I am making a commitment to post three videos a week on my journey towards self-improvement and high performance. Simply starting already feels like the hardest part but I’m only just beginning.
October 26 2015
This week’s goal is to become a more valuable person and to back it financially by making $1,000 dollars more by the week’s end. My first thought was to removed any obstacles that make this harder so I will start shedding weight by getting rid of things that siphon value away from me. My first choices were:
- Selling my bank-owned
car - Hiring out some daily maintenance tasks to save time
- Getting rid of a single value stealing habit or activity
Guessing it will be easier to run with fewer shackles I then intend to do more valuable things. I chose to:
- Complete instantly valuable projects in business
- Identify one thing I already do that I can charge for
- Create one habit that increases my value or worth each day
I’m logging my activities in a notebook to keep track of my progress and success, which is a habit I’ve had for a while now. Today I’m focusing on removing those value thieves. If that goes well I should be full speed ahead to being higher performance tomorrow.
My Personal Vision
Philosophers and martial artists were my favorite type of people growing up. There was something mesmerizing about their stories, reclusing from society and spending years in a cave in passionate search to master…something. I glorified the monk and the sage, the mystic and the guru, who were willing to devote their lives to a type of personal discipline that seemed unreal if not impossible. It goes by different names: enlightenment, mastery, actualization. By any handle, I had become obsessed with understanding what it really meant and how to get there.
While a child growing up in NYC I only had so much autonomy to exercise and I used to find different disciplinary systems to entrench myself into. Cub scouts, karate, Catholic school, ROTC, and so on. I found each of these comfortable and each helped an otherwise hyperactive and awkward kid stay a bit more focused but I can’t say that I found any of them “actualized” me. My mistake was expecting anything could self actualize me besides, obviously, myself. A point that would really get driven home in college.
On that note, I was driven home from college in my freshmen year after what was essentially a nervous and emotional breakdown. Between full-time classes, three jobs, two clubs, one girlfriend, and way too many activities I learned that my disciplined childhood didn’t translate well into my first time being truly on my own and fully self-monitored. Before that happened I changed my major from comp-sci to religious studies and spent just enough time there to reassess my life decision academically. The hiatus afterward gave me more time to meditate on it.
Many years of diverging paths, self-discoveries, whopping mistakes, and profound joys bring us to today. I’m a tech entrepreneur running a couple of startups, a habitual martial artist, responsible for a family, and like everyone else a complete mess of a person. I’m still on a quest to understand how to find realization in this world, and I’m holding myself accountable for recording and publishing my efforts. My vision is to become self-actualized, to then become self-realized, and finally to make it easier for everyone to do the same thing. I would love this to be my life’s work, my living performance art, and eventually my personal legacy. Thank you for joining me here at this, yet another turning point in the string of experiences I call my life.
What are you worth? Increasing your daily value
What is your daily value limitation? What will you do to become more impactful today?
Airplane Wings
Airplane wings are shaped such that when they move forward and meet with the resistance of that path, they take flight. Don’t give up because of resistance. It may be that what is fighting you from moving forward is pushing you toward the heavens.
Atlas
I suppose the Greeks were right about Atlas, because it seems that the whole world is up in arms.
And in this titanic embrace we’re all being strong-armed, but everyone of us shoulders this,
It is the burden of the entire world, one that we cannot ignore because it is where we live.
We all have to stand hand-in-hand and band together to make any reasonable change in this world.
Worldwide, we are facing transitions and revolutions for which there may be no solutions.
The public outcry out-reaching, they’re beseeching their salvation but there are no resolutions.
Regardless of the cause you cannot deny the affect, and I strongly suspect
The faults lie in the hands of the elected and also of those who elect.
These are the figurative hands of the Titan, and so we all stand on the shoulders of giants.
Now we must walk a thin strand that stands between alliance and defiance.
Whether you judge by intuition or simple science you can’t deny it. This is not the time to remain quiet.
We know that would fail because we already tried it. I guess this means the last option is to fight it.
It’s time that we choose a side and make sure it’s decided.
There may never be any way to know the one where right is.
When the times are tense, the senses all become quite heightened.
This is normal when we find ourselves backed up and frightened.
We’ve always paid our dues but we have never yet earned our stipend.
Out of sight and mind, our eyes are clutched and tightened.
Might makes right, but wisdom only lies with the enlightened.
Perhaps that’s why the gods had tried to end the reign of Titans.
With arms enslaved, upraised we try to hold balance.
But in leadership it seems only corrupt ones take the challenge.
We try our best to outlast this wild disaster.
It’s sad the fact is in inaction that it comes ever faster.
Alas, the fact is that the hands of Atlas lose at last their stronghold grasp. Fast to clasp they’ll fail to catch the Earth before its final crash.
We lacked alarms to warn the harm that will befall us near the ground.
All charmed as docile as the beasts on farms, we won’t make a sound.
And much like this melody, the malady is that societies will break.
That is why everything is at stake.
In times of true discontent remember that you have the right of assembly and the right to bear arms,
Granting you the right to occupy like octopi
And if things become serious and you’ve got to try.
It’s not about the arms you bear, it’s more about just being prepared, or at least being aware, at the very least being a little bit scared!
Don’t be caught off-guard if you find there is truly something that we needed fear.
If things get dramatic and we find trauma like Andromeda, we must clash with the Titans like Perseus,
And like the helmet and shield and sword and shoes of Perseus we need to use all of this with a higher power in mind,
so that in the face of injustice we can fight and win a moral battle.
This is a quest so we do not get swept away by the powers that be.
We need to defend our minds and leave ourselves invisible to protect ourselves from unjust scrutiny.
We need to be able to shield ourselves from inevitable attacks and internal mutiny.
We need to defend ourselves with any weapon we can, be it educational, explosive, airborne.
We need to prepare ourselves for forms of transportation so we can fly fast if perchance we need to escape.
You have been charged. Now get Kraken.