5 Things Avatar Taught Me About Self-Improvement

I’m not a hyper when it comes to movies. On the contrary, I wait a lot before going to see a big blockbuster. I saw Titanic 3 years after the launch. Matrix 2 years after the initial hype. But last year I took the plunge and went to see Avatar.

In short, I liked it. A lot. I saw it in IMAX, 3D and all. Didn’t had any motion sickness, although some of the people around seemed to be uncomfortable with those 3D glasses and some of them even left the movie after a few minutes. I don’t know if it was the 3D experience, the stunning imagery, or the story, fact is Avatar was definitely a milestone in movies. At least for yours truly.

But since we’re talking (mainly) about being brilliantly better on this blog, in today’s post I’ll not give you a movie review (as much as I’d want to). Instead, I’ll try to outline some of the self-improvement tricks Avatar either taught me for the first time, either confirmed to me again.

1. Limitation Is Only In Your Mind

When Jake Sully arrives on Pandora, he is just a paraplegic ex-marine. He is taking on a job he doesn’t know anything about. He doesn’t really like anything about this new world. And nobody seems to like him either. He’s just used in a strange communication program in which he’s taking on the body of a local Na’vi male, his so-called Avatar. But as the story unfolds, it turns out the Jake Sully is much more than everyone around him sees in him. He’s even more than he thought he can be. At the end of the beautiful story, instead of a paraplegic ex-marine we find a truly inspiring leader, a man in love and a powerful warrior. And all he did was to literally get rid of the old self and become a completely new person.

Every once in a while life brings you into places which may seem harsh and impossible to overcome. But the word “impossible” holds true only in your current context. So, change it. If your current self can’t handle the job, become somebody else. Like Jake did.

2. If You Want To Get To Planet A You Have To Completely Leave Planet B

As a spy in the Na’vi world, working for the greedy corporation in search for “unobtanium”, Jake Sully discovers a new universe. He expected to meet “savages” but instead, he finds compassion, knowledge and real feelings. Compared with his cold and dark military life, the free and sparkling life of the Na’vi, as dangerous as it may get at times, especially when male rivalries are at the stake, that life, well, it’s simply a miracle. A miracle which attracts Jake so much, that he is willing to get rid of his old existence and become a true Na’vi. But he soon discovers that he can’t live in two places at the same time. He has to make a tough choice. Leave behind everything that was familiar and start anew, literally reborn.

The same approach applied to every situation in which you want to drastically change something in your life: your current relationship, your income level or your lifestyle. You can’t just wear this new avatar every once in a while, pretending you’re rich and happy, only to wake up in your own bed in the morning, broke and miserable. You have to become your own avatar.

3. Disappointment Is Part Of Life

This may be a little hard to chew. When Jake Sully comes into the life of the Na’vi people, all he wants is to screw them. That’s his motivation. He comes there by curiosity but also by the promise of hist captain that, if he provides enough “intelligence on the field”, he will get back his legs. But once in the field, Jake realizes that he’s on the wrong team. And that he’s in love with Neytiri. Only it’s a little bit too late. What he started cannot be stopped. The chaos is unleashed and the Na’vi are almost destroyed. Neytiri rejects him and he has to leave. If Jake would have stopped at this level, his only outcome would have been disappointment. Fortunately, he doesn’t stop. But the disappointment he created is still real.

We may hit disappointment. We may disappoint others or others may disappoint us. What really matters is to raise above our own limitations. This is exactly what Jake Sully does when he decides to tame Toruk Makto and to become the new leader of the Na’vi.

4. Pick Your Team Carefully

Just after he arrives on Pandora, Sully teams up with a military guy. In exchange of the information Sully would give from the field, using his avatar, this military guy promises Sully to give back his legs. In his “real” life Sully is walking in a wheel chair. As a former marine, this is one of the scars he wears. The information acquired by Sully will serve for the commercial expansion of Pandora’s conquerers. But, sometimes during his new life, Sully discovers that his former team was playing him. That he was just used in a bigger, more violent plan which will ultimately leads to the destruction of Pandora’s world. And he also discovers that the new world he is discovering is purer, nicer, simpler than his initial one. Oh, and it’s also filled with love.

The world is changing. Your values are changing. Your priorities are changing. Make sure you’re always in sync with what you really care for. Make sure you’re playing on a team which supports you in a genuine way, which respects you, which cares for you. If not, go for the next team that does this for you.

5. The Only Thing Worth Fighting For Is Love

As an avatar of the Na’vi population, Sully gets to know Neytiri, the daughter of the Na’avi leader. She becomes his guide on this new world. Sully learns the Na’vi way of life, their traditions and their values. He goes into a rite of passage where he learns how to fly a dragon. At some point, Sully falls in love with Neytiri. But the gap between those souls is huge. He is not what he seems to be. Even more, his actions are casting a wave of death and destruction over this world. His love is worthless without action. Hurt and disappointed, Neytiri rejects him. He almost gets killed in the conflict. But is the same love for Neytiri that makes him reach to the sky and tame the biggest bird on Pandora, Toruk Makto.

You know it’s love if you’d be willing to do everything, and I mean, everything for it. Reach to the sky, tame the biggest beast on the universe and bring it to the feet of your love. Everything else is just an illusion (including fight itself, if it’s without a purpose). The only thing worth fighting for is love. And when the love is won back, forget the fight all together.

***

Ok, now it’s your turn. What’s your take on this? What Avatar changed in your life (if anything)?

How Sleep Can Help You Become Better

If you came here thinking: “finally, there is one self-improvement technique that will allow me to sleep more and be great”, well, I hate to disappoint you. Because it’s not going to be about sleeping more.

But it’s not going to be about sleeping less, either.

Now you’re curious. I can feel it. Good. Curious is good. So let’s get on with it.

What Is Sleep

I’ve been fascinated with sleep from the moment I was able to realize I am sleeping. As a child, I had a this fear of going to bed. My parents thought it was fear of the dark, but it wasn’t. I was literally afraid to dive into that sea of unconsciousness, because sometimes I thought I won’t be able to wake up again.

And if you really take the time think a little, there’s no guarantee that you will wake up when you go to sleep. Absolutely none. Except for your memory. So, as I grew up, my fear of going to sleep was slowly fading away, because each morning added a little bit of trust. It’s ok, I woke up again. And, from what I can see, I am the same person as I was yesterday. My memory started to form an image about myself that was easy to recognize each morning. So, sleeping must be ok.

But what happens if you lose your short term memory? What if you wake up every morning without knowing who you are? What if sleep would erase everything you think you knew about yourself, forcing you to reevaluate your place in this Universe every morning?

Now it’s time to watch the trailer below. It’s from a movie with Adam Sandler. And, as in every Adam Sandler movie, there is this bitter sweet mix of funny and tragic which makes me enjoy them so much.

Ok, so just in case you skipped the trailer: Adam, a doctor on an exotic island, who was some sort of a Dun Juan, meets a girl. He conquer her in just one day, but the next morning he’ll have the shock of his life: the girl will beat the hell out of him, right after she opens her eyes. She can’t remember who the guy in her bed really is. Adam learns that the girl lost her short term memory in a car accident. Each morning she actually reboots her short term memory. During the day she’s ok, but after she wakes up, she’s back in time to the moment of the accident. Everything in between erases.

A quest for bringing back her memory and make her his woman starts. Of course, the love for this woman changes Adam a lot, and, in the end, he finds a brilliant solution. He makes a video tape of her recent life and makes her watch the video tape every morning. So, each day she wakes up, she’s actually impregnating her short term memory with her recent past. Everything takes 2 minutes. After those 2 minutes, she is back on her track, having a normal life. She knows who she is. She knows what her life is all about. Her identity, after sleeping, is rebuilt.

Who You Really Are

Now comes the most important part of this post. And that is: who you are is a function of… well, who you are telling yourself you are. Imagine how it is to have your own video tape to watch every morning, and impregnate yourself with that. As a matter of fact, you do have this video tape. It’s called memory. And your memory can be modeled.

We function by comparison. We function by identifying ourselves with some familiar images. About the world, about ourselves, about the others. And those images are much more fragile than we think. They can be changed. They can be modified in a split of  second. And with them our entire reality will change.

Maybe your memory thinks you’re a lousy dancer. Just put some scenes in this video tape with you being a great dancer. Or maybe your memory tells you that you don’t have enough money to live by. Insert some scenes with you having enough money. Little by little, your life will adjust to this video tape you’re playing to yourself every day.

What Others Think You Are

But there’s something more about this. In the movie, the one who makes the tape is Adam. He makes the tape for somebody else, not for him. He had been trusted enough to make that tape. Now imagine the consequences if he would have put in that tape some bad scenes. He was in love with the girl, but if he really wanted to hurt her, he could have craft a completely different version of the video tape.

If you have friends or close persons who are constantly telling you you’re no good, well, they’re playing a dirty trick with your video tape. They’re using your trust in a bad way. They’re trying to control you, or take advantage of you somehow. They’re screwing with your short memory trying to make you somebody you’re not. It happens more often than you’re ready to accept.

So it’s important that you choose your close circle of friends carefully. At some point, you will let them play your morning video tape on you. You will look for acceptance form them, for validation, for support. You will invest them with trust. And by that, you will allow them to play a version of your own life in front of you. Be sure to choose wisely.

Don’t Believe Me

I know this whole sleep based self-improvement technique, as simple as it is, may look strange. As a matter of fact, I’m quite aware that it may sounds completely wacky. It may sound like a mumbo-jumbo new age gibberish. Or even worse, like a bad joke. So, don’t believe me. Do your own research. Play with your own memory. Experiment.

Tell yourself every morning who you really are. Or, even better, tell yourself who you want to be. Try to play with your memory like a child plays with his play-doh.

Make your own morning video tape.

The Horrors and Joys of Consistency

This is a guest post by Lyman Reed – @lymanreed.

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. ” — Emerson

I’ve known that quote from Emerson’s Self-Reliance for as long as I can remember, but I don’t think that I really understood it until recently.

People often use it to slam conformity, but when they do, they reveal that they are just as ignorant of it’s point as I used to be.  Conformity and consistency are two different things.  Conformity is doing something just because everyone else is doing it.  Consistency is doing something on a regular basis.

Here’s the rest of the passage:

“With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

What Emerson is talking about is a consistency with our own beliefs.  Believing something today simply because you believed it yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, is one of the most foolish things you can do.

It’s a great way to stay stuck right where you are, never growing, never learning, and never experiencing anything new.

I recently decided to take a real look at some beliefs I had around metaphysics, specifically the Law of Attraction and what’s known (or at least used to be known) as New Thought.  While it was by no means easy, I decided to drop those beliefs in favor of a more rational world view.

This one was difficult not just because of my own internal dialogs, but because suddenly people that I associated with didn’t know what to expect of me.  The guy who used to talk about the Law of Attraction and who thought that Wallace Wattles was the smartest man in the world was now saying “Nope, I was wrong.”  Which was threatening to those who still believed as I used to.

But in In some things, consistency isn’t foolish, and can be a fantastic tool that we can use to our advantage.

For example, for the past 44 days, I’ve filled a page in my personal journal every day.  It started as a 30 day trial, to see what I would get out of it.  The benefits included a renewed confidence in my writing, massive amounts of ideas for articles, and a honing of my skills.  So I stuck with it because it made my life better.

Another example: for the past 21 days, I’ve gotten out and gone for a walk every day.  That’s a 30 day trial that’s still going on, and while I’m not sure yet if I’ll continue on a daily basis, I do know that the benefits I’m feeling (sleeping better, more energy, the ego boost) will keep me doing at least some form of exercise.

In some things, consistency can be deadly.  My personal example of this is my smoking.  It’s something that I constantly struggle with, so much so that it’s possible that I’ve built up in my mind that I consistently go back to smoking, and it’s become a part of who I am.  While I still struggle with it, I’m going to keep struggling until I win.  I will not give in to that kind of consistency.

What we are consistent with determines our future.  And what we make the decision to not be consistent with determines our future as well.

Staying consistent just to be consistent is bullshit. Staying consistent in order to achieve a goal is greatness.  Staying consistent when it’s leading us down the wrong path is suicide.

But staying consistent because we can’t bear what people would think of us if we changed?

That’s horrifying.

***

About the author: Lyman Reed is a personal development blogger who currently lives in Valencia, CA.  He you can visit his blog, Personal Development in the Real World, at http://lymanreed.com/.

5 Things Inception Taught Me About Self-Improvement (And No, I’m Not Dreaming)

I’m not a movie hyper. I don’t rush to the movie theater at the first trailer, shaking my head in an uncontrollable enthusiastic crisis. On the contrary. I saw Titanic 3 years after it was launched. Matrix, 2 years after (please forgive me for that, I still took the redpill). Even Fight Club came to my DVD collection pretty late. (There is one exception though: Kung-Fu Panda. That one was pretty hot when I saw it.)

Anyway, you got the idea. Well, knowing that, I was seriously taken by surprise by my own drive to go to see Inception. I really don’t know why I felt this urge. I don’t even remember in what context I first heard about it. I just know I did and from that moment I really, really wanted to see it. Now, after I saw it, I suspect that this movie was in fact launched a few years ago. Somebody came into my dream, planted a seed, and that seed grew into an uncontrollable desire to go see the movie… An inception to make me see Inception…

I’m joking, of course. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if, in a few years from now, the marketing campaigns will start in our dreams first.

Anyway, fact is I really liked Inception. Not only I liked it, but, following my uncontrollable passion for self-improvement, I also isolated 5 things the movie taught me. As always, these things are just my own interpretation of the events, and may not be taken as a review of the movie. If we’re talking only about the artistic impression, suffice to say that I liked it. Now, let’s see what can we learn from it too.

1. Reality Is When You Say It Is

In the dream snatchers arsenal, one very important weapon is the “totem”. An artifact which behaves in a certain way, and it can only be witnessed by its owner. It’s your connection to reality and as such, it cannot be infected with other people (or projections) presence. It’s your own proof that you’re not dreaming anymore. Cobb’s totem is a spinning top. Every time he spins that top and the top behaves as expected, he knows he’s out of the dream. Back to reality, here comes gravity.

That made me think. Not the reality checking process in itself, which is pretty straightforward: you do something expecting a certain result and if it checks, voila, you’re in reality. But the mere fact of choosing that reality hook. I mean, you could be in a dream too when you pick that totem. It will still obey the rules of that specific dream-based reality. Every time it will check, it will of course enforce a reality, but that reality could be in fact, just a dream.

Reality is when you say it is. The moment you agree that a spinning top should go round and round until it stops, instead of breaking up into pieces, for instance, you sign a contract with that kind of reality. You anchor yourself in a certain time space continuum. That point will become the gravitational center of your entire world. And that’s because YOU made that decision.

Your world is built by you. You’re making the rules. If there are parts in your life which aren’t in sync with what you want, you have the power to make them disappear. Spin your top and see if it checks.

2. Time Is Irrelevant

For a dream snatcher, time is behaving differently. Time in a dream will flow slower than in reality. Time in a dream within a dream will be an order of magnitude slower. And a dream within a dream within a dream could make you spend there dozens of years. And for the dream character, that time would not be subjective, it will actually make that character older. It will have real effects.

Whenever you’re immersing yourself in something you really enjoy, like a dream you love dreaming, time will expand. Our perception is that it is slow down, somehow. Even more, every time we’re doing something we really enjoy, time will actually seem to stop. I’m sure you know the feeling: “oh my, god, I’ve been doing this for 5 hours? This couldn’t be!”… You will be in fact out of time in our normal, sequential perception.

We’re used to think that time “flows” in sequences of seconds, hours, days, weeks. But the deeper you immerse in life this perception of times weakens, and a new one, quantum based will take place. Time will manifests itself in bursts. A day can last a week. An hour can last a month. And a second can last a lifetime.  In a way, time seems to be our measurement unit for things we don’t enjoy. Because when we really like something, time will disappear. The more we love doing something, the less time we’re “consuming”.

Passion is the time killer. Passionately living makes you immortal, in the sense that time will become irrelevant. In other people’s realities you may be there for an hour, but within your passionate dream, you will be there forever.

3. You Live In A Web Of Relationships

Allegedly, a dream snatcher could sneak in, plant a seed into your mind while you’re dreaming, and that seed could expand into an idea. An idea that could change lives, build empires and reboot the world. That idea will feel like it’s emerging from your own consciousness. You will treat it like it was your idea. In a way, a dream snatcher could manipulate your consciousness through your dreams.

We’re not alone. We’re not individual entities, like we think we are. We’re interlinked in a web of relationships. We’re part of something way bigger than ourselves. We’re in a continuous interaction. And this interaction can lead to incredibly huge transformations. Every information you access is in fact a seed that could become an idea. All you have to do is to believe in it, like it was yours.

This has an incredibly impact on your life. Now, that you know that every interaction has the possibility to change your life, you will be much more careful. Or at least I hope you will. Every contact you made has the power to influence your dream. Every seed you plant into your brain can become reality, regardless of who let that seed there. Pick your peers wisely.

You can influence other people and other people can influence you. The smallest piece of information, like this blog post, could change your life. I may have planted a seed into your mind right this second.

4. What We See Is What We Project

If you enter somebody else’s dream, you will notice a lot of persons there. Those persons are not individuals, they are merely projections of that person subconscious. They have human shapes but they are in fact just projections of that persons fears, frustrations, ambitions or repressed feelings. Everything you have in your subconscious will take shape in a dream.

And the ugliest part is those shapes can have a life of their own. Everything which is not processed, dealt with, acknowledged, learned, will stay in your subconscious mind until you will confront it. To an extent, that would make sense: you will deal with those situations later. But it’s not that simple. Those projections, those lose ends, those stubs will interfere with your conscious reality. They will mix in. They will obfuscate your vision.

What we usually call reality is made almost entirely by our own projections. There is no such thing as an objective point of view. If two persons are looking at a flower, they will both see different things. Because they are projecting different subconscious messages to that flower. For one person, that flower could take the shape of a long time repressed frustration while the other one could see there just a flower.

We’re creating our reality by mixing in our own unconscious projections. The ultimate honesty is not to accept someone else’s point of view, but to understand that what we see is what we are unconsciously projecting. Other people may not even see what we’re seeing.

5. Kill Your Fears, Free Your Soul

In Inception, one of the main characters lived in somebody else’s mind, namely the main character, Cobb, a dream snatcher. Every time Cobb started to dream, he reactivated the presence of his lost wife in that dream. And, as I already mentioned, his lost wife had a life of its own. She often interfered with the other characters and made things really complicated for everybody in those dreams.

It took a lot of courage and patience for the main character to solve this mental presence. It took a lot of personal power to accept his own guilt and release that presence from his mind. But without this hurtful process, the remains of his own unsolved problems kept him prisoner in an endless power struggle. He couldn’t break free. He couldn’t even imagine his own freedom.

We’re not prisoners of walls, we’re prisoners of our own fears. And that type of captivity is much worse. We can’t even imagine how we could break free. All we know is that we’re facing an obstacle we can’t overcome. We take that obstacle for granted, we accept it, we even think we deserve it. By shame, by guilt or by social pressure. Until we can’t stand it anymore and take the courage to kill our own fears.

Every time you kill one of your fears, something will go away from you too. You will lose something in the process. But that’s the way it should be: the lost part is the part that kept you from flying higher.

***

Are you still in my dream?

How a Two-Word Aussie Catchphrase Can Change Your Life Forever

This is a guest post by David Damron, @daviddarmon.

When I was 21, I took a life changing excursion to the land down under, Australia. I took this voyage under the guide of the International Student Volunteer (ISV) organization with other American college students. We spent two weeks volunteering by doing conservation work with wildlife and vegetation in Tasmania, which is an Australian island and state off the Southeast tip of the mainland. We then traveled from Sydney north to Cairns for two and a half weeks stopping by many spots to experience the outdoor side of Aussie during the day and the libation side of Aussie at night. During this time in Australia, I became much more familiar with a catchphrase I had heard stateside, but never as widely and as practiced as down under. These two words changed my life forever. These two words were simple yet profound. These two words were, “No Worries.”

Every Australian seemed to have a care free attitude. Every Australian seemed to live the life they wanted to. Every Australian wanted less stress  and to live free. Surprisingly, every Australian seemed to be living by this motto of “No Worries”. This motto is what led me back to Aussie in March of 2009. Both times I have been there, whether I was on a farm in the outback or the streets of Sydney, I felt a sense of weightless shoulders on those around me. Everyone in Aussie seemed to live without a worry of the worst.

I have heard many a guest speakers, many a professors, many a wise old men try and convince me through long stories and tales about the way to live life. They all were intelligent and influential, but never simple, never concise, never practical. It wasn’t until the Aussie friends I made pounded this phrase over and over into my head that such a simplistic coined term could accurately describe a perfect way to live one’s life.

Upon arriving back in California from my voyage, my friends and family thought I was just ‘trying’ to be different than before. I continuously re-quoted the Aussie’s with, “No worries,” to anything said to me. “Sir, we are out of those.” “No worries.” “You don’t mind me canceling on you?!” “No worries.” “You aren’t going to be able to take that day off, sorry.” “No worries.” My friends and family quickly realized I had no care in the world and I was just going to live life to the fullest. As long as I kept reminding myself that there was nothing worth worrying about, I continued to experience life at a highly positive level.

To this day, roughly 5 years later, I try to implement the No-Worries-Rule to most of my daily actions and decisions. By no means do I get stomped on by everyone nor do I live in a van down by the river and don’t pay my bills. I do make important decisions with thought of the outcome. However, I do not stress as much over minute decisions as I did prior to the implementation of the No-Worries-Rule.

Learning this wise lifestyle has been great for me, but would be even better if I can spread this attitude stateside and beyond. The following is a list of ways to implement the No-Worries-Rule into your life:

1. Stay Debt Free : Many Australians have little if any debt outside their home mortgage. Even their home mortgages are some of the fastest paid off in the world. The less debt you have the less worries you will have. If you do have debt, don’t let that control every decision you make. As most of you know through Adam Baker’s teachings, the more focused and forward thinking you are towards your debt, the more you can say “No Worries” to obstacles that present themselves. To get down this path, I suggest checking Baker’s article 42 Ways to Radically Simplify Your Financial Life. It is still my favorite and most influential article by him.
2. Respond with “No Worries” for One Entire Day : This can be tough in America as we are accustomed to worrying and giving false responses. Try relaxing and replying with the catchphrase. If you are able to say this consistently throughout the day, you should be able to feel less stress by day’s end. Small change equals major life enhancement.
3. Don’t Overreact : I know, I know. Easier said than done. This can take a lot of will power and focus. It took me quite some time to not overreact when things didn’t go as planned. Try to focus on interactions with coworkers and family members. Think of the negatives and non-existent positives that come from overreacting. The easier going you are, the better communication with others you will have.
4. Take Everything in Stride : If a meeting gets postponed or a child needs to be picked up from school early, take it in stride. Life happens. Let it happen and stop letting it’s jumble preventing you from living a great life. Relax and kick back. Let everyone else worry their day away.
5. Love Your Life : There is no other reason than the opportunity to experience all that we can in the short amount of time we got here. Might as well not worry about the end and live for the now.

Implementing the No-Worries-Rule may take some time. I don’t expect you or anyone to completely implement this rule to every aspect of your life right away. If you do catch yourself letting stress build from actions that are out of your hands, step back and focus on letting life happen. Remember, a life with No Worries is a life worth living.

Have a good one…

Author Bio: David Damron is the author of LifeExcursion & The Minimalist Path

Pulltabs, MacGyver and the Road to Self-Improvement

This is a guest post from Colin Wright from ExileLifestyle.com (you can find him on Twitter under @colinismyname).

Hungry

I’m eyeballing the corkscrew at the other end of the counter. It could work. It HAS to work. Otherwise I’ll never be able to eat this damn pasta.

I’m standing in the kitchen, exhausted after 15 minutes of trying to open a stubborn bottle of olive oil, but to no avail. The cap is a complicated device, requiring the leverage provided by a frail pulltab to open, a pulltab that I immediately broke and have since been cursing in many creative ways.

There’s a steaming heap of pasta in a pot in front of me, freshly drained and quickly cooling off, waiting for me and my olive oil to whip up a quick pesto sauce so that I can mix it all together and enjoy a delicious lunch.

So close, but so far.

Minimal MacGyver

One of the issues I run into being a minimalist who travels frequently is that sometimes I simply don’t have the right materials at hand when I need them. In this case, a pair of pliers would be great, as they would allow me to grab the nubbin of pulltab left partway down the neck of the bottle and pull the stopper out of the bottle (as the creators intended).

But that’s not an option, and I’ve got to think creatively, on my feet 100% of the time. I need to be a MacGyver of the kitchen, of the road, of the mobile business world, and of any other sphere that I step into.

It’s frustrating and invigorating and occasionally embarrassing.

My plan is this: use the corkscrew to jab the offending portion of plastic, knocking it down into the bottle of oil and freeing up the neck so that the contents can flow freely.

The mechanics seem sound, so I latch the corkscrew to the top of the bottle and begin to twist the knob. The metal spiral shoots downward from the contraption, stopping briefly as it plows into the plastic stopper, and then slowly shoves it downward until, “PLOP!” it clears the neck and falls into the oil.

The Thrill of Success/Failure

This is just a small victory, but it’s one of a thousand that I’ve had since I sold almost everything I owned and started traveling 4 months ago. I’ve learned so much from every victory, and even more from each of the thousand failures that I’ve had when things haven’t gone exactly as planned.

By putting myself in uncomfortable situations, I’m slowly improving myself, making myself a better person and one more capable of dealing with big, bad situations when they arise.

It would not be the end of the world to have to eat my pasta without pesto sauce, but being put in a position where all of my needs are not immediately met – where pulltabs break and a hundred different kitchen utensils are not immediately available to remedy the situation – I’m forced to think creatively, quickly adapt to novelty and find as much satisfaction in the journey toward the solution as in the solution itself (otherwise it would be quite easy to get depressed very quickly).

On the Road

The road to self-improvement is not a straight shot, nor is it always even a road. Sometimes you have to climb mountains, tunnel under forests or build rafts to cross oceans.

So long as you learn from each and every external trial and personal ordeal however, you need not ever reach the end destination; you’ll be a better person for the experiences you go through on the way there, and that’s why the road exists in the first place.

About the author: Colin Wright is an entrepreneur who runs his branding studio from a new country every 4 months. You can read his thoughts about lifestyle design, entrepreneurship, minimalism and travel at Exile Lifestyle.

Being on Board at Launch48

The other day I was invited to an event called Launch48. It’s an online market event, aiming at pushing young entrepreneurs to launch a complete web application in 48 hours. I was invited to be part of the board. Little I knew about anything “launch48 related” until I made it there, I admit. Had no idea what a “board” means in this context, nor what exactly did I had to do.

I’m not going to give you any details about the technical part, but I do think there’s a lot to talk about the implications of the event at the personal development level.

The Set Up

So, just to be clear: the goal of the event was to launch a complete, functional web app in less than 48 hours. Young entrepreneurs had a 1 minute time frame in which they pitched their ideas. After an evaluation period (a few hours), a jury picked 3 ideas. Once that step completed, the initiators also picked their own teams to implement their idea. From this moment on, everything was under the time pressure.

Every few hours the project managers had board meetings, along with people from their team that they considered relevant for the actual stage of the project. In between, they met mentors who volonteered to help. Each mentor had some unique expertise: programming, marketing, business strategy.

At the end of the first day, the teams had to present an application in a so-called “alpha” stage. A workable proof of concept. At the end of the second day, they must came with a functional “beta”, which means: everything described must work, but bugs are acceptable. During these two days they also had to came up with a lot of related documents: business plans, marketing plans, competition analysis and so on.

The Board

The board members (yours truly included) had to “whip” the project managers, follow the progress, ensure the team is on the right track and even provide answers to critical questions. To be honest, I didn’t feel very comfortable playing this role, I never was the “whip” guy, but I did my best to fit in. As a member of the board I was also designated to host the final presentation. In the third day, all three teams presented their apps to a very picky audience (the event was integrated in NetCamp, one of the largest Internet related events in Romania, and not only). My role was to ensure their presentations will run smoothly and in the alloted time frame.

The Happy End

At the end of this marathon, everybody was happy (again, yours truly included). The apps were functioning, the business model was understandable and some teams even had the time to make a little buzz on Twitter or Facebook. It was a complete success.

Ok, now, what I learned from this event?

1. Working under Pressure Is Not Necessarily a Bad Thing

Looking at how those ad-hoc teams managed to communicate, to share tasks, roles and deal with impending difficulties was enlightening. Many of the team members didn’t know each other before. And yet, they managed to create a functioning unit and deliver a final product. In some way, looking at those teams was like looking at a whole year of an entire company’s life, only fast forward: new people, new ideas, coding, marketing plans, communication, failure, starting over. I will repeat myself, but this whole process was really enlightening.

2. When You Really Believe In Your Dream, Nothing Is Impossible

The project managers were also the “idea” guys. Out of several other ideas presented they have been lucky enough to be picked and to be provided with the resources they need. They were able to make their dream come true. In a kind of “sand-box” way, but still. Well, this is what we usually call “luck”. At some points in our life, we do receive all the resources we need for our goals, out of the blue. The lesson: when this is happening, push all the buttons, do whatever you can to make it happening. Don’t quit and be on top of it. In the end, it will really happen.

3. Focus On What Is Really Important

I will need a book to write down all those magnificent ideas ventured by the people involved, from the board members, to mentors, project managers, idea guys or just simple team members. But the time was too short to implement all of them. If they will implement every single strategy, monetization or technical idea, they wouldn’t have finish it in several months. The team leaders heavily exercised their choice muscles. And, again, this is what we do in real life too: we may have a gazillion ideas but if we don’t focus on something achievable and start doing it, we’ll end up with nothing but a bunch of useless, shiny ideas.

4. Discipline Pays Off

They couldn’t achieve something functional without discipline. No team was functioning at 100% and I really don’t think they could, under the circumstances. But all the people made a lot of effort to integrate and leave away distractions and interferences. Some of the team members didn’t even sleep the night before the presentation. Huge effort pays off. Always. Maybe you’re not always in such a fortunate condition to work uninterrupted for 48 hours and, admittedly, the whole event was more of an exercise, a show off, but still, the result is unchallengeable: discipline really pays off.

I want to congratulate all the people I have interacted with and express my honest admiration. It’s not by chance that I offered to each team leader a wild card to my mentorship program. Technical expertise apart, they were all winners and they proved they can stretch way beyond their limits. Also, I would very much want to thank for the invitation to Cristi Manafu, the organizer of this edition of Launch48 in Romania.

How And Why We Get Bored

Boredom. The final frontier. These are the ramblings of a blogger trying to boldly explain what no man ever avoided: why and how we got bored.

What Is Boredom?

Have you ever thought what boredom is? How we end up being bored? How we can strangely reproduce this state so often although we consider it something very uncomfortable? Maybe you tried, but ended up bored in the process…

Boredom is a state of anxiety and low self-respect. We’re educated to get satisfaction from a very limited set of activities. Watching movies, eating, reading, programming (I know my blog is read by some fine geeks too, this one’s for you, guys ), talking with friends, daydreaming. We’re in a state of comfort and balance every time we’re doing something we like. But the moment we’re not doing it anymore, something very subtle, yet extremely powerful happens.

Because we’re not doing what we like anymore, we start not to like who does it too. Meaning us. If we can’t get satisfaction from what we’re doing, in a twisted, yet understandable attempt to stop that activity, we’re trying to hate the person who does it. Which, again, it’s us. It’s like saying: “hey, stop, I’m not enjoying this anymore, I know I have to do it (or I wanted to do it, or it’s good for me or for others around me) but I don’t want to do it anymore”. And from this subtle tension between what we “have” to do and what we “love” to do, boredom rise.

Anxiety And Low Self-Esteem

People who get bored easily are usually anxious people. They’re also having quite a low level of self-esteem. If you’re constantly challenging yourself by trying to stop what you’re doing, because you don’t “like” it, you end up considering yourself an inappropriate person. If you’re considering yourself an inappropriate person, you’ll end up doing things you don’t really want, just to feel a little more “appropriated”. And this is the beginning of your low self-esteem territory.

The bad news is that situation is contagious. It will spread over other areas of your life pretty soon. If you’re constantly getting bored doing stuff you should really do, this will reach to other areas of your life pretty soon. Boredom likes wide spaces, it has an inner sense of expansion. Once allowed in a certain section of your life it will do whatever it can to conquer the rest of you as fast as it can.

What To Do Against Boredom

The simplest way to challenge boredom is to like everything you do, unconditionally. I met some people who were in this state. They were able to extract meaning from and fully rejoice every little thing they were doing, being it spontaneous, self-imposed or just randomly crossed. They were able to dive in and experience everything with equal enthusiasm and energy. Of course, they were all kids.

I haven’t met a balanced child who got bored. Yet. All the boredom capable kids I met where in fact unbalanced kids, children taught they were valuable and loved only if they were doing only a limited set of activities, generally, to please their parents. But normal, non-alienated kids never get bored.

If you can be like a child, free and fearless, I bet you didn’t even reach so far in this article: boredom is something so strange to you that it didn’t raise an ounce of an interest. But if you’re like the rest of humanity, victim of a hedonistic and coercive education, you do get bored. You do get satisfaction only from a limited set of activities and if you’re not doing one of them you’re getting anxious. You have a deep, constant feeling of not being worth anything. The rest of the blog post is for you.

Acceptance

One way to alleviate the effects of boredom, if not ditching them totally, is to accept your current tasks and situations if they are not changeable. For instance, your domestic chores is something that I consider not being changeable. Chances that somebody else will do your domestic chores like laundry and dishes are pretty low, for many of us, so better accept it. Make it part of your life. It’s ok to do the dishes and take care of your clothes. If you’re not going to do this something ugly will happen, You’ll get swamped in a mountain of dirty dishes, wearing filthy clothes. Which will have quite an effect on your social life, if you ask me. Not to mention your self-esteem.

In fact, you’ll discover that many of your boring tasks are the foundation for a proper functioning in this world. Many things you’ll consider source of apathy or lassitude are in fact fundamental for a proper insertion in your day to day life.They are repetitive and this what makes them boring, not the end result.

But there’s a little catch here, which will help you trick the boredom: it will manifest only if you take “repetitive” for granted. If you do that exactly the same each time. You don’t have to take it for granted. Change the way you do your dishes or laundry every time. Ditch the repetitive element out of it. Make it fun. Play roles. Do it at different times of the day. Try to describe the task you’re doing in an exotic foreign language. It’s not the end result which bores you, it’s yourself. Get yourself a kick in your virtual butt and accept what you have to do.

Stop Being Judgemental

If you’re eager to have the first and and final word in a discussion, I bet you’re pretty easily bored. Stop that. This constant need of being right will lead you to the swamp of self-acceptance. If you don’t accept that you can be wrong sometimes, you’ll have to be right all the time just in order to accept yourself. You’ll start searching for situations or contexts in which you are always right and avoid situations or contexts in which you know you can’t be right. You’re alienating yourself in the most common sense of this word: you’re becoming an alien. You’re drastically limiting your choices. Sooner or later you’re going to become your worst censor. And that will make you bored to death.

Learn Something New

One of the most common situations in which you’re getting bored is if you think you know everything. There’s nothing new in this world for you. You already know everything. Well, maybe. But, most likely, maybe not. You think you know everything only because you refuse learning.You found some comfortable refuge in your life, hiding behind a status, a position, your child or your partner, and don’t really want to get out of there.

Well, sooner or later you’ll be forced to learn something new, so you’d better be proactive on that. You can’t hide forever behind somebody else. Statuses are volatile and positions are moving constantly. You can’t be there forever. Actually, the source of your boredom is this very refuge. Go away and learn something new. It will challenge your mind and ruin your comfort zone. And I consider both so empowering.

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Boredom is an expression of our sense of emptiness and limitation. We think we’re functioning properly only if we do certain types of activities which is inherently wrong.

We’re designed to do anything and to enjoy everything.