A Crash Course In The Long-Lost Art Of Adaptation

One of the biggest lies of my life was this one: if you do your job constantly, if you listen to your folks obediently, nothing bad will happen to you. All you have to do in order to live a happy life is to play by the rules and everyone around you will do the same. If you listen to life, life will listen to you and will reward you back big time.

Well, guess what, it didn’t actually happen like this. I mean, I did my best to be obedient, to follow the rules, to do my job and not to harm anyone else, and yet, out of the blue, I got kicked straight in my ass. And not only once.

I’m sure you’ve been there too. And not only once. You did your job too, minding your own business, fulfilling your roles as a friend, employee or husband and then, kaboom, life hits you right in the groin, not only filling your entire being with unbearable pain, but also leaving you breathless, confused and defeated. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about business, about relationships or friendships or you name it. Sometimes you just get hit. At some point, if you’re a business man, competition will play dirty. Or employees will let you down. In your personal life, the persons you trust (or care for) the most will lie to you or dump you. In your casual circle, a friend will suddenly betray you. It will happen.

For a long time, I thought I didn’t do the right thing… you know, righteously enough. I thought I didn’t follow all the rules, or that I somehow misunderstood something. I thought it was my fault. This is what they teach you, anyways. If what you do doesn’t solve the problem, just use a bigger hammer. So I strived even harder. But surprise. Nothing changed.

As life unfolded, the tiny little crack I was just glimpsed at, became larger and larger. It looked like no matter what I did, the gap between what I expected and what I actually got grew bigger and bigger. It became obvious there wasn’t a direct link, or any causality whatsoever, between my obedience to the rules and the bad things that were happening to me.

To make a long story short, it took me a ginormous amount of time to realize that life really is random. That you can’t control it. That you can’t influence events. They will always happen somewhere outside you.

Oh, my god, stop it right here! Blasphemy!

How can someone who writes about goals, living a better life and improving your skills can come up with such an enormity? You can’t do anything about events? You just have to sit there and endure whatever comes in your face?

Well, not so fast, Jose, not so fast.

I didn’t say anything about what YOU have to do. I said something about events. About things that are happening to you. Those things, believe it or not, you aren’t able to control.

You can’t control the stock market. But you can see how she moves and take advantage of some opportunities.

You can’t control the weather (not unless you can detonate a huge atomic bomb, or generate a volcano eruption, that is). But you can assess the changes, evaluate them and then act on them. Put on lighter clothes if it’s getting warmer or take an umbrella if it’s going to rain.

You can’t control the behavior of your clients, if you run a business, not to mention competition. But you can observe the competition moves, read your customer feedbacks and then do whatever you have to do advance.

Are you with me now?

Truth is we have a very limited sphere of direct influence in this world. If you really look at it, it’s just a tiny bubble around us. You can control your body, your clothes, your moves. You can control your balance and your visual sensors as you walk outside of a building, for instance, but you can’t control a potential brick that may fall right into your head from the top of that building. You can observe it, of course, and avoid it. But the brick will be outside of your control zone.

The Randomness Of Life

We get a lot of “bricks form the top of the building” in our lives. We can spot some of them and timely avoid the impact. But some of them are invisible and we just get hit.

In the beginning, I was shocked by this discovery. The randomness of life seemed frightening. I thought I was helpless. I suddenly went to the other side and started to believe that no matter what I do, a brick will always fall down from the sky and ruin it. Of course it didn’t. So it took me a while to understand the meaning of the term “randomness” and also to adjust my position towards it.

And that’s how I started to study the “long lost art of adaptation”. Of course I don’t know if there is such an art, I just made it up. It made you click on the title, didn’t it?

Anyway, back to our story: art or science, adaptation is not only key to survival (as any serious biologist will confirm it for you) but it’s also important if you want to make the best of what you get. It’s at least a key skill and, as such, I firmly believe that it can be taught.

Without further ado, here’s a (crash) course on how to enhance your adaptability skills:

1. If Something Feels Like (Or Really Is) Wrong, Accept It First

Don’t fight evidence. If you get hit by a crisis, please admit that you are hit by a crisis and this is exactly what is happening to you. Don’t treat like an injustice. Don’t even think in terms of luck or bad luck. From a tiny point of view, at the exact moment of that event, it may feel like an injustice, but on a larger scale, it’s just another event in your life. So, instead of whining, crying and complaining about how bad life is treating you, just accept it. It’s another part of your life. It may be painful now, but it’s still your life.

2. Always Assess

After accepting it, start looking around and see what can really happen. Evaluate the harm done (or potential). Try to predict. Try to see what might go wrong. Or good. I can’t really remember any event in my life which was entirely good. Or bad. A wedding can be a good event, but if there’s a divorce 5 years later, well, I don’t know… Losing all your money may seem like a terrible thing to happen, but if you look at how this forced you to change your way of life, it may be something to ponder there…

3. Unfold Plausible Scenarios

After assessing, try to understand what you can do in the newly unfolded circumstances. But don’t limit yourself to just one thing. Don’t try to find the perfect solution. Make a few scenarios. Even better, try to develop a way of thinking in scenarios, whether you’re in a crisis or not. It will make miracles for your morale, believe me. Just try to project as many variables as you can. Don’t let anything out. Don’t believe in “this will never happen to me”. Everything you can imagine, can actually become an event.

4. Act, Don’t React

Accepting the catastrophe, assessing the damage, creating a few plausible scenarios, well, it’s not enough. You gotta act. Acceptance in itself will do nothing. Assessing in itself will do nothing as well. Those possible scenarios, as detailed and complete as they may be, won’t mean nothing. It’s action that changes things. So, just go ahead and make your best pick out of those scenarios. Just play your hand.

5. Rinse And Repeat

Once you acted, you’re already in a new context. Enjoy it. Be there, watch the surroundings and be ready for anything. It may be that the scenario wasn’t as good as you thought it may be. Ok, back to square number one. Try plan B. Or it may be that the plan really worked and now you’re out of the dangerous zone. Just be there and be alert. Enjoy what you have and live the best life you can live.

For it may fall apart again in a split of a second.

Are You Staring At Me?

As a digital nomad I get to work in public places a lot, especially coffee shops. Every once in a while I run into some mild problems, but, usually, nothing really serious. Until the other day. Sit down, relax, and make sure you don’t read this in a coffee shop too

The Premises

So, here I am, on a nice Monday morning, unpacking my laptop over a nice small table at my favorite Starbucks, arranging my cup of tea and plugging in the cable. Around, a few people at their own tables, most of them with their own laptops, tapping silently. Soft music, nice light, a perfect atmosphere for working.

I’m at the first floor (this Starbucks has two floors, and the top one is less crowded) and, at this exact moment, a young fellow, with a hoodie on, jumps over the stairs, looks at the toilet door (which was closed) and then turns at me. He smiles and waves, almost greeting me. A microsecond of browsing through my (I admit, quite large) database of persons that I know and a definitive result: I don’t know this guy. I politely look over him, while he came forward and take a sit on a bench just in front of me. 2-3 meters maximum. He must wait for the toilet, I presume.

Confusions happens, I tell to myself, then I start working. After a few minutes, a gentle sensation over my forehead interrupts me. I get this sometimes, when people are looking at me. I take my eyes out from the computer and, surprise, the young fellow is still there, staring at me. The toilet door was open, so he must’ve already been there, I think. I browse through my internal database again, only to get the same result: I definitely don’t know this guy. And yet there he is, smiling and looking at me. The hoodie is off, it’s getting warm.

I get back to my computer and continue to work. But not for long. My forehead sensation was still there. I take my eyes off from the laptop and this time I make eye contact. The same second he slips his look over me, avoiding eye contact. Hmm… I gently look around, take a tea sip and there it is again, with the corner of my eye I see him staring at me again. I try eye contact again and then he avoids it again.

Around, business as usual. Nobody seemed to perceive nothing strange. They either thought this guy is with me (somehow), or his behavior looked quite normal.

At this point, I started to identify the whole situation with some sort of a problem. I can’t really work when somebody is staring at me. So, I started to evaluate the possible reasons for this. After a few seconds, I identified 3 possible causes.

1. He’s probably gay. And really, really lonely.

Not much to do about this, I’m straight so I may just tell him that.

2. I’m on candid camera.

I’m turning around looking for places where they could hide a camera. Trying to figure out which of the people at the tables were accomplices. After a few minutes of gazing, I had to admit I wasn’t on candid camera. Nobody looked like a candid camera crew (I worked for a while in television, so I kinda sense this stuff). Also, on candid camera, at some point they come at you and tell: “Hey, man, you’re on candid camera!”. This guy didn’t. He just continued to look at me.

2. He must be on ecstasy.

As far as I could tell, his eyes were ok, didn’t notice any shaking or other strange movements, so he didn’t seem like he was on drugs. I’m not too experienced at this, though, so I didn’t rule it out completely.

As I was still trying to find out the number 4 reason, all of a sudden he gets out, turns on his heels and down he goes, over the stairs. He just left. I confess I had a huge relief breathe and gently came back to my work. Incidentally, it was one of those days when I had a full plate, so to speak, so there was a lot to be done.

After a few minutes, the foreground sensation again. Ok, somebody is looking at me again, I’m saying to myself. Who could it be? In front of me, the bench was empty. Another short relief breathe and then I turn to the right. And there he was again, the hoodie fellow, with a cup of tea and a sandwich, on the bench next to me. Not more than one meter between us now.

I felt a bit of an emptiness in my stomach and then instinctively looked to my screen, not understanding one thing of what I was looking at, but desperately trying to understand what was going on.

The Interaction

It must have been more than a half an hour since I was at that Starbucks, so I decided to tackle this somehow. I suddenly turn to the right, and this time he can’t avoid eye contact anymore.

“Can I help you?” I ask upfront. Trying not to be angry, just polite.

“Oh, no, not at all.” he shivers, looking surprised that I actually opened up a conversation with him. Like he didn’t expected this to happen. The he continues to stare at me.

“Are you sure?” I ask again, this time a little bit angry.

“Oh, yes! I’m absolutely sure.” he answers, somehow realizing that he must’ve been on some sort of a faux pax. And then he looks the other way. I stay turned for around 10 seconds and I make sure he won’t stare at me anymore. And, apparently, it worked.

I get back to my work, but only with half of my focus now. I still sense this guy, no more than one meter away from me, watching his cup of tea, eating his sandwich and staring randomly around. Every once in a while at me, too, but this time he looked a bit more controlled.

At this point, one of my partners in WPSumo came in (we had to finish something together) and, being already cautious, I invite him to sit down on my bench, between me and that guy. Of course, my partner has no idea about what’s going on and I decide not to tell.

We start working, but, after ten minutes or so, I suddenly see my partner’s eyes growing bigger and bigger behind his glasses. He elbows me pointing to that bench: “Have you seen this guy? He’s sleeping”. I lean forward and there he is, the hoodie guy, on his left side, one hand under his head, knees almost to the chest, in the embryo position. He didn’t look completely asleep, but hey, he was still lying down on a Starbucks bench.

The next second he rolls over his back, face up and then his hands are starting a strange dance in the air. Very, very slowly, he was picking objects and then rearranging them in other places. Invisible objects, of course. Think Tom Cruise in Minority Report, only sitting on his back. The other people on the room started to notice this. Some of theme were smiling, some of theme were pointing their fingers to the head: “he must be screwed up there”. But that didn’t seem to stop that slow, almost hypnotic dance.

At this point, a waitress came in, starting to clean up tables. As I know her (I do spend a lot of time there, so we kinda have small conversations every once in a while), I ask her upfront:

“What’s up with this guy?”

“Oh, I guess nothing”, she replies. After that, she leans forward to see the slow Minority Report dance and adds, just a bit worried: “Well, I hope nothing. It’s just… how he is. Does he bothers you?”

I decided to answer “no” to this question. We went on with our work, finished what we had to do like in 20 minutes and split. I could’ve stay longer, but, somehow, the staring guy, as inoffensive as he was, made me not to.

The Hoodie Guy And The Goals

As I was heading home, I tried to understand what was that bothered me so much about this encounter. After all, like the waitress pointed out, he was harmless. He was just staring at me. A simple presence, just a look, a harmless surveillance.

And the moment I found the word “surveillance”, it hit me: it was the pressure of the expectations. I didn’t know exactly what this guy was asking from me. But, somehow, I was afraid I couldn’t deliver. As simple as it was, that was the exact thing that made me feel so uncomfortable. If I wouldn’t feel that I had to do something in a certain way, I wouldn’t be bothered at all. I might’ve even look back at him for hours too. Or stare at the walls.

Almost frightened, as I was walking back home, I realized how many times I did this, not outside, with other people, but inside, in my own mind. How many times I created an observer, a person who was expecting me to act in a certain way, only to get completely stuck when he was staring at me too much.

How many times I created bold goals, literally creating dozens of hoodie guys, bringing them into my own room, and making them stare at me, until I was delivering. And celebrating big time after that.

There is a certain weight in establishing bold goals. There is a certain (unnecessary) pressure in creating bigger and bigger standards. The bigger the standard, the longer the gaze of the hoodie guy. At some point, you kinda get fed out with all that staring and just walk away.

Sometimes, we just need a balanced interaction between our goals and our resources. Too many hoodie guys in the room will make you feel uncomfortable. The pressure will be too big. And, at some point, you’ll give up.

It’s way better to negotiate your goals every once in a while. Like in telling the hoodie guy to just give you a break. And then secretly watch him arrange invisible objects with his hands while you get on with other stuff.

Now, quit staring at this blog post. It’s embarrassing

Flames

No fire can burn without air blown into it. The flame must consume oxygen in order to exist.

So every time I’m getting burned by something I do, or something others are doing or saying to me, I’m always questioning who’s blowing the air into that flame. If it’s me, I stop blowing. And every time I stop blowing into my own flame (like ignoring, letting go, accepting and move on) the flame goes away.

But every once in a while, it happens that somebody else is blowing into a fire which is directed to me. Most of the time, they blow from a hidden place. I don’t know why this happens, but it does. And I don’t think I’m the only one experiencing this, I’m sure everybody went through it at least once in their lifetime.

When this happens, when somebody else, from the secrecy of a hidden identity is starting to blow air into some fire against me, I get very, very patient. And wait for the blower to get out of air.

Taming Monkey Number 11 – The Results

It’s the last day of November and I decided to write a short report about my eleventh monkey. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go read the introductory post. In short, at the beginning of 2011, I decided to ditch my yearly resolutions and replace them with 12 monthly challenges, in which I will “tame an inner monkey”. In other words, try to solve some unfinished business or to cope with some unfulfilled promise I made to myself or to others. If you want to know more about my concept of inner monkey, go read this post.

Relationships. Can’t Live With Them, Can’t Shoot Them

This is precisely how I felt about relationships for a long time. It may feel really counterintuitive, given the fact that not only I run a quite popular blog, but I’m also a very visible person, both business-wise, and social-wise. Like I used to say in my early twenties, “the legend is bigger than me”. At that time I started to notice that there was always somebody who seemed to know me from somewhere. I was moderately popular as a radio anchor, knew a lot of people myself, been very visible (and I still am) as business man, and so on.

Knowing a lot of people is one thing, but having and managing healthy relationships is another one. The last one being always very difficult to me. Why? To make a long story short: I like to be alone. I know it took me thirty something years to realize that, but I made peace with it. I’m a lonely beast and I very much enjoy it this way. I find it tedious to relate to people for longer periods of time. While at the same time, to some extent, I do realize that it’s important for me to maintain relationships for longer periods of time. It’s still fuzzy, as I just can’t put my finger on it, can’t say why that is, I just feel that, for some obscure reason, having and keeping longer relationships may be beneficial. Somehow. A bit of this is explained in the last paragraph of this post, but hold on, don’t jump on it yet.

In short, here’s what I accomplished and what I learned while taming my eleventh monkey.

Relationships On The Move

On one side, I am really happy to have myself involved in a new circle of friendships. Many of these new friendships are in the same social circle as I am: either separated or divorced, and with kids. It was kind of a big step for me to reach out to this kind of people. One of the challenges was to find common pastimes. As a man, on the rare occasions I was going out, it was either running, going to the movies, some business event or the regular Saturday night drinks with the guys. So, I had to search, find and implement a few new pastimes.

One of them is the Saturday pancakes, as I like to call it. The neat thing about keep doing pancakes is that, in time, you become really good at making pancakes. So, I started a series of weekend pancake parties, which of course involved kids and their parents. Huge success. Another pastime was to go to the kids theater. That is on Sundays. Kids are going to see a different play each and every Sunday, while parents are catching their breath with a hot cup of tea or coffee. Of course, there are variations, sometime we go to a specific event or to a kids movie, or whatever.

On another side, I was getting rid of a different type of relationships, which I used to call “empty nutshells”. These are relationships with no core. It may have been that at the time of inception they were necessary, but now the core is consumed. So, I was slowly letting slide into the past a few empty nutshells. It is important to say that I let them slowly. It wasn’t something forced or imposed.

And yet another thing I’ve been massively doing during November: attending to business events. I’ve been called to at least 3, I guess, and at one of them I even wore a suit. I’m serious. I wore a suit and it’s been in the papers and all . At these events I did my best to mingle, interact and start new contacts. I remember I spent like 15 minutes waiting to talk to Doug Richard, which is something really unusual for me. Again, all this mingle and interacting was done without forcing anything. It was actually fun.

The last, and perhaps most important thing I did during November was to start a new business partnership. It’s about the newly revamped WPSumo, in which I am, for the first time, partner with an angel investor. It is by far the most drastic change I did in my business approaches, and one that is still undergoing a lot of changes. But it’s also something that I felt compelled to. Technically, the business partnership started in October, but I counted it for November.

A Surprising Side Effect

Well, I don’t know if it was because I announced this monkey on the blog, or because the Law Of Attraction really works, but something very interesting happened during this month. People started to call me. Like sending me emails, messages on Facebook or Google. Out of nothing, they wrote to me proposing to meet, to start projects, to get counseling (one of them was breaking up with her boyfriend and needed some astrological advice). It was a huge surprise. People are actually reaching out and trying to get in contact with me. I honestly didn’t expect that. But again, it’s fun.

What I Learned From This Monkey

We’re cells. We’re interconnected in a bigger picture. Like we’re really interconnected, it’s not just a word or an empty concept. We function differently when we’re in autonomous mode versus when we’re in interconnection mode. There is a bigger and different flow of energy going on when we’re in interconnection mode. I’m not talking about the quality of it, because energy may be either creative or destructive, I’m just witnessing the fact that human interaction is creating much more energy. Which is bigger than the algebraicl sum of 1 + 1. When in bad relationships, this energy is destructive, of course.

On the other side, it’s not at all impossible to live an isolated life. I’m a living proof of that, by the way.

But an isolated life will eventually lead to some form of energy depletion. Like a cell which is claiming independence from the main body. It may get it at some point, no doubt about it. But it may get it in a very brutal way, like a nail which is being cut. You got your independence, but you’re also expendable.

If you’re not providing to the body somehow, you eventually become unnecessary.

But the good news is that, as humans, we may still choose the way in which we provide back. We’re not so specialized, like a liver cell or heart tissue cell, doing only one thing. We can change our ways as we see fit.

The secret is to find that specific place where your skills, approaches and all the other unspoken gifts you have to give to the world are needed.

And then start giving.

The Wrong, The Real And The Right Questions

Every once in a while people are asking me: “Dragos, do you really do all that stuff on your blog?”. “What do you mean by that?”, I usually respond. “You know, writing all the articles, coding iOS apps, publishing books. Do you really do ALL that stuff on your blog?”. “Yes”, I answer and usually change the subject immediately.

The Wrong Questions

Because I honestly consider this to be a very wrong question. Just as wrong as the following questions:

• How Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook?
• How Bill Gates became the richest person in the world?
• How can Lionel Messi play that incredible soccer that he plays?
• How can rich people live such an incredible life?

Here’s the pattern for all these wrong questions: everything is happening outside. We’re identifying the people we’re focusing on with some sort of social models, then start to compare what we have with what those models have, in terms of self-esteem, money and lifestyle, and then we realize they have more than we do. So we start to ask these questions. Which, in fact, are just placeholders for the real ones.

The Real Questions

And the real ones are:

• Why can’t I create something as powerful as Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg can?
• Why can’t I be the richest person in the world and Bill Gates can?
• Why can’t I play soccer as good as Lionel Messi?
• Why can’t I live a beautiful life, like all the rich people are living?

You see? Every time they’re talking about somebody else, people are in fact talking about themselves. It’s always about some hidden desire that they cannot express or some difficult goal that they don’t even dream to set. In fact, they’re asking themselves why can’t they be somebody else.

The real questions, those that you’re avoiding, are always about how do you fit. What’s your place here and how do you make use of it. How much do you want to have, to do, to experience, to live.

At some point in your life, most likely when you were a child, you changed your genuine personality for a different one, one that you’ve been taught to be “the correct one”. So, instead of accepting yourself, your own intentions, instead of following your own plans, you changed things to fit in. And started to make detours, compromises and replaced your desires with others, much more acceptable, or fashionable, or socially compliant.

And that’s the source for the wrong questions. You forgot your real identity and now you try to find ways to get it back, by comparing yourself with others. And you keep asking these wrong questions, when instead you should focus on the real ones.

But even when you start asking the real questions, it doesn’t mean you’re there yet. After all, the title of this article says something about the wrong, the real AND the right questions. So, what’s the right question to ask, anyway?

The Right Questions

To make a long story short, here are the right questions:

• Do I really want to build Facebook?
• Do I really need all Bill Gates money?
• Do I really want to play soccer?
• Do I really want to be a rich person?

In 99.99% of the cases, the answers to the right questions are “No”. You don’t want to create Facebook, nor to play soccer like Lionel Messi, not even to be a rich person. (Believe me, deep down, each individual has a very different and personal representation of richness, very different form the “a shitload of money” approach). There is already a Facebook in place, you don’t need to build another one. It’s impossible anyway. You may build something better, but, as you already started to understand, that’s a completely different question.

You may think you want all of the above, because you kept your focus on the outside world for so much time, that you forgot what it’s like inside you. You forgot what you really want, and replaced your wishes with some ready made ones. Your goals are the goals of everybody. You try to fit your entire existence into some limited lifestyles patterns. Which is fundamentally wrong, since we’re all different. Beautifully different, I may add.

I think it’s ok to react to outside stimuli and have opinions. If something catches our attention somehow, we should take and sustain a certain position. Like when we talk about Facebook, for instance, to acknowledge that this is a very interesting trend. Or to acknowledge the fact that Lionel Messi plays very good soccer. These are our opinions, and it’s part of our personality to express them.

But what I think it’s not ok – and, subsequently, I try to change first in my own behavior – it’s the type of question that I’m asking about those stimuli.

So, the real question that I hear in fact from other people is:

“Why can’t I own a popular self-improvement blog, some apps in the AppStore and some ebooks published?”.

When you put it like this, it really makes you think, right? I’m sure you didn’t think about that… But wait, that’s only the real question you’re asking. So, you’d better move on and ask the right one:

“Do I really want to be someone else? Or just me?”.

The Lottery Scam

You know what a “Lottery Scam” is? If not, just bear with me for a second.

The “lottery scam” is a widely used con. It usually starts with the sending of a letter, in which the winning of a prize is announced. Somehow, you, the receiver of the letter, are suddenly entitled to that prize. You just won something. Isn’t that wonderful?

After you get in contact with the sender to clarify the details of your winnings, you are then asked to pay a little bit of money. It’s not much, compared to the winnings and it makes perfect sense, too. That money is either “processing money” or “tax” that you should just pay. And it’s not that much anyway.

After you pay that small amount of money, all of a sudden, your prize either disappears, or transforms itself into something completely worthless (like coupons for extremely expensive stuff you can’t afford anyway). It’s in that moment that you realize the small amount of money you were required to pay was really important. And lost. And that you’ve been scammed.

The Life Lottery Scam

When presented like this, this scam is relatively easy to be spotted and avoided. But the bad news is that the “lottery scam” works on many other levels. In fact, it activates some very deep switches, making us vulnerable on many areas. I call it “the life lottery scam”. Here are a few examples.

Suppose you’re a man and a beautiful woman enters your life. You are incredibly attracted to her and start telling to yourself that finally something good is coming into your life. She also seems attracted to you, but not too much. Just enough to be seen as a valuable prize, as something that you must fight for.

And fighting is what you do. You fiercely begin your struggle and start spending small amounts of stuff (not talking specifically about money, it’s also time and emotional support) knowing that the value of the final prize will be so big, that will make these small investments look ridiculously small.

And spend, and spend, and spend until, at some point, tired or even broke, you want your prize. You know you won the lottery, you paid your “processing fees” and now you want the reward. Alas, you will instantly find out that the reward was never there. As in the classical lottery scam, it’s either completely nonexistent (the woman simply dumps you) or it’s just something you don’t want (like the “let’s just be friends and I told you already you shouldn’t expect more than that from me anyway” thing we all got at some point in our lives).

What happened? You traded some amounts of your life (translated into various types of support, like time, money or emotions) on something that you thought it will be an order of magnitude higher. But you forgot one essential aspect: you were never signed up to that competition. Most of the time there’s no competition at all. You thought you were in, because you wanted to, and, most of the time, that’s what you’ve been lured to believe. But in reality, there was never an authentic intention for a real bonding from the other side.

Many of the relationships I see around myself are just variations of this specific case. One of the partners is a parasite to the other, feeding with his or her money, or time or emotional support, in an endless expectation of the other partner for a bigger exchange, that, of course, never happens. That’s a very common “life lottery scam”.

But it also happens in jobs, or in professional relationships. For instance, during some conversations with your boss, you suddenly start to perceive small hints that a new promotion will be in place soon. Also, you get some signals that you’re going to be a “real candidate” for it.

What do you do? You start working your ass for it like never before, because you now know that you already won the prize. Finally, something good is happening to you at this stupid job. But when the promotion time arrives, you either learn that it was never something about a promotion, or that somebody else will get it in your place.

Again, you traded your work hours, your ideas, your input for something that you thought it’s a done deal. Only it wasn’t. Just another form of “life lottery scam”.

The Surprising Scammer

One very important difference between the standard “lottery scam” and what I call the “life lottery scam” is about the scammer. In the standard “lottery scam“ this is very easy to spot. It’s another person (sometimes a group) who just wants your money. But in the ”life lottery scam“, the scammer – and I’m sure this is gonna be a huge surprise for you – is not always outside.

Most of the time, the scammer is you. Yes, you. You project your expectations, and goals, and hopes on a certain situation, without properly assessing it. You think you won something, without really taking the time to be sure about it. You just think you did. You take your suppositions for granted and start to build on this incredibly thin foundation. And when the weight of the building is reaching a critical point, namely when you want your ”prize“, the foundation collapses.

And it’s only then that you realize that you weren’t in any competition at all. There was no prize to be won. You just traded your time on a ghost. More important, on a ghost you created yourself.

You Can’t Win A Competition You Never Signed Up For

The bottom line in this scam – and the reason for this blog post – is that you can’t win a nonexistent competition. Or one that you never signed up for. If something looks too good to be true, then it usually is to good to be true. Just ask questions until you get your answers. And, most important, start by asking questions to yourself. Investigate, uncover any half-explained information, immerse yourself totally in any interaction until you find out what you need to find out. Which usually is just the answer to a very simple question: “is this for real?”.

There is this secret desire that something will happen outside us, something that will drastically improve our existence. And this desire grows stronger and stronger over years. The less you do your work, the more you expect somebody else to do it for you.

Well, I got news: there’s nobody out there capable of doing your work. Only you.

Living Off The Grid

For the last 3 years I’ve been living completely off the grid. I don’t have a regular job anymore, my income sources are completely erratic, and my personal relationships are either collapsed or very hard to understand from a traditional perspective. I travel a lot and when I work, I set up my own hours and spaces. From the outside, I often characterize myself as a digital nomad, but on the inside, I’m just living off the grid.

It’s an incredibly powerful experience and, the more I get into it, the more I enjoy the whole process. But, as cool as it may look or feel, living off the grid is not easy. Also, it is a socially alienating lifestyle, and that’s for a very good reason: any individual living outside normal rules is intrinsically a threat to the society. Which will in turn do whatever it takes to alienate those who are not obeying its rules. And believe me, I’ve been treated like this by what we call “society” more than once.

What Does “Living Off The Grid” Means?

Before diving too much into the causes and consequences of such a lifestyle, let’s stop for a moment and try to understand what “living off the grid” means. At least for me.

First of all, it means I’m not socially enrolled as a worker. It doesn’t mean I don’t work, it just means I don’t have a regular job. I don’t fit into any socially accepted description of a job, although I do perform a lot of value creating roles. I code iPhone apps, although I’m not a programmer. I write on a popular self-improvement blog (the one you read read right now, that is), although I don’t define myself as a blogger. I wrote 5 books, though I’m not a writer.

In fact, I do have a very odd lifestyle and it took a while even to me to come to the terms with it. After jumping from one definition of what I do to another, from blogger to writer and from entrepreneur to programmer, I finally decided that I’m neither of them. And that I just live outside of a normal grid of rules. With all the good and bad stuff that may come out of this.

Second, living off the grid also affects relationships. I don’t have any of the socially accepted roles in this area, nor do I want to embark on one anymore. I’m not a husband to anyone (I’m twice divorced, as a matter of fact). I’m friend of a few, although I do have a rather eclectic taste in friends. I have short bursts of powerful social interactions, followed by long periods of solitude.

All in all, I’m not following any traditional patterns in living my life. I do not comply with a lot of socially accepted rules. Also, I’m not a nice guy, by any standards. And that’s true, although parts of my blog may have mislead you in this matter.

And yet, I live an incredibly fulfilling life. I don’t experience any of the limitations that come with following the rules. I have an unbelievably diverse field of experiences. I see a lot of places and interact with a lot of people. I create and provide value on many levels. And all this while still maintaining a decent level of comfort, enabling me at least to provide for myself and for my kids.

So, that’s what “living off the grid” means to me. Now let’s move a bit to the reasons for this lifestyle.

After giving it a lot of thought, I came to the conclusion that living off the grid has 3 main reasons: impossibility to adapt, boredom and, finally, curiosity. Let’s talk a bit about each of these and then we’ll go deeper with the implications that this lifestyle had on me for the last 3 years.

1. Lack Of Adaptation

Some of the people living outside of the grid are just unable to cope with the normal rules imposed by society. They simply can’t accept something that is imposed to them. The energy necessary to follow all the rules will simply dry them out. They’re the unadapted.

To some extent, we’re all unadapted. We do not obey to all the rules, all the time. But we do obey to a certain set that allows us to survive in the grid. We’re able to cope with the majority of rules imposed on us, and we do this for the vast majority of time. But once we reach a certain threshold, once we’re not able to fit in properly, we’re off the grid.

If there will be a scale for people living off the grid by lack of adaptation, to the most violent end of it we’ll find criminals, homeless or other “extremes” of the human nature.Their lack of adaptation is so obvious and aggressive that society simply can’t manage them in a frictionless way, and they have to be put away. On the other end of the scale are the shy, unobservable, silent people. So shy and unobservable that we don’t really know they’re there. But they are. We’re only not accepting them in our “circle”.

2. Boredom

Another cause of living off the grid is boredom. You know, when you just had enough and need a break. Everybody needs a break every once in a while. We’re designed in such a way that we need diversity, otherwise we tend to implode sooner or later.

Boredom makes rules so unfulfilling that simply obeying them became a chore in itself. Why being a socially correct individual when you don’t get any excitement back? What’s the good in being correct if you don’t get back anything funny?

And, sadly, this is true: the role of rules is to keep the larger structure going on, not to provide excitement. Rules are made to keep everything under control while excitement, by definition, it’s something completely out of control.

3 Curiosity

That’s the third, and, if I may say that, the most “healthy” reason for living off the grid. If lack of adaptation is your “child” mode and boredom is your “adult” mode, this is what I call your “experimental” mode. The playful one, curiosity in action, but doubled also by responsibility. Trying things outside the normal scope, just to see what happens. How you feel. What you can get off of it.

It’s different from lack of adaptation because you know you can cope with the rules, but now you just want to play. Deep down you know you’re fit, you just try something different.

It’s different from boredom also as it doesn’t set any expectations. In the boredom mode, you expect a thrill as result of your action. In the curiosity mode, you already have the thrill inside, regardless of the outcome of your action.

So, to finish this part, my main reasons for living off the grid are in order: curiosity, boredom and lack of adaptation. I always was almost clinically curious, I was really bored after running my own business for more than 10 years and I also have my share of not coping with the rules. Like I told you, I’m not a nice a guy.

Consequences Of Living Off The Grid

During the last 3 years many things in my life were changed. I will only talk about a few of them, namely about those who may be of interest for a broader audience.

Business

Doing business when you live off the grid is kinda difficult. You must rely only on your own efforts for branding and networking. You won’t get any help back from society: none of your diplomas will work here. It’s only what you know to do and how well are you able to sell it. If you’re good at these, you may end up pretty good. You may create an image of success and you may attract a lot of partners. In my case, I have to admit I also relied heavily on my successful history as an entrepreneur. Before living off the grid, I acted as an important society pillar: I created a big business, which in turn created jobs and generated a lot of extra value. But if I wouldn’t have such a successful history, my current position as an “off the grid” business man would have been very different.

Doing business when you live off the grid is also borderline fraud. Or, to be more correct, this is how it’s perceived by normal society. And why is that? Because you, as an outsider, claim ownership to stuff that is no longer backed up by your lifestyle. You want money, right? But money is a value that was generated inside society. You’re no longer part of that society now, you live by your own rules, so why you still need money? Of course, what’s happening in real life is that you start to align some of your “off the grid” rules to those of a normal, protective society, in order to keep the revenue area in sync, so to speak. Many of the popular icons of this lifestyle are actually doing it. Think Tim Ferris or Steve Pavlina. Although they’re prophets of a lifestyle in freedom, outside a regular job, some of their rules are making (a lot of) room to (a lot of) money.

In my experience, doing business off the grid took a lot of trial and error. The good news is that my initial model, building an online brand around a blog, was validated. This thing is actually working. The bad news is that I have to work way more than I initially thought to make this happen. And I also had to increase the speed of my experiments. If you’re reading my blog, let’s say, twice a month, you wouldn’t have notice any of these. There was very small experiments in monetization, like advertising, affiliate products and so on, each in a very narrow time window. They were taking place at a very high speed, so the regular flow of my messages wasn’t disturbed. Also, I had to invest a lot of time in building some real life connections. These efforts couldn’t be seen also on the blog, but they were part of this new lifestyle.

After 3 years I can finally testify that doing business as an off the grid individual can work in a sustainable way. But it’s not even remotely as easy as doing business in the normal society. So if you wanna take on this path, be prepared to work your arse off.

Personal Relationships

Probably the most challenging area. First of all, when I really got into this new lifestyle, my traditional relationships went bonkers. Although it worked well for a year or two, starting with the third year, my traditional marriage collapsed. It took almost 2 years to solve the whole separation related stuff and it was one of my most painful and difficult times ever. Mostly because my daughter, Bianca, had to witness a lot of unhealthy emotional reactions.

I won’t blame entirely my new lifestyle for my marriage collapse, but it was certainly an important part of it. As much as we, as men, don’t want to believe this, women are also starting partnerships with our images, not with us, as human beings. Just as we, men, are attracted by their exciting shapes or flirtatious games (which are almost never exact mirrors of their real human beings), they’re also attracted by our (often unconsciously projected) images of protection and power. In my case, being “the CEO” had a big impact on my last marriage. So big that when the “CEO” part of me was gone, wasn’t much left, at least in the eyes of my ex-wife. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no one to blame here, this is just how things were and I don’t hold any grudges to anyone.

Subsequently, starting new personal relationships when you live off the grid is equally difficult. You know, before this, every time a woman was asking me what do I do for a living, the answer was easy: “I own my own business”. From that point on, things were usually pretty straightforward. But now, I am having a real hard time trying to explain to my new acquaintances what I do for a living. In the beginning, I was taking this question seriously and started to really explain that I have a blog, and around it I built an ecosystem of products, and brands, and so on. Big mistake. Now I only tell them: “I do everything I can to avoid a 9 to 5 job”. It seems that it keeps their minds busy enough so we can move to other parts of the game.

But even if they eventually understand what I do for a living, the real bonding is very difficult, especially if the other person is very much “into the grid”. As a matter of fact, the higher is on her career path, the most difficult is for a woman to relate properly with a man off the grid. Their minds are pretty hard wired into stability and protection (usually, that’s the main reason behind their effort to climb on the career ladder anyway). So, if at any moment they will perceive (and women are extremely good at perceiving things, you know) that you’re not into this protection role anymore, and you’re just experiencing and looking for adventure, they’ll back off. Of course, there is also the other side of the coin, when your adventurous image will arouse them and made them push things even deeper, just to experience a little bit of the thrill they see inside you. But in the end, the planet represented by society is way bigger than you, and its gravity will attract them back.

There is always the possibility to meet a woman who also lives off the grid, or who has a deeper understanding of the world. In that case, things will really work out. But, as you may imagine, this is an order of magnitude more difficult to happen than a normal, society compliant relationship.

Health

This area was one of the few that benefit 100% from my lifestyle change. I will just start by saying that every time I’m asking an unknown person to tell my age just by looking at me, I invariably get “30, 33 or 30 something”. I will be 41 in 3 months.

The main reason for my huge massive health improvement was that I escaped a very tiring work routine. Getting to work day in and day out, whether you like it or not, well, that’s not a good thing. I know you know that. I’m just saying. Doing things in a forced way is not good for anyone. Unfortunately, when we sign up a social contract to have a job, we gotta follow through, otherwise the whole universe around us will collapse. And that mere thought is literally killing many of us slowly. And don’t even imagine that just because I had my own business I didn’t have to go to work day in and day out. As a matter of fact, I think I worked more than any of my employees.

Another important consequence for my health was that I also had a lot of time to experiment. One of the most interesting health experiments I did in the last 3 years was my raw food diet. I stayed raw for like 9 months. During this time I lost 12 kilos and I felt like I was 14 again (minus the hormones thing). I was sleeping 5 hours a night and felt absolutely great. But in the end I had to give up. The main reason for that: society is not ready for this lifestyle. I simply can’t be 100% raw and still have a normal social life. Right now I’m omnivorous but I also drastically changed my physical exercise routine.

And by that I come to another fortunate consequence of living off the grid: the ability to start complex 30 days challenges. I started a 30 days challenge to exercise 2 years ago. I also started a “taming monkey” experiment in which I re-learned how to run. And in the meantime I did countless of other small improvements in my physical health. Like walking instead of driving and not eating after 7 PM. And more. But there’s a very important caveat to this situation and I’m very much aware of it. None of these experiments would have taken place if I wasn’t a self-improvement obsessed freak. And by that I mean it’s much more difficult to get motivated when you’re off the grid. When we’re sharing our lives with other people, by following the same rules, much of our behavior is on auto-pilot. Most of the time, this is a bad thing. But there are situations when being part of a larger group are beneficial. Like your weekly basketball game, for instance, if you know what I mean.

Social Interactions

And with that, I’m going to the part that was most heavily changed by living off the grid: social interactions. In the beginning, the most important consequence was that I was able to filter all my social contacts based on a simple rule: whether I like them or not. You have no idea how heavily our social contacts are influenced by our jobs and how little we can influence them when we follow the rules. Once you’re off the grid and once you can make a conscious choice, your social life will be completely changed. You will meet only people you want to meet. This simple change will have enormous effects on your social life. You will simply be able to ignore people you don’t like. Because you’re not forced to deal with them anymore. Massive amounts of anger and rejection won’t be triggered at all. Instead, your emotional life will start to heal. At some point, you will grow so strong that you will not need this filter anymore. You will be able to deal with all kind of people the same way you deal only with people that you used to like. And that’s huge. It’s an internal transformation that will literally catapult your social life. As of today, I have no difficulty whatsoever to normally relate with basically anyone. And I mean anyone.

Also, another important consequence was that I started to work from home. For the last 10 years I had an office. All that was “work” was happening in that place and in that place only. But after I sold my company I didn’t want an office anymore. So all my work started to happen at home. As surprising as it may seem, this was one of the most effective disciplinary measures I ever took. Working from home, instead of making me a lazy couch potato, transformed me into a productivity freak. There were also a lot of other lessons I learned from this.

But probably the most important thing that happened to me on the social level was traveling. It may sound strange to you but I never left my country until I was 35. And since 37, when I sold my company I went over the world and back 2 times. I started a company in New Zealand (and thinking to start one in US too). I went to Asia, from Thailand to Japan. I gambled in Vegas, ate cooked rice in Hong Kong and croissants in Paris. Visited half of Europe and also crossed my natal country, Romania, in any conceivable way. I learned how to fly in Christchurch and also made my first tattoo. I simply can’t imagine myself being capable to have all these experiences by living a socially accepted lifestyle. Like having a regular job and so on. If there is one, I simply cannot see it, so I’d greatly appreciate any insights in the comments.

The Most Important Lessons From Living Off The Grid

Living off the grid is cool. It’s also pretty difficult, as you already saw. But there is also one thing that proved to be the most important of all. A thing so simple and yet so powerful. A thing that made me realize that I can really keep this lifestyle for as long as I want to, provided I won’t forget it.

Without further ado, here it is: living off the grid doesn’t have any positive outcome if the grid doesn’t take something back of the outside experiments. In other words, if you’re living off the grid for yourself, you are not improving anyone’s life. In fact, you’re not improving your life either. You may say that, as a result of your actions, you’ll be a different person once you get back to the grid. But, since the grid hasn’t changed at all as a result of your absence, your newly acquired abilities or skills are useless.

So, if you really want to live off the grid, remember to give back. Stop every once in a while, look back and see what you can share with others that will make the grid a better place. Start telling your stories, for instance. Or start teaching others, Or just start providing some service you learned on your off the grid experience.

In my case, I’m giving back on this very blog more than 500 self-improvement articles. All free of charge. Just browse and read at your leisure. Also, I wrote 5 books and created an iOS productivity app. All these are some of my ways to give back to the grid.

Because I have no intention to get back there soon. It’s way too cool out here.

Even if it gets really tough at times.

Taming Monkey Number 7 – At Leisure

It’s time for my monthly taming monkey report. If you don’t know what is that taming monkey thing, I suggest to read the introductory post. To make a long story short, I ditched my new years resolutions and replaced them with monthly challenges. During these monthly challenges, I intend to tame an inner monkey. Like in a “monkey type” behavior, not a real monkey, of course.

At Leisure

The July monkey was to deliver a few astrological readings to people I promised that, but never got the chance to actually deliver. I do this astrology thing on a regular basis for myself and it proved to be a really reliable companion. I won’t go into details about this now. From time to time, I also do this at social gatherings or parties, just for fun. Every time I do it, I end up with at least a dozen of requests to do extended readings.

I don’t consider myself a professional astrologer and I do not intend to “become” one. I just learned this the same way I learned Objective C. Out of curiosity, that is. In fact, pretty much everything I learned so far was out of curiosity. So this challenge didn’t have any “work” or “professional” pressure, it was just a casual thing.

Out of 10 charts I only delivered two. One must say that the monkey was not tamed. And one must be right about that. But I don’t feel any negative emotions about that. No guilt, no frustration, nothing like that. In fact, I feel pretty relaxed and happy.

The whole month was more like a leisure break. In the Northern hemisphere, where I am right now, it’s holiday season. Many of my friends were out on holiday, and I myself spent like almost half of the month outside work. Almost a week in Switzerland and a few days at the Black Sea seaside (each time with one of my kids). And the rest was more like keeping afloat some of my projects instead of pushing them. One of the closest projects at this moment is WPSumo (expect to hear more about it soon). But even WPSumo was more like waiting for something to happen than pushing things to actually happen.

Results?

I said it before and I will say it again: this taming monkey challenge is one of the best thing that I did this year. The benefits are so deep and extended, that I can hardly believe where I am right now, compared to where I was at the beginning of the year.

And the most interesting part of the entire experience is the fact that the effects are not direct. They’re not like a direct consequence of what I do. Instead, there are places inside my life that gets activated almost magically, when I apply some pressure on a very different spot. For instance, in July, by trying to deliver some astrological charts, I activated that part in me that was ready to enjoy holiday.

Believe it or not, that part was drastically underdeveloped. I worked since I finished school, and always took a lot of pride in it. Work was one of my most frequently used social masks. Who are you? I’m a radio anchor. Who are you? I’m a self-made entrepreneur. And so on, and so forth…

Being so melted down with my work I always had a very hard time to relax. I only understood the whole process during the last few years. Until then, all I knew was that I don’t feel good on holiday. Now I know it was an identity crisis. And fear that if I leave it unsupervised for just a second, my universe will collapse. Taking my social mask with it.

But during this month I didn’t experience this at all. On the contrary. I felt light and relaxed. Joyful and balanced. Believe me, the outside world wasn’t like that. Business went on as usual, had to solve all sort of blocks, tense situations or just ordinary, day to day chores. But I did it without too much hassle. Even smiling at times.

Is there a direct connection between the July monkey and my ability to enjoy long breaks in my work? Most likely not. But the whole process of “taming monkeys”, of getting out from the mud of my exploding subconscious all the things that I never lived up to, putting them into the light and start to manage them, well, that’s for sure at the root of my improved living ability.

In fact, I am so relaxed that I even had a bit of a hard time writing this post. Like I was just staring at the walls instead.

August Monkey

The August monkey will be “straighten up my finances”. I know it sounds fuzzy and hard to measure, but I have this need for a long time, so I will make it a monkey.

What exactly do I mean by “straighten up my finances”? Well, after I sold my company and gave up my life as a busy manager, I embraced a digital nomad lifestyle. Basically, it means I can make my own schedule, work my own projects and make an office out of a bench on a park, if I want. Cool, isn’t it? But it also means I have a wider spread of my interests, projects and activities. I feel I’m spreading too thin.

If you want to have a glimpse of how I make money right now, have a look at my work with me page. Besides that, I also have a few other revenue sources, like affiliate programs, iOS apps and ebooks selling on Kindle and iBookStore. All this has become a little bit hard to understand, even for me. So I’ll try to make it clearer during August.

That means I can ditch some of my projects, put more energy in others or enforce my presence in some of the partnerships I already started.

We’ll see.

Luck, Bad Luck And The Illusion Of Control

I used to be a control freak. No longer than 4-5 years ago I was owning and running a moderately big online business. By “moderately big” I understand a network of websites with more than 1.000.000 unique users each month and a yearly income in the hundreds of thousands of euros. According to today’s economy, I guess this will easily qualify as a big business anyway

My daily management routine was a very tight one. I wanted to keep an eye on each and every aspect of the activity. From human resources to strategy, and from technical expertise to sales. The good part of it was that in time I became really good at pretty much everything that relates to running an online business. The bad part of it was that in 10 years I was completely burned out.

I sold that business 3 years ago. And with it, I also sold my “control freakeness“. Took me almost 10 years to realize that control is nothing more than an illusion.

Luck, Bad Luck, And The Illusion Of Control

The simplest definition of control could be summed up like this: ”no unexpected events“. Everything planned and working as scheduled. Actively preventing any surprises from interfering with our plan and course of actions. Simply put, being in control means you avoid any potential chaos.

But, as surprising as it may feel, our mere notion of ‘luck’ is based exactly on chaos. If you really take the time to think at it, you’ll realize that ”luck“ comes from our desire to have an unexpected crack in the controlled flow of our daily events. Somehow, deep inside, we desperately need to believe in a ”friendly“, supportive chaos.

We all have this clandestine hope that something good may happen to us all of a sudden. And we name this unexpected positive change ”luck“. You can’t plan, schedule and allocate resources for luck; it will just be there, if it’s bound to be there. (Subsequently, you can’t really prepare for ”bad luck“; by definition, ”bad luck“ is something that happens agains all odds).

The Fixed Path

Being a control freak means you’re ignoring any of these two possibilities. You willingly abdicate from luck. And, subsequently, try to protect yourself from bad luck. You simply don’t take them into account anymore. You just negotiate a certain outcome, stick to it and get rid of anything else.

From my personal (long and rich when it comes to being a control freak) experience, reaching your goals may be a little bit more predictable if you’re a control-freak. That’s a fact. But from the same experience, I also know that this approach is not only boring, but also diminishing. It’s true, I achieved a lot with my company by being a control freak.

But it’s also true that I passed by some very interesting opportunities, because, at that time, they were not ”fitting“ into my scheduled course of actions. They were simply things that were happening, out of nothing. Surprises. Unexpected events that I did not follow through, because I already had a schedule in place. I cannot say what my company would have become if I would follow those opportunities. And that’s kinda sad.

Completely protecting yourself from chaos will only give you an illusion. Because life is not predictable. It can’t be controlled. It’s something that just happens. And you always have the choice to ”protect“ from what happens, or to embrace what happens and figure your way as you go along.

For a certain amount of time, being in control will certainly give you a feeling of security. But at the same time it will take away any chance of luck. Or happy accident, as I like to call life events.

3 Ways To Let Go Of Control

It all may sound nice and easy in theory, but what about some actionable stuff? How about some simple (and I mean really simple) things you can do in order to get rid of control, and still be on top of your game?

1. Keep Your Eyes On The Road

And your hand upon the wheel. That means you should never lose sight of your goal but that you’re also ready to steer right or left if something unexpected occurs. And if you’re on a regular road, unexpected things will happen and you will have to steer right or left, or use the brakes from time to time and start again.

If you would have been a control freak, it would have mean your car doesn’t have a steering wheel at all.

2. Assess The Progress Rather Than The Process

If you’re focusing too much over the processes you’re implementing, you’re entering the control freak area. If you’re assessing progress, you can change processes at any time. I know for sure that this is completely against every management technique that you will ever read about. And I don’t really care about that .

It’s more about where you really go, not too much about ”how“ you go. That may change. Be ready.

3. Take Risks

Not too often, not too big. But do take risks regardless of the outcome. Break the patterns and let something new to happen, every once in a while. Challenge the fate. The outcome may be something you don’t really expect, but as long as you’re learning, you’re ok.

For instance, go out an try to meet somebody new. Like right now

Control And Resources

But probably the most important thing about control is your access to resources. If you set course to a certain way of doing things, you’re limiting yourself. You limit your access to resources.

That’s very easy to understand in business. For instance, if you choose only one way to approach your customers, you’re limiting yourself. That’s obvious. Everybody will advice you to use the famous ”marketing mix“, which is, well, a mixture of a lot of different approaches.

But in relationships, for instance, this correlation between control and resources is a little bit more difficult to spot. For instance, if you apply only a one specific strategy in order to meet new people, you’re drastically limiting your potential universe. You will only reach to those prone to be touched by your moves. There will be a lot of people that you may want to meet, but you won’t be able to, because, well… you never change your approach. And that’s because you’re only using a tiny part of your resources.

In fact, you’re having a huge pool of resources out there. Or, should I say, in there. Change the ways, try something new, assess, decide if it’s good for you, and the go on your path.

So, that’s the reason I’m not asking for any comment to this post right now. And I’m ending it quite abruptly, right here.

Out And Away From Facebook

As many of you may know already, I decided to suspend my Facebook account. In fact, I decided to suspend my Facebook activity, the account suspension was just a consequence of that. From now on, I will focus my activity on Google+. Here’s a link to my account on Google+, if you want to add me. Also, you can find it on the right sidebar (discretely replacing the Facebook icon, of course).

Facebook Unfulfilled Promise

One of the most important reasons for this move was the amount of time I was (uselessly) spending on Facebook each day. Initially, I had two main reasons for being there: blog promotion and networking.

All in all, I managed to get some traffic from Facebook, but I highly doubt it was because of Facebook. A significant part of that traffic was coming from posts which are already floating on the social media for one or two years now and which are constantly shared on Facebook too. Just take a look at the titles in the right sidebar and you’ll know what posts am I referring to. Also, I was getting a few comments on my posts, but nothing spectacular. But the saddest part is that, in order to get even that tiny slice of traffic, I had to cope with all the other “noise” that Facebook was adding to the game.

As for networking, I don’t think I had more than 20-25 real life interactions on Facebook since I was using it. It’s true that I managed to discover (and interact with) a handful of very interesting people from around the world, but if I do the math, I think I found far more of them via Twitter. I also discovered a few high school colleagues and a few distant relatives (Roua is a pretty uncommon name even in Romania, if you wonder, so I was an easy target). Apart from that, my entire Facebook activity was just a lousy excuse to procrastinate.

Lately, I also found quite disturbing to be approached on chat by a person I never met in real life. Most of the time, there were requests in games, or just for “likes” to various contests or polls. It was even one guy who was bluntly trying to sell me something without even knowing how to spell my name. I think I created a new definition for the term “microsecond” that day: it was the exact amount of time needed to click “unfriend” after I saw the selling line.

So, although the people are there and they do spend an incredibly amount of time, the result is under the promise.

Facebook Good Points

Believe it or not, there are some good points in using Facebook too. Something that is used by a few hundreds millions must have something useful, all you have to do is to isolate it from the trash.

So, one of the best things on Facebook is it’s ubiquity in single signon API’s. I still use this “Sign In With Facebook” functionality on a few sites. I think I will replace those credentials with others on a “first found, first replaced” basis.

Also, being used by such a huge amount of people, it creates an incredibly useful playground for learning. On Facebook, people are almost expecting to be used, stalked, involved in threesomes or something along these lines. So you can learn tremendously about people reactions, expectations and behaviors. Of course, these are social media behaviors, not real life behaviors. As a matter of fact, I observed an incredible difference in the Facebook discourse versus the real life discourse for many of my Facebook acquaintances. Either way, it’s a fantastic place to learn, to interact and to play. But way, way, way to noisy for my taste.

The Google+ Strong Points

It’s simple. No Farmville. No Events. No Groups in which I am added without my consent. No intrusive chat (only hangouts). And, on top of that, I get the Circles functionality. Meaning I can fine tune the privacy of my stream, something that was heavily lacking from Facebook. And it’s simple, folks. Did I say that already? Yes? Then I’m gonna say it one more time: it’s deadly simple.

Human interaction is probably the most complicated thing in the world. If you put on top of this natural obstacle a set of worn out tools which are mostly adding to the noise instead of fading it out, you’re not helping.

So far, Google+ seems to be doing a good job at fading out the noise and letting a clean stream of interaction flowing in and out. So, I’m sticking with them for a while.

Unlocking The Wrong Door

My first car was a wreck. A real wreck. The make was Dacia and the model was Nova. The color was metal blue and the engine was a 1.4 liter gasoline. The doors weren’t closing right and rear window exploded one very cold winter while I was waiting at a red light. Don’t ask why, it just exploded. The inside was extremely hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter.

Half of the parts were malfunctioning one way or another. For instance, a heat sensor who was supposed to start the engine cooling system decided to have a life of its own. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. During the summer, if I was using the car more than 2-3 hours a day, at some point thick layers of white steam were starting to emerge from under the hood. Had to pull over and wait until the engine cooled down.

Yes, it was a real wreck. I remember that one day, during a very hot summer, I had a meeting down town. I found a parking spot, locked the car (a useless precaution, more like a habit) and then went to my meeting. I don’t remember well what was I supposed to do at that meeting or if it went well at all, but I remember that I stayed around an hour.

It was noon already and the heat was reaching the “unbearable” point. Once I got to my car, I inserted the key into the door lock and started to spin. Unfortunately, the lock was stuck. Alas, it wasn’t the first time. Like I told you, half of the parts were malfunctioning and my door lock was on that half. I remember there was a subtle sequence of pushing and spinning that I have to do with my key in order to trick the lock.

I think I stayed like 30 minutes using my wrist in the most incredible positions, trying to make that lock open. No chance. I went to the other door, but didn’t get luckier. It was getting hotter and hotter. Drops of sweat were already flowing down from my eyebrows. My shirt was wet and my feet were burning. And that stupid door had no intention to open.

At that point, I did what every frustrated man would have done: decided to punch the car as hard as I can. I clearly remembered that I lifted my right arm, chose the exact spot where my fist was about to land, then lowered it with great speed, waiting for my fist to reach that very familiar scratch on the hood. Yes, I even had a very familiar scratch on my hood.

But then something happened. I remember just as clear that my fist stopped millimeters above the hood, because, well, that familiar scratch, the point where all my fury had to explode in a giant hit, that scratch was gone. No scratch at all. Gone. Puzzled, I stepped down. At first, I thought that heat was playing a trick on me. But no, it was a Dacia. Even more, a Dacia Nova. Metal blue. Same tires. Same steering wheel. But the scratch wasn’t there anymore.

Then, for the first time during that half an hour, my head moved two degrees to the right. Until that moment, all my visual field was locked on the target in front of me: my car. But now it moved to the right a little. Something new and at the same time familiar appeared in my visual field. Another Dacia. 20 centimeters next to the one I wanted to unlock so far. Even more, a Dacia Nova. Metal blue. Same tires. Same steering wheel. Only the hood had that familiar scratch too.

I looked around really fast. Nobody seemed to have noticed anything. I went to that second car, unlocked the door with only one move and left in a split of a second. Yes, I was trying to unlock a different, but somehow familiar car. For the last half an hour, I was focusing on unlocking the wrong door.

Who Are You Talking To?

Yes, you can stop laughing now. Seriously. Are we cool now? Ok, thanks.

The reason I wrote this story is because every time I am coming around a new significant relationship, it kinda pops up into my head. Again and again. That half an hour spent trying to unlock the wrong door seems to be my “relationship red alert”. How come?

Well, because it reminds me about the difference between who I think I’m dealing with and who I’m really dealing with.

In my car situation, I was imagining all the time that I was dealing with something familiar. I went to that car without the blink of an eye. It looked exactly as the one I was expecting to get. Only it wasn’t.

In a similar way, we build an internal image of somebody who is supposed to be our “chosen one” and when we see that image, we’re rushing towards it without the blink of an eye. Only the person behind that image may have nothing in common with our expectations. And, to be honest, it seldom has something in common with our expectations. It’s just an image we built inside and, based on a strange coincidence, it just appeared in our visual field.

I know that because I’ve been there many times. Stumbled upon a familiar image, somebody that was really, really close to my internal ideal of a significant relationship and, based only on this, I imagined that I know whom am I talking to. Only I wasn’t really talking to somebody. It wasn’t a real discussion going on. All I was doing was trying to unstuck the door lock and get into that person heart.

Most of the time spent in these relationships was just an endless effort on the outside. Somehow, I even got used to this game and said to myself all kind of “encouraging“ stuff like “if it takes so much time unlocking this door, it must be really valuable”. Only it wasn’t valuable at all, of course. None of these relationships was even started. All I was doing was staying in the heat, endlessly trying to unlock a door which wasn’t supposed to open for me.

In my experience, a relationship works only when the door unlocks from the first time and you’re getting everything about the other person, without any noise, secrets, decoys, detours or embellishing lies. Ok, you may have to do a few tricks, a little pushing and a little spinning, but the door to the other person heart must open.

That’s the starting point. Without opening the door, you can’t even leave in a journey together. You’re stuck on the parking lot. And what’s even more interesting is that even after you opened the other person’s heart, nobody guarantees that the journey will be peaceful and all happy and pink. It may leave off some thick layers of white steam every once in a while. Parts of it may explode during the winters and sometimes it will feel too cold or too hot. But at least you will have a journey together.

Yes, my first car was a wreck. A real wreck. But it was my car and I loved it. With good stuff and bad stuff.