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Archive for October, 2009

Fear of Commitment Oct 30

The trouble with commitment is its seems huge and intangible sometimes, but it is required if you want to get anywhere. With out some degree of commitment there’s no chance of moving in any direction.  Most of us want to  achieve our goals, but have little or no commitment to that end.  Whether you are trying to lose weight, quit smoking or even get married it requires some degree of effort to move forward. A friend of mind comes up with new ideas all the time but rarely gets past the starting gate, and if he does start it is usually left in a pile with all the other unfinished projects. The problem with this is that his friends no longer believe that he will do as he says he will and worse than this is that he know longer believes  that he will do what he says he will do. It’s easy to come up with new ideas to keep one distracted from moving forward in the direction you say you want.

There seems to be a couple of things with commitment. Picture sitting on a fence, a spiky fence, it’s painful Right? on both sides of the fence there is a choice, a field of opportunities that you want but you find yourself sitting on this painful fence not committing to either side. Either side is an opportunity to move forward, grow and obtain what you want and yet somehow this pain is better than committing to something that you do not know the outcome of and the fear of failing, looking stupid or the fear of losing what you already have. You can always climb back on the fence and get commit to what you have there by making a commitment to live that way or live a long and painful life by wishing you could have something that you don’t have.You could also get off the fence and really checking out the pasture on one side of the fence, you may really like it and want to climb another fence in that direction or you may want to climb back over the original fence and check out the other  side. Either side is going to be an adventure and you will gain an experience of life that you would otherwise not have.

Two of the things that make a person move are value and pain. The first is value, people always find enough time, money and energy to do the things that they want to do. You have probably come across someone who is crying the blues that they are broke and don’t know what they are going to do but have enough money to buy cigarettes and booze, maybe you are one, or that have all their credit cards to the max but still keep on buying stuff that they don’t really need, maybe you’re one. The first step to committing is make sure that whatever you are committing to is of higher value to you than the reasons that you have at the moment for not committing. Write the reasons down for committing and your reasons, excuses and justifiers why you can’t have it or it won’t work and then post it somewhere you can see, because if you don’t, the mind has great strategies to justify not following through.

The second is pain, we like to move away from pain towards pleasure. That is why sitting on the fence can be more fun because we think that what we want is going to cause us a lot of pain on the journey to getting there. It’s going to cost money that could buy a nice holiday somewhere or take the time away from the TV. You could upscale this too, I won’t have any time to be with my family and justify with a good excuse, so you won’t do this but you’ll be grumpy and down because you did not get what you wanted.

The saying that “Once committed providence moves to make it help make it happen”  is true.  Once committed there are no other choices to be made, focuses on the goal at  hand  you move into the flow of possibility to achieve the goal, this is a great thing, a place of warm possibility, a place of comfort and challenge, a place of openness, a place of opportunities, a place where one is with the universe, and best of all the mind quietens down and a sense of peace and calm takes over your being because there is just one thing to think about.

Myers-Briggs Free Personality Test Oct 28

In my search for something  new and interesting to do with my life I decided to make a visit to my local career center. This was something that I had not done for many years  and although I thought that it might be interesting to see what was out there, I was not sure that I really wanted to work for anyone else or even had the skills to do so even, though I had ran my own successful business. Working for myself gave me a great deal of freedom and flexibility and to be quite honest the idea of being disciplined enough to show up at work at 8am and go home at 4 or 5 pm seemed a little beyond my comprehension, even though millions of people do it each day sucessfully.

The Myers-Briggs course started on line and I had to answer 92 questions that where designed to inform me of the type of person that I am and also what would be a suitable career choice for me. I took the test on line and turned up for the course a week later. The were about 20 of us in the room and they handed us our results, (all very exciting) and expand them to us. There are 16 categories and I turned out to be an ENTP , “cool letters!!!”. As I read through the Myers-Briggs results  it was really interesting how close the description of me was, in fact I was amazed at how accurate it was. There where however a few things that I did not agree with, such as, I was assertive, had strong opinions and a few other points. I headed home with the results and found my wife in the garden. As she gardened I read my results to her to which she either laughed or agreed because they where truth that she had come to know about me. Even when protested and said that this one is not true her reply was that yes it is.

I concluded two things from this.

  1. One was that some of what I believed about myself was not correct and this explained why I did not get where I was going. I could not see how others were seeing me and so had come up with my own stories to fill in the blanks and justify why things had happened the way they did.
  2. The  second part was we all come with a predetermined set of qualities, some of mine are creativity, discovery, freedom and also ways of being such as extrovert or introvert that are just  the way we are. The words” Resistance is futile” are words that came to mind. The great thing about knowing this is that now I can stop trying to be different than who I am at the core and make choice that both support me and use the talents that I do have in a constructive way to get to where I am going.

I found a  site on line that allowed my friends that where interested in taking the Myers-Briggs test and also one that gave a description of  the 16 personality types. The recommendation I was given was to take the test at diffrent times, such as when I am happy,stressed etc, to make sure that I got an accurate reading. In my case it came out the same each time.

Mind Clutter Oct 26
Good bye clutter.

Good bye clutter.

One of the things that I found in my life was the increasing clutter, not just the physical things but the mental things too. I had a litany of unfinished projects and thoughts that where taking up space in my head and the feeling of being overwhelmed.  I would get to work and just stand there not really knowing where to start or what to do. The problem with this was that I felt worse because I didn’t accomplish anything  . In the past having lots of projects  was fun and exciting, I’m an ideas guy looking for new possibilities. My completion rate was  good. As time progressed with all my other responsibilities I found I just had more derelict unfinished projects on my hands that I didn’t have the time or patience to complete. So I decided it was time to clean up my mess so I could make space and move forward again.

This is the process that I used to do this. It’s called the 4D’s.

  • Do it.
  • Dump it.
  • Delegate it.
  • Date it.

It’s  pretty simple, first I took a piece of paper, blank nothing on it. Then I started to make a list of all the things that I had outstanding from books to return, projects around the house, communications that I had been putting off for a while. The next step was to take the list and use one of the 4 D’s. I either got out and Did it and then could strike it off the list. I Dumped it and decided not to  EVER!!!! do it, gave it away or any other method to get rid of it. Delegated it off to some one else so I didn’t have to do it or Dated it so that I could come back and look at it in a few months or a year or two so that I didn’t need to be thinking about it.

When it came to dealing the list I also tried to start with the one that coursed me the most grief as it freed up the most space. Here I am a year or so later left with a few small projects that I can handle. I got rid of the old trucks that I thought would be fun to fix up. I gave away for free the time share that cost money each year and that we didn’t use. I phoned people that I need to complete business with and even let go of a couple of friends that I felt drained  by every time I visited with them. Now I seem to have a lot more space and energy and have a bunch of room to start creating again, just like this blog.