What are the things you most long to do, but you just haven’t done them? What’s stopping you from doing them?

MONEY: I imagine most people will say they don’t have enough money to do the things they really want to do. That’s probably true for all of us. We all have dreams that would require more money than we have.

TIME: Some people will say time is preventing them from doing what they want to do most of all. There’s just not enough time in our days to get to the good stuff.

FEAR: Some let fear stop them. Fear of failure perhaps. Maybe even fear of success in some cases. In others, it may be simply fear of change.

And yet, one day, you’ll find yourself looking back over your life, wondering why you never took that class, or learned that skill, or flew that plane, or climbed that mountain, or wrote that book. And you’ll understand then that you could have found a way to overcome the lack of money or time, and the fear was just a four letter word.

Barrel through life. Embrace it. Live it. Many people have been credited with some version of the quote, “I’d rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not done.” Lucille Ball apparently spoke that version of it, though others in history have voiced the same sentiment in their own ways.

I’m guessing at least one person will think that barreling through life would mean running others over, in the quest to do the things one wants to do. I don’t think it’s necessary to run roughshod over others while barreling through life. Roll around them when necessary, or take them along for the ride! Live with joy, live with kindness, live responsibly, sure. But don’t forget to live YOUR life along the way.

So, tell me. What are the things you most long to do?

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Change. It’s inevitable and it’s scary and it’s happening to us continually. Sometimes change trickles through our lives almost imperceptibly. Other times, change slams into us with the force of a Cat 5 hurricane force wind. A few people thrive on change, embracing it with a fervor of passion. Many balk at change, digging heels into the ground, hoping to resist for as long as possible. Change doesn’t care if you or I embrace it or fight it. Change happens anyway.

Change affects our personal lives and invades our business lives. It forces us to make decisions, sometimes hard ones. The decisions we make may be for the best, or they may be disastrous. How we react to change can lead us into good or bad situations, and we usually won’t know which it will be until we’re swimming or drowning in the reaction pool.

I’ve recently had to deal with a massive change in my personal life, and some significant changes in my business life as well. I’d like to say that I’ve handled them all with grace and joy, but that would be dishonest of me. I’ve cried. I’ve pouted. I’ve sucked it up. I’ve panicked. I’ve reacted in all of these ways and in many more ways as well. In fact, my reactions have been a swirling chaos of emotions, highs and lows, determination and fear, mixing, weaving, tangling, wrestling within me.

Change doesn’t care about any of that. Change is. And now I must react to change, hoping I’ll end up swimming in the reaction pool, rather than sinking to the bottom.

Some of my reactions will center around my business life. I may need to make some changes in the services I offer or the focus of my business. I may embrace change and head in completely new directions, or I may dig my heels in, and try to make round pieces fit into square holes. I don’t know yet. I do know that this blog will probably be affected in some way. Some of the topics I focus on here may fade away. Some may get stronger. Perhaps I’ll even stop blogging on it all together at some point in the future. Maybe soon. Maybe never. I don’t know yet, but I do know that things will change. What those changes will encompass is not yet known.

What I want to do is shift and bend with the swirling winds of change that are blowing through my life right now. I want my personal life to bend rather than break, and I want my business to be able to adapt as needed. That’s perhaps one of the biggest advantages of being a small – or even tiny – business. Adaptability. Maneuverability. Quickly being able to duck and sway and shift and bend. Of course, that may also be a disadvantage because there’s no large group of smart business-savvy people that I can gather into the corporate meeting room and hash out the various scenarios to collectively determine the best moves to make. The decisions I make are mine alone, and I can’t blame anyone else if I fall flat on my face after making them.

I do know what some of my reactions to the recent changes will be – and have already been. I know that there are some dreams I’ve had that I’ve never followed up on; some adventures I’ve not allowed myself to experience. I’ll be dusting off those dreams and attempting to make them real. I’ll be setting out on at least some of the adventures I’ve longed to take.

I’ll be listening less to those who’ve said to me, “Don’t.” and more to the inner me who has said, “Do.”

I’m starting with that dream so many have. I’m going to write my first novel. I’ll be participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which takes place every November. The goal is to write an entire novel (a short one, yes) of at least 50,000 words from November 1 to November 30. It won’t be a ready-to-publish novel in that time. It will be first draft – or maybe not even qualify for that designation. Perhaps it will be a Beta or Alpha version that pre-dates the First Draft. I’ve never written a novel before, so more than likely, the Alpha version that I end up with on November 30th will be rather bad. But it will be written. It will have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And those 50,000+ words can be edited and expanded upon from December 1st onward until it is no longer a bad Alpha version of a First Draft of a novel. At some point, the editing will be complete, and I will publish my novel. I’ll self-publish, yes. Change has brought about the ability to self-publish. Change can be good. In case you were wondering, I’ll be writing a mystery / thriller novel. I have the basic concepts down. I know the general plot, who does what to whom, and why, and what the protagonist of the story must do and go through from beginning to end. All the details will come alive as I write, but for now, they are not yet born, just like many of my reactions to change have not yet been born. This novel is only one in a line of reactions I’m making to the changes that have blown into my life.

If you read some posts on this blog in the coming weeks and months that seem out of character with the types of posts you’ve read here in the past, you’ll know that I am simply reacting to change. You may or may not like my reactions, and I may or may not like them myself. But I’ll be shifting and bending as best I can. Hopefully, you’ll bend with me. If not…if you instead react differently…I’ll understand.

May your lives – personal and business – shift and bend with the swirling winds of change without breaking. That’s my wish for you today.

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Hack Yourself

You can be happy. You can live the life you want to live. You can become the person you want to be.

This is what I’ve figured out so far.

Stop assigning blame. This is the first step. Stop assigning blame and leave the past behind you.

You know whose fault it is that your life isn’t perfect. Your boss. Your teachers. Your ex-lovers. The ones who hurt you, the ones who abused you, the ones who left you bleeding. Or even yourself. You know whose fault it is – you’ve been telling yourself your whole life. Knowing whose fault it is that your life sucks is an excellent way to absolve yourself of any responsibility for taking your life into your own hands.

Forget about it. Let it go. The past isn’t real. “That was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.” If we’re not talking about something that is real and present and in your life right now, then it doesn’t matter. Nothing can be done about it. If nothing can be done about it, then don’t spend your energy dwelling on it – you have other things to do.

I may sound cruel, I may sound simplistic, I may sound like I’m saying you should just “get over it,” by suggesting that you should let go of your past. I’m sorry for that. But life won’t hold still and wait for you to lick your wounds. The race is still being run. Get up and keep moving. You can’t do anything about yesterday.

You can do something about tomorrow. And about the next day. Focus your energies there.

Amaze Yourself

“I don’t have time to write.” “I can’t dance.” “I can’t talk to new people.” “I’m not attractive.”

I hear this all the time. I always hear the people around me sabotaging themselves, drawing lines and borders and boxes around themselves.

To which I say, make the time; dance; just talk to people; be attractive!

Yes, again, it’s simplistic of me to say that. But it’s simplistic of you to so easily say what you cannot do!

We’re excellent pattern-matchers. That’s what the human mind does – it’s a pattern-matching engine. So we look at ourselves, at our history, at our behaviors, and we draw straight lines between the points – we assume that just because we’ve done things a certain way in the past, we’ll always do them that way in the future. If we’ve failed before, we’ll always fail.

Screw that.

Surprise yourself. No – amaze yourself.

You don’t have to keep doing the things you hate. Why go home and beat yourself up for, say, not going over and saying a few words to someone you find really attractive? Can any damage they could do to you by rejecting you possibly be any worse than the damage you’re going to do to yourself for missing the chance?

Find The Demon

Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s the little voice in the back of your head that’s always whispering, “You can’t.” You know the demon. You may think you hate the demon, but you don’t. You love it. You let it own you. You do everything it says. Every time there’s something you want, you consult the demon first, to see if it will say, “You can’t have that.”

What you don’t realize is that your demon doesn’t know anything. It’s an idiot. It’s nothing but a parrot, repeating back to you anything negative that it’s ever heard, anything that makes you hurt, makes you squirm. If a teacher once told you “You’ll never accomplish anything,” it was listening; it hoards words like that and repeats them back to you to watch you jump. It doesn’t know what it’s saying. It doesn’t care.

Exorcise Yourself

You can take me literally or not, as suits you. But do, please, the next time you hear that voice in your head, imagine it, visualize it, as something physical that you can get hold of; tear it out of you, feel its fingers weaken and lose their grip on your spine, and grind it to dust, to nothing, under your boot heel on your way out to dance in the streets.

You can. You think you can’t; but it’s telling you that. You can.

You Don’t Exist

You just think you do.

We’re nothing but the stories we tell ourselves. We know in our hearts what kind of people we are, what we’re capable of, because we’ve told ourselves what kind of people we are. You’re a carefully-rehearsed list of weaknesses and strengths you’ve told yourself you have.

(Self-confidence, for example, is a particularly nebulous quality you can easily talk yourself out of having.)

You owe no allegiance to that self-image if it harms you. If you don’t like the story your life has become – tell yourself a better one.

Think about the person you want to be and do what that person would do. Act the way that person would act.

Amazingly enough, once you start acting like that person, people will start treating you like that person.

And you’ll start to believe it. And then it will be true.

Welcome to your new self.

You Are A Product Of Your Environment

Most people realize this – usually, in the form of having something else to blame – but they tend to forget one important fact:

Humans are the masters of changing their environment.

What this means is that if your environment affects you, and you can affect your environment, then obviously, you can affect yourself.

• Your environment includes people. Figure out who in your life isn’t good for you, whose presence tears you down more than it builds you up, whose nearness is poison to you – and get rid of them. Get them out of your life. I don’t care if it’s your best friend, your boss, your mother, your lover – if they are harming you, if they are doing nothing but reinforce everything bad you tell yourself about yourself, then your relationship with them needs to radically alter or it needs to end.

• Your environment includes goals. Don’t set yourself pie-in-the-sky impossible goals and then beat yourself up over not achieving them – set yourself goals that will be good for you, not a source of pain. Attainable goals. Set them and meet them. Don’t tell yourself you can’t – that’s the old story, that story you used to tell yourself about what a poor sad victim you were and how you could never change anything about your life. You can meet your goals. This is the new story.

  Trying to clean your house? Good for you – a clean house can really affect your state of mind for the better. But don’t say “Today I’m going to clean the entire house from top to bottom,” when you don’t have the time and energy to – don’t set yourself up for failure; don’t feed the demon. Just say, “Today I’m going to wash all the dishes and clean off the kitchen counter.” And do it.

  Don’t tell yourself, “This month I’m going to write that novel.” Tell yourself, “Today I’m going to write five pages.” And do it. Take your dreams and break them down into small pieces and you’ll have them in your hands before you know it.

  And you’ll find, as you start meeting your goals, that you like it. That it feels good, makes you feel confident and capable. You’ll develop a hunger for it.

• Your environment includes yourself – your physical presence. Do what you know you need to do – treat yourself better. Sleep, eat right, exercise. This doesn’t mean you have to stop staying out late at night now and then, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a candy bar, it doesn’t mean you have to stop sitting around watching television – it just means start doing the things that are good for you as well as the things that are bad for you, every so often. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition; you don’t have to devote your life to being a health nut. Just try eating more fruits and vegetables, the occasional vegetarian meal; go for walks in the park on the weekends. You’ll feel better and be more alert if you’re a little healthier, and once you start feeling a little better, you’ll start wanting the things that make you feel better. You’ll see.

• Your environment includes your appearance. If you’re not happy with yourself, if you’re angry with the person in the mirror, it can honestly help to literally change who you see when you look in the mirror. Try a different hairstyle, new glasses, new jewelry, new clothes. It doesn’t have to be expensive – there’s a whole universe full of possible You’s waiting to be found in thrift stores, if need be. If you’re deciding to become the person you want to be, then decide what that person is going to look like. Dress the part. It’s not shallow, it’s not about vanity, it’s about self-transformation – even the most primitive tribes understand the value of costumes and masks for ritual, for change, for becoming someone else.

You are not an object. You are a system. Like with any system, if you change the inputs – change what goes into it – you’ll change what comes out.

Despite everything I’ve just said:

• Self-examination can be paralysis.
• Don’t “remember to breathe” – just breathe. It’s a Tao thing.
• It’s the paradox at the center of all this – remember that, “Am I living up to being the person I want to be?”, is not a question the person you want to be would ask.

If I can leave you with just one thought, it’s this:

Stop wasting your time fretting over not being happy.

Just be happy.

Michael Montoure, the original writer of this piece, is a writer and a web developer living in the Pacific Northwest.

This work, as originally published, no longer exists. Luckily, it was licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial- No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License, so it can be reprinted at will, and has been, at least in part, about a thousand times.

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And yet, I find myself going about business as usual, and it bothers me. Don’t get me wrong; I care. I think of all the people affected by these events and I care what happens to them. But aside from thoughts, prayers, donations, etc. most of us really don’t have much choice but to continue on with our lives – working and living the same as we always do. I recognize that I’m not a terrible person for doing so, and neither is anyone else. But it bothers me nevertheless. I feel guilty because I’m sitting here in my nice, comfy desk chair, when so many are terrified right now.

And of course, there are terrified people across the world every day, every month, every year – disaster or no disaster. So, I realize it’s just life, and I shouldn’t feel bad about going through my days in a “business as usual” kind of way. I understand that in a logical sense, but it still feels odd.

There’s no real point to this post except to “put it out there” that despite working and living as though no one is suffering anywhere, I’m thinking of them all. I guess this post is just a dedication to them all.

If you are suffering, know that people care, for whatever that’s worth.

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1. 3.6 Million people die every year because they lack clean drinking water.
2. 4,000 children under the age of 5 die EVERY DAY from preventable, water-borne diseases.
3. 1 Billion people don’t have access to clean, safe water. That’s 1 in 8 of us.
4. $25 can supply a person with water – for life.

If you’re like me, you live in a place where these statistics are only numbers that shock you for a moment. You don’t live with this reality every day of your life.

Millions do.

Each one of us can help.

No, you don’t have to spend a single dime that you wouldn’t have spent anyway. Let’s talk about that a little.

Every bottle of water you purchase is costing you money that you shouldn’t have to pay. A third of all the bottles of water sold in the U.S. is the exact same water as the water that comes out of your tap. And yet, it gets placed into a bottle, marked up by several hundred percent, and sold to us. I won’t even go into the environmental aspects of all that plastic, or the tons of oil needed to produce those bottles. Those are issues for another day. My point here is simple:

Instead of paying for bottled water, that in many cases is exactly the same water coming out of your tap, set that money aside to help communities who don’t have water to drink. Here are just two simple inventions that we can help fund to make sure those millions of people who die each year…don’t.

PlayPumps

Imagine this: Merry-go-rounds that pump clean water into tanks equipped with simple taps to supply communities with water – just by children playing. That’s what a PlayPump can do.

Now watch this interesting National Geographic video on PlayPump Water Systems

Hippo Roller

If the playpump isn’t practical, here’s an invention that can always be useful. The Hippo Roller helps women and children carry the water that might take them hours to transport now, much easier and much faster. Instead of carrying water on their heads or backs, in small quantities, and with much pain, they can simply roll the water quickly and easily – and in larger quantities. Check out the video to see the impact this can have.

There are more inventions just like these that you can help fund. Find one that makes sense to you. Then, instead of buying those 10 bottles of water, supply one person with 10 years of water instead. That’s right. It doesn’t take much of our money to do just that. And all we have to do is stop throwing our money away on ridiculous bottled water. How can we not?

Find a way to support the efforts to bring safe, clean water to everyone. It’s a human right. Let’s make sure every human gets that right.

Either donate at the PlayPump or Hippo Roller sites, or donate at water.org.

I know for some of us, a donation just isn’t possible. That’s ok. There are other ways you can contribute as well. Start by signing the petition to support the United Nation’s efforts to bring clean, safe water to millions. Click below to do that. And then tell others about this blog post, and the Blog Action Day 2010 initiative.

Doing that won’t cost you a dime, but it can save someone’s life.

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2. Sometimes I’ll feel hurt because others are unfairly judged.

3. Sometimes people need to be reminded that the worth of a voice is not dependent upon the amount of money available to spend on that voice.

4. Sometimes I’m reminded that you wouldn’t know me at all; you would never have heard my name; or read anything I’ve ever written, if I’d been required to pay $xxx in order to share my voice.

5. Sometimes people don’t realize how their good intentions might hurt others.

6. Sometimes people don’t care.

7. Sometimes the world isn’t fair.

8. Sometimes I need to speak out.

9. Sometimes we all need to realize that our words have power.

10. Sometimes we need to remember that our own self-worth is not dependent upon what some arbitrary government or some collective group of people decides we are worth.

11. Sometimes each and every one of us should share our thoughts even when others believe we should not.

12. Sometimes, that which we share, will touch others in ways that we may never realize. For that reason, we should continue to share our voices, even when we think no one is listening.

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I don’t really know what a fussypants might be, but in my mind, you could substitute “stick in the mud”, “fuddy duddy”, or just “all work and no play” if that helps define what I mean.

Sometimes, even on a serious blog, you can lighten up and have a little fun. Life, even our business lives, allows for some serious smiles and even the occasional raucous laughter. Don’t forget to let your personality shine through once in a while.

Today, I’m not going to be a fussypants. Today, I’m going to share with you my INCREDIBLE NEWS.

I’ve won an award! Woot! Here it is.

I know you’re jealous, but hey, I deserve it! After all, I begged for it, and what better way to get an award than to simply beg, right? Thanks goes to Holly Jahangiri of It’s All A Matter Of Perspective for honoring me with such an outstanding award.

If you insist on seeing me beg, you can see the conversation that took place in the 8 Ways To Get More Blog Comments post. You’ll have to scroll all the way down to the bottom because my comment was the first one (comments are shown newest to oldest). See where I say:

Oh Oh Oh! Can I be the top common tater? Puhleeze!

You really have to be old enough to remember Welcome Back, Kotter (a goofy TV series in the US in the late 70′s) to get the full impact of my begging. I was imitating Arnold Horshack. Here’s a soundbite of Horshack to help really “visualize” (audiolize?) it.

So, there you have it. You too can stop being a fussypants. You can let go a little on your oh-so-serious blog now and then. Maybe, if you beg, you can even get your own Top Common Tater award. Unfortunately, you’ll never ever get to be the VERY FIRST RECIPIENT of the Top Common Tater award – because that honor belongs to me! Booyah!

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Engadget, I’m talking specifically to you at the moment. In this breaking news story yesterday, you so kindly obscured the person’s Twitter ID (presumably to protect her identity), but you made it ridiculously simple for anyone to figure out who tweeted that message about an upcoming iPhone feature.

You not only showed her Twitter picture, but you gave everyone the exact Tweet text which is easily searchable, so figuring out who she is was inevitable.

The poor gal in question apparently had to delete her Twitter account because of this, but you can still see what that Twitter account looked like via a cache of the page. (Screenshot here for when the cache disappears).

My guess is that this might seriously hurt her chances of getting the gig as well. (The same article did the same thing to another person, but one example is enough, I think).

Obviously, we all have to think before we share things online, so I’m not really ranting about the fact that poor Vi’s tweet got spread to the masses via Engadget. She put it out there, so where it ends up after that is fair game, I suppose. But if you’re writing a story and purposely trying to protect someone’s identity by obscuring the name, don’t bother giving away all the necessary clues that will make that protection meaningless.

Two Rant Takeaways:

1. What you share online can come back to haunt you. Think before you share.
2. If your goal is to protect the identity of someone you are writing about, for pete’s sake, do it right.

*Note 1: I figure the damage is already done since Engadget has about 10 bazillion times more readers than I do, so my pointing this out won’t make it any worse.

*Note 2: Thanks to @mvandemar for the awesome P.I. investigative work and tip.

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1. I had epilepsy when I was a kid. From the ages of 4-17, I took phenobarbital 3 times a day and went in for the occasional EEG (electroencephalagraph). As a kid, I thought it was cool to have a bunch of wires glued to my head. One day, at the age of 17, I was told I didn’t have epilepsy any longer. That was even cooler.

2. From 2nd grade through 8th grade, I was a cheerleader. Actually, I think I was considered a “mascot” in 2nd-4th grades, which meant that I dressed like a cheerleader and acted like a cheerleader, but the difference is that I would occasionally get thrown up into the air by the “real” cheerleaders. Or at least that’s the way I remember it!

3. I had a funky appendix once. When I was 14, I woke in the middle of the night screaming in pain. Although my parents rushed me to the hospital, the doctors in the emergency room didn’t know what was wrong with me. They didn’t suspect appendicitis because I didn’t hurt in the normal place for that. Many hours of pain later, they finally decided to go in and do exploratory surgery. Turns out, it was appendicitis, but my appendix was in the wrong place! It was attached to my backbone apparently. Luckily, they found it in time before it burst.

4. The “biggest” natural disasters tend to occur wherever I happen to live. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but at least two of the “biggies” occured where I lived. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake happened while I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area and Hurricane Katrina happened while I was living here, just north of New Orleans. If I ever move to your neck of the woods, you might want to stock up on emergency supplies.

5. I was severely attacked by a trained guard dog when I was 17, but now I love dogs more than just about anything. The attack happened in my neighborhood. Here’s the story on that. A new family had just moved into our neighborhood, so I invited one of the kids who was about my age to ride bikes around the neighborhood so I could show her around. We hopped on our bicycles and had ridden about 1/4 mile when I pointed out one of the nicer homes in the neighborhood. “That”, I said, “is the [name intentionally left out] house. And those are [blank's] dogs, Kaiser, and …” I never made it past that, because Kaiser, one of the two trained guard dogs (Great Danes), broke his metal chain, jumped over the six foot electrified fence, ran in front of our bikes, came around the back of my bike to my right side, grabbed my arm, and pulled me off my bike and to the ground. He then dragged me about half a mile down the road, threw me into a ditch, and proceeded to eat his way through my arm and back. The poor girl who was riding with me (in this brand new neighborhood of hers) was standing in shock next to her bike, not knowing what to do. Luckily, a few minutes later, an older gentleman who lived nearby happened to drive down and saw what was happening. I really don’t know how he separated me from the dog, but somehow I ended up in his car, and he took my mangled body home. From there, my brave mom rushed me to the hospital. I’m not quite sure how she managed to calmly get me there when my arm and back looked so terrible, but she held up nicely. Although I spent a few years being terrified of dogs afterwards (even teeny tiny ones), I eventually got over it, and I’m a huge, huge fan of dogs now. Go figure. A few scars can’t stop me!

6. I’m an absolute NUTCASE about the color purple. But you probably already knew that. What can I say? I like it – a lot. That’s all there is to say about that.

7. Speaking of nutcases, I’m a wee bit on the paranoid side. Maybe that’s because of the disasters I’ve been through (see #4 above), or maybe it’s just that I like tinfoil hats, but if I could (in other words, if my family wouldn’t completely disown me), I’d build myself a nice underground bunker and stock it with a few years’ worth of food, emergency supplies, weapons, and ammunition to get me through any disaster that might arise. As it is, I have a meager supply of “stuff” that should get us through at least a couple of months, should another disaster strike.

So that’s that. Now you know more about me than you’d care to, I’m sure. And now it’s time to pass the torch, and tag 7 others. Hopefully, they won’t hate me too much.

David Harry
John Mueller
Judith Lewis
Melanie Phung
Julie Joyce
Lisa Roberson
Dianne Aull

Just a few days left before the first recipient of Project Jump Start ’09 is chosen! If you haven’t yet let me know you’re interested, there’s still time!

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Post tags: appendicitis, cheerleader, David Harry, Dianne Aull, epilepsy, food, guard, John Mueller, Judith Lewis, Julie Joyce, Lisa Roberson, location, Melanie Phung, metal chain, New Orleans, pain, San Francisco, scars, surgery
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