The troubles of a wannabbe writer

He saw again the white space in front of him. A blank page. There he was, a veteran of myriads of personal conflagrations, survivor of uncountable encounters with fate, a citizen of nowhere and everywhere. Lots of tales to tell others, lots of stories to share. He hoped he could jump the gap between idleness and motion. He stared at an empty piece of paper the same way a pet dog looks its food bowl empty of chow. Indeed nobody was supposed to fill the void for him, but being immersed in the absurd scenario of an absolute lack of ideas to work with rendered him a most perplex creature. He stands up, walks in straight line towards... something. And there he sees it, a mirror. The prize he gets for this utmost stroll into the jungle of his own bedroom is the sight of his alter ego. He wants to say something in loud voice, but refrains himself afraid of his reflection reacting with a violent demand of shutting up. This thought is overwhelming, for he's ceased to be his sole friend on earth. Dizzy, he loses balance, and stretches his hand towards the wall. What color is the wall, anyway? Didn't it use to be pale yellow? Why does it look beige now? The sun rays are also yellow. Even if no timepiece was there to help show the precise time of the day at that moment, one could tell that the afternoon was almost over...

The Life You Chose

Originally posted on 6/4/10

Life has some hard moments, and that is a fact known by everybody. Hard times lie there in a potential form, ready to manifest when least expected. Pop! There it is: one has been just laid off. Now, a pause, for we need some seconds to assimilate this.

...

Yeah, it's likely we now have to deal with the problem of finding a source of money to finance life expenses. That's just going to be rich. The thing is, that it really doesn't matter what do we do right now, for there will be a way to drive things to a balance at a given moment, and a timely one. So why not enjoy some time doing something useful: thinking. Of course, writing is the best way to think. So, here we go.

The times in which we feel like hit by a rock in the head make us think about everything that had been done in a wrong way. And, certainly we weren't ready to prevent the hit, and probably, for the same reason we consider it a hit, we feel like finding a solution will be, to say the least, difficult. So, we believe that we are to blame, for two reasons:

1) The way we earn our money, the way we spend it and, in general, the way we build relationships and we live our life have led us to the very point in which we are now, the have driven us to a situation considered by us a problem.

2) Lack of planning. A problem is more "problematic" in direct proportion to the size of the efforts that need to be performed in order to solve it. Some problems shall be regarded as unsolvable, and this needs to be discussed in detail.

An unsolvable problem implies that there exists no actions available to solve it. Classifying a problem as unsolvable follows to the acknowledgment of the presence of a problem all the known solutions of which are impracticable.

If instead of facing unsolvable problems, we prefer to face solvable ones, then the resources available are key. Resources take the form of money. This implies spending less (adjusting our lifestyle to do so, and thus saving more money) or creating more sources of income.

While spending less creates some new funds for the future, the potential total amount of these funds is constrained by the size of our income. On the other side, expanding our sources of income allows us to keep our lifestyle untouched, while creating resources to solve future problems and even to fund projects that may interest us.

A Scene

I hear my mother talking to my dad. It's about a note somebody left for me, and the words I am able to listen , all of them my mother's, are "Well, I don't know if he really needs to see this note", I heard. "Does it make sense? Well, not to me, it just says 'I love you. You know who I am.' Who can write a note like that? A girl, I would say, and a young one, for that matter. Perhaps is just part of a prank, you know he has all this weird acquaintances, I don't know why he calls them friends, some of them having strange ways and an a sense of humor that I don't understand. Seriously, do you think we need to hand him this note?" My father's reply was quick, and issued in such a low voice that I didn't perceive a word of it. The reply didn't really quench my mother's eagerness to debate about the note and how it had no stamps from the post office. Was is a scam? She wanted to spare me any possible annoyance. I decide to make my move. So I get up and slowly drag my slippers reaching my bedroom's door. Just at the moment I was passing by my parents' room's door, I hear her words again, this time it was: "He's awake. You should try and ask him if he knows this girl. I'm just amazed, I don't know what to think, doesn't really seem to be serious, does it?"

What is (or should be) a writer?

Fairly enough, writing is a career that have depended most of these modern times upon two factors: a) the ability to tell stories, and b) the access to a massive market, in order to sell them. The second factor deserves special consideration, because it doesn't really deal with the quality of the book produced, but mainly instead with advertising and networking. This allows books of inferior quality to be sold as hot cakes, for the quality missing in them is replaced with powerful marketing raids.

The "fairly enough" included in my first sentence intends to emnphasize that "anybody can be a writer". If you are able to write a couple of lines every now and then, why not offer your stories to the world? Fortunately, it is not that simple. Yes, people want to read whatever they catch in their hands, but they prefer to do it for free. Selling a book, even if it was only one copy (this makes sense to me, and probably to lots of new writers, while seems unthinkable to publishers) is like passing a quality test. Better if this assessment depends only on the judgment of your reader, than on the unbelievably hypnotical abilities of your marketing team.

A Time to Leave

I admired both of them sisters, but felt in love with only one. Alas, fate didn't seem to be on the side of this fanciful love. Like a dream, I was there, shaking hands with everyone in the family. Aunt Gretchen, magnificent as always, no doubt the most important meber of the Millers, shook my hand. It was her thing to take care of all family affairs. And I became, God only knows how, one of them. That one being my very last day in town, I felt like my world was being shattered. Pieces of hopes and dreams scattered all over the place. Would I seen her again? Would I really come back after one year, or two, to visit this dear place, to enjoy the simple pleasures of a simple life? A part of me said "Yes, we need to come back one day, and it needs to be soon". But deep in my soul I knew that it was my duty to postpone this rendez-vous as much as I could. Deep, very deep there I knew that I was not coming back. And I knew that I was losing her for good.

Creating the World for a Second Time

Ockham stated that the simplest answer is usually the best one. Of course, I am simplifying a lot his methodology, but what really makes me think is that there seems to be something really compelling in that view. It is something so powerful that I just feel it, more than understanding, or acknowledging its validity. Taking that into account and probably in a flash of supreme inspiration, I happened to have arrived to this new idea: that science is not a matter of finding unbreakable laws, but of proposing and testing laws of limited applicability. The world seems to be a very large pot full of infinity of different elements, these ones arranged according to an utterly chaotic disposition.

If my ultimate interpretation of Ockham's statement is right, then there is not a sole definite "purpose" in the existence of man, or the Universe. But I just see weak sparks of the truth, and thus I find that this is not the moment to post any conclusion.

For now, and skipping any scientific rigor, let me risk a very colorful proposition:that Earth is some sort of a Petri dish for really intelligent beings native from distant worlds. Notice that I am not saying "planets", they might have come from another time, or universe.

Since the very start of my "hypothesis", I need to wipe out from its premises the validity of religion. This is easy. Religion is taught to kids, and therefore is accepted without any analysis. Later in life, lots of events seem to threaten the value of religion, but then again it carries all the time a secret weapon, called "faith". Faith means to accept something without a discussion. If I am taught that oranges, or apples, or cows, or sheep are sacred, and if I am conditioned to have faith in this idea, then my whole life I will respect those things and will disregard using them in a way that violates the principles of my religion. So when somebody calls "faith" to the discussion of reality, everything arrives to an insurmountable dead end.

Again, I feel like in a labyrinth, for I really like faith! But faith needs to be taken into our lives only according to some rules. The first rule: faith never challenges science. The second rule: faith needs to be very private. Each person understands their world in a different way, so faith will cover for him, and only for him, the gray to completely dark area that his science and knowledge won't allow him to see with clarity. The third rule: use your chronic faith for supporting you in the everyday labors. The fourth rule: use your instant action faith for supporting you during a really terrible day. I don't believe in mixing my instant action faith (faith in that I will get off a serious eventual entanglement) with my chronic-type faith (faith in that I won't be subject of a tragedy today, and that my day will end up fine, when measured in net terms.) I don't believe that your faith is my faith. Because there's no need to mix both our faiths up! No need for me, and no need for you. But then, there might be somebody out there finding a use in mixing and merging two or more faiths. The faith authority, that is! The sum of thousands and millions of faiths generate a power field for those who know how to arrange them and direct them.

I see what I just wrote, and I am myself amazed. Now I tend to think about fashion, exactly the same way I have been thinking about faith. If every young person in a city is driven to use a certain garment or dress, then some companies will be able to produce, brand and label and then sell these garments to a large market. And if every one preferred to have their own style, then the huge market would be broken, and people would go back to the private tailor system. Likewise, if everybody is driven to watch the same movies or read the same novels, or buy and listen the same music at a given time, then large corporations will make ridiculously high profits as a result of this. But if people decided to pick their own movies from a large selection, covering perhaps the whole history of cinematography and the whole wide world, if people preferred to pick their own books covering not less than three thousand years of writing, if people chose their music from hundreds of years ago and thousands of different cultures, then the corporations will just disappear. But the pleasure of watching a good movie, reading a good book or listening to good music will be enhanced.

A huge stride away from that last comment, and I feel able to discuss, again, about religion. Churches are like corporations, and they try to offer the best way to contact God. But for some people God doesn't exist, for other people, God is merciful, for others, God is resentful and vengeful. For others, God lives in the body of an infant.For others, in the body of an animal. There would be some saying that God pushes them to fight holy battles and wars. There would be some saying that God gives them powers to heal the body and the soul. For some religions, we come back again and again to this world. for others, we become spirits who will guard the surviving loved ones and other good people from any harm. Some religions would also state that killing oneself and others considered as enemies will bring your soul to a paradise of sensual pleasure. Some people believe that God will punish them by hosting them forever in a fiery pit. The human brain is so creative. I believe in my own contact with God, and I grant myself the liberty of considering him God, and Entity, the Supreme Order, or not considering him at all. For, if God exists, he gave me this liberty at the moment of my creation. And, if he doesn't exist, then who cares whatever we think about him?

The Most Precious Secret of Them All

There was, not very long ago, a man who was considered to be the most successful millionaire of his time. Here, the word "millionaire" is used in its most extensive meaning, the guy managed to earn and hold billions. The word was that this man was raised by a philosopher, likely his father or an uncle, but little more was know about his childhood or origins. His father, for from now on we will refer to this person as such, taught about two things: poverty and meditation. Such knowledge came from a distant community, most likely situated in an Eastern country. Awareness comes from meditation, and happiness comes from frugality, those were the life principles the kid and millionaire to be was taught. In reality, son and father were different, just as the Sun and the Moon are. But after 20 years of lessons, he, by the time a young man, was encouraged to travel and learn new meditation techniques. In his farewell, the father and philosopher reminded him that frugality was to be kept his most sacred principle. The young man wandered for months, until he found himself already crossing the borders of a neighboring country. A stranger in the land, he managed to learn a new language and customs and to earn his living by doing all sorts of jobs. But he was decided to be frugal, following what he'd been taught. Time passed and he traveled again. And again. His whole life become one of wandering between different places. He discovered that frugality was not going to lead him to a fulfilled life, for he saw many different things that enriched his soul, but most of them which also happened to cost money. He questioned his father's rules, he felt he learned from life that frugality constraints man to a minimum amount of stimuli, and he needed to gain access to new knowledge and perceptions. He started his own quest for philosophical truth, a set of principles which would allow him to make lots of money. Because, he also learned, the money that matters is not the one accumulated, but the one that flows in to our hands and then smoothly flows out from them, being replaced by goods and services we can use. Money itself is nothing but a concept, and certainly nothing more than an agreement. Each bit of knowledge was written by him in paper, and later engraved in sheets of silver, placed into a chest that he always carried with him in his travels. Frugality, he discovered, was a great way to cope with lack of resources. And meditation, the second half of his original set of principles, worked just right when people controlled their impulse to acquire goods, due to financial constraint. But once removed the constraint, meditation will still be possible, albeit usually not perceived as necessary.
Little remained of the philosopher's pupil, for this man had changed a lot. He craved fine goods and good books, and neither of those were free to get. He learned new trades, some of which he didn't really like, at least in the beginning, but despite that, he worked. But money flowed away from him all the time. he realized his interests were offsetting his budget. It was like the ultimate law, and then he believed he will be constrained to never gather a greater amount of money, the one which could allow him to buy the finest goods, cover all his needs, and keep some currency saved for future expenses. He was confused, and frustrated. He even thought that his life was nothing but the pursue of sunset, a task seemingly easy but impossible to be accomplished. So, in what should be considered the second most important day in his life, he took some of his belongings with him and ran to the mountains. And stayed there. He waived to his cravings of goods and culture, he decided to live alone for a long while. In the neighboring cities and towns that had seen him before, the word was that he had become a hermit. He avoided human contact, and so little was known about his life there. Before the eyes of the folk, he turned into a legend. A man with the highest potential to be rich, now the most frugal man on earth. Nobody could be really sure that he was alive, because when someone claimed to have seen him, people considered that a hoax, and so the man to be rich vanished like a ship after sailing from a foggy harbor.

Creation is the Key

To create is to... create. Well, it's somehow difficult to describe creation. But creation is a process that depends on some intelligence, some free will endowed with knowledge. There needs to be some creator behind creation. Otherwise, there's no creation, but generation.

The relation between invention and creation is simple: invention is a form of creation. The true is that I find that the word invention states a sort of inspiration. Creation relates more to the process of making something come to existence. In both words, there are two points in history to be distinguished: the first situation (where the created or invented thing is not there) and the second situation (where the thing belongs to the real world).

There are numerous instances of creation. One is the invention of things, machines, etc. Another is the composing of tunes, and music. Another one, the writing of stories, drama, etc. Another instance of creation, the works of hands: arts. In the marketing science, the formulation of new names for firms and products and the drawing of new logos are as well a form of creation. A kid writing an interesting tale for a contest is also creating something.

But not everything is creation. Plain repetition is not creation. Making millions of copies of a report or a comic strip to distribute massively is not a form of creation. But that can be called a sort of systematic generation.

Creative action is powerful. And because it is, it has financial value. So I see that I am catching your attention now!

The truth about finance is that there are at least three ways to make money that are not considered illegal:

1) Taking money from others through imperfections of some murky market. This happens a lot in stock markets. Not the best way.
2) Working on helping people access goods and services that they might like. Two tasks are more important in this concern: to gather resources, including workforce, and implement the provision of the service, and to shape up a market (the consumers, those who pay for the goods and services offered).
3) To create.

Well, I'm saying "to create something that has value", because I believe that something that comes from the human mind and becomes real needs to have some value ion it to be considered a creation. If I draw some circles on a sheet, I am just "building" a set of three circles. But if I imbue that same set of circles with a certain quality, let's say, a representation of reality (and it just came to mind a Venn diagram) or of some ideology (the Christian Trinity) or if I assign to them an abstract meaning (Borromean rings), then, and only then, I am "creating". That's the difference between creation and generation. Anybody can generate in any circumstance (we generate debris out of our bodies, of the solid, liquid and gaseous kind). Doodles are generated, while a drawing with a certain value assigned to it is created.

Now, when we talk about value, that means that it will help us attain a certain goal. Of course the goals we are interested to reach are:

1) The storage and transmission of information.
2) The solution of extant problems and as well the staving off of potential ones.
3) The reduction of time costs. We look for celerity.
4) The reduction of labor and the use of resources.
5) The increasing of pleasure, of the body and mind kinds.

But not one of those is an exclusive goal for the creative action. They are mere goals that human pursue and that are usually solved by elements that already exist. Houses solve the problem of living subject to the open environment, clothes solve the problem to cover us from cold wind or sun rays. Cars, the problem of transportation. These elements are provided by people already in the markets, people that just recreate or buy and resell those elements. But there was creation when the first car had been built, tested and given and OK. There was creation when the first soft drink was prepared, and as well the first ice cream, etc.

To Imagine is to Create

The most important law of the all is: what you imagine, what you visualize and believe will happen, will certainly happen.

The best way to put this in practice is by visualizing something. It could be a certain rare flavored coffee drink, for example. Visualize something that's not supposed to happen with the rest of everyday events, something unusual, something special. The law says: it will happen. And it will certainly happen. And that's how you get acquainted with the law.

So do it. Your life is in your hands. Actually, it's under the command of your mind. Focus. Create special accessories for your world, customize and personalize it. You can even create in your world the set of things that will give you pleasure, satisfaction and happiness.

You have the control. Use it.

To get what you take

I, like lots of people, have my moments of disappointment. Towards what? Normally towards the comfort I have, for not being large enough to produce a smile in my face, and sometimes towards a much more consistent subject: the size of the inflow of resources that allows my comfort level to expand. Which results in just one action: whining.

Or complaining, if the word suits better. So, yes, I whine. I complain. But to what avail? To none, of course. So then, one day, after complaining a little bit too much, I discovered (and by discover I mean that it was unveiled to me) an obscure mechanism of sorts that (to be continued).

A few lines on the concepts of Strategy and Tactics

What causes motion in human beings is the acknowledgment of a necessity to change their living conditions. The basic motivator is the seek of welfare. The result is action. Any given set of actions is intended to change the situation of a person, from what we may call situation A to some other situation B. For ease of discussion, let's resort to the analogy of a travel map. In it, you start in whichever location you are at current time, and plan to shift your position to a desired location B. An immediate analogy is that whenever you want to move, you need to perform some actions. Likewise, if you want to shift your situation towards a new desired one, different actions need to take place.

In any geographic region it's usual to find elements that block the free pass from some point to another. A river, for instance, cuts the region in two. In real life there are also blocking elements in the path that joins point A with point B. These are what we call "problems". Not having enough money, lacking education, etc. are gaps in the path that separate us from the desired welfare. In geography, some of the blocks are trivialized by means of artificial elements, such as bridges, ladders, etc. Also, some blocks are dealt with by use of ingenuity, for example by swimming from one rim to the opposite, if the flow of the river is not very strong. Which suggests that in real life problems might be overcome by use of ingenuity and tools.

Actions can be classified as planned and not planned. The set of planned actions usually will shape up a strategy, while actions which haven't been planned but need to be performed, usually in a very short time, adopt the form of a tactic. Tactics are very powerful, and help us overcome the immediate block in our path. But strategies are very efficient, and one would expect a good strategy to spare us the necessity of performing too many tactics.

A strategy is aimed to cover the whole path. A tactic is aimed to cover just a small part of it.

The Most Valuable Thing in the World

Time.

Everything else depends on time. Life is measured over the time that we are able to breathe, think and move. Freedom is measured in the time that we have to do what we want to do. Riches are measured in the power they have to spare us big efforts and enjoy things that would otherwise require immense of infinite time for us to make or accomplish.

Time is the only good that cannot be kept intact in a storage room or any sort of container. Of course, we can trade ten hours of our time doing something for some item that would cost us fifty hours to get by our own means. That may be regarded as a way to "buy" time, time that has been accumulated under the form of finished goods or special services. When in our senior years, time shows itself as less abundant than it was. For some, this will present a problem, specially if they would like to double their expected availability of time in order to experience what they couldn't before, in a way similar to the premise of the "Bucket's List" recent movie. Yes, at the end of the party we feel compelled to move more frantically, to dance more songs, to meet those which we didn't yet meet. We don't want the party to end with us still not having enjoyed lots of experiences. Life is measured in the number of interesting events lived, and experiencing anything requires time, there's no such a thing as an instantaneous experience, at least not for us human beings.

The way we "rectify" our ways is largely dealt with in the movie "Groundhog's Day". In the scenario there depicted, the starring character lives a day for innumerable times, stretching his life for several times the average lifespan of a human being. Though what happens if treated in a somehow comical way, there springs a conclusion out of the story, that with enough time we can relearn how to live our life. The lesson that arises form that conclusion is that we need to take advantage of the time we have and explore the better ways to do our things, including how to enjoy little everyday events, how to offer others a smile, how to remove negativity from the emotions we experience, etc. Groundhog's Day shows that we need to live our life with wisdom. And this seems to be the kind of wisdom that anybody can experience or acquire.

There's not an infinite amount of time to enjoy. But we cannot notice it. Some people do not care much about the future. But then, a decision made today can affect the future. When that day about which we didn't care finally comes, we will probably wonder why things seem to be out of control. But they weren't, we just left some circumstances unattended, those which could have had created a better scenario for us to live.

A dream

Me and a friend were in a fancy beach resort. Of course, there was there what is in every beach resort: white houses built in a beach style, their walls made out of tiny bricks, wharves were numerous vessels were docked, green gardens to ornate the whole compound, some other architectural elements such as fake lighthouses, ornaments made up of rope and white painted metal rods with rings at their tips, white stands scattered all over the place, beautiful gardens with shiny light green grass surrounded by a yellowish aura. And last, but not least, the waterline. A maze composed of waterways capriciously joining the land areas, wide enough to allow a medium size boat sail tour the whole resort. Actually, even wider. The water looked crystal cool, and its color was like cobalt, a mist coming upwards and bathing our nostrils with sheer freshness. After a second, we are already standing on top of one of the boats. A moment later, we are sailing. And while this required special attention for we knew that there was always the risk of crashing if we didn't sail with safety, well, we didn't. That is, sail we safety. Instead of that, a clear movie of what was a series of still scenes outside began playing in front of my eyes, and I would have bet that before the eyes of my friend as well. It was an extremely crazy ride, and we wanted out of it. But it was too late, for despite none of us having started the sail, the images of the surrounding environment were shifting with a sort of violence. But everything kept being beautiful, and people out there still enjoyed the sunny heat and the pristine landscape. If you asked any of the others, neither me nor my friend were about to have a fatal crash or meant any kind of risk to the life of passersby.

There was a time differential there, for some twenty seconds counted to me as a good forty minutes lapse. I felt the adrenaline inside me, and a mix of joy and fear. While gliding at high speed, I found myself aware of some roads reserved for people and closed for vessels. And we crossed from our ship area to the bathing area, in a nick of time. Being there, we vowed with almost religious intensity not to hurt anybody, or anything that was on our way. People still smiled, and swam with irradiating joy, as if we were an entertainment act and our impulsive trajectory was under perfect control of some show master. So we glided over all the waterways, and came finally to the non restricted area. Suddenly, our ship braked with smoothness, and we found ourselves in safety again.

And then, my awaking ensued.

So, what's the point of narrating this dream? I asked that myself before doing so. My intention was to set a signal that experiences come not only from the "real" world, but for our imagination. I had this dream only minutes before I started writing this post. And it felt part like an event really happening in my life, and part as something I was watching, full color, in a big screen. Two points that I find extremely relevant:

1) The impression of the thing being real

2) That the whole experience was "written" by my subconscious mind, and that it was it that told the story, choosing the place and the elements which composed it. And also, that my mind acted by its own volition, and by no means under my command, to produce this vision.

If we want to get good things from life

We get what we feel we deserve. The way this statement works in our life is very specific.

Some people translated this statement in the following: "the size of the meal we are served equals the size of the plate we hold before the server". I'm not quoting it with deep accuracy, but trying instead to express the sense of the statement.

Anyhow, what is in discussion here is the validity of such a statement. What we think and feel and believe we deserve is what life puts on our plates. This implies that those who think they deserve a big plate of meat and potatoes will be served a big plate with with meat and potatoes. And those who think they deserve nothing more than a tiny leaf of parsley, will be served that precisely, and nothing else. If the statement acts with the firmness and steadiness of a law, then everybody will request their servers to put big tasty things on their plates and not just little food with no nutritional value. But then, we can see all the time that lots of people live lives with lack of good experiences and lack of valuable goods. In other words, there's not meat and potatoes for everybody, just for a few ones. Of course we are tempted to argue that no sane mind will result in commanding such a poor dinner. So, how does it happen that a lot of people get too little in live?

It all depends on perception. Perception acts deeply in our subconscious, and the subconscious feeds back our self with ideas and suggested actions. A negative perception carries negative feelings to the subconscious, which on time will carry back terrible suggestions to us. And we will do as the subconscious suggests, for it processes immense batches of information and gets to conclusions by itself that are to us mandatory to follow.

I see this as analogous with what happens with a food processor. If we put bad raw food in it, we get prepared food of inferior quality. It's the well known problem of output depending upon input. Now, the problem becomes more serious after a while of we using the food processor with bad input. It will happen that if we pout some good raw food in it, some parts of the processor that have been spoiled because of being treating bad food are going to perform in a bad way. So actually we have now a second and harder to take care of problem: how to clean the whole processing system? If we try to input good thoughts in our subconscious and we never get any stable improvements in our mechanism to get the desired conditions in life, then we would probably need to clean the whole mechanism of processing ideas. Often what happens is that we state our good intentions for the new year, and then drop one by one all of them, regarding the task of accomplishing our goals as an unsurmountable one.

Stimuli are necessary to clean the whole perception and idea processing system.

If you want to be happy, spend time with people that are like you, only happier. If you want to be rich, look for the ones that have interests common with yours, but are richer. If you want to be healthier, spend time with people that think like you and are also healthier.

Alas, not always would be that simple to "pick" your friends from a vast catalog of characters. Then I suggest this: to schedule everyday a mini session of good thoughts and visualizations. Let's say that at 8:00 a.m. you wake up and commit to think good thoughts, and assess the wellness of your feelings. You will be giving good food to your inner side, only in small amounts for starters. Perhaps after some weeks of doing this, you will be able to stretch the session and make it last for half a day. This good food for your soul will certainly strengthen the mechanism of perception and tune it up to the positive side, which will in turn clean your soul of negativity and give you the energy and determination to acquire all the good things that you long in life.

Creativity, Motivation and Achievement

The way things are, adopting an "attitude" towards life may not be everything we need to accomplish anything in it. The "attitude" line is more a pep talk that we offer to ourselves in moments in we need to command all our power for a one-time move. Attitude can be defined as a synthesis of a perception and behavior towards life, i.e. a way to think about things that makes them gain sense, and quick and strong action that matches that mindset. As such, attitude is good, and an essential part of the ways of our mind. But this attitude is the result of several processes of thinking, attitude is a resulting attribute, and not really a mechanism in itself. If somebody says that green vegetables are rich in iron and other nutritional elements, but I like to have yellow squash for my daily meal, it's not going to be by dyeing the squash in green that it will gain iron. Well, "attitude" is the way winners think, but is more a result of a programming process.

Here's the deal: the human being learns how to perceive things and how to act in life as a result of two kinds of factors: biochemical factors (a sort of a preprogrammed slate written in chemical code that which affect the way one gets joy from life) and learning by interacting with other human beings (this may be direct or indirect interaction). Now, "attitude" as a way of thinking all the time is not really the external attribute of "attitude" but an external effect coming out of internal programming. So what I want to say here is that all the hype about people who have an attitude (people of the winner sort) leads to confusion when trying to transfer this whole attitude to the mindset of those who want to be winners but aren't it yet). Although one is tempted to find sense in this sort of a sudden adoption of a winner's mindset, given that it's appealing to start thinking as a winner and behaving like one too, I believe that it is necessary to work on the roots of one's mindset, and let grow some attitude in the way the stem and leaves of a plant grow out of its roots. And this is not going to be a simple task. The complexity of it will be dealt with later in this same post.

We also mentioned the subject of body energy. Alas, without body energy little can be done. That doesn't mean that one needs to be an Olympian athlete, but that they're capable to channel this energy and translate it into action, and this in a continuous basis. Even a little old man can move as fast as a bullet, despite his small size. And for people with physical disabilities the possibility of acting fast is still there. On the anecdotal side, there are lots of people who have good body build but are reluctant to act. Their energy is somehow hindered to flow. Energy that flows can be seen in children. The flow of energy probably decreases in intensity with age, but the willpower to command the whole of our energy and transform our thoughts into actions and new creations will always be there, and for some of us it increases with age, as a result of a steady process of self programming.

Almost anybody is able to decide what to do, and also to act accordingly. The problem lies not in whether we have or lack this function set, but in the degree of command that we have to pursue a goal, whatever the goal might be. I assume that the following might have happened to you at least once: the weather outside is very hot, but you are longing for an ice cream, and the ice cream parlor is two blocks from your house, which you will need to cover by walk. Now, there are only two outcomes of the situation: either you walk the distance to the shop and get the treat, or you stay in the house, finding the heat outside not worthy to endure just for the sake of gratification. The problem that you have before you is one of choice, which might be considered one of the most important subjects that the human being is compelled to face in life.

The question, though, is not a simple one. The simpler version will be: if my longings are strong enough, I will assume the pain of walking the way to the ice cream parlor, and if my longings fall short of that, then I will just stay at home. An ice cream is a trivial good, but what would happen if we translate the problem to: I need to study German to improve my salary and future job opportunities, which will allow me to buy more of what I like in the future. But in present time studying German is a very hard task. So, should I assume the pain of my studies, which will cover me the way to a better life, or shouldn't I? So, now, if one is a motivated person, they will definitely choose to study German. But not always for the previously stated reason: they might just like to have a chance to act. So we lose the link between the goal (an improvement in life, an increase of welfare) and the action stated as required (study). On the other side, a person with very low motivation might, despite really longing to expand their welfare basis and improving their life, say no to the project just because he doesn't feel strong enough to bear the labors involved. And, sadly, he might be very wrong in that precise assessment: that he lacks what it takes to do the job. He might just be a victim of delusion, he might just be being swindled by a tricky perception in not assuming works that are affordable to him and even to his emotional side.

Again, the motivated person is protected against making a bad decision in that regard, because they act all the time. People in constant motion are like dynamos that produce energy, and that energy can be used in getting good things from life. People with critically low levels of motivation will say no to excellent options to improve their life. So the problem lies in the parcel of motivation, and the problem exists only for those who lack it, not for those who have it in huge amounts. Try to do this: explain to somebody who lacks motivation the welfare they might get after reading a book, visiting a museum, or going to a party. They might agree with you, but left to their own devices, they will let down the options. Even this happens all the time: parents and friends explaining to somebody the importance of they getting some education. People who are not motivated will let down these propositions, sometimes despite they being bright and very capable.

So, how to master that devilish imp that is the motivation blocker? How to tame it, how to chase it away? This takes us to the following subject: some of the people who are not motivated for their own sake are motivated for the sake of others, i.e., to act for the welfare of others, but rarely for their own sake. This makes the point even clearer: motivation is a mechanism that pushes people to act, but sometimes part of the mechanism is upset, and in this case we respond to the needs of others, but not to our own needs. Tricky! Again, this shows that people can be motivated when the motivation comes from outside, even if they lack the essential component that is self motivation.

What would happen if I do not have a goal?

Well, not having a goal leads us to a zero level of activity. Which is wrong. Why? Because time range for action is a resource that does not reproduce, but is instead consumed as the clock ticks, showing the passing of time marks. Using a time delay for not doing anything is the equivalent of being in a supermarket with a six hundred dollars coupon the value of which diminishes at a rate of ten dollars per minute, therefore leaving us with a zero value of goods purchased if we remained idle during the whole one hour delay or validity of the coupon.

Moreover, the achievement of a goal constitutes itself a very positive feedback for self reliance and assertiveness, which are factors that increase productivity and efficiency, i.e., effectiveness. Success in a project leads to ease on attaining goals, therefore increasing the speed of development and evolution. Idleness, on the other hand, drives people away from activity, work and action, but it won't build up a feeling of conformism, which would offer the idle person a way to cope with his sluggishness and lack of capability of succeeding in anything. Instead, idle people are led (by mechanisms the presence of which they are completely unaware) to believe that they are doomed to failure, that it's fate itself which make them that way, that only lucky people are able to drive their lives according to their will. Are idle people right when thinking in such a way? I'd say that their situation is better described as similar to that of the gardener who, despite needing to weed out his garden every day, chooses not to do anything for a while, finding at the end before the unsurmountable task of weeding out a multitude of vines covering every inch of the garden. His efforts still will put him in the right direction, but the unaccomplished tasks before him are enormous, and the feeling of progress, which needs a reference and is therefore relative, will be very tiny.

Can Anybody Become a Financial Champion?

Short answer: yes. But for starters, what does it mean to be a financial champion?

Let's first review the concept of "financial freedom". Financial freedom is the situation of people who have a projected income that is generated by their assets and that extends for their expected lifetimes and is enough to cover basic needs as well as desired goods and experiences. Aside to this concept there is that of having a career full of expectations, in which one is not really financially free, but has expectations of having a job position until the age of retirement, and has a retirement plan to live afterwards. Though developing a career has been the favored option to handle the income matter for a long while in society, some changes in the economy have increased the risk of interrupting one's career, and also retirement plans tend to be more unstable. But managing one's assets and acquiring some more is still the best way to generate income. And for those who really don't feel like joining the workforce, and, as well, for those who find it difficult to join it despite really intending to do it, the remaining alternative is also to work out their monthly income based on their assets and the objective to continually expand its magnitude. Therefore we come now to the starting point of perfect financial freedom: to get money from the assets we already have, and to expand the number of our assets, so that more money will be generated every month for us. Let's repost these two main ideas:

Idea #1: To get money from the assets we already have.

Idea #2: To acquire more assets, which will increase our monthly inflow of money.

Now, what exactly is an asset? The definition of asset is simple, is just a form adopted by our money which, by means of having being invested, "works" and earns its own "salary". Thanks to its dutiful works, our money, under the form of assets, gives us the option of working less, or even of not working at all. But this may be deceitful, for the whole idea of investing implies that we will need to watch and assess our investments, our assets. In this case we find ourselves in the situation of working again, only this time for our own sake, commanding every part of the process of making money. This way, our monthly income expands. Let's remind that we are getting some money thanks to the diligent work of our assets:

Idea #3: Thanks to our assets, we can work less, for they are already working and receiving a salary which will be received by us.

Suppose you have already secured you assets and that the income they produce every month is enough for you to pay bills and also get lots of fun buying stuff you want, traveling, etc. This may suggest that you do not need to worry about working again. But then comes step two of the money creating premise: to plan the acquisition of new assets that will expand your income base. And this requires a lot of thinking, whioch might be considered work. So at this point we compel ourselves to work again, but still only for our own sake. Let's restate this:

Idea #4: Although in the upper end of the efficiency of our income generating program we are free from worries associated to work, expanding the borderline of the income generating base puts us again in the situation of working, only this time intellectually, in order to acquire profitable assets and adequately manage their risks.

Now, because all these ideas are important, I'm re-posting them all here:

Idea #1: To get money from the assets we already have.

Idea #2: To acquire more assets, which will increase our monthly inflow of money.

Idea #3: Our assets work for us, and therefore we do not need to strive as hard as when he didn't make them work.

Idea #4: We use part of our free time to manage efficiently our assets, allowing them to work with supervised risk.

The central idea of owning, acquiring and managing assets is to make our money work. Money works under the adopted form of assets, i.e., allocations of money we make related to investments, be them small or large. These points constitute the guiding idea of a financial program for growth. This is all based in money owning and handling. This is independent of sale power, personal talents or social skills, and is, of course, also very apart from the idea of having a career. If a career is to be relatively associated with this ideas, it may be a financial related one. In other words, the following are killers of this purely financial approach to expand monthly income:

1) Being in the situation of not possessing any assets, and disregarding, at the same time, the objective of acquiring some.

2) Lacking any financial education, and, even worse, any interest in developing or improving one's financial knowledge basis.

Which puts you in the need to work to earn money for your living. The objective of building an assets' base is that of start working for your own sake, and working using your brains, specifically the financial part of it. Of course, you may already have a career in a field that is way apart from finance, for example: hairstyling, modeling, home decorating, cooking, etc. Chances are that you chose to start your career when you were in your early twenties, and chances also are that you said something like this: "I couldn't study finance, I hate numbers, and finance is so hard a matter, it would be impossible to me to follow it up, let alone accomplish college studies in that field". Well, if you didn't, at least nineteen out of twenty of people to whom I talked think that way. And here lies the problem: finance is a field designed not only to develop a career in a bank, or so, but also to make grow the sources of money income at hand. Not having a formation in finance leads people to misunderstand deals involving credit, in a way that a person with a good financial education would never do. Instead of expanding their financial sources of income, what people do is to expand their sources of expenses. Taking the wrong approach leads people to engage in a never ending loop of working for somebody else's sake, under the pressure of paying all good purchased with credit plans.

Considering the above said, let's not (ever again) underestimate the importance of including a sober financial approach and to pursue the goal of becoming financially free. Which takes me to the idea of being a financial champion, which, to me, represents being somebody who is financially free and, furthermore, is completely engaged in making their assets' base grow. These kind of people see no boundaries for the extension of their income generating money base.

I have written above that anybody can become a financial champion. What do I mean by saying this? I actually mean that I believe that anybody can become a financial champion, for I see no restrictions for normal people to start getting more concerned about finance. I even see the financial approach to generating income as a duty of utmost importance. While our ancestors were concerned with killing enough animals for the weekly or monthly food supply, we, who need to be concerned in earning money first hand and not just through an employee position, we need to be concerned in continually "stalking" the financial spheres in order to tame their products (some of them) and make them start supplying us with fresh weekly and monthly wealth. And, for those who still do not own any assets or lack financial education, here's what they need to do

Step #1: Get educated in what are the dynamics of asset value and of their markets

Step #2: Get informed of several assets that you might start purchasing and handling, in order to open your first asset portfolio.

Step #3: Purchase your assets and monitor it on a daily basis. Be ready to sell those who tend to go down and to replace them by others that seem to be reliable, at least for the immediate short while.

The Impact of One Man's Life

OK, so this is supposed to be merged with my previous post, only that I prefer to temporarily write it in a different note. One man's life has an impact in the lives of others, and this impact can be measured basically in the following: how many people are using a device that was created by him. And by device, I am not meaning just engines, also ideas, and not only scientific ideas, also philosophy, and not only academic philosophy, also everyday and everyman's rules of thumb. but there's even more: body language can also be communicated and have an influence, and it's there were many professional actors develop a great influence over people.

And we have even more to discuss here, for there is the matter of those unknown people who have an impact on our lives (not "one time" achievers who did something historically significant, but people who created something that was or is still used and appreciated as valuable by lots of others).

Measuring Personal Power

He who has the money, has the power.

Nope, that's way to simple. I see that power manifests in different ways. Let's start with the obvious one:

1) Power of wealth. For those who haven't noticed yet, money is a way to communicate people. In a way, the invention of money and the invention of the world wide web represent the same step of achievement for the world, thus being an analogy between money and the Internet a necessary one. But wealth is just a way to show the others (inform them) that you have power. Wealth is more of a sign of power owned than of a spring of power itself. It represents power that other people are able to grab, crop, possess, master and take advantage from.

2) Sale power. (to be continued, stay tuned)

Short Story:

Inspector Bhasa decided not say anything about it.

How could you expect to get anything good from telling the story? Who will be in a better position after that? Is law that important, that it needs to be observed even when a good man is to be harmed, and the reputation of a group of citizens risks to be broken down?

Bhasa already had it with everything. His wife, dead, making now company to his first born, also a victim of pneumonia. Did these deaths really need to happen? What was he supposed to do now? Jeanette, his sister in law, had two children, both of them old enough to work. They shared the same house, and so Jeannette will be the new mother for little Albert and Rose-Marie. Changes were happening so fast in his life, and now that thing. Life is hard. Not even the weekly mass had proven to be enough comfort to Bhasa, who needed new water for his soul. Then, again, that thing. A decision to be made in an instant, its delay about to be turned into a decision itself, only one eventually to be made by somebody else.

The Fundamental Flaw That Pushes Success Away From Us

We lack awareness of our potential and our weaknesses. Not knowing what we can do is serious, for it leads us to live a life completely alienated from the fresh, sweet fruits that can be savored thanks to our special talents. We end up, therefore, getting our nurture from what can be compared with dry, insipid seeds. The lack of awareness is an interesting phenomenon: we do believe that we get the best of life, based on what others get from it, and never on the grounds of what we can possibly draw from it. Which is myriads of times better, according to the potential of the human brain.

But there's also lack of awareness of our weaknesses, and it will lead us to make mistakes, which, once turned into systematic ones, will result in lives that are erratic and wrong.

We need to seek for a flaw, and we track it up until the lack of awareness appears, clearly cut. But, is it the fundamental flaw that we are looking for? I will say: no.

The Strange Nature of Motivation

Every time you get something done, you're shifting from some situation A to another situation B, and the deeds you did, in the very same order you did them, constitute the path you walked over in order to produce or "reach" the new situation.

Now, there's a lot of things that happen automatically. For instance, time runs, and it runs automatically. You are not requested from nobody to do anything in order to make time run, time running is a constant, and for a constant, its effect is absolute. But lots of things become automatic just because they are linked to time. The growth of the human body, the wear of clothes, furniture and other good by the sort, etc. And also society creates gods that are artificially linked to time, the perfect example being the accrued portion of debt. Therefore, there are lots of processes that behave automatically, they grow in presence, and or, effect, without us raising the tip of our little finger. These processes might lie in one of three classes: those which give us advantage, those which are neutral, and those which might create annoyances of even present a threat to us.

The processes of the beneficial and the neutral kind do not generate motivation on us, or at least not in a direct way. Processes which are harmful do create a source of motivation in those who care about keeping things in a comfortable way: staying healthy, keeping their savings, protecting their house from danger, etc. Danger is a powerful motivator. But, is it the only one thing that will move us to action?

The Human Being, the Supreme Creature

One day, a visitor came to Earth. He was a perfect man, and by perfect, I stick to the primary meaning of the word: accomplished. His body built was efficient, achieved through special exercises and care, he looked like an athlete ready for the Olympics. With majestic poise he cared to stroll between the people from our time and space, he was looked with admiration and a little bit of uneasiness. But he remained cool all the time, his business was very particular, he wanted to assess us.

And so he found out that people were really stupid, that they were like little kids with a position and money, doing what little kids with a position and money wil do. They called themselves mature, but mature they weren't.

Men with money caring about buying bigger cars for themselves, spending more money in pleasures of the body, favoring technologies that released them from body efforts and withering like dry straw at the age of thirty-five. Men killing other men in order to claim possession of lands, sometimes under the pretext of protecting their nations. Killing, destroying, vexing myriads of others under an oath of protection of ideals that were prettier in their statement than solid in their substance. Men teasing other men to going to war, men teasing people to buy goods that posioned the body and the mind. Men running towards slef-destruction with a merry chant of concordance to the pursuit of an imaginary comfort. He saw lots of things, negative things, in us. And he stated a sour conclusion: humanity was consumed by an endemic and supreme idiocy, men were rejoicing themselves in a world of mud, their eyes covered in thick dirt turning them uncapable to see the truth: that progress come from the inner side of us, and never from what's outside us.

The smartest man in the world, a human from another time, saw with regret that people were misusing the functionality of their minds. And he asked himself if he was there to save humanity from ultimate destruction. He meditated for days about what he learned. The truth is he had the power to transform the world by himself, he was the perfect man, he really could do it. It wasn't his world. though, for he had been only visiting. He decided in the end not to do anything. There was something sinister in the situation of the world he saw. It reminded him of an experiment gone amok. Perhaps these people were not human beings as he was, endowed with exquisite and powerful talents, but just some ape-like creatures, looking like humans but really just moronic beings. It was so sinister that he told himself that he didn't, couldn't understand our world. And to think that he was a million times smarter than the smartest person form our world.

So he decided to leave, perfectly aware of the dark ages about to unfold over mankind.

This... this doesn't need to happen. It is my certainty that he was wrong, and that we can still steer our world to clearer days, to peace and beauty and the elimination of corruption in the government and in corporations.

Let's do it together: let us show this perfect human that we, being the babies we still are, have nevertheless enough intelligence to pull ourselves out from a vortex of ruin and flower a new higher level of society, full of joy and void of human suffering, hunger and the drive to kill the other.

Logic, Emotions and Achievement

Emotions can build up or completely destroy the possibility of achieving a goal. Much has been said about negative emotions, and how they block a person from even defining what is preferable and desirable to them, i.e., from stating their own goals. Without goals there is no compass showing us where to head to. Negative emotions make people think that they are defenseless or worthless, and certainly clueless. Positive emotions make people believe that life is worth living, even believe things that might be arguably unreal, but that allow them to set themselves a North, a set of goals and its subsequent list of actions to be taken.

In a discussion about emotions versus logic, which will be favored by those looking for efficiency? Well, computers and other machines are perfectly efficient, and they lack emotions. On the other side, the most important inventions came out from highly motivated human beings, people who were subject of emotions of the positive kind, creating a snowball effect that pepped them up, up to the level of extraordinary achievement. And then we have negative emotions, which hold people from achieving anything. We can see that:

1) It is necessary to avoid or contain in a "safety chest" manner all negative emotions. That will free us from the possibility of systematic failure.

2) It is necessary to use a neutral, emotionless approach when assessing our performances in things that do not require us to be motivated. To make myself clear, I propose an example. If I hate traffic jam when driving to my workplace in the morning, then I need to "un-hate" it, to be perfectly neutral about it. That way I might be able to use the commuting time to play a record reminding me of my personal goals, for instance. Or, if I like languages, I can learn a new one by listening it during the commute time.

3) When addressing our goals, it would be highly recommendable to cover them with positive emotions. This way we make them more vivid, and have the "feeling" that they lie around the corner, that our efforts will make sense very soon. (Of course, in relation which previous posts of mine, I am able to find a link between positive thinking and the creation of a better reality to enjoy.)

When assessing the worthiness of your life, and that of life itself, be super positive. When tripping over undesirable situations, strip them out of their negative connotations. Achievement depends on feeling positive. Efficiency on being neutral. Both of them rely on a perception of reality stripped of negative emotions. With this three point approach, everything is possible, every goal is attainable.

Freedom and our parents

Although hard to see a reason why, the truth is that when we are born, we belong to our parents. We depend on them for everything but breathing air. It is them who teach us the language, in its basics. It is them who show us how to behave in society, so that we don't get ostracized from it. We come to this world inside the body of our mother, and we become a part of the family, a part of something and the whole of nothing. This condition, nevertheless, is only temporary. After a certain number of years, we will see the world outside the family, outside the house, with eagerness. We become avid drinkers of the spirituous air from outside, even from abroad. We decide that there's some for us, too, and that we might be able to live a life of our own. Indeed, there's still some good stuff to enjoy inside the family home, but we need to understand that every parent is also a human, and as a human they are the center of their own life. When they declare that their kids are their life, what they're actually saying is that will do whatever prove to be necessary to nurture them and protect them from sickness or mishap. That "they" "will" "do". It's they who act, they who strive. Not the kids, or anybody else. Once the kids are ready to engage themselves in the labor circuit, and provide their own food and money, living in the house won't change the dynamics of leadership, vis-à-vis, power.

The Man Who Has Everything

Hello, my name is Adrian. I lack nothing in my life. For instance, I have enough credit to acquire whatever I need, or want. You are probably expecting me to talk about how I live, about the way I experience pleasure, and probably to hear me making conclusions about the good life. I know that you want to know that, for pretty much everybody wants to experience or find out, at least for a brief moment, what is it to live with no worries. But I risk to disappoint you, because I am about to expose those aspects of my life with I consider the most relevant, and these certainly are not those related to the good life, but with a life lived under the beacon of awareness.

I own a Patek Philippe Grande Complication. It's nice, though I wouldn't say beautiful. I just have it, and it reminds me of the fact that I can afford anything I want. Don't expect me to talk about my car, or the size of my house. I am somebody who doesn't have any real budgetary constraints on his pursuit of comfort. The thing is, I buy a new car as your average Joe buys a new light bulb or soap tablet. So I don't really care about them, cars. I have everything, and I don't really need nothing from nobody. In a way, I am almighty. It feels good.

I don't work under a superior, so I don't need to humble myself by pretending that I acknowledge being wrong when I do lively feel that I am right. My demeanor is located far from any populated place, because I can afford it, and so that no neighbor might disturb the peace of my day. I don't need to deal with lots of people, I share my time only with few persons in a day, and it is me who decides who they may be. But don't believe I am a lonely person. I have friends, it's only that they know my rules, that I won't adopt somebody under my wings to allow him live the comfortable life that I have, although I could! There would certainly be little sense in doing that. My life is one that only could be lived under the light of great awareness, and this awareness opens my eyes to this truth: that things matter very little in life, that is the way people think and act and behave that matters. That is the way people see things that may make them free or burn them to the marrow. There's, I think, only one man in a million that won't be really vulnerable to the temptation embodied by the infinite possibilities that the infinity of things offer in infinite markets. I am one of those men.

Some notes about achievement

Okay, so we are here now. And we want to be there. That means, that we want to shift our situation, from a starting one to the desired one. We need to accomplish the new position.

The first rule: We need to believe that this is feasible. It doesn't matter if it really is not. Belief is necessary, the conviction of the goal being attainable by means available to us. A weak belief is the cause for collapse of our plans.

The second rule: we need to have a strong desire. If the desire is weak, only the easiest goals might be reached. But man can pursue and attain any goal he wants. The requisite is to want it. Lack of desire equals failure in attaining the goal. Therefore, desire needs to be regarded as fuel for achievement!

Stressing a statement helps finding the truth, or does it?

As always, I had a curious dream. This time, I was dreaming about people I know, but all of them immersed in a very specific context, whose most remarkable feature was all of us taking care of a bunch of nuts. They were of the edible kind, I might add. Now that I think about it, kind or reminds me of that scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory, only we were human beings, not squirrels. So I was there in a position of "leadership", let's say, but not alone, for two more shared this attribute with me. The three of us were concerned about the nuts not running out from their shelves and containers, and our staff was acting in a hectic way, which posed to us, the "management", a very serious problem (although I didn't have any solid semantics to assure me that the problem was grave, but, as I said in a previous post, when you're dreaming you accept the majority of statements as absolute).

I'm amazed of the way a dreamed adventure seems to be real, but I'm even more surprised by the conclusions that may be derived of this: appearing to be real, our dreams compel us to behave in a certain way. If we are capable to tell what we dreamed about, then we might be able to compare our behavior and its dynamics with what we think about ourselves. After some trimming, we have statements that we may issue about ourselves, and though they may be incomplete, and rough or even absurd, they have information that should not be dirsregarded about our psyche.

So I, acting the lead role in my own dream, felt like pepping up the staff by emphasizing the importance of acting hastily. In a way, I didn't understand why we were storing nuts in the shelves, but even under that circumstance, felt like doing what was possible to stop the losses of nuts. I really didn't have an argument to offer to the staff or to the other leaders, but I found it absolutely necessary to issue such an argument. So then it came to me that these nuts were our assets, that they were our wealth. Incredibly, still immersed in a world of dreams, I managed to get hold of the idea of economics. I didn't care if the criterion was true, or not, for I didn't know if the nuts belonged to us and if there was a market for them. I just made it all up in my dream. My pepping up of the staff produced more efficiency in the storing duties every time I used more energy in my harangue. Now the other leaders seemed to think that we really were there for the nuts, and the task of storing them with a minimum loss was successfully attained.

The conclusion: if you manage to believe that there is a reason to do what you are doing, you'll be able to do it successfully! Nice conclusion, and nice ending!

But... I just checked out the title I assigned to this post, and it includes the idea if finding what is true.

I just said that in my dream the idea of becoming wealthy by means of dealing in the nut market was more a pretext than an actual premise. But in reality it felt in a different way, it felt that I was assigning that value to the nuts and extending this idea of value to outside of my "nut storage/factory". It felt (in our dreams there's a lot of 'feeling') that I was capable to command the world and tell them "I have nuts, and I am collecting them, and thus now you will buy my nuts". Sounds crazy, but that feeling was what compelled me in the beginning to start this writing.

Seriously, I need to think a little bit more about it, and will, afterwards, streamline this post. But if the lesson stays put, then I might have learned now that we can make others believe in what we believe. Moreover, truth doesn't exist, its real name is motivation. And we find the truth only if we can create a motivation. Believe in something, and you're already making it the truth. Make other believe in that something, and your truth will be shared for many more people. They will believe, and know, that that is the truth.

Achievement: Agents versus Entrepreneurs

Achievement is a fantastic word. It covers the ability of people to attain goals. Thinking about the idea of an achiever, it came to my mind that some achievers become entrepreneurs, while others do not. An entrepreneur is somebody who dictates the rules of his way of working, he is an independent element of the whole body of productive people. On the other side, we have what may be referred as "agents", people who act attaining goals posed by somebody else. There are efficient agents and idle agents, as well as there are also good entrepreneurs and bad ones.

Between those agents and entrepreneurs who are efficient, one can also distinguish extraordinary achievers. These people excel in performing their duties and getting advantageous outcomes for the firm. An extraordinary achiever organizes his mind in a way that he gets the capability to systematically achieve goals. He has the control of his actions. His conception of the universe is that one creates and recreates his environment, at will. His will is channeled through a chain of controlled actions, most of the times under the form of a plan.

Building winners up

Being a winner starts with believing that one is a winner. But it doesn't quite end at that point. Being a winner is more of one thinking like a winner. I might say that all of us have probably thought like a winner at least once in our lives. A winner thinks in terms of achievement. Thus, whenever we have had focused our mind on achieving a goal, then we had thought a little bit the winner way. Being a winner is a matter of distinguishing from the rest in that the winner mindset is stretched over long whiles rather than momentary ones. While winning a single match might be seen as a feat of skills of the tactical kind, winning the whole series of matches that define the championship can be compared to a full strategy. I believe that everybody is a master of tactics in a way, therefore, anybody will be able to win a single match sometime. But the beauty of the winner quality is that he, the winner, wins most of the time, just the number of times necessary for us to turn our heads towards him, to remark him. We mark him because he's special, unique.

But, how did he arrive to this status? This, in many cases is the outcome of several circumstances. Though it requires hard discipline and strong commitment to stay a winner, I dare to propose that many winners had the good luck to be born with skills that were appreciated in the environments they lived in, they were also acquainted with the notion of discipline and did end associating the presence of this discipline to the pleasure of achievement and public recognition. We have here, thus, an exceptionally fortunate combination of events and circumstances. Our winner, according to this story, couldn't have helped but being a winner!

Winning, as many other elements related to human life, is basically, as I see it, an attitude, and so, pretty much more the result of a learning process than of anything else. We learn to win. And we learn to win like we learn to speak our first language, by assimilating everything in our environment, and experiencing the joy of a series of achievements. We can also learn "not to win". The truth is that is statistically more likely that we learn "not to win" than that we learn to win. Learning to win is a self expanding process, and so is lean "not to win". The more you win, the more you win, and the more you don't win, the more you don't win. And there comes into existence a real schism between these two categories of human beings. (I need to acknowledge here that this idea is widely developed in Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers", so that I waiver originality in presenting this idea here, not because I did not think it, or have learned it there, but just because it has been openly discussed somewhere else by a famous author.)

Winning and not-winning are forms of programming, both very well rooted, running in the minds of human beings. So, if there was a way, let's say, by using a "magic wand", to root out the not-winning program and to replace it with the winning program, then Jack T. Loser will start, miraculously, behaving like an all time winner! Just in the same way that a custom car performs in a way that exceeds several times its original performance, you will see Jack's face and body driven by a new, more powerful engine, the result of a re-engineering of sorts of his human software.

Such a re-engineering of the mind has been proposed, under several names and fashions, by a number of authors, including scientists, preachers, motivational speakers, aficionados, new age writers, etc. I am not familiar in a first hand way to the very highly praised overnight results of these different systems and doctrines. But I do believe that most of them are basically right, and I believe that they do not do any harm to the individual self practitioner, on the contrary, I am of the opinion that some of the followers of these methods are bound to improve their lives. The lucky ones would even become winners, but I tend to think that the winner status would not be reached by each and every reader of a book of this kind. There's nothing wrong in those books, but I will take the liberty to post a simple question: how many people is able to learn how to play the piano, drive a car or adequately perform in a karate fight just as a result of reading a book? I dare say: just a few (I'm sure that at least these few will succeed, relying only in what they learned in the book, but this will, of course, mean that the book's writings' universal application is unreal, and the statement of universality just not true.)

Back again in our quest for the building of a winner, by means of building a winner's mindset, we see that "nature" had done its deeds while creating the natural winners, and that our built-up winner requires some specific programming, in such a way that it will be a (perfect, perhaps?) substitute for the doings of nature and fate. An interesting idea naturally arises: a winner can be built up by somebody else, and this can be achieved by an specialist rooting out the failure codes and replacing them with winning codes. I believe that more than simple reading of a book is necessary to achieve this universality. I believe that a workshop of winning is the logical factor to include in the building up of the winner's mindset. This workshop will create images, or even icons, that will shine over the first batch of iconic elements, those which engaged the actions of the subject with imminent and recursive failure. The presence of a new imagery will drive the individual in a way and intensity that allow him to think he wins, to focus on winning. This work, this personal effort, reproduces the chain of events that produced the natural winner. But in this case, the built-up winner is subject to these experiences thanks to a theory, a personal monitor, and tangible action.

Then, again, I might be wrong. But, isn't every approach, if proved its harmlessness, worth, at least, a try?

Mind Teasing

I arrived today to a long awaited conclusion, a reasoning new but old at the same time. Our lives are just a lie. But this not in a "bad" way, just in a "this-is-what-really-it's-going-on" way. Open your eyes! Because you are asleep, and dreaming. I had, minutes ago, a heavy dream. I call a heavy dream one in which I see myself threatened, and I'm powerless, completely unable to do anything. I feel that I am doomed. It' so real! And, again, there's no way out, no solution, just the unavoidable danger plummeting over me. I know that I'm doomed. Again: it's so real! You wouldn't be able to see that the events are not happening in real life, just in a world of dreams.

Of course, you see where I am heading to: if we can be teased this way while we're sleeping, why shouldn't we believe that our whole life is in reality a dream? This reasoning seems to be a minute gratuitous, but is it? We sleep, and then our mind creates a whole tangible world in which we live several adventures that feel real. But in the "real" world happen lots of things that should be assessed as non sequitur. There's extraordinary luck, for instance. There is such thing as extraordinary luck. Extraordinary good luck violates the groundings of statistics. But then, again, there's recurrent bad luck, which is more tolerated by our mind than good luck, while should be considered equally improbable. There is people who have everything to succeed but live a life of failures. And here is where I feel the presence of a substantial mind teaser: we live lives that make sense to a tiny ghost, and if this tiny ghost believes in a stream of defeats, then a script of an unsuccessful life will be written in our books, and we will live such a life, inevitably.

But I am a science lover, so I will leave open a window, the possibility that all that my conclusion of our minds teasing us and making us believe things that are not real is wrong. Then we have little to do in order to re-create our personal universe, the one that is centered in the body and mind of each one of us. Then this life, in a whole with its environment, escapes, in the end, our control. Believing my concept of a world and life subject to the teases of mind can lead us to try and control our lives. And this may prove to be ineffective, if I'm wrong. But... if I'm right... then this drive and strive to handle the steering wheel of that tiny ghost that is the teasing mind will result in teasing again ourselves, but in a beautiful way, in a way that will allow us to perceive that everything that we want, or believe that we want from life is becoming tangible, real.

And if in that case the savvy reader would say "nothing is real", this statement, which I believe to be a possible and probable scenario for the existence of the human being, should not be received with sadness, but with joy. We become aware of the existence of a mind driven reality, flexible to our wishes and desires, we waiver the being aware of a hard reality, a source of pain and disappointment.

Yes, I can be wrong, but I will give it a try, I'm trying now to transform my life just by steering, at will, my mind.

We are all just one

I know that I am the outcome of a lottery game. I am just a ticket number, let's say, 308,547. Just like in a raffle, where all numbers have a prize, be it a toaster or a TV set. Only that I am not sure if a I could be the proverbial toaster, or a pressing iron or a vacuum cleaner. The thing is that I am Augusto Rufasto, son of Augusto and Virginia. I am IT, and there's no discussion about that. I am lucky enough to be alive, to have been born to this world. But as well, it come to my attention, I could have been the neighbors' kid, whose name is another one, whose attributes largely differ from mine. I could have been another person! I could... have been... So what if...? Yes, what if I actually am that somebody else, in a "parallel" reality? According to this viewpoint, I am everybody, therefore. Also, with a smooth extension of this line of thinking, I am probably just a "point of view" of a whole being, just like there are infinite corners from which a three dimensional object can be watched, then the person who I feel that I am is just only one of these points of view.

Do you want to be rich? Then think about this!

I noticed that during my twenties, when I could be considered by all aspects a grown up, I started dreaming about success. Big success, sweet success, steady success, influence, recognition, power. It all needed to naturally come to me, because I was "special". Through my thirties, I realized that it actually wasn't coming to me with ease. So I secretly complained about my luck, and about fate. Then I started reading all sorts of material about the path to create riches. It all seemed just fine that hundredths of authors were validating the "become rich easily" approach. But...

The Power of Man: The Power of Suggestion

If somebody really believes in you, no matter if that somebody is someone else or you yourself, then your life experiences change. If that somebody happens to be a very closer person, or you yourself, the changes are dramatic, and you start turning into reality the potential you always had inside you, for all of us have an inner dormant power to do extraordinary things.

Let's Create Wealth NOW

Let's be wealthy, let's state our position about creating wealth: do we want it? do we think it's possible? We can answer anyway we like to these two questions, and there will be infinite answers to them, while only one possible combination of answers that will take us to the wealthy condition: Yes, and Yes. The human being is worth a lot by itself, it's worth billions of billions of dollars, isn't it? Is it possible to create a human kidney if we pay one billion dollars? No. Is it possible for a machine to think a thought if we invest one trillion dollars in it? No. People tend to forget how worthy they are just because we, made of matter more valuable than platinum or diamonds, are so used to play with inert goods that shine and glitter. Why do we feel incapable to create wealth? Because we are astray from the real source of riches, and are convinced that only luck or hard work will allow us to get there. Trusting mere good fortune will take you to bankruptcy, and believing that hard work is the key to riches will result in a major disappointment. The real power of man differs from physical force, but consists on his confidence on his own self. Man creates, his stay on Earth is aimed to show not that he can be a trusted worker for somebody else, but that he can become a powerful creator for the sake of his own self and for the benefit of the whole world.

You can be rich, if you only believe that you can be rich. Believe otherwise, and your fate will drift away from wealth and welfare.

Prisoner's Dilemma

Long time ago some very smart thinker created a concept called the Prisoner's Dilemma. The model was there to show a plausible way to analyze the competitive interaction of two people and set who were individualistically looking for payoffs, the two agents being in a situation that somehow hinted for ruining the other agent's possibility to any gains as a result of the personal-egotistic nature of each one agent. Moreover, the Prisoner's Dilemma turns into a moral about how seeking for the personal benefit will result into the ruin of everyone in a real life situation, given, of course, that that situation's conditions match those of the model.

The above said, it must be noted that the Prisoner's Dilemma is regarded as a masterpiece of counter-intuitive analysis, and considered a concept peer to that of minimax analysis. I applied my own version of the acid test to the Prisoner's Dilemma, and found out that a lot of its power comes out of the minds of those who are beiong introduced to it rather than being an essential part of the formulation of the model itself. To say this in simpler terms: the model is incomplete because it relies on the emotions of the analyst rather than on its own structure. Allow me to elaborate.

Suppose there are two small firms dedicated to the development of new energy sources: Xenergy and Y-Fuel, and that both firms belong to the same market, and have some interactive dynamics that will restrain them from being held by two shareholders, making the matter of the share value a very important one. Furthermore, there is a duopoly in the market for energy generation, so that AlphaCo and BetaPower are the only two major firms that might be interested in acquiring the new small firms. Now, we mentioned that interaction will affect the performance of the small firms. In detail, the conditions, summarized in the table below, are:

	Beta X	Beta Y
Alpha X	2, 2	0, 3
Beta Y	3, 0	1, 1

1) If AlphaCo and BetaPower both of them decide to purchase share packages of Xenergy, then profits coming out from the total annual activity will be of 4 billion dollars, allowing each one major firm to receive 2 billion dollars of net profits. This seems to be appealing to both firms, for the amount earned is huge.

2) If AlphaCo decides to buy Xenergy, and BetaPower buys Y-Fuel, then the net profits in the market will be of only 3 billion dollars, and Xenergy won't get any of them, therefore leaving AlphaCo with zero profits at the end of the year, and BetaPower with round three billion dollars. While this scenario is really appealing to BetaPower, it threatens to harm AlphaCo level of profits.

3) If AlphaCo buys Y-Fuel and BetaPower buys Xenergy, it will be AlphaCo the one to make the three billion dollars, and BetaPower to get zero profits. An scenario appealing to AlphaCo, but dreadful to BetaPower.

4) Now, if both of them decide to buy shares from Y-Fuel, then the performance of the energy market will be that of 2 billion dollars, to be split between AlphaCo (one billion dollars) and BetaPower (one billion dollars).

And then which one should we expect to be the definitive scenario for this interaction? Well, according to the conventional approach for the prisoner's dilemma, we should expect both firms to try to outsmart the other one and generate a (suboptimal) outcome such as Y-Y (AlphaCo will buy Y-Fuel under the assumption that BetaPower will likely buy Xenergy, and BetaPower will buy Y-Fuel under the assumption that AlphaCo will buy Xenergy). Each one firm receives the suboptimal profit level of 1 billion dollars at the end of the year. Now, let's review this conflictive interaction (namely, a "game"), with two different, simpler individuals. Let's say Al and Bob, two young brothers.

So one day Al and Bob's uncle Ernie comes with two two-sided cards, each card having a white side and a black side. Uncle Ernie gives a card to each one and proposes a game, that if each one chooses the white card, he'll give two dollars to each one, if one chooses the white card and the other the black card, the one with the black card gets 3 dollars and the one with the white card nothing. Finally, if each one gets the black card, each one gets one dollar from him. The kids are taken to two different rooms, so that they won't be able to talk to the other. Al's thinking process goes as follows: if I choose the white card, then I am giving two choices to Bob. Choice 1: that he picks also a white card, so that both of us receive 2 dollars. But he will also have a second choice, to pick a black card, in which case I do not receive anything and he gets three dollars. And if I pick a black card and he picks a white card, then he doesn't get anything, and I get three dollars. But if he decides also to pick the black card, then I am getting just one dollar.

The End of the Beginning

Jack Walker got out of the bed in a day he couldn't name. It was a long while since the last time he was certain of anything. It didn't matter, though. Jack knew that there was only one thing to pay attention to, one sign. Still sleepy, he reached his right pocket and held that little gem that could make a big difference in his life. It was still dark inside the room, but he knew it didn't matter at all. In a quick move he drew his hand and threw a glance to the stone. Was it really blue? It could have been just a trick played by his eyes. So he close them. Three seconds later, he saw the stone again, and it was, definitely, blue. It was the time. After the long wait, the time had finally come for him to act.

The Power of Man. Note 1

It is said that Albert Einstein used only 10% of his brain to create his theories. I’ve been thinking about it, and somehow tend to conclude that the world is a better place to live than we can possibly imagine. Just for starters, I think that anyone who can use his brains at least at the 10% level Einstein did, will, undoubtedly, capable to acquire wisdom. And wisdom is likely to be currently a very scarce asset, throughout the whole world, or we would not be depending on fossil fuel and would not be witnesses of such bane as famine and wars.