I was in my mid twenties when I realized I could redefine my beliefs. Once I saw this was not only possible but necessary, I worked hard at uncovering my beliefs and changing the ones I thought weren’t right for me. One of the beliefs I left behind until recently was my definition of failure.

My original definition of failure was this: not getting something right the first time.

As I look back now it is obvious to me the definition came from how our education system is set up. We go through school where we take tests which determine our competence. It’s basically a one-shot deal to prove your worth. You can either pass or fail. If you pass, you have a grading system that shows how successful you were on that particular test. If you fail, well, that’s it - you get an F.

Even though I did well in school, my big fear was failing a test or even a class. So every test or homework assignment had anxiety of failing attached to it. I carried this throughout college and into my early adult life as well.

As I looked at this definition of failure I could see it was flawed in so many ways. Real life doesn’t work like a test in school. It very rarely requires you to get something right the very first time you do it. As a matter of fact I can’t recall too many things in my life that actually had that requirement.

We can try something, miss our target, and then re-aim if we want. We can hand in a report to our boss, get feedback, change the report and hand it in again. Of course in many circumstances there is a time constraint like a deadline, but if we are dilligent enough we can usually plan some time to review our work.

Since I have such a distaste for failing I figured I might as well define failure in a way that would make it virtually impossible for me to fail. So I defined failure as this:

Failure - to quit without a good reason.

I can’t do it; I’m afraid I’ll look like an idiot; It’s going to take a lot of work; I don’t have the time; I have kids; I’m not in my 20’s - these are all not good reasons to quit.

A good reason is a conscious decision I make that isn’t based on a fear or a self-limiting belief. An example would be if I decided part way into a goal that to do it will require more time than I’m willing to take away from my family at this point in my life. It has to be a conscious choice based on a good solid reason. This eliminates and excuses my mind may try to conjure up. (It’s very skilled at excuse making)

I’ve left room to change course or to stop if I make a decision that the path I am on is no longer a good one. As long as I am heading in the right direction I am not failing. If I don’t quit I can’t fail.

So all obstacles and stumbling blocks become temporary setbacks rather than failure. If Edison can miss his target 2000 times and continue on without quiting or failing I sure can too.

This reframing takes the pressure off me as far as failing is concerned. It also allows me to take chances on things that are difficult and lets me take action without the anxiety of having to get it right the first time. It frees me up to live and express myself more openly.

Learning and changing is a process. It takes time and practice. We all need to allow ourselves that time and practice to learn from the beginner state without worrying about failing.

Stumbling and falling down is a part of that process and it has absolutely nothing to do with failing.

A few weeks ago I went to my nephew’s confirmation. My 4 year old son attended and he doesn’t like loud noise so we brought along hearing protection for him. This protection is the big ‘ear muff’ type and it does a great job in blocking out noise. Usually he’ll wear them and see the noise is not so loud and end up taking them off. Sometimes having them around is enough of a reassurance that he doesn’t use them at all.

Before the service started I looked over and saw him wearing them. Here is this little boy, sitting in a church pew, wearing this ear protection. They are pretty big, and on a child’s head they look huge. (They’re adult size)

As I was looking at him I couldn’t help but smile. He can sit here in church surrounded by so many people and wear those big things on his head and he doesn’t feel self-conscious in the least bit. He doesn’t care what people think. What freedom.

I was relaying this story to a friend of mine yesterday and I realized something that was even more important. It’s not that he doesn’t care what other people think.

It doesn’t even cross his mind that anyone would be thinking about him wearing those things at all.

His mind hasn’t been tainted with that judgment capacity so it doesn’t even register to him that someone would even think something either positive or negative about it. There just is no thought to it at all. He hasn’t developed those self-limiting beliefs that hold us back. He’s wide open - free.

In that freedom is so much power. Imagine what any one of us could achieve if we had no care about how we would look doing it or what other people thought of us. Failure and rejection wouldn’t matter - they wouldn’t even register.

I know I will corrupt him along with others in his life. We have to. It’s how the world is. For him to survive and be successful in this world he will learn things that will take away that freedom he now has. The freedom I now work so hard to achieve.

We all had it in our lives. It was then systematically taken away from us due to the structure of the world we live in. My only hope is after he loses that freedom he will realize he had it, and work on trying to get it back.

It’s what I’m doing now - trying to get that freedom back.

I think it’s what we are all doing to some degree.

It’s been a while since I last posted anything. I find myself starting articles getting part way through them, reading them, getting disgusted, re-writing, re-reading, re-disgusted. I then park them in the draft section. I wait a little while, then I get inspiration to do another, and repeat the process.

In the meantime, nothing gets finished. I find myself looking for the perfect post. The explanation of a principle or idea that I know so well in my head but can’t seem to write in a manner that is flowing, interesting and easy to read.

So instead of just writing through the frustration I stop. I allow myself to get distracted into something that has nothing to do with writing a post. I read. I play with the kids. I dream. I think, only if…

I have to remember I am re-awakening my creative process. Taking ideas and transferring them into words is just that - a creative process. My creativity has been dormant for so many years, yet I’ll expect myself to generate a Picasso right out of the gate. Being so hard on myself is nothing new to me, and I’m sure many people can relate. I’ll compare my early writing to the writings of someone I aspire to write like and easily get discouraged. Comparing my early attempts to someone who has been doing it for years is a dumb thing. How would I expect to feel doing such a comparison? What do I expect of myself?

But as I was writing about my frustration in the Morning Pages today, I realized something (or should I say re-realized).

It’s all in the process.

If I want to become someone who can write simple or complex ideas in a form that is both entertaining and easy to read I have to write. And write some more. And then some more. The style, flow, transitions will all come out in the process of practice. What I am seeking will show up only if I take enough action to allow it to show up. I already know this, yet I forget it every time I move into a new area of learning.

If I look at any time I’ve successfully learned something new, or made an improvement in myself or in my life, I can see I learned it through the very same method. I learned what I wanted to learn by doing it.

I recently watched my one year old daughter do it when she learned how to walk. She didn’t sit there thinking about learning. She learned by doing: walking, falling down, getting up, and doing it again and again and again.

We won’t become a better writer by thinking about it. We won’t become a better writer by reading a book about how to write better. We won’t become a better anything unless we actually do the thing we are trying to become.

This holds true for anything we try to learn.

It’s all in the process.

Over the years I have accumulated personal development related ebooks that are in the public domain. When I first heard of public domain books I began searching them out on the web. I found quite a few but there were others that were very hard to find.

I discovered some sites selling the harder to find books and I purchased a few of them because I couldn’t find them for free. My intention is to host them here so anyone looking for them can download them free of charge.

I’ve added Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill and I will be updating the page as I go through my old backups and find the ebooks.

If you’re not familiar with public domain books have a look at Project Gutenberg. Books For a Buck has an index of sites that offer free ebooks. A google search for free ebooks will give you about 25 million hits.

If you have any problems downloading any of the books please email me.

So I read Christine Kane’s blog yesterday and I got to an article called Begin Your Day where she referenced something called Morning Pages. I’m usually game for anything when it comes to my own improvement, especially when I’m feeling in a peculiar kind of mood - like my last post. So yesterday was my first experience doing Morning Pages and I have to say - I Loved It!

I wrote three pages and basically dumped everything that was sitting in the forefront of my mind. In the process, I got a nice glimpse of the streaming thoughts that were occurring behind the normal mind chatter. (People who have done it will understand what this means) I realized where all the mind pressure I have been experiencing for the past few weeks was coming from.

My recent focus has been on establishing a goal system where I write down my goals and work toward achieving them. I’m 42 years old and I’ve never written down a goal. I’ve had goals and I’ve achieved a great deal, but I’ve recently decided the goals I want to achieve now are the kind that I need to have a lot more structure in place to actually get them. I also believe that having this kind of structure will help me overcome something else I’m dealing with in my life. (A story for another post) The problem has been I’ve been thinking about goals that are really, really big from my perspective. The shear magnitude and size of the goals I’ve been looking at has basically done nothing but paralyze me in my current position.

When I went through the Morning Pages exercise I arrived at the answer to my problem when I hit the third page of writing.

Simple is better.

I realized my overall goal in my life right now is to develop a Goal System that I can put in place and use consistently. A system where I can write down my goals and look at them every day, and take action toward achieving them. My current goal isn’t to achieve my goals, but rather to implement a system that will help me achieve my goals and to make this system a part of my life. I guess you could say my goal is to setup a goal setting/achieving system.

With this in mind, I decided to set what I think are more realistic goals for a beginner goal setter. (And beginner is exactly where I’m at). So the three goals I set were these:

1. Do the Morning Pages each day. I don’t even have to do them first thing in the morning. But I need to get them done each day; 3 pages of writing.
2. One blog article by the end of the week (Sat. 5/27/07). It doesn’t matter what I blog about or whether I even think someone will find it interesting to read. (This article will be the fulfillment of that part of my goal)
3. Read 1 chapter of the book I am currently reading. (I’ve already accomplished this and I am currently reading the next chapter)

By setting realistic, achievable goals I am allowing myself to have one complete repetition in my goal process. I wrote the three goals down on a piece of paper in a three ring binder. I’ve read the goals each day and have done them. At the end of the week I will be able to celebrate my first successful week of writing down my goals and getting them done.

I’ve already written out my goals for next week so my simple strategy is now working for me. To some people, what I just wrote may seem really basic. To me the difference is night and day. It’s the difference between wanting a goal system and actually having a goal system.

As I go along and continue to use my new system it will evolve and change and grow. The point for me has been to get moving and get something in place. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been paralyzed by my perfectionism where I had to see it all in place before I would even attempt a single step.

It’s 12:48am and I’m getting up at 5:30 in the morning to catch a flight to Virginia for my niece’s Bat Mitzvah. Tonight was the only time I could write an article to fulfill this part of my goals for this week. I know I’ll be tired in the morning, but the really, really cool thing is this - I did what it took to achieve my goal. That is worth more than any sleep I could possibly get. As I get ready to hit the publish button I am so filled with a sense of accomplishment I feel like I could stay up all night.

For me today, Simple Is Best.

A lion of potential trying to roar,
but out comes the squeek of a mouse.

Taking action - the ability to move and do something. I used to think that taking action was my greatest weakness, but I’ve recently come to the conclusion that my greatest weakness is taking action where action is required the most. I can stay busy for days at a time and cram my weeks full of all kinds of activities. The problem I have is choosing the activities that will benefit me the most.

It’s no coincidence my recent focus has been on setting goals, writing them down, and working on them daily. If I don’t have the structure, I find myself floating aimlessly around in my life moving my focus from one thing to another. (I’ve recently discovered why that happens to me and have taken steps to change it)

Sure, I get things done, but I feel like a waste so much potential and it has gotten to the point where it’s no longer acceptable to me. I have two young children so free time is rare and has taken on a quality of being priceless.

For the past week I have been working on figuring out my direction but in hindsight most of the week’s free time has been spent on needless floating among activities. Even when I seemed to be working on my direction, it was still a whole lot of wandering. I laugh as I type this because it is such a habit that it often fools me even when I’m looking directly at it. It’s like procrastinating at improving your procrastination.

Can you actually set a goal to set goals? Or set a goal to get a goal setting program up and running? Well I can!! And then I proceed to think about thinking about it. So I’ve managed to ‘list’ myself to death and have done a bunch of stuff but I don’t feel like I’ve actually made much headway in what I’m trying to accomplish. I don’t beat myself up over it because I know that it takes repetitions of seeing the behavior and taking action to change it where the true change comes.

What set me off on my analysis above is this: A few minutes ago I went over to Christine Kane’s blog, and as usual, she wrote something that I needed to read. Her article Taking Action Makes You Happier Here’s Why is part of a series she is doing on taking action. I realized I have been feeling a bit off this week and haven’t felt much drive and was wondering why; then I read this:

“3 - When you take action, you decide.

Deciding is a big deal. Deciding creates direction. Lingering in indecision is a guaranteed way to get depressed. Making decisions forces you to ask yourself what you want, rather than just following the usual course of what you “should do.” Or what you “usually” do.”

It’s the reason I’ve been feeling a bit off this week and here’s the answer staring at me. I’ve been lingering in indecision and doing what I usually do. It always amazes me how that synchronicity works. 

I know that action breaks the stalemate; action brings about the much needed inspiration and motivation; action beats down depression; but I still fall into the trap.

The best part of seeing this is now I can take action to change my current state. And that action makes all the difference.

The other day I was reading an article where the author was annoyed at Dr. Phil for dispatching dieting advice. His line of thinking was Dr. Phil shouldn’t be giving advice when he wasn’t in good shape himself.

This got me wondering. (I seem to do a lot of that) Can good advice and knowledge come from people who appear to be not taking their own advice?

Can an overweight person give you great tips and advice on dieting?
Can a smoker teach you how to quit?
Could you learn the principles and steps to goal setting from someone who doesn’t set goals, write them down and read them every day?

In other words; does the messenger have to be perfect in order to have a good message? I think we can agree they don’t. If perfection was a precursor to passing of knowledge would we have any books or audio programs on personal development?

Some overweight people could quote you the principles and application for dozens of different diets. Just because they may not be following through on them (or maybe they are and it’s early in the process) doesn’t mean they don’t have good information to share. If they were presenting themselves as having the information and successfully applying it, and it was obvious they weren’t, then it may be best to leave the information with them and move on.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with analyzing the message in relation to the messenger. I do think it’s a mistake to dismiss information solely on the condition of the person delivering it. Some of my best learning has come from the most unexpected sources. You may miss an opportunity to see things from a different perspective.

I always like to use this as my guide: Take what works for me; leave the rest.

I don’t know if you have seen this yet, but I just watched this video and it’s a darn good idea that Brad Fallon has come up with. They created a site that allows publishers to upload free and paid content that users can browse using a search function. It’s basically a warehouse for information products - audio, video, ebooks. The categories as of right now are: ecommerce, marketing, entrepreneur, income, online advertising, online sales, small business, success, webmaster, how to, blogging, adsense, ebay, and web 2.0

When I watched the Intro Video I was pretty struck by the simplicity and magnitude of the idea. It’s kinda long but worth the watch. Especially if you’re into making money online.

I went to the site and took a look around and there’s quite a bit of valuable content there that’s free.

You can just skip to the main site here: Main Site

Once there I would suggest you browse the stuff that’s posted for free. There are videos, audios, and ebooks that you can grab. No opt in page or sign up necessary; just start looking.

If you’re interested in checking out the affiliate program you can find it here: Affiliate Information . The affiliate program tracks whoever you send there for a year - there are no session, week, month cookies. You earn a commision on their purchases for a WHOLE YEAR. I think this is an incredible deal.

The whole premise of the site is content providers can upload audio, video, or written files that provide valuable information. The opportunity lies in them providing high quality FREE content that will get people interested in purchasing the content that’s not free. Part of their terms is the content providers can not upload a sales pitch product. From their terms of use:

“There are a few things that Free IQ is not.

Free IQ is not a social interaction or “party” site; it is not intended for minors.
Free IQ is not a site on which to upload unauthorized content.
Most importantly, Free IQ is not a site for “free” content that serves as a “sales pitch” or platform. We accept only content that educates, informs, and/or provides tools, techniques, skills and/or other benefits.”

There is no requirement to buy anything and no requirement to sign up and give your information.

And even if people don’t want to purchase any products, they can get free information by listening to audio, watching videos or reading written works - ALL FOR FREE.

It seems like this idea has the potential to take off and would benefit people on many different levels; from going there to grab free information; to uploading and selling products you’ve created; to driving traffic there through affiliate links if you’re into marketing/making money online.

It will be interesting to see the evolution of it. I think the basic premise of giving away more volume of higher value content for free is what’s going to make it take off.

Be in the Now; There is only now; Everything that happens, happens only in the now; Be mindful of now; Bring it back to now; Now is all that exists (’past’ is dead, future hasn’t happened)

But what exactly does it mean? What is ‘the now’? How do we experience now? Why would I want to ‘be in the now’?

Note: For the remainder of this writing I use Now as the standard to represent ‘the now’ and ‘now’. I thought the single quotes would get tiring to the reader.

I never heard of the concept of Now until I started reading spiritual based personal development books in my early twenties. I read a few books that talked about being present in the moment but I always equated that to just paying attention to what was in front of me.

About two years ago I discovered there is a difference between being present and the concept of ‘now’. I think the idea of bringing your attention back to the present moment is self explanatory, although it can be very difficult to do consistently. For this post I’m going to focus on the concept of ‘now’.

I looked at my life as a string of present moments, one following the next in a linear progression forward. The moment I was in, was Now. When that was replaced, it went into the past. The next moment in line was my future. This model of time was like a film of individual frames; one frame giving way to the next.

The problem with this thinking was I couldn’t find the transition point from one moment to the next. It seemed there was no defining point where one moment ended and another one started. In an attempt to get around this I started splitting the moment of time into smaller and smaller segments. I could imagine making the increments extremely small, but no matter how small I made them, there was always a beginning and an end. I had a problem with this model and I appeared to be moving in the wrong direction.

Then one day I started thinking in a new direction. The problem I was having was sandwiching Now between the past and the future. I was sticking something that is real (Now) between two things that were not (past and future). The past is dead (see note 1 below) and the future never occurs. We imagine a future and recall a past; but this occurs in our mind right Now. It all happens in the present moment. We don’t actually go back into the past or move into the future when we think about them. We never leave Now. Another shift in my thinking was Now could not be represented by a slice of time because it had no beginning or end; it wasn’t connected to time at all.

What I needed was a paradigm shift. I needed to divorce my concept of Now from time. There are a number of ways I started to look at Now which represented this new way of thinking:

• Now is like a movie screen. The movie plays on the screen but the screen remains untouched and unmoving. The full film of our lives plays out but the now always remains the same.
• Now is like a stage. We move around and live life on top of that stage but the stage never moves. No time passes; things change on the stage but the stage is static.
• We are just moving around in the ’substance’ of Now.

This line of thinking was a completely different way for me to see and understand the concept of Now. Instead of having Now attached to time, I managed to see it as a static state of being. Obviously the examples I gave above are merely pointers to this new perspective and don’t represent the actual Now.

From this point of view I arrived at some new conclusions:

Time doesn’t exist. Time is only a concept. It is just a unit of measurement. Like an inch or a foot is used to measure distance, time measures the relationship between events. You can’t hand me an inch or physically give me a unit of time. They are merely concepts or ideas, not physically real objects. (There are some schools of thought which argue this point. See Time for an interesting read)

Now is eternal. It doesn’t start and stop and start and stop, one segment of Now following another in an endless march forward. It has no beginning and no end because it always is Now; from this we can say it is eternal.

e·ter·nal (i-tûr’n?l) (Definition from thefreedictionary)
Being without beginning or end; existing outside of time
Continuing without interruption; perpetual.
Something timeless, uninterrupted, or endless.

Now is a static condition. Everything we experience including the passing of time and the movement of objects occurs inside the Now. The dynamic motion of life exists inside the static condition of Now. The clock hand moves, your body changes, trees rise and fall. There is an appearance of time but it all occurs in the now. It is a static condition that just is. We have been so conditioned by a time-bound model of reality that we can’t see it is only an illusion. It takes a tremendous effort to break the momentum that has been built up in order to see reality as it is.

So What’s The Point?
Soon after I wrote the first draft I was speaking to my wife about it. After a while, she looked at me and asked, “So how does this benefit your life?” I had to think about this because if it has no benefit in my life then what’s the point. These are few things I get from this kind of thinking:

• Another example of how a seemingly concrete idea/belief/concept is actually an illusion upon closer inspection
• This thinking yielded a realistic example of eternal
• A deeper understanding of what Now is and how it relates to my life
• I always find benefit in flexing my brain to understand abstract concepts
• Ammunition to go out and confuse family and friends. Just look for the glassy eyes as you run through the explanation

I think the main reason for writing this article is to share the different perspective I arrived at to see the Now from an entirely new direction. The goal is to experience the now, not merely understand it. Understanding can help point the way to experiencing but it is no substitute.

My updated understanding has given me the ability to better experience the Now. Rather than only bringing my attention back to the present, I feel an expansion which occurs as I sense the all-encompassing nature of Now. What I am trying to say about the experience is a very difficult point to convey. It is similar to trying to explain a color or the flavor of an orange. Each one is fundamental and impossible to explain without using the concept in the explanation itself. It’s just one of those things that need to be experienced by each person on an individual basis.

The problem is we are so conditioned to make everything time-based that we have a hard time removing ourselves from the concept to see what is really going on. If it is always now, and the now has no beginning and no end, where does that leave room for time?

I hope this helps you understand and experience the Now from a different perspective.

Further Notes and Food for Thought:

1. I understand the limitations of writing this article: past is dead - implies the past is real; past does not exist - implies past is not real. There seems to be a flipping between time-bound and non-time-bound perspectives of reality. I’m not sure how I can remedy this because even though I can logically see there is no past or future, there is an appearance of a past based on my ability to recall thoughts and positions I have held prior to my current one. There is a motion which is occurring as I live my life, but it always happens in the now.

2. Some of the cycles we use to measure time: the rotation of the earth, the moon orbiting earth, the earth circling the sun; these don’t indicate the presence of time. They are just motions and changes in position. Even a sun dial is just a measurement of the position of the sun relative to the earth. It is our thinking that relates that to time.

Before there were clocks the conversation went something like this: “Meet me at the apple tree when the moon rises over the top ridge of the mountain.” Where is time there? It is positions of physical bodies. When man invented the concept of time, he said, “When the moon rises over the top ridge of the mountain, it is 10 pm”.

If it’s always now, and it has no beginning and no end, then the Now must be a static state. All the appearance that happens inside the Now are dynamic. So when I walk across the room there is no time passing; although there is an appearance of time from the time-bound perspective. I am only moving from point A to point B inside of the Now. No time necessary.