Passive Income Walkthrough

I think we’ve all waited long enough. Let’s begin the walkthrough of creating a new stream of passive income from start to finish.

If you haven’t already been following the passive income series that I started in April, I encourage you to begin with the first post and get caught up when you can.

The process of creating new income streams is different for everyone, so you won’t necessarily want to model my approach exactly because your knowledge, skills, and resources may not align with mine. Even so, I’m sure you’ll learn something from this walkthrough.

So let’s dive right in and get started.

Your first step is to pick an idea. Hopefully this is fairly obvious.

One of the simplest ways is to grab a pen and paper, and brainstorm a list of ideas. Keep writing down ideas until you run out of ideas. Then look over your list, and pick one that seems decent.

If you need help generating ideas, read Generating Ideas for some advice on how to do it.

Many people get caught up trying to pick an idea. If you get stuck here, you can’t progress. So whatever you do, don’t let yourself get stuck here. Make a decision no matter what.

One of my favorite ways to choose among different options is simply to ask, Which option is the most me? That usually narrows it down quite a bit.

Worst case if you can’t decide, flip a coin or roll a die and let chance decide. You’re better off getting into action quickly than suffering useless delay and self doubt. You’ll progress much faster by getting a few projects under your belt than you will be trying to dream up the perfect idea in advance. Some creative people will advise you to fail faster, which is good advice.

Notice that picking an idea is not the same thing as whining about why you can’t pick one.

It’s also not the same as saying you don’t have any good ideas.

And of course it’s not the same as saying “I don’t know how” when you think about your favorite idea.

The truth is that good income-generating ideas are a dime a dozen. Coming up with ideas is the easy part. If you’ve been stuck in the corporate world for too long, then perhaps your creative impulses have been squashed to make you a better slave, so if that’s the case, then go ask a nearby child what you can do to make the world better for people, and listen to what s/he has to say.

Now if you’re really and truly stuck and can’t come up with a decent idea, then I’d be delighted to pick one for you and assign it to you, but you may not like it unless you’re Canadian and very submissive.

My initial idea was to create some kind of digital product and sell it. That seems simple and straightforward, and it’s an approach other people can model if they so desire. I can sell something through my own website, and other people can sell digital products through Amazon, iTunes, and other online stores, depending on the format.

Depending on the nature of your idea, you may have some details to decide next.

For my product idea, I need to determine a topic and a format.

Once again, you can brainstorm possibilities. Then pick something, and keep moving forward.

Don’t get caught up in vacillating. Just decide. Your decision won’t be perfect, and it doesn’t have to be. Just pick an idea that seems pretty good, and run with it. You’ll get better at picking ideas once you’ve completed a few projects and saw how they turned out.

For the format I decided to create an ebook and an audio program, so I’ll actually have two different products in different formats, but the underlying content will be the same. I might sell them separately or as a bundle or both, but I can decide that later.

For the topic I settled on Subjective Reality.

Why SR? For starters people have been clamoring for a more in-depth product on that for years. We had the Subjective Reality Workshop in 2011, but not everyone can make it to a 3-day workshop.

I also think this would be a fun and interesting product to create. Based on what I’ve seen, there isn’t a lot of quality material available on SR. Most of it is either very shallow or very woo woo, and it fails to explain why we seem to have the various limitations and constraints that we do.

I doubt that SR is the topic that would make me the most money. It’s a niche topic, and many people don’t care to learn about it. But for those who do care, they tend to care a lot. So this is the kind of product that should have strong appeal to a certain core audience, and beyond that most people will just think it’s weird. For whatever reason, this sort of product really appeals to me. I’d rather make some people really happy than lots of people only moderately happy.

So I’m choosing this topic because I think I’d enjoy it, I think enough people would appreciate it, and it’s an area where I feel I can contribute something unique and worthwhile.

SR is also a timeless topic, so this product could easily sell for many years to come.

The next step is to fall in love with your idea.

A mistake people often make is that they look to their ideas to give them confidence, as if an idea itself can provide that. In reality almost all ideas are going to feel fuzzy and uncertain at first. It’s your job to inject them with confidence.

Your relationship to your idea will largely determine how far you get with it, and this relationship is under your control to a great extent.

Where does your relationship with another person exist? In your mind. Where does your relationship with an idea exist? In your mind.

If you start thinking ill about your relationship partner and succumb to doubt about your future together, what does that do to your relationship? It kills it. On the contrary, if you hold lovey dovey thoughts towards your relationship partner, does that not improve the relationship? Of course.

With an idea it’s even easier. Treat your idea as if it’s the most amazing thing ever. Respect it. Honor it. Fall head over heels in love with it.

Don’t look to your idea to provide you with inspiration and motivation. Don’t try to suck your idea dry like you’re sucking an orange. You must let the inspiration flow the other way. You must feed and water and nurture your idea, helping to give it form and substance. You’re the creative conduit here, not the idea.

If you don’t fall in love with it, why would you expect anyone else to? An unloved idea will lead to a crappy result that no one will want.

Have fun with this. Be playful about it.

By way of example, I’m making myself fall in love with my subjective reality product. It’s going to be the coolest, deepest, and most mind-blowing product on the topic that anyone has ever seen.

Who cares if that’s actually true? It’s fun and motivating to inject your idea with positive expectations. Self-doubt is only going to slow things down, so don’t even go there.

Once you’ve selected your idea, the evaluation period is over. Like a newborn child, you’ve named it and claimed it and taken it home with you. It’s too late to decide whether or not it’s a good idea. It’s yours now, and you’d better learn to love it.

Some ideas are easy to adapt to income streams. Others require a bit more finesse.

In the case of an ebook and audio program, my intention is to package these as digitally downloadable products and sell them directly via my website.

Later I may sell them through other sites like Amazon, but for the purposes of this demonstration, I want to keep it simple.

What if you don’t have a high-traffic website like I do? Then you’re not likely to generate many sales if all you do is post it on your website.

When I released computer games before I had much web traffic, I spent a lot of time marketing them. Basically this involved uploading the free demos to hundreds of download sites, buying some online ads, sending out press releases, and more. For one game I spent about 6 months marketing it after it was released. This made a big difference, increasing the sales by 10 times.

If you’ve fallen in love with your idea, you’ll have a lot of motivation to do this part. But if you don’t love it, I’d bet money that you’ll drop the ball here.

I see a lot of would-be online entrepreneurs create and release products they clearly don’t love. They’ll usually spread the word for a few weeks, and then they give up and let the income stream die. People can tell it’s a me-too product, so they don’t buy. With an unloved product, this is enough discouragement to call it quits. With a product you really love, however, you’ll be able to push through and keep putting the word out.

It’s not enough to just create a cool product and hope people will buy it. You have to let people know about it. Once you build enough momentum, your sales may become self-sustaining, but don’t assume this will happen automatically just because you created something and put it on the Internet.

In my case I own some marketing vehicles that I can use, like my website and newsletter. I can also use my Twitter and Google+ accounts to get the word out. Blogging about the development of this product along the way can also be seen as a way of marketing it. Many people who are following the passive income series won’t care about an SR product, but some will. So there will probably be some decent interest in the product when it launches.

I can share more ideas about marketing later in the series. For now, let me just say that you can expect to spend as least as much time marketing your new product or service as you do creating it. If you don’t love your creation, that’s a headache. If you love it, then getting the word out won’t be so bad.

The good news is that you don’t need to design your own income-generating process from scratch. I’m certainly not doing that here. You can borrow someone else’s fully developed system, such as the ones I shared in Passive Income Systems.

Your next step is to outline the idea. What do you think you’ll include?

For my SR product, I came up with a rough chapter outline:

Part I – Understanding Subjective Reality

IntroductionWhat Is SR?Lucid DreamingSR. vs. OR / Equivalency PrincipleUnderstanding Beliefs / Observing or Causing RealityChanging BeliefsLiving Subjectively

Part II – Applying Subjective Reality

The Law of AttractionCreating Your RealitySubjective Reality and MoneySubjective Relationships

Part III – Integrating Subjective Reality

Merging Subjectivity and ObjectivityReality as StoryFinal Wisdom / Closing

Now this is only a rough draft, not necessarily the final outline of the completed product, but it gets me started and helps me see what I want to include. For example, I know I’m going to cover the Law of Attraction in this product.

The idea is to create something to help guide you in your development process, but don’t let this part bog you down. If you’re spending more than an hour on it, I think that’s too long. Just aim for something that looks halfway decent. If you can’t manage halfway decent, then settle for indecent. You can always change it later.

It’s pretty easy to get stuck in this stage, so that’s why I like to move through it quickly. If you’re building a space rocket or a hospital, then it makes sense to invest in careful planning. But for a flexible digital product, overplanning tends to be a much greater risk. We just need a general idea of the main sections, so we can start filling in the content.

Now that we have an idea and a rough outline, how are we going to get this done?

The previous steps in this article are pretty straightforward. You can do them in less than an hour. If it takes longer than that, you’re probably getting stuck in vacillating. Just make a decision at each step and move on.

Lots of interesting ideas die somewhere between here and full completion. So let’s pay some attention to how you’re going to complete this and get it done.

For one-person projects like this, it doesn’t make sense to get bogged down in overplanning. Some people spend more time planning a project and getting ready to begin, when it would have taken less time to just dive in and do it.

I favor the dive in and do it approach, which has worked beautifully for blogging, but since this is a larger work, I want to make sure I have a process that I trust will converge on a completed product.

Here’s my basic action plan to move this project forward to completion:

Each day until the ebook is complete, I’ll create a minimum of 5000 words of fresh content, and this will be edited content of publishable quality. This includes weekends.I’ll keep adding 5000 or more words of content to the product until I’m satisfied that the content is complete.For each section I’ll jot down some quick notes for the key points, stories, and examples I intend to include. Then I’ll use the built-in dictation on my MacBook Pro (dictation is part of OS X Mountain Lion) to speak the content aloud into a Pages document. If I don’t like this process or if the dictation quality isn’t good enough, then I’ll fall back on just typing the content like I do with blog articles.After I dictate a section of content, I’ll do an editing pass to correct errors, add subsection headers, and improve coherence and flow.At the end of each day, I’ll bring all of the existing content to a publishable level of quality, meaning that it would meet my standards for something I could publish to my blog. This is an important lesson I learned from writing software — always bring the code to a publishable level of quality at the end of each day. Fix mistakes and low quality work as soon as possible since it takes much longer to fix them later.Once I have the first draft done, I’ll give it another editing pass and have a few others check it for typos and mistakes. I may keep doing rounds of this till I’m satisfied we’ve got the final content good to go.Once the ebook content is done, I’ll have someone who’s more aesthetically minded format it to look nice, including creating a cover page.After the ebook is complete, I’ll use it as the script to record the audio program. Since the initial content will have been spoken for dictation, it should make for a natural sounding script for the audio. I may not record it word for word exactly, but the core content will be the same. I think this will yield a more polished audio program than if I try to use the initial, unedited dictation sessions. I’ll probably use the same recording equipment I used for podcasting.I’ll have someone help me edit the audio files, add intro music, turn them into MP3s, and help package the results into a completed audio program.Once these products are complete, I’ll create a sales page for them, add them to the online shopping cart, add links through my website, and announce them on my blog, newsletter, and Twitter and Google+ pages.

So that’s the basic plan.

Now all sorts of things could go wrong with this plan. Maybe maintaining 5K words per day will be too much. Maybe I’ll need to take weekends off to regain my sanity. Maybe the Mac dictation won’t be good enough, and I’ll have to fall back on typing all the content. That’s okay. The plan can always be adapted as needed. The point of planning is to envision a path to completion. What I have above looks good enough to me.

I also have some travel coming up, so I’ll need to work around that. The first trip is less than 3 weeks away, and I’ll be gone for nearly 2 weeks. Then I’ll be back for a few days, and I have another short trip after that. It’s doubtful I’ll want to keep working on this while I’m on the road, so in that case I’ll probably put this work on pause and continue where I left off when I return. Travel is a big part of my lifestyle, so I’m fine having this project take a bit longer to work around these trips.

I know that if I hit a certain content quota each day, and if I bring the existing content to publishable quality at the end of each day, I’ll eventually have a completed ebook. And using that to record an audio version should be pretty straightforward. So even with some travel breaking things up, this will eventually converge as long as I stick with it.

How long will this product be? I don’t know… maybe 60-100K words (6-10 hours of audio), but it could be a lot more. I’ll create as much as it takes to do the topic justice and feel satisfied with the end result. The length doesn’t really matter since it’s going to be digital. I’m not planning to make print books or CDs since physical media is all but obsolete. If some people won’t buy it because it’s digital only, I’m perfectly okay with that. Most of my website visitors are under age 30, and past surveys showed that most of them prefer digital products anyway. Less than 2% said they wouldn’t buy something with no physical media, and dealing with physical media isn’t worth it to capture an extra 2%.

Price-wise I’m leaning towards $15 for the ebook, $15 for the audio, and $25 for both together. I think that’s very reasonable, especially for a niche product. I’m sure I could sell this for more, but I don’t want people who want it to feel that the price is a barrier for them.

My initial intention, which I shared earlier in this series, was to create a new income stream of $2K or more per month that lasts for 10 years minimum. If the average sale is $20, I’d have to sell 100 copies per month, which is just over 3 copies per day. For all the outlets I have available, I think that’s an achievable goal.

There are lots of ways to set up an income stream, so let me caution you to be careful what you optimize for.

Many people try to maximize income or profits, but this often involves sacrificing other things in exchange for more money, such as your ability to communicate as a real human being. For instance, you may need to be a lot pushier and more aggressive with your selling process if you want to squeeze more money out of people who are on the fence about buying. To me this is a big turnoff.

My motivation is to do something creative that I’ll enjoy, to contribute something of value to people’s lives, and to share it in such a way that some financial support flows back to me. For me a homerun is what I do on the creative side.

Another important factor for me is to avoid creating headaches for myself. I really don’t care about fighting piracy, so if people want to steal a copy without paying for it, that’s their choice. I don’t think $15 or $25 is too much to ask for a cool and interesting product like this.

As for whether or not to keep this product copyrighted or make it uncopyrighted, I decided to keep it copyrighted, at least initially. All my blog posts are uncopyrighted, but for a product such as this, I’d rather keep ownership of the copyright. This intuitively feels right to me. I can always uncopyright it later if I so choose, but once I do that, it’s irreversible. I’m still observing the ongoing ripples of uncopyrighting my articles, so I want more time to see how that turns out. It’s only been a couple of years so far.

During the past 8 years, I’ve given away a lot of content for free. The payment I ask in return is that I’m allowed to enjoy my life — to be happy and fulfilled in living how I wish to live. I like creating passive income streams because they make it easier to center my life around learning, exploring, connecting, and sharing.

Your priorities may be different than mine, so it makes sense to adapt your passive income stream to suit your own desires. Just don’t assume that maximizing income is necessarily the best approach for you. It’s not an approach I’d be happy with.

If you’re going to follow along with your own idea, then I encourage you to pick an idea, create a quick outline, and determine how you’re going to move it forward to completion. There’s no time like the present!

Please don’t feel pressured to follow me in real time with the creation of your own income stream. I obviously have some advantages and experience that many others don’t. This walkthrough will be available indefinitely, so feel free to go through it at whatever pacing works for you.

Incidentally, this summer was my 20-year anniversary of not having a job. That’s 20 continuous years of unemployment. Booyah!

Steve Recommends
Here are my recommendations for products and services I've reviewed that can improve your results. This is a short list since it only includes my top picks.

Getting Rich with Ebooks - Earn passive income from ebooks
Sedona Method - Free Audio - Learn to release blocks in a few minutes
Site Build It! - Start your own money-making website
Lefkoe Method - Permanently eliminate a limiting belief in 20 minutes
Paraliminals - Condition your mind for positive thinking and success
The Journal - Record your life lessons in a secure private journal
PhotoReading - Read books 3 times faster
Life on Purpose - Discover your life purpose

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5 prescription drugs doctors had no idea could hurt their patients

As a doctor, Ben Goldacre likes to have all the available facts about a prescription drug before he even thinks about prescribing it. However, when it comes to medicines, it’s nearly impossible to find all the existing data. As Goldacre described in this impassioned talk given at TEDMed 2012, there is a bias in medicine towards publishing studies that produce positive results. Meanwhile, studies with negative results often go unpublished, the information culled in the research all but disappearing.

“People will do lots and lots of studies and on the occasions that it works, they’ll publish. On the ones it doesn’t, they won’t,” says Goldacre in his talk. “This is a problem because it sends us all down blind alleys.”

You are probably asking yourself: how big is the problem?

The answer is, unfortunately, very big. As Goldacre notes, in this study published in Nature in March 2012, researchers tried to replicate the results of 53 basic preclinical cancer studies. Of those 53 studies, only six were replicable—one of the benchmarks of good science. And the situation is worse when it comes to trials of specific pharmaceuticals. In his new book, Bad Pharma, Goldacre sounds a warning bell on the fact that drug manufacturers are the ones who fund trials of their own products.

“Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques that are flawed by design, in such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of treatments,” writes Goldacre in his book. “When trials throw up results that companies don’t like, they are perfectly entitled to hide them from doctors and patients, so we only ever see a distorted picture of any drug’s true effects.”

In his talk, Goldacre turns his attention to a survey by Erick Turner of all the anti-depressant trials filed with the United States Food and Drug Administration. Of the batch, there were 38 studies that produced positive results and 36 that produced negative results. Of the positive-result group, 37 of the studies were published. Of the negative results group, only three were published.

In his book, Goldacre also notes a survey of trials of statins, a class of drugs used to lower cholesterol. In 2007, researchers looked at all the published trials on these drugs, finding 192 of them. They found that industry-funded trials were 20 times more likely to give results favoring the drug.

“This is a systematic flaw in the core of medicine,” says Goldacre.

To hear more about why this problem exists, watch Goldacre’s talk. And after the jump, five specific drugs for which unpublished data gives a very different picture of both efficacy and side effects.

Reboxetine. After reading positive things about this antidepressant in journals, Goldacre decided to prescribe it for a patient who wasn’t responding to other drugs. But upon further examination, Goldacre felt duped. While seven trials had been conducted comparing the results of reboxetine against a placebo sugar pill, only one was published — the one that suggested it worked better. However, the six other trials were done on almost 10 times as many patients. Meanwhile, three small studies — with 507 patients in total — showed that reboxetine was just as good as other antidepressants. However, data on 1,657 patients went unpublished. “As a doctor, I did something that, on the balance of all the evidence, harmed my patient, simply because unflattering data was left unpublished,” writes Goldacre in his book. “Reboxetine is still on the market and the system that allowed all this to happen is still in play, for all drugs, in all countries in the world.”
.Lorcainide. As Goldacre explains in his talk, this drug — which suppresses abnormal heart rhythms — was developed for use in those who had recently had heart attacks to increase chances of survival. The drug was tested in 1980 in a small study of fewer than 100 patients — half who took lorcainide and half who took a placebo pill. Of those who took lorcainide, nine died. Of those who received the placebo, only one died. The commercial development of the drug was quickly halted, and the results of the trial were not published. But the story didn’t end there. Over the next decade, other pharmaceutical companies had the same idea for a prescription drug. Several were brought to market and prescribed widely. Sadly, more than 100,000 people using these drugs died unnecessarily before the connection was recognized. In 1993, the researchers who did the early study published an apology to the scientific community.
.Rosiglitazone. This antidiabetic drug was released by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in 1999. However, as Goldacre writes in his book, “In that first year, Dr. John Buse from the University of North Carolina discussed an increased risk of heart problems at a pair of academic meetings. The drug’s manufacturer, GSK, made direct contact in an attempt to silence him, then moved on to his head of department.” While Buse stayed quiet, four years later, the World Health Organization contacted GSK about a potential relationship between rosiglitazone and heart problems. They spent the next two years analyzing the data. Writes Goldacre, The analysis “showed that the risk was real, but although both GSK and the FDA had these results, neither made any public statement about them.” It wasn’t until 2007, when an unrelated cardiologist published a study showing a 43% increase in the risk of heart problems in patients taking rosiglitazone that the medical community took notice. The drug was restricted in 2010.
.Oseltamvir, aka Tamiflu. While hospitals and pharmacies have been stockpiling Tamiflu to prevent complications from the flu, new research suggests that the drug might not be as good as we think. While two studies on the drug were published, researchers from the University of Georgia have uncovered an additional eight not published by the manufacturer, Roche. This new data suggests that the drug might not be effective for 30 hours, as currently believed. But the most interesting part of the article is what the researchers had to go through to get this additional data. They issued Freedom of Information Act requests and dug through documents that were largely redacted.
.Paroxetine. Sometimes, drugs are created for adults but prescribed for children. That was the case for this antidepressant, which GlaxoSmithKline wanted to market specifically for minors. Writes Goldacre in his book, “Between 1994 and 2002, GSK conducted nine trials of paroxetine in children. The first two failed to show any benefit, but the company made no attempt to inform anyone of this by changing the ‘drug label’ that is sent to all doctors and patients. In fact, after these trials were completed, an internal company management document stated: ‘It would be commercially unacceptable to include a statement that efficacy had not been demonstrated, as this would undermine the profile of paroxetine.’ In the year after this secret internal memo, 32,000 prescriptions were issued to children for paroxetine in the UK alone.” But that’s not nearly all. In their trials, GSK noticed an increased risk of suicide in children taking paroxetine, but because the use of the drug for children was “off label,” they were not required to disclose this information. They didn’t until 2003. Only then were doctors warned not to prescribe the drug for those under 18.

These examples are disconcerting. But Goldacre assures that this is solvable problem. He explains, “In any sensible world, when researchers are conducting trials on a new tablet for a drug company, for example, we’d expect universal contracts, making it clear that all researchers are obliged to publish their results, and that industry sponsors – which have a huge interest in positive results – must have no control over the data.”

For much more on this topic, read an excerpt of Bad Pharma, published in The Guardian.

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Fake pot industry generating novel, untested drugs

There’s an excellent article on the highs and increasing lows of the synthetic marijuana ‘legal high’ industry in the Broward Palm Beach New Times.

The piece is an in-depth account of how a legal high company called Mr. Nice Guy became the biggest fake pot manufacturer in the US.

It describes in detail how the business created and sold the product – only to fall foul of the rush ban on the first wave of synthetic cannabinoids.

The company was eventually raided by the Drugs Enforcement Agency and is waiting for the case to be tried in court. However, it’s still not clear whether they actually broke the law.

They changed their formula a few months before the raid to use two cannabinoids, called UR-144 and 5-fluoro-ur-144, which are not specifically covered by the current ban, so the prosecutors have to argue that they are close enough to the prohibited molecules to be illegal.

A curious point not mentioned in the article is that cannabinoid 5-fluoro-ur-144, also known as XLR-11, had never previously been described in the scientific literature and was first detected in synthetic marijuana.

It is listed by companies that sell research chemicals (for example, here) so you can buy it straight from the commercials labs.

But the data sheet makes it clear that structurally it is “expected to be a cannabinoid” but actually, it has never been tested – nothing is known about its effects or toxicity.

Previously, grey-market labs were picking out legal chemicals confirmed to be cannabinoids from the scientific literature and synthesizing them to sell to legal high manufacturers.

But now, they are pioneering their own molecules, based on nothing but an educated guess on how they might affect the brain, for the next wave of legislation-dodging drugs.

Fake pot smokers are now first-line drug testers for these completely new compounds.

Link to ‘The Fake-Pot Industry Is Coming Down From a Three-Year High’.

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The Habit of Starting

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All Your Excuse Are Belong to Us

I have many friends who are broke and other friends who are very wealthy. When people are broke, their favorite excuse is “I don’t have enough money.” When people are wealthy, their favorite excuse is “I don’t have enough time.”

Anyone can come up with an excuse to avoid taking action, and their excuses always seem valid.

The difference between those who take action and those who don’t isn’t a matter of addressing the seemingly valid excuses. People don’t normally acquire more money to eliminate the “not enough money” excuse, nor do they create more time to overcome the time excuse.

The way they succeed is by realizing that they’re creating and feeding these excuses, and they decide it’s time to stop feeding them. They realize that as long as they’re willing to feed excuses, there will always be an infinite supply.

It’s never a good time. And there’s never enough money. And that isn’t ever going to change.

And despite how valid these excuses may seem, they can’t stop a committed person.

People don’t suddenly take action when they cure their apparent money or time obstacles. They get into action when they cure their deluded thinking… when they drop the silly act.

Between the Edmonton and Winnipeg Fringe Festivals that I attended this summer, I saw 57 theatrical plays, which is probably more than I’ve seen in my whole life previously. I saw dramas, comedies, clown shows, murder mysteries, storytelling, performance poetry, modern dance, adult shows, acrobatics, and more.

Mainly I did this because I like independent theater, and I wanted to have an immersive experience.

In talking to some of the performers afterwards, it was clear that they all had to overcome laziness, timidity, and other blocks to get up and deliver something of value. Instead of feeding their excuses, they fed their creative ideas.

You don’t have to eliminate your excuses. You just have to tip the scales enough that they don’t create enough friction to stop you. You do this by starving your excuses for attention. Send all the energy to your creative flow.

Everyone has the option of allowing fear and hesitation to stop them. Even some of the best performers still feel some anxiety before they take the stage. Sometimes you can see them sweating during the first minute, notice their hands shaking, or hear their voices cracking.

But they still get up and do it. Why? Because they’ve tipped the scales.

If you don’t take the proverbial stage, you get nothing. No feedback. No income. No growth experience.

Very soon I’ll be kicking off the passive income series walkthrough that I’ve been talking about. This is the point where I’m encouraging you to take action along with me. Create something of value and put it out there.

I’m sure you can come up with plenty of valid excuses not to take action. I can easily do the same. But if I came up with an excuse not to finish this series, I’m sure people would call B.S. on that excuse, and they’d give me all sorts of reasons why I should finish it anyway.

So I’m going to do the same with you. Whatever excuses you’re about to come up with, I call B.S. on all of them in advance.

Not enough time. Not enough money. No good creative ideas. Not smart enough. No web traffic. Not technically minded. Kids to take care of. Too busy with my job. No energy. Family is against it. Being held captive by the Dread Pirate Roberts. And so on…

Whatever your favorite excuse of the day is, it’s still not a reason to stop. Go forward anyway.

You have all the time, money, energy, and support you need.

Steve Recommends
Here are my recommendations for products and services I've reviewed that can improve your results. This is a short list since it only includes my top picks.

Getting Rich with Ebooks - Earn passive income from ebooks
Sedona Method - Free Audio - Learn to release blocks in a few minutes
Site Build It! - Start your own money-making website
Lefkoe Method - Permanently eliminate a limiting belief in 20 minutes
Paraliminals - Condition your mind for positive thinking and success
The Journal - Record your life lessons in a secure private journal
PhotoReading - Read books 3 times faster
Life on Purpose - Discover your life purpose

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Avoiding the shadows

The Lancet has a powerful essay on children born from rape and the social and psychological consequences for mother, child and community.

I’ll let the article speak for itself as it carefully articulates how the relationship between mother and child can be affected by these tragic events.

There is one point worth highlighting, however. The piece notes that when affected women do have contact with healthcare professionals, clinicians often avoid tackling problems with childcare because they are denied or ignored by the mothers who, understandably, find it difficult to address problems linked to such a violent and painful event.

The article notes that the wellbeing of the child is often not well addressed as “Many practitioners who care for women who have been raped maintain this silence because either their focus is on the well-being of the mother or they genuinely believe that the interests of the mother and child are not served by articulating relational difficulties”.

Mental health professionals rightly identify avoidance as one of the key factors that maintain problematic behaviours. It’s a strategy that places short-term comfort above longer-term well-being and we all use it, but when we rely it to manage serious emotional or behavioural difficulties it can mean we never recover.

But what is less admitted is that healthcare professionals also suffer from avoidance. We don’t like making people distressed, even when it is necessary to overcome serious difficulties. Consequently, we also avoid addressing painful issues, which is something that can also help maintain the problem in the person we are working with.

Ironically, it is very difficult to get healthcare professionals to recognise that they themselves are affected by this. We are much more comfortable when the problems are safely situated in the patient.

Link to Lancet article ‘Child in the shadowlands’ (via @EvaAlisic)

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Sleight-of-hand causes a moral reversal

Just over half of participants in survey of moral opinions argued for the reverse of what they first claimed when their answers were secretly switched.

The thoroughly delightful study is open-access from PLOS One but is also described in a news piece for Nature.

The researchers, led by Lars Hall, a cognitive scientist at Lund University in Sweden, recruited 160 volunteers to fill out a 2-page survey on the extent to which they agreed with 12 statements — either about moral principles relating to society in general or about the morality of current issues in the news, from prostitution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

But the surveys also contained a ‘magic trick’. Each contained two sets of statements, one lightly glued on top of the other. Each survey was given on a clipboard, on the back of which the researchers had added a patch of glue. When participants turned the first page over to complete the second, the top set of statements would stick to the glue, exposing the hidden set but leaving the responses unchanged.

Two statements in every hidden set had been reworded to mean the opposite of the original statements. For example, if the top statement read, “Large-scale governmental surveillance of e-mail and Internet traffic ought to be forbidden as a means to combat international crime and terrorism,” the word ‘forbidden’ was replaced with ‘permitted’ in the hidden statement.

Participants were then asked to read aloud three of the statements, including the two that had been altered, and discuss their responses.

About half of the participants did not detect the changes, and 69% accepted at least one of the altered statements.

Don’t miss the video of the ‘trick questionnaire’ in action.

Link to Nature News coverage of the study.
Link to full text of study.

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Schizophrenia beyond the brain

The Wilson Quarterly has an excellent article about the rebirth of interest in how social experiences affect the development of schizophrenia.

It’s written by the brilliant anthropologist Tanya Marie Luhrmann, who tracks how the enthusiasm for a completely neurobiological explanation for the disorder has now begun to wane.

It’s worth saying that this extreme neurobiological focus has really been an American phenomenon.

While it’s true to say that psychiatry has taken a distinct neurobiological turn across the world, the mantra that ‘schizophrenia is a brain disease’ and only needs to be understood in terms of brain function has been most strongly championed in the United States.

For somewhat mysterious reasons, and not without a touch of irony, American psychiatry has been subject to quite striking mood swings over the past century.

The ‘Freudian takeover’ only really occurred in the US, and was overturned by the diagnostic manual championing ‘mid-Atlantics’ who created the DSM-III.

Subsequently, a dominant current of thought emerged that mental illnesses could be understood as ‘brain disorders’ – a concept massively promoted and funded by drug companies. Searches for the ‘gene for schizophrenia’ and the ‘brain circuit for depression’ were all the rage, even if they seem a little naive in hindsight.

In Europe, however, social psychiatry – where mental disorders are seen within a social context – remained widely taught. In the UK, it had more an an epidemiological flavour, where on the continent it was more focussed on analysing the cultural meaning of mental illness.

Nevertheless, Luhrmann’s article is an excellent overview of how psychiatry has started to look ‘beyond the brain’, although we’d hope it doesn’t lose sight of it while gazing at the horizon

My only significant problem was that the article repeats the ‘people with schizophrenia do better in the developing world’ claim, which is so over-general as to be useless.

Other than that though, an excellent incisive article and one of the best pieces you’re likely to read in a while.

Link to ‘Beyond the Brain’ in The Wilson Quarterly (thanks Peter!)

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On our reading list: David Byrne’s book, How Music Works

Many people simply listen to music. Not David Byrne, the solo artist and former frontman of the Talking Heads. Even beyond making music, Byrne thinks deeply about how music functions on a perceptual level.

At TED2010, Byrne spoke about how the nature of a space effects what kind of music is played there, from a gritty club like New York’s CBGB to the echo-filled chambers of a gothic cathedral. Now, Byrne has expanded the ideas from the talk into the book How Music Works, published on September 12 by McSweeney’s.

BoingBoing calls the tome “possible the book [Byrne] was born to write.” Reviewer Cory Doctorow continues, “Though there is plenty of autobiographical material in How Music Works that will delight avid fans (like me) — this isn’t merely the story of how Byrne made it, or what he does to turn out such great and varied art. Rather, this is an insightful, thorough, and convincing account of the way that creativity, culture, biology and economics interact to prefigure, constrain and uplift art.”

Meanwhile, fellow TED speaker Kathryn Schulz writes in New York Magazine, “Byrne’s style and energy are as apparent on the page as on the stage.”

After the jump, watch Byrne’s TEDTalk and his latest music video.

Here, Byrne speaks at TED2010 about the relationship between architecture and music. Read what he had to say to the TED Blog at the time >>

And while we’re reading How Music Works, we’re also listening to Byrne’s brilliant collaboration with songstress St. Vincent, Love This Giant. Here’s their first video together.

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On our reading list: Nate Silver’s new book The Signal and the Noise

One might ask Nate Silver, the data whiz behind FiveThirtyEight.com, which shot to prominence after providing eerily accurate forecasts of the 2008 election, what makes for good predictions. His answer will come as a surprise. In his new book, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail But Some Don’t, Silver explains the “prediction paradox”—that it is only by adopting a true appreciation for uncertainty that one can form a more accurate picture of how things will likely unfold.

Silver’s book looks not only at political forecasters, but also at those who predict hurricanes, poker games, national security risks and the stock market. And it’s a good understanding of probability that tends to make for success.

Silver writes, “Our views about predictability are inherently flawed. Take something that is often seen as the epitome of randomness, like a coin toss. While it may at first appear that there’s no way to tell whether a coin is going to come up heads or tails, a group of mathematicians at Stanford is able to predict the outcome virtually 100 percent of the time, provided that they use a special machine to flip it. The machine does not cheat — it flips the coin the exact same way (the same height, with the same strength and torque) over and over again — and the coin is fair. Under those conditions, there is no randomness at all. The reason that we view coin flips as unpredictable is because when we toss them, we’re never able to reproduce the exact same motion.”

Check out the book, out today, or read an excerpt explaining why you should never call a weatherman a moron. And after the jump, watch Silver’s TEDTalk from 2009, which is still sadly relevant.

Nate Silver: Does race affect votes?
How did race play out in the 2008 presidential election? Math whiz Nate Silver unpacks the many layers of variables and gives fascinating insight into how town planning could promote tolerance in the future. Because, as he says, when something is predictable—it is also designable.

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Growing up in Broadmoor

Novelist Patrick McGrath talks about his childhood as the son of a psychiatrist growing up in the grounds of Broadmoor – one of Britain’s highest security psychiatric hospitals – in an article for Intelligent Life.

Broadmoor Hospital has a special and undeserved place in the British psyche – stereotyped as ‘the real-life equivalent of Arkham Asylum’.

The reality is vastly different. While dangerous people do genuinely go there, it is primarily a hospital and a particularly state-of-the-art one at that, although it is a very secure place.

With this is mind, McGrath’s article is all the more amazing, as it describes a forensic hospital of generations past where children could live on the grounds and play amid the hospital buildings.

…the family had settled happily into Broadmoor life. The superintendent’s kids—there were four of us eventually—were well pleased with their lot. Kentigern had sculleries, pantries, a meat safe, servants’ quarters, and various sheds and outhouses, including a conservatory where the patients grew tomatoes. The garden was a sprawling expanse of trees and lawns, a goldfish pond with a fountain, a vegetable garden and, best of all, areas of dense rhododendron bushes where you could hide out from the authorities and build a campfire. It was a good place to grow up.

I occasionally work in medium secure psychiatric wards, a ‘step below’ Broadmoor on the risk ladder, and it usually takes me at least 15 minutes to get in through the searches, doors and endless locks. The days when families lived on site are long gone.

McGrath also talks about (in)famous patients and cases that made the media and how they affected their family life.

Interestingly, McGrath has gone on to write several novels that feature psychiatry or madness as central to the plot.

A curious and unique perspective.

Link to ‘A Boy’s Own Broadmoor’ (via MeFi)

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How a school-age blogger can effect big change: A Q&A with Martha Payne of NeverSeconds

Martha Payne may only be 9-years-old, but she is already a world-renowned food blogger.

In a preamble to his fascinating TEDTalk about what governments can learn from open-source programming, Clay Shirky told Payne’s inspirational story.

In April of 2012, Scottish schoolgirl Payne started the blog NeverSeconds.blogspot.co.uk, which documents her school dinners (otherwise known as school lunches in the United States) with ratings like “number of mouthfuls” and “pieces of hair” found in food. The idea was to raise money for the charity Mary’s Meals, while at the same time showing the world the low nutritional value of school meals.

The blog quickly picked up fans. But on June 14, readers of NeverSeconds were greeted with a distressing post.

“This morning in maths I got taken out of class by my head teacher and taken to her office. I was told that I could not take any more photos of my school dinners because of a headline in a newspaper today,” wrote Payne. “I am sad I am no longer allowed to take photos. I will miss sharing and rating my school dinners.”

While Payne’s school supported the blog, it was reportedly the local Argyll and Bute Council that had decided its fate. Fans of the blog swung into action, flooding the council with angry messages. The outpouring was so extreme that the council quickly reversed its decision. By June 15, Payne’s blog was back.

Today, NeverSeconds has been read by 8 million people across the globe. Payne has raised £114,840 for Mary’s Meals, and the charity has set up the Friends of NeverSeconds kitchen at a school in Malawi, which Payne herself will soon visit. Meanwhile, Payne is also inspiring students in other countries, like 13-year-old Isadora Faber of Brazil, who documented her school’s poor facilities, leading to many swift improvements.

We caught up with Payne to ask her a few questions.

What inspired you to start your blog?

I want to be a journalist and I asked my dad if I could write everyday. Dad suggested a blog and we looked at some. I like the fact there is a publish button because it’s like I’m a real newspaper writer.

Why do you think your blog posts resonate so deeply with people?

Everyone knows about school dinners. I love seeing what school dinners are like around the world. Children are sharing their photos and ratings. It’s brilliant and I have cooked some of their lunches.

How did you feel in June when you were told you couldn’t photograph your lunches anymore?

I was upset and cried because I had done nothing wrong. Some adults had got embarrassed and thought stopping me would stop them being embarrassed.

What reactions did you get after you posted your goodbye message?

There were so many messages — I couldn’t read them all. Dad said it trended on Twitter and lots of people contacted Argyll and Bute Council.

Were you surprised by the level of public support you received?

It was awesome. Although I was sad because it was unfair, I was also happy that other people thought it was unfair as well.

What does that tell you about the type of world we live in?

It says even a big Council can’t be a bully. They ignored me when I said it was unfair but they couldn’t ignore the world.

How has your blog changed since you were able to resume posting? 

There are guest bloggers writing each week because I’m off school, so no school dinners yet. I am going to Malawi to visit the Mary’s Meals charity because the friends of NeverSeconds raised over £114,000 to feed children a school dinner in Malawi. I will blog everyday from Malawi if I can.

What have you learned from your blogging experience?

I don’t know why adults teach us to write and think then get embarrassed when we do it outside class. I love kids sharing their meals with me and I like sharing back. The internet isn’t just for adults — we can use it too. When everyone chips in, you can help children around the world like with Mary’s Meals.

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A Primer on Full-Screen Living

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Shea Hembrey sculpts dark matter in a new gallery show

Shea Hembrey is 100 artists in one. At TED2011, he shared how he staged an international biennial containing works from 100 artists … all of whom he invented himself.

The talk has spun into his first New York gallery exhibit, featuring work he made—this time as himself. The exhibit is called “Dark Matters,” and it’s on view at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery through October 20.

“When I spoke at TED in Long Beach in 2011, Gary and Sarah Wolkowitz were in the audience and their son, Bryce, now represents my work,” Hembrey tells the TED Blog.

The exhibit focuses on his fascination for the past 20 years: dark matter.

“For nearly two decades, I have continually pondered dark matter and dark energy—which together account for over 95% of the cosmos,” Hembrey says in the gallery materials. “The question of these mysteries has repeatedly surfaced in my imagery over the years.”

After the jump, watch Shea’s wonderful TEDTalk and see some of the pieces from his new show.

And here, some of the works from Hembrey’s new exhibit:

When Eyes Are Closed—Dark Rain, 2012, acrylic on board, 36 x 48 inches.

This close-up is from a piece in the series What You See When Your Eyes Are Closed. Hembrey explains in the gallery materials, “When I first heard about dark matter, the first visual I immediately connected to this mystery was what I see when my eyes are closed: that mercurial, unfixed, shifting darkness.”

Raft, 2012, guinea feathers, redbud sticks, lead, amethyst, chrysocolla, vanadinite, azurite, malachite, fluorite, quartz, selenite, nickel, calcite, garnet, citrine, turquoise, mica, tourmaline, topaz, and silk thread, 13 x 21.5 x 21.5 inches.

This work is also one of Hembrey’s Universal Portraits, which he calls “simple sculptures that are lyrical models of the cosmos.”

Radius, 2012, wheat straw, wood, foam, plastic, paper, screws, and acrylic paint, 83.75 x 83.75 x 27 inches.

Hembrey says of his series Strewn, “Made of straw, [it] contemplates the ever-present well of dark energy.

Brick (celestial), 2012, burnt cork, pins, nails, moonstones, one piece of thread, ink, and acrylic paint, 5 x 12 x 8.5 inches.

Another of Hembrey’s Universal Portraits.

To read much more about Shea Hembrey, visit his website. And to find out information on his exhibit, head to the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery site.

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How to Use Siri with a Third Party iPhone Calendar

It’s easy to feel – and be – more productive with Siri. But, how many times have you wanted to use Siri’s phenomenal ability to create a quick appointment, only to be thwarted by your third-party calendar? Tired of the work-around of creating the appointment with Siri on the fly, and then copying/pasting it into a third-party calendar? Read on, because I’ve tested the following solution over the last month or so, and it is consistently effective.

The problem is Siri doesn’t talk to third-party calendars, like Pocket Informant (which is what I’ve used for years). As much as I love Siri, I don’t love it enough to give up Pocket Informant for the native calendar. But I also love Siri’s ability to create appointments on the fly, regardless of what I’m doing, as long as I can be heard clearly enough. I got tired of using Siri to create notes and then pasting them manually into the calendar. That’s hardly an elegant solution, and none of the others generally available in the discussion groups work well, either.

Knowing that Pocket Information syncs quite well with Google Calendar, and that the native iOS calendar also syncs quite well with Google calendar, it occurred to me that I ought to be able to figure out how to get the two calendars to talk to each other using Google Calendar as the go-between. It took a few tries across half an hour or so to get it working the way I wanted, but from there it was all smooth sailing to tweak a few settings.

Here’s what I did, using a combination of Google’s recommendations for setting up syncing in general, and a few tweaks I tried along the way:

Set up Google Sync with your iOS device

On your iPhone, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, select Add Account, select Microsoft Exchange.  Yes, really. (If you already have an Exchange account set up and aren’t running iOS 4 yet, either upgrade to iOS 4 or search the Google help for additional instructions on setting up another sync type.)Enter your complete Google email address in the Email field, leave Domain blank, enter your full address as the email address, and put your password in the appropriate spot.  Two-step password users should use an application-specific password rather than the primary password.Press Next, press Cancel if “Unable to verify certificate” appears, enter “m.google.com” in the Server field, and press Next again.Select the Google services you want to sync (Mail, Contacts, and/or Calendar).  In this case, you definitely need Calendar and you’ll need mail if you want to respond to meeting requests using this mechanism.  New Eventsneeds to be enabled in your Google Calendar Settings. (To enable New events, sign in to your Google Calendar using the web browser on your phone or computer. Go to Calendar Settings > Calendars  and click on the Notifications for the calendar you want to sync. Under Email check New events (and any of the other Invitation settings you want enabled, and click Save.)At this point, there are several options for syncing (and retaining or deleting) the contacts on your iOS device. Since I set this up on mine long after establishing my contacts database on the phone, I wanted to retain my iCloud contacts. In order to do that, select the Keep on my iPhone option when prompted. This will also allow you to keep syncing with your computer via iTunes. The other options allow you to variously delete and replace the contacts on your phone with those from your Google account, or replace them in the other direction.

At this point, we now need to tell the phone to sync the iOS calendar with Google.

Open Safari on your iPhone and go to http://m.google.comSign in and select the device you’ve associated with your Google account.

You only need to do this once, so if you’ve already done it (as I had), you don’t need to do it again. The instructions will be calendar-specific, so there are far too many calendars available to list them all here. If your calendar supports Google sync, the built-in help or a quick search online will return the instructions.

Since I had many customized categories in Pocket Information and these don’t sync to Google (yet), and there was no way to effectively get them all to the iOS calendar or to tell Siri to use them, I have to do this step manually. However, since I already conduct a calendar review as part of my personal productivity routine, assigning the single category I typically use to flag particular appointments isn’t a big deal for me.

Since I wanted Pocket Informant to be the alarm manager as my primary calendar, I needed to silence the alarms, popups, notification center behavior, and badge counters in the native iOS app just to cut down on clutter and keep things neat.  That took only a few minutes, and a bit of frustration as I dealt with duplicate alarms because I chose to make all of these changes during a time of the day where I have recurrent reminders set. I also changed the default colors for the iOS default categories to match the same colors I use in Pocket Informant, which further reduced the changes I needed to make when minor final tweaks to a voice-created appointment were processed.

Once consistent snag I seem to encounter is recurrent alarms that were set before I implemented this automatic multi-sync solution don’t always go off. An irritating, but effective, solution is to delete the recurrent appointment and recreate it, which seems to have solved the problem in every case where I’ve tried it.

You can read more about Siri’s effectiveness in CM Smth’s Lifehack article, 30 Days with Siri.

Featured photo credit: Annette Shaff / Shutterstock.com and inline photo by junyaogura via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)<

Andrew writes at 360 Minutes, where he shares his best advice on becoming more productive and effective, so you can gain the time to do the things that you love. Get his RSS feed directly, and take a look at his Getting Started page if you're looking for ways to get your head above water at work.

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Edmonton Meet-up

Rachelle and I are in Edmonton, Alberta for the Fringe Festival, and there’s been some interest in having a local meet-up, so let’s have one!

Here are the details:

When: 11:00 AM on Sunday, August 26, 2012

Where: Meet at the gazebo at the NE corner of 83rd Ave NW and 104th St NW. This is very close to Fringe HQ at the TransAlta Arts Barns, and it’s next to the main outdoor stage area. The area should be fairly empty since the outdoor shows don’t begin till 12:15pm.

Depending on how many people show up (we’d expect around 5-10), weather conditions (it should be cool but hopefully not too cold), and how crowded the area is, we may sit down at one of the nearby picnic tables or move to another spot like a nearby Starbucks to chat. If we move locations, we’ll wait at the gazebo till at least 11:15am.

These meet-ups are ultra-casual, and Rachelle and I are very friendly, so please just walk right up and hug us when you see us! I’ll probably be wearing jeans and a gray hoodie — just like every other Edmontonian.

I’m loving the Fringe. This is my 5th Fringe Festival but the first time in Edmonton. Rachelle and I have seen 25 plays here so far. I expect we’ll hit 30 by the end of it.

If you’re looking for good Fringe shows to see, some of my favorites include Olymprov, Harold of Galactus, Peter ‘n Chris and the Mystery of the Hungry Heart Motel, No Tweed Too Tight, Die Roten Punkte, The Adversary, and House of Dopes.

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Human Touch

A curious article has just appeared in the latest edition of the International Journal of Group Psychotherapy. The opening line of the summary is oddly delightful:

The group, with its intensity, interaction, roles and dynamics, is an important unit of experience in everyday life, in psychotherapy groups, and in Bruce Springsteen’s music.

The author, psychotherapist Lorraine Mangione, has written a previous paper on how “Bruce Springsteen is an eloquent spokesperson for the psychological journey through darkness, disconnection, and despair that many people experience, and for which they might look to professional psychologists for help.”

My own paper, ‘Firestarter: Deviant Behaviour and Psychopathy in the Music of The Prodigy’ is still a work in progress.

Link to locked article on psychotherapy and The Boss (via @Neuro_Skeptic)

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Finding Peace with Uncertainty

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The Manhattan Project to End Fad Diets

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In Short: Driverless cars now legal in California, a glimpse at why people cheat

Enjoy these fascinating reads from across the Internet:

California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law yesterday making it legal for driverless cars to travel on public roadways. [Forbes] Watch Sebastian Thrun’s TEDTalk “Google’s driverless car” for a description of how such a thing works and Chris Gerdes’ talk “The future race car — 150mph, and no driver” for how it works on a race track.
.Healthcare innovators rejoice. Medstartr, the “Kickstarter for healthcare,” is currently crowdfunding for an organization that provides gynecological care for women in rural Dominican Republic, for a special bra created to be worn by breast cancer survivors and for an app that tracks medical history for first responders. [OpenSource.com]
.Google Maps has launched its first underwater panoramas, sea turtles included. [Google Blog]  Here, a slideshow of images. [Salon.com]
.On a related note, phone booths don’t need to be retired entirely — they can be refurbished as aquariums. [The Atlantic Cities]
.In June, 71 juniors at New York’s Stuyvesant High School traded answers to a state Regents exam via text message. Today, students from the premiere public school explain why, describing a systematic culture of cheating. [New York Times] Watch behavioral economist Dan Ariely’s TEDTalk “Our buggy moral code” for further insights on why people cheat.
.This Friday marks the 25th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Here, how the show changed popular culture worldwide. [Time.com]

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5 Ways to Build Stronger Relationships

We all have relationships. We have acquaintances, relatives, colleagues, neighbors and probably some friends. However, for a large percentage of us, many of these relationships are simply not fulfilling.

They are unfulfilling because they lack real strength; and they lack real strength because they lack real depth.

Unfortunately, in today’s society, we tend to have shallow, superficial relationships with others, and it’s extremely hard for this kind of relationships to provide anything more than faint satisfaction.

I’d like to show you, based on my experience as a communication and confidence coach, how you can add a significant amount of depth, and thus strength, to your relationships and make your social life a whole lot more meaningful.

This is an apparent paradox, but the quality of the people you meet has considerably to do with the quantity of people you meet.

If you don’t know a lot of people and you barely meet one or two new people every season of the year, considering the variety of individuals out there, you won’t meet very often people who are a good match with you in terms of personality, interests and values.

And since this natural match plays a huge part in building strong relationships, you’ll just as seldom have the opportunity to develop strong relationships.

Conversely, if you go out a lot, you meet a lot of new people and you constantly expand your social circle, you’re much more likely to meet people you match up well with, and these people have a tremendous potential to become good friends, reliable partners, etc.

This is why it’s important to meet more people.

A relationship becomes the strongest when two people discover they believe in the same things and have similar interests. It’s these commonalities regarding values and interests that create the strongest emotional connection.

I’ve noticed that many people keep conversations shallow. They talk about trivial stuff such as the weather, what’s on TV, the lives of various movie stars, but they rarely talk about what really matters to them in life.

This is a mistake from my perspective, because it’s the perfect method for a relationship to not develop.

Talk about the things that truly matter to you and give others a chance to know what you care about and what you believe in. If they believe in the same things and they care about the same things, they’ll eagerly let you know. Thus you’ll find meaningful common ground and you’ll feel more connected.

Many people try to come off as perfect. They don’t talk about their failures, they hide their shortcomings and they never say anything that could embarrass them.

This is all just a facade though. You may appear perfect to some, but you know you’re not perfect and they know that too. You’re only human and humans have flaws.

However, by hiding your flaws, what you do succeed in is appearing cold and impersonal. You seem like a marble statue rather than a real person. And this makes it very hard for anyone to connect with you emotionally.

Humans connect with other humans, not with ideals. Keep this in mind and don’t be afraid to let your vulnerability and your humanity show. This is what takes a relationship to the next level.

Integrity, as I see it, is the alignment between your thoughts, your words and your actions. When you say what you think and you do what you said you’ll do, you have integrity.

This is a crucial trait because if you have integrity, people can trust you. They can trust you to give them an honest feedback, even when it’s hard to shallow, and they can trust you to keep your promises.

This trust is one of the central pillars of a strong relationship, both in your personal and your professional life. So, as challenging as it can be sometimes, always try to have integrity.

Be honest with the people around you, even when this will initially hurt them. It’s more important for them to trust you than to not feel hurt. And always do what you promised. Even better, think twice before you promise anything, and only promise what you really can and you are willing to do.

Another central pillar of strong relationships is support. Connections between people grow sturdy if they can rely on each other for support when it’s needed, whether that support means a few kind words or several massive actions.

Of course, you can’t be there for everybody, all the time. Your time, energy and other resources are limited. But what you can do is identify the genuinely important people in your life and then seek to be there as much as possible, at least for them.

Your support will help them practically, and it will comfort them emotionally; which makes one hell of a difference in a relationship.

With the right mindset and the right behavior, you can strengthen a wide range of relationships in your life and advance them as far as they can be advanced.

And with strong relationships, not only that you feel more fulfilled, but you feel more connected to the entire world. You feel that your life has real value, you have more fun and you live in the moment. An entire world of opportunities opens up in front of you.

Then your task is to simply walk through the open doors.

Featured photo credit: Happy Couple via Shutterstock and inline photo by Handhsake via Shutterstock

Not all tips are helpful to all people. Timo Kiander is back with 4 more common time management tips that can make you unproductive.

We all have days where we are stuck for inspiration. Here are some tips for improving your motivation; to take you from an "also ran" to the top of the podium.

The added advantage of eating regular small quick and healthy snacks is that it keeps your energy up and will help you stay focused during the day.

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The Way to Success: Know What It Looks Like

I’m waiting for a meeting. It’s a biggie: depending on the report I give, someone either keeps or loses their job, in the next 20 minutes. I’ve already had two big meetings today (on of them resulting in a contact for my company which on its own takes us 20% of the way to our annual targets!). I’ve got a huge meeting to come with a very influential man in my field.

I really can’t afford to screw up at any point at all today, so I need to stay calm.

The killer question is “How?”

I’ve written in a lot of other places about tools and tricks. Here I want to concentrate on just one more – and it’s so simple I feel embarrassed typing it.

But here goes…

Ready?

See! Told you it was embarrassingly simple!

Here’s the deal.

Everyone knows what it feels like to screw up, right? We all know exactly what it feels like to fail – or at least we can imagine it. It’s not hard… the laughter, the mockery, the sense of having let everyone down; the letter saying you didn’t get the job…

But what does success look like?

Okay, for getting a job the result is (usually) getting the job, fair enough (although there are jobs you’re better of not getting, trust me on this as I speak from experience!) but for much of the rest of what we do success is harder to describe.

Let’s take my big meeting last thing this afternoon. It’s with arguably the biggest name in my field (presentation skills training) in the UK and obviously I want him to think well of me.

I can imagine a million bad scenarios in my head, but how will I know if the meeting has gone well?

Well, the trick is to figure out what ‘good enough’ looks like. That, of course, is easier said than done but the important thing is always (seriously, always) do that before you get involved. Once you’re up to your neck in something it’s impossible to be objective about things, least of all when to call it a day.

One technique I’ve found to be remarkably useful is to jot down the project on a sheet of paper… make sure you write it down clearly…. and create three columns. (The image is a grab from my iPhone of a whiteboard in our office about a training day we’re planning.)

The first is the one you’ll find easiest to fill in, so do it first: it’s examples of how you know you’ve screwed up.

Fill in the right hand column next – this one is the same items but now itemized as complete success. Instead of the report being late, the report is now (as an example) written a week early, giving time for reflections and reviews.

With the right hand column filed in it’s much easier to get to the point of the exercise – filling in the middle column… the column of “Good Enough”.

This middle column matches the others, item for item, but now things are only ‘good enough’. For example, if the first column might include the report being late and the middle column would include it being on time – just.

Once you’ve done that, you’re finished. It really is as simple as it sounds. Like all good ideas, the main problem is remembering to use it in the first place! The ‘magic’ of it lies in forcing you to be objective.

Featured photo credit: Sunset via Shutterstock

Simon runs a soft skills training company called Aware Plus in the UK, but is probably best known for his work as a presentation skills trainer. He's also becoming known as a speaker on emotional robustness and personal resilience... he's also a fairly proficient fire-eater!

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Hate Chores? Make Them Less Painful with These Tips

Few of us actually enjoy doing chores. Even happiness guru Gretchen Rubin admits that one of her “pigeons of discontent” is having to do errands.

But, chores and errands are an inevitable part of responsible adult life. Even if you still refuse to consider yourself a “responsible adult,” you have to admit that stepping over mounds of dirty laundry and running out of clean plates to eat from can eventually get tiring.

So, how do you make this inescapable part of your life a little less awful?

Sure, you can bone up on the latest productivity tools or learn how to put together a really killer to-do list. But let’s face it: actually doing the chores is still gonna suck. Which is why I like to play these little games to try to distract myself from how much I hate what I’m doing:

Are you the competitive type? Get out a timer and see how quickly you can wash those dishes, fold that laundry or dust the entire house. Then try to beat your record next time. (Just be careful not to get so wrapped up in speed that half the dishes wind up on the floor in pieces. That does not count toward your record.)

Better yet, get bonus points for delegating the work and try to get other members of your family into the competitive spirit. Can your husband wash the car faster than you can wash the dog? Can your son clean up his room (properly, not stashing everything in the closet) faster than your daughter can clean up hers? Up the ante with prizes like “winner gets to choose where we go out to eat.”

Nothing can make an unpleasant task more fun than some quality tunes. If you’re in an “I-hate-this-why-me” sort of mood, scream along with something horribly emo and allow yourself to feel the therapeutic effects of venting teen-style. If you can’t help but feel pumped every time you hear some quality jock jams, make yourself a playlist containing stadium song greats like “Eye of the Tiger” and “Get Ready for This” and pretend that instead of sweeping the floors, you’re playing the final minutes of the NCAA tournament.

Dance around like a fool for some bonus calorie-burning points. Put on a jersey, even, if it helps get you there. The neighbors are probably going to think you’re weird anyway, so why not run with it?

Never underestimate the effectiveness of bribes, even self-assigned ones. Promise yourself that if you can get this particularly yucky project or errand over with, you can have [fill in a particularly tempting thing here]. Maybe it’s an hour of watching your favorite guilty-pleasure reality show. Maybe it’s a favorite drink or snack that normally doesn’t fall within your diet. Maybe it’s a well-deserved nap. The rarer the treat, the more effective its bribing power.

Granted, this one actually combines two things people loathe (chores and dealing with customer service on the phone), but bear with me. As long as you’re going to be stuck on hold for 20 minutes listening to crappy elevator music, you might as well get some stuff done around the house, right? Put the call on speakerphone and use your mounting frustration to infuse your chores with extra energy—especially once the rep actually comes on the line and starts giving you a hard time.

You’ll probably have a more effective call since you’ll be channeling your anger into your chores instead of directing it at poor Joe in Idaho (who’s really just doing his job). And you’d be amazed how vigorously you can Swiffer a floor when you’re arguing over cell phone charges. Plus, at the end of it all, you’re rewarded by having knocked two dreaded things off your list in one fell swoop. Not too shabby.

What tricks do you have to get unpleasant tasks over with?

Featured photo credit: Do We Have To? via Shutterstock and inline photo by Wayne Wilkinson via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Everyone knows what it feels like to screw up, right? We all know exactly what it feels like to fail - or at least we can imagine it. But what does success look like? You're about to find out.

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