Influence your world by making it influence you

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

Okay, all though I’m still a bit late on my posting, I am now going to making an effort, break out of some nasty, lazy, habits and begin to push towards making more frequent blog posts.  I will also avoid slacking and putting up half assed writing for the sake of my readers and myself.  I wouldn’t want to compromise the integrity of my blog.

This post will be more focused on habits once again and how we can truly change them once and for all.  Just like any species, we are no different.  Humans adapt to their environment.  Plants with little sunlight will not grow well.  Birds in the winter migrate south.  Likewise, people in cold weather wear jackets and typically eat more meat.  The world is synergetic and everything is interlaced.  We cannot separate anything for everything else.  Now that being said, I’m sure you can see where this is leading.  The easiest and most effective way for someone to experience a paradigm shift, pick up, or drop a bad or good habit is to change their environment.  Is the environment you live in reinforcing your current habits?  Think about this question.  For example, let’s say someone were to live in a typical home with lots of TV, internet, video games and leisure available.  Is that a stimulating environment for doing homework?  Compare that to something like the library which is a very stimulating and reinforces something like doing homework or studying.  Now that was a very simple example, but the same can be applied to very complex issues.  This is why home gyms are statistically low in effectiveness versus commercial gyms.  At home, there are more distractions when it comes to working out.

Altering our immediate environment to get quick results may seem like it’s “cheating”, but there is no such thing as cheating.  Whatever gets the job done without any major or long term negative consequence is more than acceptable.  For example; I stopped buying video games because I was noticing their long term negative consequences.  While they are fun and give me short term pleasure, they were one of the main causes for me neglecting certain responsibilities.  Certainly discipline and a great mindset helped too, but the games not being available to me when I had the urge ultimately sealed the deal.  Think about it.  If an alcoholic trying to get over drinking was in a place that had a lot of alcohol available versus a place with very hard access, which will help the alcoholic in the process of recovering?  If someone is afraid of approaching women, what will get them over that fear quicker?  Being around more women and an environment that reinforces interaction with women or being home on Facebook?  The examples are endless, but I think it’s pretty clear now of how big of an impact the conditions of a particular environment, whether simple or complex will have in assisting our development of habits, skills and experiences. 

What we can’t imagine today or tomorrow will become practical once we try it out.  It is only when we experience the process (and in some cases getting use to) can we truly understand the functionality of a specific trait, mechanism, or idea.  That is the essence of a paradigm shift.  To give a clearer example of a paradigm shift, here is a short, true story from one of my favorite books, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.

An American navy ship in the Canadian waters detects something on the radar and the following is true dialogue or what happened.

Americans: "Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision."

Canadians: "Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision."

Americans: "This is the captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course."

Canadians: "No, I say again, you divert YOUR course."

Americans: "THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES' ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH. THAT'S ONE-FIVE DEGREES NORTH, OR COUNTER MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP."

Canadians: "This is a lighthouse. Your call."

Can you imagine how huge of a paradigm shift occurred after the captain of the US Navy ship heard that last part?  I'll end today's blog short and hopefully have another one up pretty soon. 

 

This Week’s Challenge: Try and meet at least two new people this week and hang out with them the following week.  They must be completely new people. 

Never settle..............free yourself......

"Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system."
Bruce Lee

Let me start off by apologizing for not updating this blog in such a long time.  The good news is I just won my first fight in the golden gloves.  The bad news, I think I have to forfeit from the tournament due to a small fractured in my left wrist.  I have met some very great people over the week and learned a few important things about myself and the world around me.  Today I want to talk about the little things in life. 

Everyone is just trying to get by in this world and is basically living by the experiences and values they grew up with around them.  Everyone tries their best to live as comfortable as possible.  That is a very good instinct, but sometimes it may lead us into a rut.  Sometimes trying to live comfortably by going about it in only the current methods we know and the arsenal we have will put us in undesirable, places.  Habits form around our repetitive action and we become comfortable, but not satisfied with our current situation.  We will continue to do so until it is unsustainable anymore.  At this point it is either perish or adapt.  By perish, I don’t necessarily mean “die”, it just means sinking so far into the hole that it becomes too hard to see a way out.  People end up being restricted by artificial rules that they have created for themselves that hold them back.  Often times, societies as a whole agree on these unwritten rules and bind themselves to mindless conformity that retards the social growth of a nation or a culture; sometimes even the world. 

We human beings, unlike any other animal on Earth, have the power to create, but we also can easily form the habit to settle.  We must over-come that settling habit and develop a habit of active renewal.  If we don’t do that, we’ll end up creating all sorts of illusions and call them reality and live our lives in a restricted fashion.  The scariest thing to do is to write something down in stone.  Nothing is absolute and nothing can be isolated from time and either of its functions (if multiple).  Now I am speaking extremely broadly, but I want to get a broad idea across, something to think about.  Any established system is fraudulent.  The very nature of establishments goes against nature itself and the laws of the universe (gravity, physics, etc, which by the way are the only seemingly established systems, not man-made “establishment”) the push towards constant renewal, ever changing fluidity and constantly emerging systems that deal with the changes that occur.  

To close it off, I’d like to tell a little story about my debut in the golden gloves.  I had minimal sparring experience (close to none), my coach couldn’t be there, I had to severely dehydrate myself to make weight, and for the first time in my life, I felt pessimistic.  I was so close to quitting.  Everyone was telling me I shouldn’t fight. I didn’t know what plan to go into the ring with.  I was so lost, I was sick to my stomach.  In the end, I had to remind myself “wait a minute, what the Hell am I thinking?  I need to go in there and do what I have to do and leave satisfied with whatever I get.  I write a blog about this stuff, I have no use complaining!”  It was one of the most uncomfortable things I have come across in my life, it was still nerve wrecking all the way up until the bell.  I had to collect myself and remind myself how easy it is to get lost in this world.  The most subtle things can wreck us back into unwanted habits.  I went in there and finally knew what I had to do.  If I didn’t have a plan “A”, I’ll move to plan “B”, and that’s to believe in myself, which gave me confidence and I pulled out the victory in the sloppiest, ugliest way possible, but I went in there and did it without giving up.  If I give up on myself, it means I have given up on all my readers.  So thank you all!

This week’s challenge:  Go out and help at least 2 people a day for the rest of the week.  Stuff like carrying bags for someone struggling, helping someone change a flat tire, giving your neighbor a ride, holding the door for people, etc