Fisher-Price Little Superstar Jammin' Band Musical Microphone

The Fisher-Price Little Superstar Jammin' Band Musical Microphone is full of instrument play, lively tunes, sing-along songs, musical variety, and busy activities that help babies develop an awareness of rhythm, melody, and movement. Designed for ages 6 to 36 months, this musical toy will get little toes wiggling and little voices crooning.

Jammin' Band Musical Microphone Ages: 6 to 36 months Requires: Adult assembly (contains small parts in unassembled state) 4 AA batteries (included) Philips screwdriver

What We Think Fun factor: Durability: Ease of assembly: Educational factor: Novelty factor: The Good: Fun interactive features keep your baby entertained. The Challenging: Two play modes are almost identical. In a Nutshell: Interactive toy encourages activity and motor skills.

Designed for ages 6 to 36 months, this musical toy is full of instrument play, lively tunes, and more. View larger.

Inspires and Delights Babies Through Musical Discovery
The Little Superstar Jammin' Band Musical Microphone features a real working microphone that gently amplifies your baby's voice, lights up, and talks. The microphone plays six sing-along songs and four karaoke tunes -- it even has a build-a-song option. The musical activity center comes with a separate tambourine and maraca that hang from the sides and can be removed for playtime.

Two Modes of Interaction
Offering two modes of interaction, the Jammin' Band Musical Microphone lets you choose between sing-along fun and musical discovery. In sing-along mode, babies can press the song-select button to hear a song, or they can sing into the microphone to hear their voice. Your little one can also press the piano keys, tap the drum, or spin the roller on the guitar to hear the sound each instrument plays.

The musical discovery mode is nearly identical to the sing-along mode -- in fact, our reviewers had difficulty telling the two modes apart. However, your baby should enjoy the musical discovery mode just as much. Children can activate the instruments to play a little ditty, press the song-select button to hear musical phrases, or choose an instrument to build their own song. Also, children can sing into the microphone to hear their voice and a fun response.

Designed to Grow with Your Baby
While entertaining for babies, this toy will grow right along with your child. Little ones can sit and enjoy the busy activities and sounds, and as they get bigger, they can stand and sing with music, sounds, and phrases playing from the interactive microphone. An easy height adjustment lets you switch the toy from sitting to standing position as your child grows -- the microphone angle also adjusts for your child's height.

Loved by Babies and Parents Alike
With no small parts or sharp corners, the Jammin' Band Musical Microphone is a safe durable toy parents can give their child. A sturdy footed base steadies the activity center, and a handle on the front supports any child pulling him- or herself up to stand and play.

And, because this unit is self-contained, you won't have to worry about lots of stray pieces cluttering up your home. For further convenience, this toy is incredibly easy to assemble and maintain -- just wipe with a clean cloth that's been dampened with a mild soap and water solution.

But the best feature parents and adults will appreciate is the volume switch that lets them choose between low and high volume. There's also a power switch to completely turn off the activity center as a battery-saving option.

Encourages Developing Skills
The Jammin' Band Musical Microphone encourages your baby's developing skills through interactive play. The activity center enhances fine motor skills with hands-on activities, and it fosters coordination and gross motor skills as your baby learns to stand and balance. Additionally, this toy inspires the senses with flashing lights and bright colors that offer visual stimulation, as well as lively music, songs, sounds, and speech that help enhance your baby's auditory and language skills.

What's in the Box
Little Superstar Jammin' Band Musical Microphone, four "AA" batteries, and screws.

The microphone gently amplifies your baby's voice, lights up, and talks. View larger.

Standing or sitting, you child can sing along with music, sounds and phrases. View larger.

Price: $54.99

Click here to buy from Amazon

Lenovo ThinkPad X201 12.1" Tablet (i5-560 Processor, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit)

LENOVO X201T i5560M 2.66+/2/160/12.1/W7P64 NB

Price: $1,399.99

Click here to buy from Amazon

HP Promo Probook 4525S,ATHLON P340 CPU,15.6 HD Ag Led Sva, Uma, Webcam, 2GB DDR3

HP Smartbuy ProBook 4525s AMD Athlon II Dual-Core Processor P340 (2.2 GHz, 1 MB L2 Cache); 15.6-inch diagonal LED-backlit HD anti-glare (1366 x 768) 2MP Webcam 320 GB 7200 rpm 2.5-inch hard drive 2 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM (1D) DVD RW SuperMulti DL LightScribe Drive Broadcom 4313GN 802.11b/g/n 1x1 Wi-Fi Adapter + Bluetooth 10/100/1000 NIC 56K v.92 Modem Integrated: ATI Mobility Radeon HD4250 HP 6-Cell 47 Wh Li-Ion Battery HP Protect Tools, HP SpareKey, HP Disk Sanitizer, Enhanced HP Pre-Boot Security, Drive Encryption for HP Protect Tools Genuine Windows 7 Professional 32 OS10

Price: $752.68

Click here to buy from Amazon

Winnipeg Meet-up on Dec 29

Rachelle and I are hosting a meet-up in Winnipeg, Canada on Wednesday, Dec 29th at 2pm at The Forks. If you’re in the area, you’re welcome to hang out with us for a while, meet new people, and chat about life, the universe, and everything.

Look for us in one of the seating areas near the Human Bean coffee place on the ground floor (it’s on the SW corner of the building). We’ll probably be on the side near the Fish & Chips place, but we may move to the other side if it’s crowded there.

I can’t predict how many people will show up, but I’m guessing it will be less than 10.

I seem to like the cold weather here, maybe since my ancestry is from Eastern Europe. It’s like having a shot of espresso each time I venture outside.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 26th, 2010 at 4:54 pm and is filed under General, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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The 10 Worst Energy Zappers and How to Beat Them

Let's face it. If you are trying to accomplish anything in life, whether it is work, raising a family, or even having fun, you need to have energy. When we run into trouble in the form of bad moods or poor productivity, its usually because we are low on energy. Oddly, many of us willingly subject ourselves daily to factors that suck us dry.

Here is a list of the top 10 energy zapping offenders and how you can avoid them.
Lack of Sleep
Duh, right? Well how come we don't get enough sleep? It needs to be a priority and you need to muster up the proper motivation to make it happen. Now, not everyone needs 8 hours of sleep, but some do. How do you figure out how much you need? Experiment. Measure how much you need by how you feel the next day. Are you dragging with droopy eyelids all day if you only sleep for 7 hours? Then that's not enough. If you feel mostly alert, then you've hit on the right amount for you.
Sugar
Avoid it. If you must eat sweets try to combine them with fiber which slows the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream. Most fruits naturally have both the sweetness and the fiber. The next time you have a candy bar or can of soda, watch for the subsequent energy dip that occurs within 30-60 minutes. Be prepared to nap because that's what you will feel like doing.
Caffeine
I'm sorry, but caffeine is the big lie. Don't hate me. It's simply the laws of physics. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Caffeine follows this law. Initially you will see a kick of energy from caffeine, but everyone pays the price later in terms of tiredness, insomnia, or irritability. This is obviously a personal choice, but there are many, including myself, who have improved their life by eliminating or decreasing their caffeine intake. Here is an article with both pros and cons to help you decide if you want to kick the caffeine habit.
Lack of Exercise
If you don't use it, you lose it. Your muscles store and therefore provide energy. Exercise gives you energy especially if you do it on a regular basis. Shoot for 20-30 minutes everyday to improve your energy levels. Another simple thing you can do is take a 5 minute break every hour to get up from your work to stretch and walk around a bit. So if you're feeling lethargic, get your blood pumping by moving your body. If you're feeling exhausted on a particular day, see #1 and get some rest instead.
Not Enough Oxygen
Many of us have shallow breathing most of the time. When we do that we're not getting enough oxygen which is the element we need to burn fuel inside our bodies for energy. Deep breathing will serve another important purpose and that is moving fluids through the lymph system. Your lymph system eliminates toxins which in turn frees your body to work on more important things like your goals! What to do: 2-3 times a day take 5 minutes to do 10 slow long deep breaths. Breath in slowly, hold, and then release slowly too. You'll be amazed how good this makes you feel!
Processed Foods
The more live foods you eat, fruits and vegetables, the more alive you will feel. Seek to eat healthy foods: whole grains, fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and good fats such as found in salmon, walnuts, flax seeds, and olive oil. Here are some additional healthy eating tips.
Dehydration
This is an often overlooked cause of fatigue. When you don't get enough water, blood flow to your organs, including your brain, is slowed down making you tired. At a minimum, be sure to at least drink enough water to replace what you lose through your daily activities. This amount will vary from person to person. While many people scoff at the 8 glasses per day rule, it is indeed a good rule of thumb (as explained here). It is also important to note that your water needs can come from juices and other beverages, but bear in mind that caffeinated drinks will make your body shed water so you may need to drink more if you drink a lot of caffeine. Be safe about it and just drink more water.
Stress
Life is stressful by definition, but for many of us, we make it worse by overfilling our schedules. Instead, stop trying to do it all. Figure out what is most important to you. Cut out the rest. Trim your schedule. Learn to say no. And try meditation. By simply meditating once or twice a day for 10-20 minutes will make a huge difference in your stress levels. If you're tired in the middle of the day a "meditation nap" is a great way to rejuvenate your energy. Another thing to elevate your happiness and decrease stress is to practice gratitude and be mindful of keeping your internal voice focused on the glass being half full.
Chronic Pain
Daily pain can take the form of debilitating back pain or as simple as chronic foot pain from wearing tight shoes. The thing with chronic pain is we become used to it to a certain degree. Many people just live with it. This is not good, because chronic pain robs you of energy. Pay attention to your body to identify any pain you are experiencing on a daily basis and come up with a plan to alleviate it. So, for example, if you always feel enormous relief upon taking off your shoes at night, you might want to find more comfortable shoes. If you have sciatica pain you might want to begin a slow regimen of simple stretches such at toe touching and hip opener stretches. If you are having knee pain, and are carrying extra weight, losing some weight might help relieve that daily pain. Other pain relieving strategies include stretching, massage, acupuncture, or a pain management program from a doctor who specializes in this.
Toxic People
People who are negative can rob some of your energy too if you let them. There are a few actions you can take. Make a commitment to not engage with negative people. Don't fight with them. Don't expect better from them. Instead, try to practice compassion for them. Maybe their negativity is a reflection of pain in their life. Focus on that when having to deal with them. Be kind and make it a point to spend time with positive people every day.Wishing you tons of energy. Please share your best energy tips with us in the comments!

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The Essential Zen Habits of 2010

I am overjoyed.

Zen Habits has just finished its 4th year of existence and every year has been better than the last. This year has been no exception.

How great a year has it been? Zen Habits grew from 150,000 subscribers to well over 200,000 and topped TIME magazine’s Top 25 blogs for 2010 (after also making it in 2009).

Each year I choose the top posts from Zen Habits for the year but this year I decided to let you guys do the choosing. I don’t keep track of stats anymore so I don’t know which posts you guys liked best. It was interesting to see the results.

—
el Tweeto
—
Read more about focus and getting great things done
in Leo’s book, focus.

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Your Simulated Reality

Last night I had a really cool lucid dream. It started out as a regular dream that involved a bunch of robbers stealing items from a large house. I was trying to foil the robbers’ plans. At some point I realized that I was dreaming and became lucid. I ignored the robbers after that and decided to try something interesting.

Instead of donning super powers and going around flying, I wanted to see if I could get my dream characters to become more lucid themselves. Could I get them to realize that we were in a shared dream together and to rise above their pre-scripted dream roles? Could I get them to fess up to that fact that our shared reality was a dream?

I went outside and found some characters to interact with, but they seemed pretty dim-witted. They acted like plain vanilla NPCs that couldn’t handle off-script events. Then I had the idea that perhaps within the dream world, there are somehow limited “computing” resources available. Since I was outdoors in a complex scene, could it be that rendering the outdoor environment was chewing up a lot of dream resources, and that fewer resources were then available for the characters themselves?

I thought that if that were the case, then perhaps I could experience richer character interactions if I went to a simpler, less visually complicated location in the dream world. Then perhaps the dream “computer” could devote fewer resources to rendering the environment and transfer some of those resources to creating richer dream characters that were more responsive.

If I could say that the whole dream is happening within my physical brain, then I’m just saying that if my brain doesn’t have to render the illusion of rich, sprawling outdoor scenes, then perhaps it can devote more neurons to the task of creating richer characters.

I went back to the house where my dream began, and I found a small room there. It had a basic layout with white walls, a window obscured by blinds, a bed, a couch, and a table. I figured that the dream renderer wouldn’t be overly taxed by such an environment. Three characters appeared in the room. Two were representations of friends I know in real life, and the other was some dream character I’d never seen before.

I talked to the dream characters, and they seemed much smarter and more self-aware than the NPC-like characters I tried interacting with outdoors. We had a fascinating discussion about the nature of the dream world. They were aware that our shared reality was a dream, although one of them was skeptical about it. We talked about different ways of explaining how the dream world worked and why it seemed so real.

We didn’t really understand how our dream world worked, but the best analogy we came up with was that it functioned much like a Holodeck from Star Trek. In other words, the dream world was being rendered as if by a computer, but that computer has limited computing resources (analogous to a physical computer’s processing power, memory, secondary storage, etc.). This dream computer  only renders what is seen and interacted with, much like a computer game only renders what is visible on the screen. These computing resources are general purpose, so they can be transferred among “systems” like scene rendering, event creation, character development, etc. For a complex outdoor scene, we could say that most of the available resources are being used to render the scene. For a simpler environment, more resources might be available for simulating character interactions.

When I awoke from the dream, which seemed to last for hours, I wondered if our “physical” world operates in much the same way. Does it also have limited computing resources? Do public interactions with NPCs seem to be more shallow because the world’s renderer is devoting most of its resources to rendering complex scenes? Do private interactions in a home seem to have more depth because there are more resources available to simulate the characters we interact with?

What if the world really does operate like a giant simulation with limited computing resources that get transferred? Do other parts of your life seem to become richer when you cultivate a zen-like space that’s free of clutter and distraction? Do you tend to have experiences that aren’t as deep or rich when you’re out in a busy public area where hundreds of NPCs are being rendered?

Do you have the deepest conversations when you’re alone with someone in a simple environment?

Is there a special advantage to simplicity? Does it free up more computing resources to enrich the simulation of other parts of your life experience?

If you fill your life with clutter in any form — visual clutter, shallow interactions with NPCs, a job you dislike — is it possible that you’re essentially wasting computing resources that could be used to simulate a much richer life? How can life’s computer bring new experiences into your simulation, such as a rewarding relationship, if you’re wasting it’s resources simulating what you don’t want?

Many people have discovered that when they drop from their lives that which doesn’t inspire and fulfill them, a temporary void is created, but that void is soon filled with new experiences. As the saying goes, “When one door closes, another opens.” When you shut down one aspect of your reality, perhaps you’re freeing up computing resources that can then be used to enrich your simulation in other ways.

What if you assume that most of the time, the computer that’s simulating your life is running at full capacity? You can’t add anything new until you delete something old. If you want to launch some new programs, such as a new relationship or a richer career path, you must first close some programs that are already running. One of the simplest ways to do this is to, at least temporarily, go to a very simple, quiet, uncluttered space, and be alone for a while. Another idea is to physically throw out or give away what you don’t need. If something is present in your life, but it’s not adding value, then it’s wasting computing resources. You’re asking life’s computer to keep rendering it. Why waste its resources?

Is your reality simulating what you want it to be simulating? If not, then delete from the simulation that which you no longer desire. You certainly have a lot of control over the simulation. Close the unwanted programs, so you can reclaim the resources needed to create what you desire. That’s a lot better than intending what you want and having your reality respond with an hourglass icon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 28th, 2010 at 3:16 pm and is filed under Consciousness & Awareness, Lucid Dreaming, Metaphysics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Road kill for hot lady drivers

In 1960, the American Journal of Psychiatry reported on “an unusual perversion”, in a case of a man with “the desire to be injured by an automobile operated by a woman.”

The patient, a man in his late twenties, reported a periodic desire to be injured by a woman operating an automobile. This wish, present since adolescence, he had by dint of great ingenuity and effort, gratified hundreds of times without serious injury or detection. Satisfaction could be obtained by inhaling exhaust fumes, having a limb run over on a yielding surface to avoid appreciable damage or by being pressed against a wall by the vehicle.

Gratification was enhanced if the woman were attractive by conventional standards. Injuries inflicted by men operating automobiles or other types of injury inflicted by women had no meaning. He experienced pleasure from the experience, thus establishing the symptom as a perversion rather than a compulsion.

Although psychiatry no longer uses the word perversion (problematic sexual compulsions are now called ‘paraphilias‘) the introduction to the case study says, in a rather understated way, that “some perversions, while representing formidable psychopathology, are also tributes to the complexity of the human mind.”

The article additionally notes that the patient “was ashamed of his symptom but somewhat proud of its unusual nature.”

Link to PubMed entry for case study.

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Poetic sensitivities

Perceptual psychologists have long been interested in limen – the threshold at which a stimulus becomes detectable. The following limen for the different senses, expressed in everyday terms rather than in terms of physical quantities, have a certain poetry to them. I got this information via email as a scan of an (unknown to me) textbook. I reproduce them here for your enjoyment:

Approximate absolute sensitivities, expressed in everyday terms:

Vision – A candle flame seen at 30 miles on a dark, clear night
Hearing – The tick of a watch under quiet conditions at 20 feet
Taste – One teaspoon of sugar in two gallons of water
Smell – One drop of perfume diffused into the entire volume of a three-room apartment
Touch – The wing of a bee falling on your cheek from a distance of one centimeter

Exact values vary between individuals and even from moment to moment with the same individual. Source: Galanter, E. (1962). Contemporary psychophysics. Holt, Rinehart, Winston.

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The dynamic embrace

I’ve just found an enjoyable BBC World Service radio documentary on the relationship between tango and psychoanalysis in the Argentinian city of Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires is the birthplace of tango and, as we’ve discussed before, has the highest ratio of psychologists to population of any place on earth.

The city has traditionally been one of the world centres for psychoanalysis and it remains a hub for theory and treatment drawn from the work of Sigmund Freud.

The BBC documentary looks at the relationship between the city’s love of therapy and one of the most psychological of dances, talking to both enthusiasts and conscientious objectors.

Link to documentary with mp3 and streaming.

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New Years Relationship Evaluation

We all think about (and sometimes do) New Years Resolutions. This year I suggest that you try something new, a New Years (Relationship) Evaluation. Take a look at your relationship and your life and ask yourself some deep questions. It will give you the clarity you need to get want out of the year ahead and some insights as to how to deal with and avoid the difficulties of the year past.

I firmly believe that if you want to grow personally you have to take an honest look at where you are before you can decide where you want to (or are able to) go. Doing a serious Relationship Evaluation at least once a year is necessary to keep your life balanced, and if you want to grow at an accelerated rate, I suggest doing it twice a year.

Here are ten "Relationship-Evaluation" questions that can help you begin the process and show you where you need to make any course corrections if necessary. These questions will be great fuel for helping you understand how progress in your relationship is being made. It also opens the door for some serious relationship discussion. Most importantly, it will help you discover how to achieve your goals with each other for the rest of the year.

These questions are not designed for quick answers - this is not a race. Take your time and feel as well as think about how you can most honestly answer these questions. Read the entire list before you begin your process and allow each question to digest slowly. Taking your time with this evaluation will give you the best insights.

1. What are the most valuable things we achieved in the past year?

2. What would I like to change about myself (or my relationship)?

3. What are my most significant personal and relationship goals for the next year?

4. What are the most significant personal/relationship challenges for the next year?

5. How can I improve the way I am dealing with the current challenges in my relationship?

6. What do I need to keep doing more (or less) of?

7. How am I treating the most important people in my life?

8. How can I give more of the best parts of myself to those I love?

10. What do I wish for the future of my relationship? 

If you need to make changes in your relationship or your personal life, first write down exactly what it is you want to change. Writing down what you want gives you a 300% better chance of making the changes. Next, share those ideas/goals with your partner and support each other in achieving them.

Lastly and most importantly, review your desired changes/goals daily. I advise posting them near the refrigerator or on your computer desktop, someplace that you see them often. This will serve as a subconscious reinforcement and will aid you in reaching your goals in less time. Making one significant change per month is appropriate for most people. Remember, if you try to eat the whole pie at once, you'll make yourself sick.

These self-evaluations are one of the most powerful tool you can use to boost your enjoyment of both your life and relationship. If deeper questions or concerns arise talk with someone you trust and be proactive by taking the steps necessary to create balance where it is needed. It's your life, no one is going to make it better but you.

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Committed Relationships

If you say you’re in a committed relationship, what does that mean? What are you actually committing to?

If I ask some people who claim to be in committed relationships what they mean by it, they might say things like:

I’m committed to my partner.

This answer is pretty vague, wouldn’t you agree? It could mean anything. Committed to what specifically?

How is this any different than taking care of your dog?

I’m committed to loving my partner.

That’s a step forward but still essentially a cop-out. Love is wonderful, but what’s the actual committment you’re claiming to make? To feel the emotion of love for your partner 24/7? To feel loving at least once every couple days? To hug your partner 5 times per week? To live together in the same household? To have joint finances?

What are you actually saying? Temba, his arms wide.

I’m committed to having a spiritual bond with my partner.

I feel like I’m asking a Ferengi how much they’d like to donate.

Believing that you’re creating a spiritual bond is great and wonderful and all. But once you return from Narnia, then what are we really talking about here? Are you meditating together till your chakras look like a bowl of Lucky Charms? Are you smoking the same joint as one? What will we actually see of this spiritual bond you speak of?

When you define your commitment in such a vague way, there’s so much wiggle room that we could say you haven’t actually committed to anything yet. This is laziness masquerading as commitment.

I’m committed to only having sex with my partner.

At least we’re getting specific now.

I’m sure your partner is very shaggable, but this is merely exclusivity. Is that all there is to commitment? If you’re exclusive with someone, is that sufficient to claim that you’re in a committed relationship together?

And does this mean that prior to your current relationship, you were in a committed relationship with your hand?

I’m committed to my partner’s highest good.

Praise Hestia!

What’s your partner’s highest good? Are you sure it involves being with you?

Does this highest good include encouraging your partner to leave once you suspect that being in a relationship with you is no longer (or perhaps never was) equal to their highest good?

I’m committed to your highest good. Does that mean I’m in a committed relationship with you?

I’m committed to loving, cherishing, honoring, and obeying my partner.

How original.

What does that actually mean though? How does this translate into what we can perceive? You can love, cherish, and honor a friend or family member if you so desire. What’s so special about how this shows up in your committed relationship?

I like the obeying part though. Yum!

One reason so many relationships involve cheating, lying, and secrets is that the commitments are poorly defined. This creates gray areas that can be easily stretched until you reach the point of having crossed the border into breaking that commitment, but it isn’t clear at what point the border was specifically crossed.

How will you know if you’re honoring your commitment or not?

Be specific. Start by explicitly defining what your commitment looks like. What do you expect of each other? What have you decided to co-create together?

Talk about actions, events, feelings, reactions, expectations, and consequences. Step out of the conceptual realm, and move into the world of what’s perceivable. If you’re going to make a commitment, then let it be grounded in reality. Bring it over to this side of the wardrobe.

Making a subjective commitment is wonderful. That’s a good start. It’s perfectly fine to begin with abstractions like loving and honoring each other. But if it’s a real commitment — and not an airy fairy nebulous one that could mean anything — then there will be an objective side to it as well. The subjective and objective commitments are two sides of the same coin. Ultimately you can’t have one without the other.

If there’s genuine love present, how do you intend for it to manifest? Will this translate into flowers, joint finances, and having kids? Or will it show up as sailing around the world together, sharing bottles of wine, and hours-long lovemaking sessions? Or is it simply a matter of texting “I <3 U, Schmoopie!” twenty times a day?

Everyone has a different understanding of commitment. If you assume your partner’s notion of commitment is the same as yours, good luck with that. It’s a well-trodden path to disappointment and heartbreak. Be prepared for that slow sinking feeling down the road.

As you discuss your commitment with your partner, be careful not to get lost fussing over the exact meaning of words like commitment and cheating. The exact labels you use aren’t that important. What matters is that you focus on what’s real and grounded and experiential as opposed to getting too abstract and vague.

Talk about what your commitment means to you in a grounded way. It may be less romantic than the ungrounded version, but creating that level of clarity can deepen your connection. You’ll tend to feel more connected when you and your partner clarify what you expect of each other and what you’re willing to give.

Saying that you expect your partner to love, cherish, and be faithful to you is likely to create headaches down the road. Instead, replace these vagaries with a specific expectation like, “If you were to kiss another woman in a way that’s more than a friendly greeting or a peck on the cheek, such as if you were to make out with her or French kiss her, I’d consider that a violation of our commitment, and I’d feel hurt and betrayed.” Or say, “I’d like you to take at least one specific action each day that you expect will make me feel loved and cared for, such as making me a nice dinner; going for walk together while holding my hand; cuddling me on the couch as we watch a movie; looking into my eyes and saying ‘I love you and care about you’; or slapping a slave collar on me, commanding me to strip, tying me to the bed, and shagging me rotten.”

As your relationship evolves over time, it’s wise to update your commitment now and then. Talk with your partner about the changes you’re experiencing. If you can’t renegotiate your commitment in a way that feels good to you both, then agree to let go with love, and give yourselves the freedom to seek out new partners who feel good about making the commitments you each desire.

You don’t actually have to commit to anything. So if the idea of being specific doesn’t feel right to you, then it’s absolutely fine to let go and to allow your relationship path unfold as it will. In that case, don’t get too attached to the idea of commitment as it relates to any one person, as it will simply devolve into attachment and clinginess. Commitment requires free choice, not obligation.

If you claim to be in a committed relationship but you don’t have a specific commitment with your partner that goes beyond the use of vague and ill-defined words, then don’t be too surprised when your connection gradually becomes something that appears committed on the surface but lacks the true spirit of commitment in your thoughts, feelings, and actions. If you haven’t spelled out any specific commitments, then you’re better off not using the C-word to describe your relationship. But if you still want to feel the spirit of commitment without going through the trouble of defining it, use a slave collar instead.

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An informal chat about hard data

Scientific American has an excellent article on the sociology of communicating new discoveries and how the relationship between science and journalism has changed over the years.

It’s a remarkably comprehensive analysis that looks not only at science publication but how it relates to our regular patterns of social communication.

This informal style of communication has been deliberately excluded from science in recent decades through the adoption of peer-review and a uniform impersonal writing style, as a way of imbuing the process with a form of institutional trust.

According to the author, online science pioneer Bora Zivkovic, this model is now being challenged by internet science writing where trust is gained through transparency – showing your working and background through links to original source – rather than having an institutional stamp of approval.

I think he’s a little hard on traditional science journalists, but as an analysis of how trust works in science communication, and how that is being affected by the online science community, it’s an incredibly thought-provoking piece.

Link to ‘The line between science and journalism is getting blurry…again’

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The Domino Project

Book publishing is changing. It’s changing faster than it has in a hundred years. I’ve been persistent enough to be part of that change, provoking and poking and wondering about what comes next.

Today, I’m thrilled to report on what’s next for me.

To reinvent the way books are created when the middleman is made less important.To reinvent the way books are purchased when the tribe is known and embraced.To reinvent the way books are read when the alternatives are so much easier to find.To find and leverage great ideas and great authors, bringing them to readers who need them.

The notion of the paper book as merely a package for information is slowly becoming obsolete. There must be other reasons on offer, or smart people will go digital, or read something free. The book is still an ideal tool for the hand-to-hand spreading of important ideas, though. The point of the book is to be spread, to act as a manifesto, to get in sync with others, to give and to get and to hand around.

Our goal is to offer ideas that people need and want to spread, to enjoy and to hold and to own, and to change conversations.

Working with a great team at Amazon, I’m launching a new publishing venture called The Domino Project. I think it fundamentally changes many of the rules of publishing trade non-fiction.

Trade publishing (as opposed to textbooks or other non-consumer ventures) has always been about getting masses of people to know about, understand and read your books. The business has been driven by several foundational principles:

1. The middleman (the bookstore) has a great deal of power. There’s only a limited amount of shelf space, and there are more books (far more books) than we have room for. No display, no sale. That’s one reason books are published with the economically ridiculous model of 100% returns from bookstores. Huge stores can carry thousands of books and return them if they don’t sell. Large chains get a say about what’s on the cover, what the title is, and they even get paid for shelf displays.

2. The audience (the reader) is largely unknown to the publisher, and thus to the author. Authors with large followings still have to start over with each book, because they don’t have permission (or the data) to contact loyal readers directly.

3. Pricing and product are static and slow. Once a book is published, the price is set forever. Add to that the glacial speed from conception to publication date and you see a system that is set up to benefit neither the publisher nor the reader.

4. Books are inherently difficult to spread. The ideas in books might travel, but the act of recommending a book, having the idea stick and a new sale get made is slow or broken. Given how important the ideas in books are, this chain has many weak links. It's worth rethinking how a publishing house could organize around its ultimate goal, which is to spread ideas.

The internet and the Kindle are changing all of these rules. The Domino Project is designed to (at least by way of example) remap many of these foundations.

1. There is no middleman. Because there is infinite shelf space, the publisher has more control over what the reader sees and how. In addition, the Amazon platform allows a tiny organization to have huge reach without taking significant inventory risk. "Powered by Amazon” is part of our name—it describes the unique nature of the venture... I get to figure out the next neat idea, and Amazon can handle printing, logistics and the platform for connection.

2. The reader is tightly connected with the publisher and the author. If you like the sort of things I write or recommend, you can sign up here (for free, using your email) and we can alert you to new works, send you free samples and otherwise make it easy for you to be smart about the new ideas that are generated. (RSS works too).

3. Pricing can vary based on volume, on timing, on format. With this project, I’ve made the decision to ignore the rules that publishers follow to get on the New York Times bestseller list. There’s no point in compromising the consumer experience or the product merely to get a nice ego boost and a small shot of promotion. More on this in a future post, but I'll let you use your imagination.

4. Digital goods and manifestos in book form make it easier to spread complex ideas. It’s long frustrated me that a blog post can reach 100 times as many people as a book, but can’t deliver the nuance a book can. The Domino Project is organized around a fundamentally different model of virality, one that allows authors to directly reach people who can use the ideas we’re writing about.

The Domino Project is named for the domino effect—ideas can quickly spread, moving through a previously static set up. Our mission isn’t to become a promotional machine, focused on interrupting large numbers of people or having significant promotional chops through traditional media. Instead, we're grabbing the opportunity to choose and deliver manifestos that are optimized for the tribe, for the small group that wants to grab them, inhale them and spread them. The good ones will spread, first from person to person, then from one circle to another, and eventually into large groups.

That’s a lot to absorb for one post. I’ve been working on the ideas behind The Domino Project since I published my very first book in 1986. The first manifestos won’t be out for a few months, but you can learn more as we go by following the Domino Project blog here.

PS When we roll out our books, there will be sneak previews and other goodies for those first on the list...

View the original article here

How To Save Thousands on Personal Development

In life, there often seems to be a line where many things move from being a positive to a negative. From a healthy part of our existence to an unhealthy one. From a functional and normal process to a dysfunctional and abnormal one. From something that should be life-enhancing, to something that becomes potentially life-destroying.

Take food, for example. Over the years, I’ve worked with many people who have turned their healthy eating habits into completely unhealthy eating disorders. Somewhere along the way, they went from being focused on eating well, to being totally obsessed with, and preoccupied by, food. Something which is fundamental to human existence and survival (eating) somehow becomes their biggest challenge in life. The very thing that will sustain most of us, might well destroy them.

The same thing happens with exercise. The unfit person becomes fit. Before long, they feel better, look better, function better and get lots of approval and recognition – all highly desirable (and potentially addictive) outcomes. So, they decide to get a little fitter and leaner and train a little more. And more again. They reason: “Well, if one hour of exercise is good, then two hours will be twice as good and three must be amazing!” Before long, they train whenever and wherever possible. They begin to lie about their exercise habits. They experience anxiety and even anger when they can’t do their workout. They start planning their life around their exercise regime. It affects them mentally, emotionally and socially. They lose perspective and the healthy pursuit of exercise has now become an unhealthy obsession.

We see this type of unhealthy behaviour in a range of settings and wrapped around a plethora of everyday issues and responsibilities. For some people, making money will transition from being a normal, everyday responsibility and necessity to a complete obsession. They will eat, sleep and breathe it. Money will become their identity. Their self esteem. Their sole focus. Or should I say, soul focus? And, in the middle of their fanatical pursuit of the almighty dollar, they will become physically, emotionally and spiritually bankrupt. They will lose themselves. Their success will not be success at all. Their practical and sensible goal (to earn and save money) will have become an unhealthy and destructive obsession.

And speaking of destructive and dysfunctional habits, behaviours and beliefs, I guess I could play the religion card… but do I really need to? Thought not.

So, let’s talk about the potential dangers of personal development instead; the reason I started this long-winded monologue. “But Craig, surely immersing myself in personal development can’t lead to any kind of undesirable or negative outcomes, can it?”

Er, only about a thousand.

Like anything else that we might focus on, the pursuit of personal growth can produce a myriad of negative outcomes when we go about it the wrong way. Some people will become quite fanatical and emotional about their new-found insight and reality. Which might compel them to evangelise their un-impressed family, friends and colleagues with an ever-expanding range of theories, ideas, stories and shonky research. And, naturally, that’s always well received.

For the most part, being excited, educated and passionate about something is good, especially when it leads to some kind of positive behavioural change and desirable outcome. When the information (like the mountains of stuff on this site) is the genesis for practical application and lasting transformation, then personal development is serving its intended purpose. It’s positive. It’s practical. It’s transformational. It’s a valuable resource.

But when we step back from all the motivational language, the theories, the mantras, the affirmations and the emotion, can we honestly say that personal development products, programs, services and resources typically (that is, most times) result in significant and lasting transformation for the individuals who partake? Of course, there is no independent data or research to answer that question accurately or quantitatively (to my knowledge) but if I had to take an educated stab my answer would be… no, most people don’t create significant or lasting change. That’s not to say that they can’t but, rather, that they won’t.

For some people, the answer will be yes but it’s my experience, observation and opinion that far too many people delude, delay and deny themselves in the theory of transformation (yes, even people who frequent this cyber-classroom) when they should actually be rolling up their sleeves and immersing themselves in the practical, messy, uncomfortable reality of the change process. The doing part.

After decades of teaching, coaching, learning, studying and watching this stuff in action, I’m of the opinion that, for personal development to be a genuinely effective transformational tool – in a practical, measurable and experiential way – the change process should be somewhere in the vicinity of ninety percent doing stuff (the practical) and ten percent learning stuff (listening, watching, reading, researching, studying). Of course, the percentages might need to vary a little depending on the individual goal and what stage of the journey we’re at with that goal but, for the most part, I think 90/10 works.

Sadly, for many people, the percentages are more like 1/99. That is, one percent doing and ninety-nine percent… not doing.

What are your percentages?

View the original article here

SBI 2-for-1 Holiday Special

SBI is offering their annual special buy one get one free holiday promotion. This is the best deal they offer. In fact, it’s now the only special deal they offer each year, having discontinued all their other seasonal promotions (Valentine’s Day, Spring Special, etc).

SBI is a popular online service that helps you build an income-generating online business. It includes the education, tools, and website hosting to get you to the point of making money. This service is for people who want to build a real online business that consistently generates income month after month. If you only want to put up a website and don’t care about whether it makes any money, you don’t need SBI.

The whole point of using SBI is to create a website that makes money for you, namely passive income that keeps coming in month after month.

I don’t recommend SBI for people with strong technical and web design skills who are already making streams of passive income online. If you’re already doing what SBI does, then you really don’t need it. Personally I don’t use SBI because I’ve been doing business online since 1995, so I already developed the know-how to do what SBI would otherwise do for me.

I recommend SBI as the best choice for people who aren’t already making at least $1000 per month online — and they’d really like to get into it — but they don’t know how to make it so. (If they knew how, they’d already be doing it, not just talking about it.) This is especially true for people who don’t have deep technical and design skills, but they can write well enough to produce decent content.

I also recommend SBI for people who have the skills to create a website or a blog, but they aren’t making much money with it, and they really don’t know how to monetize their work well. SBI does a great job of teaching you how to monetize your content, and they providing tools to get you into the money game faster.

One of the reasons I keep recommending SBI is that it works. I’ve recommended it to some of my closest friends. It’s gratifying to see them making money with it month after month. I can’t teach people to do what I do the way that I do it — it’s too complicated, and there are decades of knowledge and experience that got me to this point. Fortunately, SBI doesn’t require people to learn all of that. They provide a structure and tools to keep you headed down the right track towards making passive income for life.

One advantage that SBI has over blogging is that a blog can be a bit of a “monkey on your back.” There’s a feeling of pressure that you have to keep updating it. Personally that doesn’t bother me. I’ve been blogging for 6+ years and still enjoy it, and I have limitless new ideas to express. But if you don’t want to dedicate so much of your life to a single website, SBI is a good choice because it focuses on creating sites that don’t look like they need to be constantly updated, so if you want to take a few months off here and there — or just get it to a certain level and then enjoy the ongoing cashflow for life — that’s perfectly fine.

My friend Darlene is a talented raw food chef. I tell her she’s my stomach’s best friend. She has an SBI site called Raw Food Diet Inspiration, which she’s gradually built up to about 150 pages. She shares many recipes and tips for healthier eating. She can choose to let the site sit there, such as while she’s traveling, or she can continue to build it up by adding more content. By using SBI she was able to get up and running fast and has turned her passion into a online business.

If you just want to put up a website and don’t care about making money with it, don’t use SBI. Use WordPress instead. WordPress is very robust, and you can’t beat free. But a website is a different animal than an online business. It takes more knowledge and skill to build a successful online business that actually makes money.

My website may not win any design awards, but it consistently brings in six figures a year. It took about 24 months after I started blogging to pass the $10K per month mark. There are many SBIers who are earning at that level and more; most own multiple SBI sites.

If you want an online business that actually makes money, then I’d recommend SBI over WordPress for most people. SBI directly teaches people how to monetize their work and provides tools to assist in that process. The whole point of using SBI is for you to make money with it.

WordPress is a content management tool. SBI is a business building tool. There’s a lot of overlap, but the former is designed to help you publish content, while the latter is designed to generate multiple streams of passive income for you. If you want to share personal growth tips or something like that, use WordPress. If you want to make money from what you share, and you don’t necessarily want to create new content every week for years, then use SBI.

As a tip for succeeding with SBI, I recommend using Jack Canfield’s Rule of 5. Take 5 small actions each day to improve your SBI site, especially the content and monetization. Actions might include signing up for a new affiliate program, posting a new article, tweaking the layout of one of your pages for better flow, and so on.

Jack and his partner, Mark Victor Hansen, used the Rule of 5 to promote their first Chicken Soup for the Soul book. They took 5 specific actions each day, 6-7 days per week, to work towards their goal of making the book a New York Times bestseller. It took 14 months of consistent action, but they eventually got there. Actions included calling radio stations for interviews, calling bookstores to request that they stock the book, mailing out review copies, and so on.

SBI isn’t a get rich quick scheme. It’s not for the fool who thinks they can get something for nothing. It’s for the person who wants to share genuine value with others and generate income from their work. If you’re willing to put out good value, SBI will help you turn it into streams of income. That’s precisely what it’s designed to do, and it does that quite well.

The 2-for-1 special is only offered once per year. This is an extra optional bonus where you can get a second SBI subscription for a friend or relative (or even yourself) for FREE instead of the regular price.

This offer is only good until midnight on December 25th, 2010, so if you want to take advantage of it, now is the time to look into this and make a decision.

This is a great deal for couples, for a parent and child, or for two friends, since the two of you can build your own online businesses together.

Most SBIers that I know use the 2-for-1 special to build two sites for themselves. Every site monetizes differently, so they may find that one site brings in $500 per month while their second site is earning $2000 per month after an equivalent amount of time spent on each. This is also a great deal for people who have multiple passions, and they like having the freedom to switch back and forth between them.

If SBI sounds interesting to you, a good place to start is to watch their video tour.

Then you may want to read my full review.

After that you may want to poke around the SBI website.

And finally I recommend you read my Site Build It! Walkthrough.

If you have any questions about SBI, please submit them via their questions form. Your questions will be answered by an actual SBI customer.

Just remember that the holiday two-for-one bonus offer is expires at midnight on December 25th, 2010.

There are several successful SBIers who are active in the forums here, and they’ve been great about sharing tips and advice. So as you’re building your own SBI site(s), take advantage of that extra social support to keep you on track towards your passive income goals.

There’s no substitute for making money online. With a well-monetized online business, money comes in month after month, and you can generally expect the cashflow to continue for years. You can’t be fired and suddenly lose your income. Even if you stop working on your site after a while and just let it sit there, you’ll probably find that it keeps bringing in cash like clockwork year after year with no end in sight.

This is a wonderful place to be lifestyle-wise. Thanks to the income that StevePavlina.com generates, I’ve spent 9-10 weeks traveling this year, and I have another 10-day trip coming up in a few weeks — it will be my first ever White Christmas. I don’t need permission from my boss, and my website brings in more money than I spend while I’m on the road.

In the Spring of 2011, I intend to go to France. I haven’t been to Europe yet, so I’m really looking forward to the experience.

Other than laziness or limiting beliefs, there’s no reason you can’t enjoy similar freedoms and benefits. It’s definitely worth it! Who needs a boss anyway?

When I’m posting pics of the Eiffel Tower in a few months, will you still be slaving away at the same job? Or will you already be making money from a new web business and be well on your way to a lifestyle you desire? For a smart person like you, a job is totally unnecessary, and so is being broke. You deserve to get paid based on the value you create and share with people, not the number of hours you put in.

View the original article here

4 Tips for Getting Started and Self-Publishing a Book

I make a living as a professional organizer. You’d think that it would have been a cinch for me to get organized to write my first book. Unfortunately, when it comes to enormous new projects that I’m scared to death to do, I need more than my organizing skills to get me going.

I had known for years that I had a book in me. I believed that writing a book would be beneficial for clients who often left my seminars and speeches wanting more information. And, I’d even made some feeble attempts to get started. I kept getting hung up on the organization of the content of the book. I had so much information to share. I just couldn’t figure out how arrange it in a simple, easy to understand outline.

In 2009 I began working with Mark LeBlanc, a business success coach, to help me launch myself as a national speaker. In the first session he said, “I want you to write a book in 90 days.” After taking a deep breath I squeaked out, “OK, and how am I going to do that?” He replied, “Write 50 minutes a day five days a week.” I said, “I can do that. Can I still use Rock Scissors Paper as the title?” He asked me to clarify the meaning of Rock Scissors Paper. After I explained the meaning of the words he said, “Great! And, the three chapters can be Rock, Scissors and Paper.” With those words he gave me the solution for the organization of the book. I was off and running. The bulk of the content of the book was written in less than 90 days. And the finished product was in my hands 7 months later.

If you’re reading this article, I imagine you’re looking for some help to make the enormous task of writing a book less daunting and more doable. Here are four lessons I learned that may help you with your journey:

Tell others, especially people who have already published a book, about your intention to write a book. You never know what kind of helpful advice you might get! Those of us who have been on the journey to book publication are happy to share advice and resources that could make your experience easier.Start with tasks that you can do. Doing anything will give you momentum to keep going. Writing a book is much more than writing the content. Other tasks include editing, layout, cover design and then choosing a publisher, not to mention marketing the book. Part of the reason I was afraid to really commit to writing a book was because the whole process from start to finish included so many unknowns. For example, I had no clue how to choose a cover designer or editor. But, I could look at other books of the same genre and make some decisions about the look and feel of my book. I found an organizing book with a cover and layout that I just loved. It gave me a model to use when I was making design choices about my book size, the cover and content fonts and layout.Consider blogging to get yourself writing and develop your content in small bites. Dan Poynter, the guru of self-publishing, first introduced me to the idea of “blooking”. Blooking is writing blog entries until you have enough content to organize it into a book. The idea of writing a whole chapter is pretty overwhelming, but writing two to five paragraphs is much more doable. Doing it as a blog entry and publishing it also gave me the opportunity to try out my content on interested readers before committing to a whole book.Ask others who have already self-published to share their resources with you. My coach, who had already published a book, gave me the name and contact information of his cover designer and publisher, and recommended a reputable editor. What a relief that was for me! I hate researching services! I liked the look and feel of Mark’s book, so I knew I would be in good hands if I used his resources.

If you have a book inside you, don’t let overwhelm and fear of the unknown stop you from giving birth to it! Writing and publishing a book can’t be a solo project if you want to successfully complete it. Start where you can and be open to help from knowledgeable others.

View the original article here

Vote for your favorite Zen Habits posts of 2010

It’s that time of year when we look back and reflect. I usually pick my top posts of the year to share with those who missed them, but this year I thought I’d let you guys pick.

I no longer keep stats on Zen Habits so I don’t know which posts have been the most popular. So you guys have to judge — on quality, not popularity.

Vote for up to 10 posts in the poll below (you can choose fewer than 10 if you like). Deadline for voting is 11 am Pacific on Dec. 27, 2010.

And thank you.

View the original article here

Releasing My Copyrights

I hereby release my copyrights to, and place into the public domain, all of the following:

the 1000+ articles I’ve posted to my Blog and in the old Articles section (all are linked from the Archives page)the articles I’ve published in my Newslettersthe podcasts I’ve posted in the Audio sectionthe Videos I’ve posted to YouTubethe articles I posted on my old computer games site that I wrote from 1999 to 2004 (site is no longer online)the compilation of tweets I’ve posted on Twitter and the status updates I’ve posted on Facebookthe forum posts I’ve written (just my posts, not the ones made by other people)

I estimate that the article collection alone is around 2-3 million words of content, enough to fill about 25-30 books. So this is a lot of material.

Unless I explicitly state otherwise, all future content I personally create and publish shall not be copyrighted and shall instantly be placed into the public domain. This includes future blog posts, podcasts, newsletters, ebooks, etc. If I decide to copyright something new, I’ll include an obvious copyright notice. Otherwise you can safely assume it’s in the public domain.

This does not, however, apply to my book Personal Development for Smart People, which shall remain copyrighted for the time being. The book is still actively published by Hay House and other publishers in various languages.

It means that I no longer “own” this work as my intellectual property. You now have as much right to it as I do.

Here are some of the things you can do now with the content I created if you so desire:

Repost it on your own website as much as you wantTranslate it into other languagesTransfer it to different media (articles-> audio, books, etc.)Make money from what you create (sell it in ebook form, post it on your website and make money from advertising)Create derivative works based on my content (i.e. books, movies, software, etc.)

Here are some more specific examples of what you can do:

Package the polyphasic sleep articles into an ebook, and give it away free or sell itCreate a website to share my content in another language, translating as much of it as you desireInclude some of my articles in your company newslettersTurn my subjective reality articles into an audio programTurn 1000 of my Twitter/Facebook updates into an iPhone Daily Inspiration appDevelop a workshop or seminar based on my productivity content

You don’t need to ask my permission to do this. You can simply go ahead and do it now.

I’d rather that you not ask me permission anyway. I don’t need the extra email.

If you’re not sure about something, consult your inner guidance and make whatever decision you believe is right. Or talk to a lawyer if you’re concerned about legalities.

Definitely don’t ask me to do anything that would involve lawyers, contracts, exclusivity, or obligations.

Attribution is a fancy word that simply means giving credit to the original author, such as noting that “Steve Pavlina wrote this…” when republishing one of my articles.

There’s no legal requirement to give attribution, but I’d still encourage you to do so. It’s good form, and if you don’t give attribution, it could create headaches for one or both of us down the road, such as either you or myself being accused of plagiarizing the other. I’d prefer to avoid that.

If you do give attribution, I’d appreciate it if you’d include a link to my blog or mention the URL www.StevePavlina.com. Partly this is so that people can find the full body of my work, including my latest creations, all in one place. And they can connect with the awesome community here too.

If you create a book or product based partly on my content, use your best judgment as to whether or not you feel I deserve a co-author credit for the content you used. Whatever you decide is fine with me.

I’d love to see you do something creative and expansive; however, please exercise good judgment. Don’t create headaches for me by doing something sketchy or deceptive.

For example, don’t make it look like I’m recommending or endorsing a product when I didn’t explicitly do so. Don’t quote me inaccurately. Don’t get me banned from China.

Years ago an author included two of my copyrighted articles as chapters in his book without permission, and he even modified my personal stories to try to pass them off as his own. People emailed me to ask if I had plagiarized him, or if he had plagiarized me. It was easy for me to prove that I was the original author, so I contacted the publisher and we worked out a settlement whereby the other author could keep pretending that my stories were his. This sounds like it’s right out of a Seinfeld episode, doesn’t it? I’d prefer not to deal with nonsense like this again, so please don’t try to appropriate my personal history, even if my stories are in the public domain now.

Another headache would be if you released a piece of software based on my work, but you packaged it in such a way that people mistakenly assumed that I wrote it or endorsed it, and this resulted in lots of people coming to our forums asking for tech support.

If you create a headache for me, you can generally expect that I’ll do something about it, which may include leveraging my network to open a can of whoop-ass on you till you do the right thing and correct the problem. That said, you have plenty of leeway to be creative here, and if you do create a problem by accident, I’ll probably contact you about it first and give you a chance to fix it before I go looking for the tweezers and blowtorch.

You can make money off my work if you so desire. I expect that over the next several years, millions of dollars in revenue will be generated for people as a result of this decision. Consider this my personal economic stimulus package.

My website gets a lot of traffic — I expect 9-10 million page views this month — but there are still billions of people worldwide who haven’t been exposed to some of the most basic personal growth concepts like taking 100% responsibility for their lives or focusing on their dreams and desires. If you can help expose more people to ideas and information that will benefit them, I see no reason why you shouldn’t be compensated for your efforts.

I think there’s an especially great opportunity here for people who want to create hubs for this content in other languages. I’ve received many requests to that effect over the years, so there’s no reason to hold back any longer.

You might even consider doing something creative with an extra SBI subscription — their two-for-one offer is good for 10 more days (it expires Dec 25th).

If you make money from my work, there’s no obligation to pay me a portion of what you earn. However, if you feel good about doing so, I’d very much appreciate it if you’d share some of the earnings, either on a regular basis or as an irregular donation, which you can do via my donations page. This makes it easier for me to sustain what I’m doing and to expand this work in new directions. You’re free to decide what feels right to you.

If you have some ideas and you’d like to discuss them, or if you’d like to coordinate something with others, please don’t email me about it personally since I don’t have the capacity to serve in that role. Instead, use the Steve Pavlina forum to share what you’re doing, recruit helpers, brainstorm ideas, inform people about product releases based on my content, etc. If that particular forum gets too cluttered, I’ll spin off a dedicated subforum just for people who are working on projects related to this.

It’s my hope that people will choose to collaborate on some projects to avoid duplication of effort, especially when it comes to translations. You could even team up with others who are looking to translate articles to the same language as you are.

If I see something really cool being developed (based on my subjective judgment), then I may even help to promote it if I feel it would strongly benefit people. Just don’t expect me to agree to anything in advance before you actually do the creative part.

I like helping people. I like the idea of removing all barriers to sharing. And this is something I want to experience as part of my own path of growth.

If you have questions, please post them in the Steve Pavlina forum, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Give me some time to remove the copyright notices on the site. I’ll replace them with links to this post.

You are loved. Merry Christmas! :)

View the original article here

Post-coma nail trauma

Being in coma could play havoc with your nail care routine.

A 1997 report from the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry notes how discoloured fingernails may be a secondary effect of coma owing to the side-effects of a common medical assessment for consciousness.

The test is nothing more high-tech than giving the finger a hard prod with a pencil to see if there is any reaction to pain, which is a common test on unconscious patients.

In fact, it forms part of the universally used Glasgow Coma Scale. You’ll often hear doctors saying “the patient was admitted with a GCS of…” followed by a number up to 15 which rates how conscious and alert the patient is, depending on their reaction to various prods, pokes and verbal requests.

The brief article reported an unintended side-effect of repeated Glasgow Coma Scale assessments after a patient woke up from coma to find her nails all black and blue.

A 30 year old woman was admitted to hospital with a rapidly progressive decline in level of consciousness and seizures. Neuroimaging studies disclosed thrombus in the superior sagittal sinus, bilateral cerebral venous infarctions, and oedema. She was treated with intravenous heparin and propofol for control of agitation and increased intracranial pressure. She made an excellent recovery.

Three weeks after admission she alerted us to a painless brownish discolouration of many of her fingernails. Bilateral subungual haematomas in different stages of resolution were noted. These lesions had been created by frequent nail bed compression with a pencil to monitor motor response, a common practice of applying noxious pain stimuli in comatose patients admitted to neurological intensive care units.

Obviously, if you’re a Goth, Glasgow Coma Scale evaluations are likely to have much less of an impact on your post-coma nail care routine.

Link to brief JNNP piece on ‘Coma Nails’.

View the original article here

Arguing for Peace

At this time of year, many citizens of the western world celebrate the winter solstice, with its returning light, as the coming of peace. The Prince of Peace is born.

Tell that to my five-year old, Kai. He loves to argue. I know, because he told me. A few months ago, when, in response to my “no,” he spun an elaborate argument for why he should be allowed to watch a video, I exclaimed, “You should be a lawyer!” (deftly changing the subject). “You are really good at making arguments!”

I watched as his face softened into a beatific grin. “I love arguing!” In a flash he screwed his smile into a mock grimace and pointed his finger at me: “It’s all your fault!” Indeed, I thought, I’m sure it is.

Still, I wasn’t ready to begin my solstice celebration with an argument. It wasn’t even 7:30 AM when Kai found me in my room. “Kyra’s not being nice!” he complained. He was upset. “She and Jordan are keeping secrets! She whispered something in his ear and she is not telling me what!”

I checked in with Kyra. Sure enough, she had been asking Jordan for help in making Kai’s Christmas gift. I turned to Kai to talk about it, calmly and quietly. “They want to give you something.”

“They are not being nice!”

“Would it be nice if they didn’t want to give you something?”

“They aren’t telling me what they said!”

“They want it to be a surprise!”

“They don’t like me!” And so it continued. Kai was insistent and furious: not telling equals not liking. There was no other equation that made any sense to him. I sighed and sent him along to talk with his dad. I was supposed to be working anyway. 

In the kitchen Geoff ran through the same reasonable logic I did with similar results. Suddenly I heard Kai make a new move: “If they tell me, it won’t ruin the surprise, because I won’t know what package it is in!”

The boy is five and he won’t give up. He will argue with a passionate and precise fury for what seems, to an outside observer, to be right there in front of him. He wants to be included, and he is!

Is his passion so hard to understand?

*

I think back to what I have been learning since I realized that he “loves” to argue. One thing is that “arguing” means something different to Kai than it does for me. I don’t like to argue. I prefer peace. If someone argues with me, I assume that they don’t like me. For Kai, it is nearly the reverse.

Before I understood this about Kai, we had been periodically getting stuck in the same conversation that went something like this:

Kai: “I love you, Mom.”

Mom: “I love you too, Kai.”

“But I love you more than you love me.”

“I love you so so much, Kai!”

“You don’t like me.”

“I love you, Kai!”

“No you hate me.”

And so it would go, with Kai insisting that I hated him, until I would finally resort to something like: “Kai, when you say that it hurts my feelings!” At which point he would be convinced that he was right. I didn’t like him at all. Not one bit. He would start crying. I would then give up, change the subject, and try to get him interested in something else. 

It was so confusing to me. How could my best efforts to tell him how much I love him backfire so profoundly? Why, when I was telling him something, was he arguing with me saying that I wasn’t?

But after realizing how he loves to argue, I began to get it. One day, when he told me that he loved me, a new move arose in me. I went with it.

“Oh no, no, no, Kai. I love you!” Instantly his face lit up. It was a game and I was playing.

He came back: “No, no, no, no! I love you!”

“No,” I said, carefully and with great, exaggerated emphasis, “you just don’t understand. I love you!!”

And there we are, “arguing” back and forth for several minutes, our large loud mouths smiling at one another.

It worked. I was so incredibly relieved to have found a way in. We kept having the same conversation, with the same warm feeling of a result.

Then it occurred to me. Kai argues with me because he loves me. More to the point: he argues with me because he wants me to argue back with him—or at least, to argue with that part of him that might doubt my love for him or fear his worthiness in receiving it. He doesn’t want to feel that doubt or fear. He wants to be in—in-cluded, in the loop, in the light.

By arguing with me, he is sounding out this darkness inside himself; in wanting me to argue back, he is asking me to help him dissolve it, defuse it, and find his way to more presence, more intention, more love. To help him find his way into the light, I need to move with him into the dark, into his dark.

*

A few days ago, we were having our “No, no I love you” dialogue when suddenly, he stopped. He looked at me intently: “Mom, we don’t have to play this game anymore.”

I peered back at him. “You mean, I can just say, Kai, I love you too!”

He smiled at me, “Yes.”

I saw the light. Or rather, Kai and I saw it together.

*

Perhaps that is what the morning’s argument is reminding me to celebrate. 

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Focus and Discipline vs. Caring

After yesterday’s post on Life Purpose and Values, I saw some questions about why I dropped values like focus and self-discipline from my list. Are these values no longer important? Or do I feel I’ve mastered them to such a degree that they I don’t need to consciously think about them anymore?

Actually it’s neither.

Ironically I found that having such values on my list didn’t help me much when making decisions. They seem like good values to have, and I agree that they’re important, but in practice they served to obfuscate a deeper truth.

Focus on what? Discipline yourself to do what?

What if you apply these values to the wrong pursuits?

When I was 19, I was very focused on shoplifting. I thought about it every day, kept improving my game, and disciplined myself to take action. And I got pretty good at it. Was that a wise choice?

Later I focused on running a computer games business. That focus gave me good results in some areas of life, but it also slowed me down in other areas. When I’d write an article to help people on the side, sometimes I’d chastise myself for it because writing articles would dilute my focus, drawing me away from publishing games. But I still felt motivated to write. I didn’t know I’d someday become a blogger, author, and speaker and end up writing more than 1,000 articles, having a book published in a dozen languages, and doing live workshops. Blogging didn’t even exist back then, at least not like it exists today. So even though it seems like a good value to have, if I’d clung to the value of focus more tightly than I did, I might still be writing computer games, ceasing all article writing as an unjustifiable distraction.

Look at your own life and ask yourself if focusing on becoming more focused has produced positive results for you. Is it paying off? Might it also be holding you back in some areas? Are you certain that your focal point is the best one for you?

In my case I would say there were some benefits to trying to become more focused and discipline as ends in themselves, but those results weren’t as strong as I’d hoped. I intuitively sensed that something was off. I’d do things that seemed more focused and disciplined, but often that made me feel more stressed and overwhelmed, which ironically make it harder to focus. Some part of me was resisting, and it wasn’t due to laziness.

I eventually realized that my resistance had to do with feeling disconnected. Often I would focus on actions that left me feeling unfulfilled, even though I initially expected to feel really good about the results. The deepest levels of drive and motivation weren’t coming through.

This got me thinking. Is there a better place to focus my attention, such that I’ll experience less resistance, feel more motivated, and be more fulfilled?

Eventually I figured out the focal point that works best for me. That focal point is caring.

That value has been present in my life for many years, but it wasn’t till recently that I became consciously aware of just how important it is to me.

The main reason I started this personal development website is that I care about helping people. You don’t succumb to writer’s block when you care. The words always flow. I’d find it harder to discipline myself not to write. I don’t have to discipline myself to write because I care about the topics I write about, and I care about the people who read my work. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t write anything.

Caring is why I’m a vegan. I have a deep sense of compassion for animals, and it breaks my heart to see them suffer needlessly. So I strive to keep reducing the amount of suffering I contribute to, and I keep holding the intention for us to co-create a more compassionate world. Perfection may not be realistic in such an inter-connected world. Nevertheless, I do the best I can. I’m not going to close my heart, even if it stings now and then. I know that joy and sorrow are a package deal.

Something that non-vegans are rarely aware of, but which many vegans know quite well, is that your relationships tend to improve significantly when you go vegan, partly because you feel much more connected to your fellow human beings. Even if you go vegan mainly for health reasons, as I initially did, a side effect is that your heart becomes less clogged (both physically and metaphorically). This allows you to feel and express love more strongly. After several years on this path, you look back to your past self and shudder to realize how cold and dark you once were. It generally takes years for this effect to play out, but a lot of vegans experience it. You can’t close your heart to animal suffering without also closing part of it to human suffering. When you open your heart more, and you behave more compassionately, initially it may seem more difficult to attract a decent relationship because your standards will be higher, but when you do connect with someone who cares as much as you do, the connection can be more intense than anything you’ve previously experienced.

Caring is the primary value I use in my relationships. I love to care for someone deeply and to express that caring — through affection, attention, playfulness, etc. I like making people feel good. This is why I resonate more with polyamory than monogamy. It doesn’t feel right to me to label caring for more than one person as cheating. Making love physically is one way among many to express caring, but for some it’s a powerful channel for giving and receiving love. If I’m going to discipline myself, then I might remind myself to give Rachelle a nice massage or to tell her how grateful I am for our connection. Or I might post some encouraging words on a friend’s Facebook page, or come up with a Twitter update that might help inspire people.

On the other hand, caring made it very difficult for me to separate from Erin. The last thing I wanted to do was to hurt her. Our connection couldn’t be transformed until I realized that it wasn’t enough that we cared about each other; we also needed to feel cared for. Since Erin and I give and receive love in very different ways, it was a struggle for us to express caring in ways that the other would receive it. So we had to let go and allow each other to seek out more compatible partners. We continue to care about each other, but now we express it differently.

When I see other people who haven’t opened their hearts, and they struggle to find something to care about, I see that they suffer for it. I’ve seen how much happier people are when they finally open their hearts and begin to care. Often that begins with giving themselves permission to turn and face what breaks their hearts — and to stop holding back the tears. What is it that makes you cry? What would happen if you allowed yourself to care about it every day?

My new list of values does a better job of clarifying what I want to focus on.

Focusing on making more money or on achieving more success doesn’t motivate me to do my best work. Often it just makes me feel more stressed. But when I focus on caring about people and when I enter into that place of knowing that we’re all part of the greater body of humanity, everything flows beautifully. I feel stimulated even if I might otherwise be a bit tired or drowsy. There’s just enough tension to drive action but not so much to make me feel stressed or overwhelmed. My mind feels sharp and alert, and my thoughts become clear and focused, like I’m flowing down a river with the current. I’m able to concentrate well. And I have this warm and powerful feeling in the center of my chest. When I write from that place, people seem to resonate with it, and my words are often coincidentally synchronous with events in their lives. A greater level of harmony is achieved.

When I focus on values like caring and oneness, I feel more fulfilled. I become stronger and more disciplined because caring is intensely motivating. If you don’t care about what you’re doing, it’s very hard to discipline yourself. But when you really care, it’s actually harder not to take action. You’d practically have to be restrained.

Interestingly enough, isn’t that what society does to us sometimes? When certain activists go out and express how deeply they care about certain issues, you’ll sometimes see them being physically restrained by those who’ve been conditioned to keep their hearts closed.

What kind of world would you rather live in? Would you be happiest living in a very focused and disciplined world? What kind of imagery that does bring up? The Nazis perhaps?

Or would you rather live in a very caring world? What would it be like to live in a world where everyone cared about each other and about the planet as a whole? Wouldn’t this make us more focused, disciplined, and efficient too — and in the ways that matter?

I choose the latter. I understand the importance of becoming the change we wish to see in the world. I think that what our planet needs most at this time is for more of us to wake up and care, not just through feeling but through action. At this time in our history, it’s more important that we learn to care about each other than it is that we produce a new iThing.

When I listen carefully (= care fully) to what tugs at my heart strings, those strings begin to play music. That music is very beautiful.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 2nd, 2010 at 9:42 am and is filed under Motivation, Passion, Purpose, Self-Discipline. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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