Playing to Lose

One of my rare shirtless training pics. I was reluctant to post it, but I wanted to show that I have "walked the talk," so to speak.

While I was on my weight-loss journey from 275 pounds down to 190, I put in a fair amount of research on weight loss.  I spent a whole lot reading about what works and what doesn’t.  And today I’d like to discuss one of the “holy grails” of weight loss: the 6-pack.  Now, I didn’t deliberately work towards acquiring 6-pack abs, but I have had them for quite some time.  They were more a by-product of my Parkour training than the result of any deliberate effort, but they sparked a lot of questions from friends.  Questions like “What exercises did you do?,” “What supplements did you use?,” and “Did you use any of those ab machines?”  In answering these questions, I discovered that there are quite a few myths surrounding the elusive 6-pack.  And I decided to dispel some of them as best as I could.  So, without further ado, here are the 3 most common myths about 6-pack abs.

Myth #1: You can buy something and get a 6-pack without having to work for it.

I’m sorry to tell you that nothing you buy will get you a 6-pack any faster than a healthy diet and regular exercise.  There is no magic ab supplement.  Those electronic muscle stimulation belts don’t work.  In fact, these things might actually take you further away from your goal, because they lull you into thinking that you don’t have to work for the body you want.

One of the few fortunate things about living on a shoestring budget is that you don’t have the resources to go buying every hot new vitamin supplement or exercise machine that comes out.  You learn to stick with the bare essentials.  Which is good, because in exercise, the bare essentials are usually what bring you the greatest results.

There is no magic bullet.  Exercise often.  Eat right.  Work hard.  And you’ll get results.

Myth #2: You can get a 6-pack from doing nothing but ab exercises.

I’ve run into quite a few people that have said something along the lines of, “I’ve been doing nothing but crunches and planches all day, but I can’t see any abs!  I don’t get it!”  A lot of people seem to think that they just don’t have abs yet, so they keep trying to work the muscles to get them to appear.

Everyone already has abs.  Without them, we wouldn’t be able to support ourselves upright or stabilize our spines.  The problem is that the abs are sheathed in a layer of fat.  It’s like trying to grow carrots.  Everyone knows that carrots grow underground.  And even if you water them every day, and you see their tops growing, you can’t get to the actual carrots until you remove the layers of dirt that are on top of them.   But so many people are doing the equivalent of standing around for hours, watering and yelling, “Where the hell are my goddamn carrots?!”  They’re there.  Your abs are there.  You just have to start unearthing them.

My advice is to abandon ab exercises for a while(especially if you’ve been doing nothing BUT ab exercises) and start doing cardio.  Were you doing an hour’s worth of ab exercises every day?  Switch it up to an hour of running or an hour of swimming.  You don’t need to build the muscle anymore.  You’ve already got the muscle.  Start burning the fat first.  Which brings us to the next myth…

Myth #3:You can target your weight loss to your abdominal area.

Absolutely untrue.  When the body burns fat, you can’t tell it where to take the fat from.  I hear a lot of my friends ask me what exercises I did to get rid of my belly fat and love handles.  I tell them that I practiced running and climbing.  They just laugh and say, “No, really…what exercises target the fat in the belly area?”

It takes a long time to explain that there is no exercise that burns fat exclusively from the midsection.  All you can do is eat less and exercise more.  The body takes the fat from wherever it wants, and it doesn’t care what exercises you’re doing that day.  The best that you can do is to continue eating right and doing your cardio exercises to reduce your overall bodyfat.  Eventually, your body will decide to take fat away from your midsection, but you can’t isolate or target the fat loss yourself.  Accept that.

Conclusion

I don’t like that I have to refer back to cliches like, “Eat less, exercise more.”  But there’s a reason that people use those phrases over and over.  Because they’re true.  There’s no quick path to weight loss.  And there’s no single step to six-pack abs.  Achieving these goals, just like achieving any other goal, comes through carefully planned and executed work.  There is no way around it.  But that’s the way it should be.  Because, ultimately, it’s not about having the six-pack.  It’s about what the six-pack stands for.  Would you want it to just be the result of some miracle pill that you bought?  Or would you want it to be a badge of honor that you earned through diligence and hard work?

Thank you for reading, friends.  I hope that today finds you all in good health, and that you will all continue to live well and be well.  See you all again soon!

Imagine for a moment that you are pushing rocks down a hill.  What happens if you start with a small stone?  It probably won’t get very far.  There are a million things that can stop a small rock from rolling downhill.  Trees.  Grass.  Other small rocks.  But what happens if you push a boulder?  Do you think a boulder has any regard or respect for trees, grass, or small rocks?  Of course not.  So why can’t the boulder be stopped when the stone obviously can?

Simple physics and common sense.

Every object in the physical universe is subject to certain immutable laws of physics, not the least of which is inertia.  Objects in motion tend to stay in motion.  Objects at rest tend to stay at rest.  And the amount of effort that it takes to move something is the same amount of effort that it takes to stop it.

So what does all this have to do with achieving your dreams?

More than you think.

As part of the physical universe, you and I are just as susceptible to inertia as everything else.  So are our minds.

Now let’s re-visit the rock-rolling scenario…but this time, let’s look at it as a metaphor for achieving our goals.  Many of us keep our goals small…the reasoning being that since they’re smaller, they’ll require less effort to achieve.  What many of us tend to forget in our haste is the fact that small goals have no real power.  They may seem easy to start in the short run.   But they’re also incredibly easy to stop.  Once you encounter your first obstacle, the amount of motivation that pushes you forward will drop drastically.  And that’s the hidden danger of small goals.  As Niccholo Machiavelli once said,

Make no small plans, for they have no power to stir the soul.

So how are we to remedy this situation?  Easy.

Find yourself a big-ass rock.

Think back to any movie or book where an invading army is trying to break through a castle’s walls.  Did the catapults throw pebbles?  No.  They hurled boulders.  Do you know why?  Because pebbles don’t put much of a dent in life’s obstacles.

Instead of wasting all of your time and energy trying to push a bunch of tiny dreams to fruition, I’d recommend you create a meta-goal, a giant power goal that you can fit some of your smaller goals into.

Let’s say, for example, that you’ve decided to lose weight…and you start small by setting a goal to begin every day with a bowl of oatmeal.  But setting a goal to eat a bowl of oatmeal every morning isn’t exactly the most inspiring goal in the world.  So you start finding excuses to skip making oatmeal, and eventually give up on the oatmeal altogether.  Why?  Because it’s a very small goal.  Which makes it a very boring goal.

Now, imagine what would happen if you funneled that goal into something larger and more meaningful.

Instead of focusing on just eating the oatmeal, think about creating a leaner, more muscular version of yourself, loving how incredible your life is and how much attention you get with your new body.  Or take it a step further and imagine yourself winning a marathon or a bodybuilding competition.

They’re your dreams, build them as big as you want!  But remember that the ultimate point is to create something that you can really get excited about.  The bigger your power goal is, the more excited you can get about it.  The more excited you get about it, the more energy you’ll invest into setting it into motion.  And the more energy you invest, the more unstoppable it(and you) becomes.

Thank you for reading, friends.  I hope that this article makes you a little “boulder” in approaching your dreams…and I hope I may someday be forgiven for that pun…:P.  Please go forth, share, and enjoy your day!

As much as I might love it, the life of a freelancer isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.  There’s a trade-off that happens when you leave the traditional workforce, the same trade-off that occurs anytime we leave a place of perceived security in pursuit of more freedom.

The price of freedom is that nobody can hold your hand anymore.  When you work for a company, your employer handles all your pertinent government expenses.  But when you work for yourself,  you automatically owe about 30% of your income to the government: 15% for income tax and 15% for self-employment tax(the independent equivalent of social security.)  And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the money that needs to be put aside for retirement or emergencies, which could take anywhere from another 5% to 25%.

For someone who’d been occupationally spoon-fed his entire life, managing my own income was an incredibly daunting task at first.

In looking back, though, I’m glad that nobody warned me.  If I had known about it, I might have hesitated and ended up being far less happy than I am now.

Once I found out what being an independent contractor was all about, I was determined to make the lifestyle work for me.  I had to.  I couldn’t go back to the daily grind, not after I’d had my first sweet taste of freedom.  I was making my stand: liberty or death.  But I had overlooked a couple of crucial weaknesses: my organizational system was crap and I had given carte blanche to my buying impulses.

I had no retirement fund.  I had no emergency fund.  I was constantly coming home with new gadgets or video games that I didn’t need.  And many of these were still laying around my room unopened, because I was so busy making the money to buy them that I wasn’t making the time to play with them.

I was floundering.  Bad.  I had to find a way to stop the impulse buys and put my finances in order.

Then, one fateful day, while I was getting this blog up and running, my girlfriend leaned over my shoulder and said, “I’m pregnant.”  I almost choked on my water and passed out.  It turns out she was kidding.  She just wanted to point out that if she were serious – knock on wood – we’d be up a creek without a paddle.  “What would you do if you found out I was pregnant?” she said.  So that was the day I picked up a copy of David Allen’s Getting Things Done and came up with the idea for the F.B.E.(Fictional Baby Experiment.)

The main idea behind the FBE was that I would pretend that there was a child on the way, a child that I needed to be ready for.  I would implement the experiment for 9 months – partly because it was funny, and partly because there were about 9 months left in the fiscal year.  So I set aside 55-60% of all my income(I based it on the average percentage of child support taken out of paychecks), and established that as an “untouchable” account, because it was “for the baby.”

That fund was then further split into three accounts: “baby food”(tax account), “the college fund”(retirement account), and “diapers”(emergency account…in case any crap were to show up.)  Anything else I had, had to be stretched out and made to last.  This was particularly difficult in the early months, considering how scarce paying gigs were at the time, but it ended up being completely worth it.

I ended up selling all of my unopened games and toys(with many a whimper, I assure you), both to help generate income and to un-clutter some space that I would need “for the baby.”  As a result, I was incredibly prepared when tax time came around and I ended up with a far better benefits program than any of my previous employers had ever offered(yes, even the government of Guam.) After the booming success of the first trial run, my girlfriend and I have decided to have another “baby”, and it’s already in its second trimester, keeping me honest and my spending under control.

So if you’ve got an active imagination, you don’t like overly formal systems,  and you’re finding yourself at odds with your personal finances…maybe you should give this experiment a try.  You might be pleasantly surprised at the results.

Thanks for reading, everyone.  I hope that you continue to grow, learn, and share with each other.  I’ll be back in a couple of days.  Have a great weekend!…:)

Edit – 10/9/10: This article has recently been mentioned in an article by Brad Tuttle over at Time Magazine’s money blog.  I highly suggest you check it out, for further money-saving ideas and inspiration.

Some of you might be aware that I’ve spent quite a bit of time practicing the art of Parkour.  I also occasionally spend my time practicing classical gymnastics and trail running.  And in all my time spent practicing these activities, I’ve learned one very important lesson that’s carried over into almost all aspects of my life:

The head leads the body.

Anyone who’s studied the Alexander Technique has heard this before.  For those who haven’t…it just means that wherever the head turns, the body will naturally try to turn itself to follow the head.  In gymnastics, this is particularly important, because the movement of the head is what keeps most flips and spins going.  If you want to keep spinning left, keep looking left.  If you want to keep flipping forward, keep your head tilted forward.  And so on.  Keeping the head in a static position halfway through a maneuver is one of the worst things you can do, because it kills all of your momentum.  You must commit to the move, spot your target, and see it through to the end, or it won’t work.

So why is this important?

Well, many of us don’t realize it, but this simple physical phenomenon is a microcosm of how our minds work.  Physically, our bodies are constantly trying to align to whatever we are facing…or, more appropriately, whatever we are focusing on.  Who’s to say that our minds aren’t constantly trying to do the exact same thing?

The Dangers of Distraction

I very rarely share this, because I’m used to telling people about personal successes, but this is a story about one of my failures.  When I was learning how to front tuck a year or two ago, I wanted it more than anything else in the world.  I had wanted to learn how to front tuck ever since I was a child.  I dreamed about the technique.  I mentally rehearsed it before I went to sleep.  I knew it from start to finish.  But when the time came to perform, I jumped high off the trampoline…began the rotation…and froze upside-down four feet in the air.

Up until that moment, I had known I could do it.  I was sure I could do it.  But in that moment, my mind decided to start voicing all of my doubts and that got me thinking about the consequences of failure.  So I froze up.  I stopped tilting my head forward.  And my entire body(210 pounds at the time) came crashing down on the back of my neck.  I suffered severe neck trauma, and for several weeks, I couldn’t turn my head without pain shooting down my spine.  But it could’ve been worse.  Much worse.  My hesitation could’ve caused me to break my neck.

Maintaining Focus

I eventually got back on the horse with some minor rehabilitation, and I achieved my front tuck.   A lot of my friends thought I was crazy.  Maybe they figured I’d be in a constant state of fear, now that I’d seen what a mistake could do.  They thought that my chances of failure were even higher.  But even though that single moment of doubt…that small millisecond of hesitation…could have paralyzed me in pursuit of my dream, I was more convinced than ever that I could succeed.  Do you know why?  Because I wasn’t focused on what could go wrong.  I was focused on what could go right.  I wanted that front tuck too bad to think about anything else.  I knew what I had done wrong, and I was dead-set on not doing it again.  So as soon as I launched into the air on that first successful front tuck attempt, I knew I was going to kill it.  And kill it I did.

The head leads the body.  But attention leads the mind.  The things that you pay the most attention to are the things that your mind gravitates toward.  When you focus on the positive aspects of any situation, you are directing your mind toward those things.  And when you focus towards the negative aspects, your mind  is directed towards those things.  So why focus on the negative?

Thanks for reading, friends.  Stay focused, share, and have a great day!

Hello again, all!

I apologize for the long break since my last article, but I’ve recently been hit with a heavy case of the flu, so I’ve been bed-ridden for the past few days.

Sometime during my hiatus, though, I found myself feeling a bit sad that I couldn’t focus enough to get any of my copywriting or blogging done.  And I soon found myself laughing at that thought.  Because I’ve never been sad to get away from work in my life.  Never.

And then, I realized that I was feeling something I’ve rarely felt in regards to working.  I felt grateful.  And so I took the time to jot down a few things about my work and lifestyle that I’m grateful for.

- I’m grateful that I can make my own hours.

I am grateful that this is sometimes my office.

- I’m grateful that I can work on things that I genuinely care about, rather than what my boss dictates.

- I’m grateful that I can take a three-day weekend whenever I feel like it.

- I’m grateful that I can make my own decisions.

- I’m grateful that I can work in my pajamas.

- I’m grateful that my writing has a far-reaching and positive effect on people.

- I’m grateful to be blessed with so many intelligent and passionate readers that enjoy contributing to the conversation.

And after writing it all down, I began understanding the importance of allowing yourself to appreciate things.  Without being grateful…without reflection…without appreciation, it can be very easy to lose our motivation.  And it’s not just something that applies to work.    It’s always important to accentuate the positive in our lives, and eliminate the negative.  Because that’s what keeps us productive and gives us the drive to go on.

Now, in honor of this revelation, I’d like to ask you to take the time to create your own list.  Take inventory of your accomplishments.  Write down the things about your life that make you happy.  Write down what you appreciate about your spouse.  Write down what you appreciate about your family.  Write down what you appreciate about your life in general.  When we can see all the things that we have to be thankful for, laid out before us in black and white, it infuses us with a joy and sense of accomplishment that can fortify us against the low moments and keep us kicking ass when we need to.

And we can also be grateful for that.

Thank you for reading, friends.  May your appreciation grow perpetually…:).

Lesson #96: Always take a moment to reflect.

Hello again, all!  After a long, productive weekend, I’m finally back with the final installment of the series.  I hope that all your weekends have gone well, and I’m glad that you’re back to enjoy my work…:).  Moving on to lesson 5!

5. “Get out of the ****ing fire!”

This is a mantra that has been become notorious among large WoW groups, especially when fighting a particularly difficult in-game boss.  It comes from the tendency of most WoW bosses(and real-life bosses) to pause mid-fight and start dropping circles of fire, or waves of fire, or, in some horrifying instances, tornadoes of fire.  But, believe it or not, the real problem isn’t the fire.  Everyone knows that the fire is coming.  Everyone knows what to expect.  The problem is that players sometimes focus so much on trying to maximize their performance that they get tunnel vision.  They forget the danger and they start focusing on only their attack rotations* or their spell rotations, because they want to out-perform everyone else.

*Note: Attack rotations and spell rotations refer to the sequences of keys pressed while fighting in World of Warcraft.  Each press corresponds to a different attack or spell, and when they are pressed in the correct sequence, they can increase your overall damage substantially.

When you’re busy trying to master a rotation, it can be pretty easy to forget that there’s a swirling circle of death right below your feet.  Until that circle drains all of your life away and you can no longer do anything.

Surprisingly, this is how many of us approach our work.  We establish routines that we feel will give us the greatest boost in performance…and then we follow them.  We attempt to master them.  But then one day, a little circle of fire pops up beneath our feet, telling us that circumstances have changed.  It tells us that we need to stop for a while and change it up.  Maybe you just had a baby.  Maybe you just got married.  Maybe your job responsibilities have changed.  And these are all things that require us to be fluid.  They require us to take a few steps away mentally.  But we don’t.  We get so caught up in our routines that we forget the big picture.  And so we keep grinding away…until that little circle of fire drains us completely, and we soon find that we have no life left.

Being the best is great.  Maximizing your performance is fantastic.  But don’t let it come at the expense of the rest of your life.

If we don’t want to burn out…every once in a while, we need to get out of the ****ing fire.

6. Success is a numbers game.

On its face, WoW is a game of beautiful graphics and enjoyable gameplay, but at its heart, it is a numbers game, pure and simple. And just as in life, nothing is guaranteed.

You can increase the chances that your strikes will land.  You can research until you know every strategy and dungeon layout ever conceived.  You can fine-tune your abilities to the point where you are almost unstoppable alone.  But you are never assured victory.

No matter how well-equipped you are, no matter how well you play, there are always factors that can work against you.  Sometimes your groupmates will be incompetent.  Sometimes the monster you’re fighting will glitch and become immortal by accident(yes, it has happened).  Sometimes you’ll spend hours in a dungeon only to discover that the one random item you came in for didn’t drop.  It happens.  So what are you going to do about it?

When it happens in WoW, people willingly throw themselves into the same dungeons over and over again until they’ve gotten it right and gotten everything they want.  It might take days.  It might take weeks.  For some, it might take months.  But still, they do it.

Out in the real world, these same people will try something once…and then when it doesn’t work out for them, they give up.  They say they’re no good at it.  They say it’s a waste of time.  But what they don’t realize is that real life and WoW really aren’t all that different.  It’s not that they’re doing it wrong.  It’s just that they don’t understand that things work the same way out here as they do in WoW.  No matter how good your gear…no matter how prepared you are…no matter how talented…you will fall many times.  Maybe you didn’t get a job.  Maybe you got shot down for a date.  Maybe you lost the big game.  But the big question is, are you going to give up?

…Or are you going to run that dungeon again?

Thanks so much for reading, my friends!  That concludes “5 Productivity Lessons I Learned from World of Warcraft”, but if you’re sad that it’s over, don’t worry!  I thought of quite a few more lessons while I was putting this last installment together…and if all goes well, there may be some future installments in the works!   Thanks again for reading and enjoying, and please share!

Hey, all, great news.  I’ve recently been asked to submit an article over at PickTheBrain.com!

It’s a great site, with all sorts of helpful information to improving your life and making yourself more productive.  So please, go check out my article, and browse around a bit.  Thanks very much for all your kind words and support…:).  Now go check it out!

Lesson #47: In Soviet Russia, lobsters catch you.

Hello, and welcome back for the second round of productivity lessons I learned from World of Warcraft.  I’m breathing a huge sigh of relief that people are liking it so far, let’s keep it goin’…:).  Kicking it off with number 3…

3.  Work smarter, not harder.

In the World of Warcraft, just like in the real world, you get compensated for certain actions.  If you kill a creature or complete a quest, you’re rewarded with a small bit of currency or a random object that you can sell to a vendor for currency.  You spend your time, you get paid for your efforts, and you can use that compensation to buy something that will enhance your overall experience.  Sounds like a hauntingly familiar situation, doesn’t it?  And I’m sure you’ve known your share of co-workers that spend an undue amount of time at work in an effort to earn a promotion or a little bit more money.

Well, WoW also has its share of workaholics.  I’m talking about players who have spent over 24 hours at a time(yes, really)killing monsters non-stop in pursuit of that almighty gold coin or level.  We call this kind of behavior, appropriately enough, “grinding.”  And it means exactly the same thing as it does in the working world.

These players usually burn out long before they reach their goal, and with good reason.

While I applaud focusing on your work, and living with purpose, you should also learn how to streamline your work, as I said in the first article.  There are only so many hours in a day, and unless you want your work to become your life(and I assume you don’t), you should start learning how to work more efficiently, instead of trying to force more hours into your workweek.  That way lies madness.

4. Not everything is treasure.

In WoW, people are constantly hoarding stuff.  And the majority of it isn’t even useful stuff.  If a vulture drops a gizzard that can be sold for 39 copper pieces(the WoW equivalent to pennies), there is someone somewhere that has a bag full of vulture gizzards.  I’m not even joking about that.  When players start out, these items are collected and sold to a vendor, because that’s one of the few ways that a new player can make money.  It’s a normal thing.

The trouble comes when you’ve been playing for a few months or years, and you start attributing value to items that have little to none.

I’ve heard many variations of this scenario: “Oh, I can’t get rid of this sword, I got it when I killed that thing that time.”  Do you ever use it?  “No, but I can’t get rid of it, it’s valuable.”  Yeah, but it’s not.  It’s worth 75 copper.  “You just don’t understand.”

Or this scenario:  “Man, I can’t get rid of this helmet, it’s got little wings on it.”  Do you ever wear it?  “No, but look at the wings!”  How would people even know it’s got wings if you don’t wear it?  They can’t see into your bags.  “Yeah, but I’ll know.”

So people start filling their bags with these “cool” and “meaningful” items that they never use.  And they end up having to buy bigger bags(which can be very expensive) or more bank storage space(which is also very expensive), just to store things that they don’t really need.

A great example of this is a friend of mine who had been waiting months for an extremely rare weapon to drop from a boss.  The weapon finally dropped, and all interested parties were asked to roll dice for it.  He rolled, and he won.  He was so excited.

Now, it’s important to know that when you win a roll for something, the game usually moves it directly to your bags.  But because his bags were full, the weapon stayed on the boss’s body.  He didn’t notice this little fact until the body had disappeared, and the weapon disappeared with it.  Needless to say, he was devastated.

But there’s a good lesson to be learned here.  Keep your containers empty.  Whittle things down to the bare essentials.  Use what you can.  Get rid of what you don’t.  Because it doesn’t matter if it’s swords, or purses, or outdated ideas, there are just some things that aren’t worth holding on to.  Otherwise, how will you ever make room for the things that are really important?

Thanks again for reading, friends.  The final installment is coming soon, and I’ll be throwing in a sixth lesson…for free!  Which is somewhat redundant, considering the first five lessons were also free, but the sixth one is…even more….free.  Somehow.  It’s very complicated.  Thanks again!

Lesson #1: Every great warrior needs a pig.

I’ve been a part of the World of Warcraft(WoW) community since 2005.  And over the years, I’ve gone through several phases of addiction, ranging from casual dabbling to complete immersion.

To be honest, when I started up my freelance writing business, I was more than a little concerned that WoW would be my downfall.  Self-employment provides folks like me with the ability to set our own hours…and with WoW looming large in the background, that seemed like a fairly heavy temptation to bear.  But surprisingly, I was able to stay focused on  my work and only play WoW in a specific time window that I had scheduled for myself.  How was I able to maintain productivity, even in the face of such luxuriant other-worldly goodies?  Ironically, I learned to become productive through PLAYING the game.  And I’d like to share a few of those lessons with you.

1. There is no such thing as instant gratification.

When you play WoW, you generally don’t get things automatically.  Do you want titles and prestige?  Do you want that big, shiny axe you’ve always had your eye on?  Well, then you have to start from the bottom and work your way up.  And if you slay what needs to be slain, and you do the quests that need to be done, then you’ll reach the elite ranks in time.  Occasionally, there will be people that can help you by giving you advice and tools.  But at the end of the day, only you can help yourself improve.  And that can’t be done without time, diligence, and effort.

Life is exactly the same way, though many people seem to forget that fact.  There’s no magic pill that you can take to become an instant millionaire.  When you enter college, there is no “Graduate” button that rushes you through the process.  If you want to become the best in your field, you have to take responsibility for your own advancement.  Learn what needs to be done.  Work at it.  And with time, you’ll learn how to streamline the process and get things done more efficiently.  It won’t be instant, but it’ll give you a lot more insight into how to maximize your potential.  Which brings me to the next lesson…

2. Know your role.

In my years of playing, I’ve found that there’s nothing more annoying or less efficient than people who don’t understand their role in a group.  When a player is supposed to be healing, the last thing you want to see is that player rushing to the front lines to punch that big monster in the face.  Things like that are what cause entire groups to fail.  If you’ve never played WoW and you don’t think you can relate, let me ask you this: Do you have a co-worker that seems to know nothing about their job, and just comes in every day to surf the web or hang out by the water cooler?  The principle is roughly the same.

Now, am I seriously comparing WoW to a job?  Perhaps.  Imagine a group of capable, motivated, intelligent individuals being led astray by a single incompetent.  Now am I talking about a WoW group, or your work environment?  Some people have trouble telling the difference.

But my point is this:  in all things, we should know our appropriate roles and act them out with purpose.  When it’s time for me to be a writer, I forget the rest of the world and I write.   When it’s time for me to game with my friends, I log on and I kick ass.  When it’s time for me to be a boyfriend, I….boyfriend.  I boyfriend like hell.  Whatever that means.  But that’s what allows me to live to the best of my abilities:  focusing on one role at a time.  I hate to recruit the age-old adage of “Work hard, play hard”, but I fear that I must.  Giving 100% to whatever you’re doing at any given moment is crucial to becoming a more effective person.  I’ll even throw in, “A jack of all trades is a master of none.” for good measure.  You’re welcome…;).

Thanks for reading, friends…I hope you all enjoy this, as it was a very fun post to write.  There are at least four or five more lessons forthcoming, so please stay tuned!

-Tom

Would you believe me if I told you that there is very little separating you from the likes of creative geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein?  Probably not.  But it’s true.  And it’s not even an intellectual difference.

Every human being holds within themselves the spark of divine genius.

The thing that keeps most of us from becoming great creators and scientists like da Vinci and Einstein is not a vast difference in intellectual ability.  No, the limitation that separates us from great creators like these is the fact that we are constantly striving to become something that resembles our idea of a “grown-up.”  And in doing so, we have come to abuse and mis-use our imaginations.

If you get the chance, observe a young child at play for a little while and consider why you don’t think that way anymore.  I don’t know about you, but as children, my friends and I visualized amazing, fantastic things.  We imagined that we were kings…warriors….pirates…astronauts…doctors.  We created entire worlds unto ourselves, and we made changes to those worlds as we saw fit.  And that’s what creative geniuses like da Vinci and Einstein do.  They see the world through a completely different lens, and they decide that they will change it.  And sometimes their visions are so strong that they completely revolutionize the way that the rest of us see things.

Why can’t the rest of us do that?

When we grow up, we begin to become aware that the world has some sort of expectations of us…and we begin to become self-conscious.  We begin to fear being excluded from society, and we slowly stop using our imaginations to create.  We stop trying to be different.  We stop trying to change the world.  We stop living our lives for ourselves.  And what do we start using our poor imaginations for?

Worrying.

We start to worry about what people will think.  We start to worry about what will happen to us in the future.  We start to worry about fitting in.  And the creative potential within our vast imaginations is channelled almost exclusively into worrying and forging worst-case scenarios.  So when can we find the time to create solutions?  We can’t.  Because we’re attempting to change the world by trying to be grown-ups. And this simply cannot work.  The pursuit of adulthood creates stress.  Stress creates worrying.  And worrying does not create solutions.  Only problems.

As someone that spent a long time trying to cope unsuccessfully with the transition from boy to man, I beseech you…please stop worrying about that elusive ideal of adulthood.  It does not exist.  All of us are still children, playing “house” and “dress-up.”  It’s just that somewhere along the way, the games became our lives.  But the good news is that if our games can become our lives…then our lives can also become our games…:).  If you truly want to get back in touch with your potential for genius, you should start by casting off the world’s expectations of you…and committing to rediscovering that boy or girl that once built castles in the sky.

I’d like to leave you all with a quote from G.M. Trevelyan:

“Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.”

Thank you for reading, my friends.  May you all think of at least six impossible things before breakfast!  And kudos to whoever can tell me where I got that last sentence from…;).