Fear, Frustration And Futility

This won’t be a zen post. If you came by for something zen today, you’d better walk away right now. I totally understand that many of my readers are looking to find here their daily dose of serenity, motivation or inspiration. And, most of the time, they do. But today is gonna be different. If only because life is not a sequence of zen moments and, every now and then, puts us in challenging situations.

A Romanian Story

The other day, a Romanian blogger, let’s call him A., mentioned me in one his tweets, with something like “somebody tell @dragosroua that he’s doing a shitty work by keeping his link on a paid WordPress theme”. Yep, exactly. That’s what I said too: “What?!”. What’s the link between shit and a… link? I couldn’t see any. And what theme?

I don’t usually engage, but this time something made me to (in the end, my hunch proved me right). So I answered back: “what theme?”. I don’t sell any theme, I’m only part of a WordPress framework where I sell subscriptions, not products. It’s a big difference. He replied: “sumo, do you sell others?”. So I said to myself, this is going to be a long afternoon, but let’s start it anyway. First, let’s see if we can have some common concepts: “do you understand the difference between a theme and a framework?”. He answered: “right. but it’s still shtity”.

At that point I realized that we were not about finding the truth about a situation, being it a tiny link on a product, but about saying: “what you do is shitty”. I call this trolling. When you always say “no”, no matter what the other person responds. Don’t get me wrong, trolling is a very profitable job, if you know how to do it. It attracts thousands of visitors each day. They silently admire how the troller manages to tell all kind of stupid, sometimes spectacular things, to a more and more helpless interlocutor. And that traffic sometimes even converts. In advertising, mostly. And it converts very poorly, but that’s another story.

So, knowing that we’re not going to advance, I answered: “so it’s trolling, IMHO”. Waiting to see if we do have the same opinion about trolling. There might have been a chance that the other guy was an honest individual, looking to find something about something. In that case, he would have come forward with something like: “yes, trolling is shitty, I’m not trolling, I just want to know x and y from you. Can we?”. But nothing happened. Nothing came back.

Until today, when the same blogger wrote a very nice piece of work about yours truly. On his blog, this time. Two and a half paragraphs. Half of one of them was a reference to another article in which another troll, now the biggest blogger in Romania, engaged in a similar conversation with me, five years ago. By the way, the same number one blogger in Romania still makes a decent amount of traffic by talking about my ex-wife and her own opinions about me. What can I say, I’m famous…

But back to this two paragraphs article. To make a long story short: if you didn’t know by now, I’m arrogant, I have a very bad image in Romania and everybody is running away from me because I will cheat them. Badly. And if at some point I will end in a hole, Christ Himself won’t be able to save me. Romanian are Orthodox and they take these things very seriously. And their most popular bloggers have a natural ability to mix shit and Christ in the same paragraph.

The Inflated Ego

After I finished the article I found his phone number (toldya I have a very bad image in Romania but apparently I’m still able to find a blogger’s phone number in less than 10 minutes, if need will be). I called him and started a calm and normal conversation. It took me a while until I finally got him to listen. Until then, he was very upset that I hurt his feelings by making him a troll. Anyway, after ten minutes we got to the following conclusions:

• I’m not selling a theme, I’m selling a subscription to a framework
• I have the right to keep whatever link I want in whatever parts of my products
• If he felt hurt, that wasn’t my intention

Of course, nothing about he hurting my image on his blog, about his assumptions that I’m an arrogant cheater and so on and so forth. But no request about these topics was made from my part either, to be honest. Because, in the end, I don’t really care about that. And now we finally came to the core of the article. What we read so far was only the setup.

The plot thickens.

Fear

Whenever you attack somebody else (without being attacked first), being it verbally or physically, you express fear. You’re in a “fight or flight” situation. Something is pushing you to such a point that you must find an outlet for this pressure. Most of the time, people who are going around arguing are scared. Even frightened.

They can’t express fear in a normal way. Most of the time, they even forgot what made them so fearful. It may have been that they didn’t have enough attention as kids. And now they will do everything to get your energy, even if it’s negative energy. They can’t stand the fact they’re going to be left alone. Solitude is triggering so many hurtful memories, that they will do anything to get rid of them.

Of course, most of this process is unconscious. If they will be able to take it to light, in their consciousness, allegedly, they will be able to process it and find a healthy way of expressing their needs. But they don’t bring it to the conscious level. Mostly because they already have the habit of the “fight or flight” situation and habits are very powerful. Not to mention that the psychological reward is fulfilled, even in a “fight or flight” situation. They get their thrill. So, they not only think this is the “right” way of going around, but also that this is the “only” way to do it.

Frustration

A very close relative to fear is frustration. But, as opposed to fear, which usually bursts in with short and powerful actions, frustrations builds up in time. Tiny things that aren’t the way you want, some small needs that are never really fulfilled, or even long time memories that are still making you blush, all these things are creating an invisible swamp around you.

And in that swamp you start to crawl. You get bitter and bitter, forgetting the fact that you created that swamp. It wasn’t there before. Your unfulfilled needs, your memories, your incongruences with reality made that swamp appear. But you don’t remember that. And you know that? Because you found a better creator for your situation: somebody else. And that somebody else has a fundamental quality: he’s guilty.

Frustration is making us irresponsible. We’re so bugged and pressured that we can’t stand for our own actions. We delegate our misery to somebody else. You’re guilty for me feeling like crap. You’re guilty for me not having enough money (and that’s only because you already have more than me). You’re guilty because I’m not a successful person (and you, of course, you already are).

Futility

When you build your day to day existence based on fear and frustration, what you experience is not life anymore. It’s futility. It’s lack of meaning. It’s an endless string of void actions with void results and a big void of emotions. You’re not experience anything outside the thrill of the“fight or flight” situation and you can’t imagine another place other than the swamp of your daily frustrations.

At the end of the day, when you go to sleep, all you can think of is: “Who am I going to fight with tomorrow? Who is going to give me back the energy and attention that I lack so badly?”. And nothing more, except that. Just a silent, endless emptiness.

The Stimulus And The Answer

So, why do I wrote about fear, frustration and futility? Instead of writing about zen stuff? Because I finally understood that there is an important part for this stuff in our lives. Whether we like it or not. And that we have to process fear, frustration and futility, not hide it under the carpet. Or, even worse, ignore it completely.

Yes, this entire post may look like it’s futile, just a waste of time. “Don’t engage in it: turn your face from it, and it will disappear. Listen to some zen music, read an enlightening blog post and it will pass.”

To be honest, I don’t think so. Not anymore. I think that everything that must be said, must be said. Even if the trigger was an unpleasant situation. The uncovered parts may be ugly, but they are still our parts and we gotta live with them. Yes, the assumptions of this blogger (who I never met in real life) were based on fear and frustration. Yes, I am not the person he depicts and his entire plot was built to create some more futility in his life. Yes, I could have turn my face and move on with my stuff.

But something made me not to. I chose to answer to this stimulus and put the whole story on this blog post. I’m not after a resolution with this. I don’t know if somebody is right or wrong. I don’t even remember from what we started in the first place. And I also don’t want to prove that I’m smarter or nicer than him. And, by all means, I don’t want him to praise me or, even worse, to become friends.

But I want to send a very clear signal that I’m here. And that I know about fear and frustration. And I know about futility too. I just chose to accept them as parts of my life, process them when need arise and then move on. Not stumbling around in a swamp, spitting bitterly at every person that may look like having enough energy to give me until tomorrow.

So, I’m arrogant and I do have a bad image in Romania (at least two people, high profile bloggers, hate my guts). Guys, get used to it.

This is who I am, and nothing will change about that.

Ok?

33 Ways To Overcome Frustration

I have a huge experience with frustration. I experienced it in so many ways, at so many times in my life, that I feel like I’m some kind of a specialist. If you wonder why I have this huge expertise, here’s the answer: growth never happens without it. The more frustration you are able to harvest, resolve and overcome, the more growth you’re experiencing. Avoiding it, hiding from it, deluding the game, none of these strategies will make you a better human being. On the contrary.

What follows is a list of tools and approaches I used to solve my own frustration and limitation episodes.

1. Accept Reality

Yes, something bad happened. Don’t spend your day imagining how beautiful life could be if it wasn’t for that stupid incident or mistake. This is it. It is frustrating, no doubt about it, but rejecting this reality will not lower the frustration, on the contrary, will make it stronger and stronger. Accept reality.

2. Shift Your Focus

It’s so easy to get caught in a spiral of anger and despair when you’re frustrated, and I know that first hand. Shift your focus by engaging in small but demanding activities. Get involved. Do take the necessary steps to get over the frustrating situation, but do not ignore everything else around you.

3. Talk About It With A Friend

Find somebody you trust and talk about it. Let it out. Don’t let it grow inside yourself until you explode. Most of the time, when you reach this point, it’s too late to make a meaningful change that will restore your reality. Let your worries and your tension fly. After all, this is what friends are for, right?

4. Journal It

If you don’t keep a journal, start now. Write down all your fears, all your sensations and describe them in great detail. Do it until you feel you can’t do it no more. You’re going to feel incredibly better. Writing has this side effect of lowering what you write about, making it more manageable. Just try it.

5. Write A Letter About It

Imagine you’re on a desert island. Sit down and write a letter to somebody who could potentially rescue you. Be verbose. Imagine how your life will be after you leave that desert island. Because if you can’t describe that, you will never leave the island. Then destroy the letter.

6. Write A Worse Case Scenario

What is the worst thing that may happen to you right now? List everything from physical loss to emotional imbalances. Try to foresee every little detail of a worst case scenario. What life will you live if everything will turn out as bad as possible? Then read it. It won’t look as bad as you thought.

7. Identify A List Of Possible Actions

What exactly will make the situation acceptable again? What are the things that you could actually do to improve your current status? Make a list. Try to identify every possible action, as improbable as it may seem, and put it on the list. At the end of this, you’ll feel much better: you have work to do.

8. Sleep Over It

Most of your unconscious life happens while you’re asleep. Try to go to bed with a clear thought of resolution. Don’t try to find a solution, just prepare yourself for getting out of that frustrating circle. During the night your unconscious mind will find resources to make you stronger.

9. Be Your Own Avatar

Try to look at yourself from “the outside”. Write on a piece of paper what an observer would see at you. How do you behave? How do you talk, how do you act? The more you’ll do this exercise, the more you’ll differentiate yourself from the frustrating persona and take control over it at the same time.

10. Read Something Funny

This will not solve your problem, most of the time it will only switch your focus to something else, giving you a temporary break. Do not mistake this technique with avoidance, just use it as a chillout session, then get back on track and solve whatever you have to solve.

11. Stop Blaming Yourself

Maybe you did something really wrong, and your current situation is the result of that mistake. Take responsibility but don’t blame yourself. It’s all in the past. You’re in the present now and you can do something about it. Blame will only put weight on that past and drag you down. Avoid it at all cost.

12. Take A Walk

Even on the wild side, if you like the wild side, but do take a walk. The mere action of moving will set you up for action and hopefully will make your mind a little clearer.  Walking always helps me put my thoughts in order and let off the steam a little bit. And it’s free of charge.

13. See It From The Future

This one goes hand in hand with number 6. Try to describe your current situation and look at it from the future. 1 year from now, your problem will be as  big as it is right now? How about 5 years? Or 10 years? Putting your frustration in a larger context will usually weaken it or at least make it manageable.

14. Cook A Delicious Meal

As simple and mundane as it may seem, cooking is an art. And every time you perform some sort of an art, you’ll see the world through your intuitive mind. You’ll summon your way out of frustration rather than find it through logical inference. And cooking is the cheapest – and tastiest – art one can afford.

15. Go To A Party

Not to be abused and transformed into some sort of escapism but extremely useful to lower your shirtiness. Go out, mingle and see if you can wipe out your frown from your face. You can get back to your problems later, when your body and mind will be more balanced. After the hangover, of course.

16. Write About Your Past Successes

You don’t have to keep a journal for it, you can just sit down at a table and remember all your breakthroughs. Or only the most important ones. Seeing yourself succeeding will definitely weaken all that frustration you feel right now and will also give you some hints about how to completely overcome it.

17. Borrow Some Enthusiasm

Stay around energetic people or get involved in active projects. Choose to be part of something that exhales a lot of energy. Get involved in fresh projects. Being around enthusiastic people will lower the frustration to the point where it can actually become manageable. And it will make you just feel better.

18. Soak and Dry

Let it flow through you until you’re completely overloaded. Just be sure not to do something during this stage. Isolate from the world and allow yourself to be frustrated. Then slowly wait for the frustration to dry out. Sometimes, this “all you can eat” approach is the only way to deal with it in a healthy way.

19. Go Watch A Comedy

As an alternative to number 10, “Read Something Funny”. Giving yourself permission to laugh will lower your anger and hopefully will make things easier to handle. Also, seeing people in strangely hilarious situations will make your own frustration seem awkward. Through a good laugh at it.

20. Attack It With The “Why?” Weapon

Another writing exercise, in which you start to find the root cause of your frustration by asking “why?” questions. “Why am I broke?” – Because I spent too much. “Why did I spent too much” – Because I’m feeling insecure. “Why?…” You got the idea. At some point, something will click inside.

21. Volunteer For Something

Frustration is closely related to your ego, or the part of your being that is concerned with those big phrases starting with “Me…”. If you volunteer to do work for somebody else, you’ll stop feeding your ego with energy. The weaker that part gets, the stronger your authentic and powerful part will be.

22. Stand Up And Fight

Be a soldier. Give yourself orders and follow them. Instill some rough and unquestionable discipline in your life. Get up early in the morning, do your work as if you’re on a battle field and then go to sleep. Repeat until your problems become just situations you can solve by following an easy sequence of new orders.

23. Stop Blaming Others

Similar to number 11, only this time your attitude will turn towards other people, in a desperate attempt to avoid feeling hurt. Just stop it. Although it may seem like a relief, blaming others it’s just a temporary hack, it won’t last. In 99% of the situations, what we experience is the direct result of our own actions.

24. Do Small, Repetitive Tasks

Borrow the behavior of a machine. Do those tiny little things you avoided so much because they seemed so boring. Now it’s the best time to start working on them. Slicing your time and focus will dissolve the pressure. Frustration will slowly dilute in this sea of tiny, repetitive tasks.

25. See It From The Past

Alternative to number 13, looking at your own frustration from the past will color it in a new, fresher light  Most of the time, the feeling triggered by this perspective is: “I’ve been through though times before, I can get over this”. And this is more often than you think true: we have a huge life experience, we just don’t trust it enough.

26. Read Similar Stories

You’re not alone. And even if you find it difficult tot talk to other people you can always do this by yourself: just scorch the Internet using descriptive keyphrases about your own frustration. You’ll discover that you’re not alone. Somebody else have been there too. And now he’s so over it.

27. Assess Progress

Every second of your life changes something. Look for the small steps you’re doing and assess them. The first item on this assessment list may be: “I’m starting to assess my progress and this is in itself a huge step forward”. The more you write, the bigger your progress will seem.

28. Disguise It

Put a mask on it, make it look like something else: “I’m feeling frustration right now, but this is a mask for…” and replace with whatever quality you want to build: discipline, personal power, endurance. Transform it. I usually use the caterpillar – butterfly image: it’s bad now but look what it can become.

29. Contrast It With A Worse Situation

Try to identify a related situation but with a significantly higher degree of damage. If you’re in debt, imagine how it will be to be bankrupt. If you’re having a relationship hickup, try to imagine how it would be to live on a desert island for the rest of your life. Be grateful for what you experience, because it can be worse.

30. Dilute It With Meditation

I don’t preach meditation as an all-in-one cure, but from my personal experience, it does help. Meditation will not only shift your focus from your current situation, but it will also clean your thoughts and help your body regain a subtle energetic balance. Remember you’ll still have to take action, meditation will only dilute it.

31. Get Physical

Start an aggressive exercising routine. Getting physical will make it easier to embrace action and to do it with vigor and determination. A side effect of exercising is the “endorphin effect”: the induction of a well-being state generated by your own body.

32. This Too Shall Pass

Impermanence is at the core of our human nature, is our curse and escape: we’re prisoners of time and everything we experience is bound to it. Laughter and sadness, joy and depression, everything will fade away in time. The same will happen to this frustrating period too: it will pass.

33. Write A List Of 33 Ways To Overcome Frustration

This is an incredible exercise. As funny as it may seem in this context, it’s actually a very powerful standalone approach. Just sit back and try to imagine 33 ways to get over your current frustration. I bet that around number 20 your problem will seem smaller than you thought it was.

About Limitation – My First Podcast

It had to happen: ladies and gents, welcome to my first podcast ever. I admit I struggled with this idea for at least 6 months, but it finally happened. At the end of this post you’ll find my first 5 minutes of talking in an ad-hoc English to the whole blogosphere. But don’t be gentle. Please, be harsh, severe and point me to the points where I’m ridiculous, out of my mind or just plain wrong.

I know I’m doing a lot of bad stuff when it comes to my English, but this time I’m actually talking out loud, with my own voice, so it must be something really entertaining. So please, use the comments to criticize, adjust, rant or just shout in disagreement .

A little bit about the content:

• limitation is sometimes about money, sometimes about social life and sometimes about physical movement.
• standard answer to limitation is frustration, non-standard answer is acceptance.
• how the world changed around me after I accepted limitation and how I got saved by a white horse after I got stuck in snow 4 times.

That being said, thank you so much for listening. I’m ready to be slaughtered. Be merciless

How to Overcome Frustration in 3 Easy Steps

“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion . . .  I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.” – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I used to totally, utterly, absolutely, downright hate frustration. It was an emotional reaction, I just couldn’t help it. Whenever I got caught in its the subtle yet powerful chains I felt like crap. I think you know the feeling. Hands tied up, no possible solution to the current situation and a lot of mess to deal with. Yes, frustration can do that to you.

Being so keen on doing things, starting new projects all the time, entering new challenges almost daily, it was absolutely natural to face a lot of frustration. It was the expected behavior. Only I thought it wasn’t. I thought I didn’t deserve it. Why this is happening to me? Took me a long time to understand, but it really worth the wait.

Be a Friend of Frustration

The good news is that you can overcome frustration. I’m not talking about avoidance here, because, believe it or not, frustration is a key ingredient in your personal development, but rather about a friendship strategy. An alliance with frustration, an armistice. As any other emotional response, frustration leverages huge amounts of energy. And you can use that energy. In fact, it’s such a shame to let it slip away.

Step 1: Acknowledge the Problem

Accept it. Yes, you are frustrated. It’s already happened, can’t bring time back. You’re here and you’re frustrated. You’re not sad, angry or apathetic. You’re frustrated. Write it down on a piece of paper. Find a mirror (preferably in an isolated place) and say to you: “I’m looking at me and I’m frustrated”. Find a good friend, call him and say to him: “Buddy, I’m frustrated”.

This requires a little bit of courage and a little bit of exercise. You need courage to accept it, because frustration is often associated with being powerless. To some extent, you are powerless when you’re frustrated. You really lost your power over the specific events you were trying to control. But only on those events, not over your entire life. You still have enough power to move on. Yes, you lost power over what you’re trying to do, accept that.

Acknowledging the problem will stop your current flow of actions. Maybe you’re doing the same thing for weeks months or years, without any positive results. Acknowledging that you’re frustrated about that will stop you. And that’s a good thing. It’s good to stop when you’re doing stupid things.

Step 2: Change the Status Quo

Now that you know you’re frustrated, start working on the status quo. Start changing the current environment. Somehow. Accepting your frustration already did half of the job: it stopped your current flow of actions. You’re not doing stupid things anymore. That’s good. But that’s not enough. You have to move forward.

Changing the status quo involves reversing part of the actions you’ve done so far. If it’s possible. If there are persons involved, you can start by apologizing to them. If there are broken things, you can start fixing them. If there are damages, you can start covering the loss. Somehow.

Changing the status quo also means acting. Just do things again. Frustration is like a snake venom: paralyzes you, makes your muscles useless and you can’t speak anymore. Reverse that. Start moving around. Stretch your legs, start babbling even if you’re pathetic. Being pathetic means you’re no longer frustrated, you’re just pathetic.

Acting after accepting your situation will reorganize the odds around you. The mere fact of moving in a new direction will bring in some luck. Sometimes enough to put you on the right track again, sometimes much more than you can even imagine. I know for sure that some of my bigger breakthroughs were born out of some of my bigger frustrations.

Step 3: Enjoy your New Level

After you started to act on your status quo, your environment will look better. Sometimes you can completely reverse the situation which causes frustration, sometimes you’re just ameliorating things. Whatever the case, you’re out of the dead hole. You’re on a new track, trying something new. Stay there.

And, above all, enjoy it. There is this popular habit of mild sorrow after you overcome a huge obstacle. Man, it’s good to be here, but before wasn’t so bad after all. Don’t do this to you. Just fully enjoy your new level and leave the past tot the past.

Frustration is not a dead hole, unless you want to make a dead hole out of it. It’s an elevator, a way to quickly reach to a new level. You could take the stairs, of course, and have a leaner course to the top. But if you want to reach there faster, you’ll need more energy. A lot more energy. You’re going to make leaps instead of going step by step.

And what you call frustration, is in fact the manifestation of an elevator right at your fingertips. You asked for it, because you wanted to reach out faster, now you have it. Don’t reject it, don’t misuse it. An elevator can take you in a few seconds to the top of the world, or it could take you to the basement. Be careful what buttons you push.

After all, it’s just an elevator, you’re in command.

Action versus Reaction

Acting is what makes you happy, reacting is what makes you miserable.

Whenever you act, you perform a conscious choice, you decide you’re going to do that thing. You become responsible. But when you react, you follow somebody else’s choice, you’re responding to an external stimulus. You’re not responsible anymore, you leave the responsibility to the stimulus. When you act, you’re the pupeteeer, when you react, you’re the puppet.

Choice versus Context

Acting is independent of the context, reacting is totally dependent of the context.

You may be in favorable contexts at times. When you’re a kid, most of the time you’re in a continuous favorable context. The problem is that context is artificial, you are protected by your parents. While you’re a kid, in a favorable context, acting or reacting are basically the same: whatever you do the context will remain favorable. Your parents will love and protect you no matter what. But once you get out from their protection, you may hit some very unfriendly contexts. And here you’ll learn the real difference between conscious action and powerless reaction.

If you consciously chose success, you don’t really care about context. You’re going to be successful no matter what. You act, you’re consciously building your own way. You chose to get there no matter what. But if you don’t make this choice, and your life is just a reaction to a chaotic flow of stimulus, then anything in the surroundings will help you fail. It’s you who let the context do that, and you did this by resigning from your own command, by reacting instead of acting.

For instance, being miserable after losing your job it’s a reaction. The context was really hard for you and you lost something. The “normal” reaction is to be sad, worried, discouraged and miserable. On the other hand, being confident, manifesting hope and starting to look for another job (or even starting your own business) it’s a conscious choice. Losing your job it’s just a fact. What you do about this fact is what really matters.

Reward And Frustration

Acting is rewarding, reacting is frustrating.

Every time you act on something, you are rewarded in some way. Not every conscious action will be successful. You may fail at times. Maybe many times. But you still get your reward. When you fail, the reward is in learning. You made a choice, you acted in a specific way and you learned something, even if the action was a complete failure.

If you react, all you get is frustration. You didn’t make a choice, you just responded to a stimulus. Maybe you wanted something else, but instead of choosing an action, you automatically reacted to that stimulus. There is no way you can get a reward if you’re reacting to something. Even if the initial stimulus was positive.

For instance, you blindly fall in love with somebody.That’s a positive stimulus and you reacted to it. After the initial, unconscious chemistry phase, you have a choice: to love and accept no matter what. If you don’t consciously chose to love no matter what, you’ll get hurt. Instead of accepting the other one, you’ll start to control him. In love, jealousy is a reaction, unconditional acceptance is a conscious action.

Choosing versus Enduring

The difference between action and reaction is not always simple. Most of the time we’re acting by habit, and habits are just safe reactions. We know how to ride a bike, we learned how to do it, when we’re on the bike, we’re just reacting to it. It’s a safe reaction. Many of our habits are safe reactions. But some of them are just stupid.

Some of the most dangerous safe reactions are related to money. We tend to react to economic stimulus and news, rather then act upon them. For instance, if there’s news about a bad economic context, we’re starting to protect our investments. That’s a safe reaction. The bad economic context may or may not hurt us directly, we never really know that. But the pre-programmed reaction to cover our savings will emerge without any control from our part.

A much better approach would be to directly act upon our finances. For instance, it’s not uncommon that investment is much more profitable during hard economic conditions. A lot of stuff, including real estate, is getting cheaper. Running to protect our money, by reaction, instead of investing it, by conscious action, will be stupid. Again, the economic context it’s a fact, everybody will feel it, what really matters is our attitude towards it, our choices.

Results versus Excuses

Action creates results, reaction creates excuses.

Every time you consciously chose something, you are producing results. You are the one who started everything, hence the reality obeyed you. Again, even if the action was, by any standard, a failure. Reality responded to your stimulus and created a result. Maybe it wasn’t the result you wanted, but it’s still a result.

If you’re reacting to something or somebody else, you are producing excuses. Your reactions to external stimulus will seldom be aligned with your internal values. If you chose to react to stimulus, you’re already giving up your values and empower the stimulus. You’re not acting, you are giving out control.

Most of the time, your reactions will try to protect yourself from apparently bad things: somebody yelling at you, losing your job, being left by your partner. A typical reaction to all of these will be frustration. And perhaps sadness, lack of hope, misery. So, after the yelling is gone, after the job is gone, after the partner is gone and after your miserable reaction, all you will be left with are excuses. It could have been the other way around, but it isn’t. Sorry.

***

A typical reaction after reading this post will be to think a little bit, to identify possible matches with your own behavioral patterns and then to forget it while gazing at the next funny cat picture on the web. A conscious action will be to bookmark it, to share it with as many friends as you can and to comment on it.

I’m joking, of course. But I’m consciously choosing to joke with you by writing this blog post, instead of gazing at the wall in my office and thinking life sucks. And this action will certainly create some great results.

How about you?

Getting Something For Free

Do you like getting freebies? Gratuitous stuff? Free lunch, maybe? Well, I don’t.

I’ve always been like this, I have quite a repulsion towards free stuff. I become reluctant, I start to question myself, I back up. Although one may think that avoiding free stuff made for quite a difficult path for me so far (with the overwhelming stream of opportunities around), I will have to tell you the exact opposite. Avoiding free stuff made me far more wealthy and self confident than the average.

You know that old saying “there is no such thing as a free lunch”? Well, it’s still quite accurate.

The Exchange

Everything you do requires energy. Everything you receive was made with energy. Everything around you, including yourself, is a form of energy. And every time you start an interaction, you are initiating in fact an energetic exchange. Every form of communication is an energetic exchange.

Have you ever had a relaxing conversations with somebody else? Have you ever had a deep bonding with close, dear friends? Ever had a sense of exhilaration after closing a big business deal, a sale or just getting a promotion? All of these are successful energetic exchanges.

In each successful interaction our energy exchange is balanced, instant and beneficial. Balanced, instant and beneficial. Let’s take a closer look at this.

If we give more or less energy than it’s required, our energetic exchange is imbalanced. If we’re talking, for instance, and we give more energy than required, the other part may step back, ending the process. Or we find ourselves fighting instead of talking, opening our energy valves beyond control. Or we can find ourselves not responding in kind to other’s verbal flow, putting a lot less energy than required in the process. Whatever the cause, putting more or less energy than necessary, will make the interaction fail. This is an unbalanced energetic exchange.

If the response of our energetic exchange is delayed, we feel insecure. If we’re having an intimate relationship and the response to our interaction – making a gift to someone, for instance – is coming several hours later, we start asking why this is happening. Even if the response is positive, we start asking why we’re getting our response so late? Is something wrong with us? With the other one? With both? We feel insecure, and that’s because the energetic exchange was not instant, it was delayed. Most successful energetic exchanges are in the moment.

And if the energetic exchange was not mutually beneficial, we feel frustrated. If you close a deal under pressure, giving away some of your benefits, you feel frustrated. If you laugh and the other one cries, you feel frustrated. If you didn’t receive as much as you want from a conversation, you feel frustrated. That’s because the exchange wasn’t mutually beneficial, only one part of the exchange was favored. Most of our energy exchanges are not mutually beneficial, it’s always some part that will take a little more than we expect.

But despite these conditions, balanced, instant and beneficial energy exchanges are always possible. (more…)