Change sucks because something is going to clobber you once you start and it’s up to you, and you alone to deal with it.

Well, if you haven’t before, you have now. Change, generally, is a good thing. Change for the sake of change? Bad thing. Small changes = good. Big changes = who the hell knows. The idea is good, doing it is hard, and if something screws up along the way, then it’s bad.

Change is a force, and if we remember anything from high school physics class it’s Newton’s 3rd law of motion (simplified):

“To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

This does explain why change is often de-railed once the process of change has begun. Take for example someone who wants to take control of their financial situation. They go out, buy some books, learn, and start reducing costs, saving, investing – yet what happens shortly there after? A sudden massive expense arrives out of the blue and all the hard work is suddenly dashed in a short period of time. Yes, they were further ahead, they have learned skills that can be duplicated again, and things can be gotten back on track – but it’s up to them. Life suddenly threw a curve-ball at them and future success or failure on their part will be up to them. Another example is when someone decides to take control of their un-healthy lifestyle and do something about it. So what do they do? They start to get up early and excercise, they begin to drink more water, and they start to track their food intake and make better choices. This works for a bit of time until either they suffer an injury or become ill (flu, cold, etc) which disrupts the schedule and takes them out of the game for a period of time. Take the smoker who finally decides to quit once and for all, yet during the same week something highly stressful happens and they’re right back to smoking again.

We can all look around and see this pattern happen for people over and over and over again. But why? Why is there always an equal and opposite reaction – especially when the change is significant? Does it always happen? No idea – but it does happen enough to notice it… Some would say that these are tests to see if you are truly committed to the change that you desire (god, universe, whatever), but why? What possible purpose does it serve? Why not a big challenge at the end of change so that which has changed can directly apply to, and effectively mange the challenge?

It has been said that you’re only supposed to change one thing at a time, for example, stop smoking, but don’t stop smoking, stop drinking, start running marathons, and start eating carrots all at once. Stop one thing for 21 days and develop the habit so that you can move onto the next thing requiring change and that which you have changed is now a habit. Kinda makes sense, however, the clobbering potential still applies regardless of whether or not it’s one change or 10. Changing 10 things at once is to say the least, challenging, however, it is entirely possible. Changing just one thing is also possible, yet depending on what it is can easily equal 10 things.

The point here is regardless of what, why, or how many things you decide to change, beware of the clobbering that is in your future. Yes, if you’re committed to the change(s) then it merely becomes an annoyance or a delay, yet if you happen to have insight as to why it happens (and it will) – do share.

And yes, I’m currently battling a cold after a whole week of working out in the mornings and dramatically improving my intake… Clobbered.

Asking questions is easy – we do it all day long: Do you have the time? Have you seen so-and-so today? Where did we park the car? What are we having for dinner? Should we have one glass of wine each, or four? But even simple questions have the ability to mess with your belief system in a big way. Lets for example, all agree that taking the life of someone is bad. Ok – that’s a belief correct? We both believe that taking another person’s life is bad. Now what happens when you start to ask questions? Questions like:

• Are there people that believe it is good?
• Why would they believe this?
• What other beliefs must you possess in order to believe that you are correct?
• Where did those beliefs come from?
• Is is there ever justification?
• What about in situation X?
• Why not? Is that belief valid?
• and so on..

In context these simple questions provide us with the ability to explore things even if they are completely contrary to what we believe. No one ever said you have to agree with the answers, yet are you willing to ask the questions to actually get the answers? I’m not saying asking questions of a thesis/PhD-type where you’re dedicating your life to finding the answers, but what about just asking enough to learn something new? And what happens when you learn something true and correct that is contrary to what we believe?

Now if we take the list of questions from above out of context, take out the ‘personal/beliefs’ references, and then apply them to….. the economy? religion? technology? anthropology? linguistics? Every day we are continually marveling at the advances and decline of humanity, yet advancements come from the hands of people who ask questions – decline comes from the hands of those who stopped asking.

… to be continued

It is said that the average 5 year old asks between 300-400 questions per day which to me is both insanely disturbing yet absolutely incredible. If we think about our day to day lives (now much older than 5), how many questions do we ask vs. how many statements to we make? My guess is that at first we likely don’t ask as many questions as we once did, yet we likely ask more than that because there are many questions we didn’t even realize we were asking.

Yes, of course it’s not about the quantity but the quality, right? Well generally, however, who are you to decide what a quality question is or not? Ok sure we can likely agree that rhetorical questions are not quality, but other than that, will you not ask because of you’re allowing your bias to screw up your judgment? Lets skip the debate over what makes a question good or not and purely focus on the actual power of asking a question.

While wandering through the book store I was skim-browsing some of the titles in the business section when I started to notice books by economists. Now having learned a bit more about economists and how they perceive and explore the world around them, titles I recognized started popping out. Always the junkie for purchasing books (reading optional – the intent is always there to read the book, yet it could take some time before I get to starting it.. Finishing it is a whole other topic.), I started to explore a couple books. What is this book about? Where do I know that author name from? Is this book really what I’m looking for? Is there something better right in front of my eyes that I’m not seeing? How much is this book in my hands? That much? Why? and so on…

After picking up a particular book to explore further and then looking for a more suitable perch for my coffee than the last precarious location, I noticed a massively thick book sitting on the top shelf. Ooooh, what’s that? Now the title of the big book is rather intriguing: “The Real Price Of EVERYTHING” edited with an introduction by Michael Lewis. At first I wondered if it was literally a book filled with items and their price at the time of compiled all printed insanely small and on bible paper to ensure maximum pages – thankfully it was not (but if the print was really small, and you were able to gather the data in a relatively short period of time – how many items could be listed in ~1400 pages?).

Rest of the long story short, I found myself asking: What if I actually read this entire book?, and the power of a simple question now sees a gaping hole where this book was located in the store, a surprised look on the cashier’s face as it slams into the counter, a little old lady thinking it was a bible then realizing it is not, and this book on the end of my desk in one of the cat’s many favourite sitting places. Sure there was the expected justification before, during, and well after the purchase, yet the power of a single question changed everything.

To be continued… (Part 2 in a couple days)

So here is the challenge. Along the way you gain experience points which in turn helps move you up the levels. At the time of writing this I am at level 20 out of a possible 40 levels – I’m half way there. Now, because there is no level 41 (currently – they may add more levels later), there are potentially hundreds or thousands of people at this level. Also, much of your strength in the game is determined by the number of Twitter followers that you have. So we now have a ceiling on how high you can go in the game, if you don’t build your Twitter followers you will always be the whipping boy of larger players, and really, once you make it to the top – it’s really really crowded with no clear winner. Basically, all the people who have reached level 40 are now just collecting money, buying stuff, and attacking each other. There is no victory – just wasted time. Sure, you could make the argument that the entire thing is a waste of time, and no doubt, some will. That’s fine.

Looking at life however, how many games do we play where there is no possibility of winning? I believe that Sun Tzu put it best when he wrote:

Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.

The true hardliners take the stance that if you haven’t already won, don’t even play. In life, it’s always a bit challenging to be that definitive, but the basic principle of  that if you don’t even stand a chance of winning – don’t play. But what about all the glorious learning through failure that could be had? Well, how much fun has it been so far? Sure, there are times where we fail, and we learn, but to actively go out and look for things to fail at? I agree, it doesn’t make much sense.

The fact is that if there is the possibility of winning, then you have the possibility of winning. That’s a good thing. You also have the possibility of losing, however, in this case you have the opportunity of learning so that you can win in the future. Also a good thing.

It came to the point in Spymaster where I suddenly realized that unless I wanted to game Twitter and dramatically increase my following in a very short time, for no other gain than the game, then there was no possibility of ever winning. Why was I even playing? We don’t need more things in our lives that we can’t win at. We need more things that we can win at and we need to take the time to recognize these.

If you can’t win, ever – don’t even play.

I work in a big office building. Not one of those massive downtown behemoth’s that have separate elevators for upper and lower floors, but given the area of the city it’s located in, my office building is a big blue glass monolith that you can (sadly) see for miles around. Seriously, I can walk to the end of my street, look left, and literally yell “Thar she ‘blows!” while pointing off in the distance at the big blue whale rising above the sea of trees. The special days are when you’re looking east towards the office, the sun is setting in the west, and you get this nice blinding reminder (literally) of what awaits you the next day… The point here is that it’s big. With big offices come hordes of people you don’t know, and cleaning staffs that scour that sucker for hours long after you leave for the day…

One of the big concerns in large offices where not everyone knows your name is simply, theft. For a while there, just after I had first started, laptops were being removed from people’s desks – during business hours! Constantly there were emails circulating throughout about how to secure your equipment, not to leave laptops laying around, and if you didn’t recognize anyone in the office to challenge their reason for existance. Did I get challenged? Yes, a couple times, however, after about a month of everyone interrogating everyone else in the office who was meant to be there, we all just gave up on vigilante security and went back to just locking our stuff to our desks (yay Kensington!).

So the daytime theft had decreased, yet at night the odd backpack left at a desk was rifled through, or prizes meant to be given away for contests suddenly evolved, grew legs, realized this was no place to hang around, and walked away. The next day most conversations would consist of how terrible that such a thing happened, yet each time ended with something like ‘well, it should have been locked up anyways’… Wait. No. It shouldn’t. Sure everyone comments about how sad it is that we have to lock our doors when we leave in the morning, how we need security systems for our cars (that don’t necessarily work), how our stuff on our desks needs to be locked away, etc. etc., yet WHY does it have to be like that?

Property theft is one of those things that I never really understood. At what point to you have the right to remove something from my possession, without my approval, and do with it what you will? Why is your selfishness and sense of entitlement greater than mine or anyone elses in the world? What makes you so special?

Now keeping all of this in mind, what do you think went through my head first when I discovered that I had left my watch sitting on my desk when I got home? Yeah, not pretty. See, depending on the shirt I’m wearing that day, if my watch band is exposed, it scratches on my keyboard rest, or just generally makes a lot of noise as I use my computer. So to combat this I simply take it off and place it on the supporting leg of my monitor until I’m finished for the day, or until I get up to go somewhere. There have been the odd time where I’ve gotten up to go get a cup of mocha (coffee + hot chocolate; can you possibly go wrong?!), forgotten the watch, and it’s still been there. Generally during the day (and given the location of my desk) I’m not overly concerned about my watch evolving and walking away. On this particular evening however, I was ill, tired and just wanted to go home. I packed up my stuff, made sure I had everything and headed downstairs to kidnap my wife from her cube (yeah, same company, same building – but different floors, and different brands). As per usual, something in the back of my brain was trying to tell me that I was forgetting something… Side note: Brain, it would be REALLY useful if you would just tell me what I’m forgetting, rather than just annoyingly hint at it for hours on end.

After being home for a while, I suddenly realized exactly what  i had forgotten at work. I quickly located another source of time, realized that even if I left now the cleaning staff would have already been through, and now had two simple choices: either go to the office now and possibly have the rest of my night ruined, or simply resign to the fact that there is a 50-50 chance that I’ll be disappointed in the morning. I chose the latter…

When chosing to be either surprised that there is still honest people in the world or that everyone sucks, it begins to mess with your brain a bit. There is the part of you that figures the minimum wage, non-english speaking cleaning staff just had a pretty good score tonight and that you’re a complete idiot for leaving something like that on your desk – but there is the other part of you that figures (especially when you realize that you’re being a jerk and that the previous line of thought is the entire reason why we keep our stuff locked down), no, generally people are honest and respect other people and their property. Our brain might even go as far as to justifying the disappearance of such an item in that perhaps this new immigrant who doesn’t speak the language, fled a war-torn country, is working this menial job just to put food on the table, and that perhaps if they’re able to get a few more dollars for my materialism, they could probably buy some warm winter clothing for their children…. or something along those lines.

If you truly let the brain run wild down certain lines, you can quickly find yourself out to hate everyone, or out to pity everyone including yourself… and this really doesn’t do anyone any good. On the other hand, it is important to remember that other people don’t always suck. Not everyone is out to rip you off by stealing your stuff. Not everyone has an over-inflated sense of entitlement, and not everyone deserves to be suspected of stealing something before anything has even happened, or before you even know whether or not you’re even at a loss. Sure, there are jerks on the public transit every morning and every night with the previously mentioned over-inflated sense of entitlement, but there are also the self-aware people who aren’t about to bang into you with their backpacks, or yell into their phones on a bad connection.

For the most part I beleive that honest and good people far outnumber the ignorant in our society – if you don’t think so, then you could be right, and if you are, then it’s your fault.

General Calixto Garcia (left) and Brig. General William Ludlow, taken during their conference at the time of the landing of the American army, from p. 312 of Harper's Pictorial History of the War with Spain, Vol. II, published by Harper and Brothers in 1899. (another site indicates that it's Garcia on the right and Rowan on the left... dunno - probably stick with Wiki's data)

For whatever reason, Mark Gorman popped into my brain the other day. There is the small possibility that I was seriously deficient in Cajun humor at the time, but it was likely someting else. Mark Gorman is many things, but mainly, he is a minister and a speaker. As an athiest, Mr. Gorman is probably one of the least offensive ministers around – and he’s funny to boot. If you’re into that sort of thing and you haven’t heard him before, I would suggest checking him out – hey, it’s not every day you get a recommendation about a minister from an athiest! On the speaking side of things, Mark has been on the circuit for a number of years and he always has a great message regardless of the topic he’s on.

Many years back I was given a tape of Mark’s from when he did a talk back in the day for a group in the old Amway system. Amway/Quixtar – good/bad – not the point. The point is that many of the large training organizations associated with various MLM’s had/have the resources to bring in some great speakers. The tape in question was ‘A Higher Standard of Excellence‘ in which Mark relayed the article by Elbert Hubbard called ‘A Message to Garcia‘.

Because of various copyrights, I don’t think it would be wise to post the audio from the tape, however, if you have not read ‘A Message to Garcia’, here it is in its entirety complete with a foreword to put it in better context (if you have read/heard it, feel free to skip on down – I have a bit more for you):

A LETTER TO GARCIA
Elbert Hubbard 1856-1915

Foreword

This literary trifle, A Message To Garcia, was written one evening after supper, in a single hour. It was on the 22nd of February, 1899, Washington’s Birthday: we were just going to press with the March Philistine.

The thing leaped hot from my heart, written after a trying day, when I had been endeavoring to train some rather delinquent villagers to abjure the comatose state and get radioactive.

The immediate suggestion, though, came from a little argument over the teacups, when my boy Bert suggested that Rowan was the real hero of the Cuban War. Rowan had gone alone and done the thing – carried the message to Garcia.

It came to me like a flash! Yes, the boy is right, the hero is the man who does his work – who carries the message to Garcia. I got up from the table, and wrote A Message To Garcia.

I thought so little of it that we ran it in the Magazine without a heading. The edition went out, and soon orders began to come for extra copies of the March Philistine, a dozen, fifty, a hundred, and when the American News Company ordered a thousand, I asked one of my helpers which article it was that stirred up the cosmic dust. “It’s the stuff about Garcia,” he said.

The next day a telegram came from George H. Daniels, of the New York Central Railroad thus, “Give price on one hundred thousand Rowan article in pamphlet form – Empire State Express advertisement on back – also how soon can ship.”

I replied giving price, and stated we could supply the pamphlets in two years. Our facilities were small and a hundred thousand booklets looked like an awful undertaking.

The result was that I gave Mr. Daniels permission to reprint the article in his own way. He issued it in booklet form in editions of half a million.

Two or three of these half-million lots were sent out by Mr. Daniels, and in addition the article was reprinted in over two hundred magazines and newspapers. It has been translated into all written languages.

At the time Mr. Daniels was distributing A Message To Garcia, Prince Hilakoff, Director of Russian Railways, was in this country. He was the guest of the New York Central, and made a tour of the country under the personal direction of Mr. Daniels. The Prince saw the little book and was interested in it, more because Mr. Daniels was putting it out in big numbers, probably, than otherwise. In any event, when he got home he had the matter translated into Russian, and a copy of the booklet given to every railroad employee in Russia.

Other countries then took it up, and from Russia it passed into Germany, France, Spain, Turkey, Hindustan and China.

During the war between Russia and Japan, every Russian soldier who went to the front was given a copy of A Message To Garcia. The Japanese, finding the booklets in possession of the Russian prisoners, concluded it must be a good thing, and accordingly translated it into Japanese. And on an order of the Mikado, a copy was given to every man in the employ of the Japanese Government, soldier or civilian.

Over forty million copies of A Message To Garcia have been printed. This is said to be a larger circulation than any other literary venture has ever attained during the lifetime of an author, in all history – thanks to a series of lucky accidents.

A LETTER TO GARCIA

In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion.

When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba–no one knew where. No mail or telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his co-operation, and quickly.

What to do!

Some one said to the President, “There is a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can.”

Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How the “fellow by the name of Rowan” took the letter, sealed it up in an oil skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia–are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail. The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, “Where is he at?”

By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing — “Carry a message to Garcia.”

General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias. No man who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man–the inability or willingness to concentrate on a thing and do it.

Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook or threat he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant.

You reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office–six clerks are within call. Summon any one and make this request: “Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio.”

Will the clerk say, “Yes, sir,” and go do the task? On your life he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye and ask one or more of the following questions:

• Who was he?
• Which encyclopedia?
• Where is the encyclopedia?
• I was hired for that?
• Don’t you mean Bismarck?
• What’s the matter with Charlie doing it?
• Is he dead?
• Is there any hurry?
• Sha’n't I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself?
• What do you want to know for?

And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him to try to find Garcia–and then come back and tell you there is no such man. Of course, I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average I will not. Now, if you are wise, you will not bother to explain to your “assistant” that Correggio is indexed under Cs, not in the Ks, but you will smile very sweetly and say, “Never mind,” and go look it up yourself.

And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift–these are the things that put Socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all?

A first mate with knotted club seems necessary: and the dread of getting the “bounce” Saturday night holds many a worker in his place. Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate–and do not think it necessary to.

Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?

You see that bookkeeper, said the foreman to me in a large factory. “Yes; what about him?”

Well, he’s a fine accountant, but if I’d send him uptown on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and on the other hand, might stop at four saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street would forget what he had been sent for.

Can such a man be trusted to carry a message to Garcia?

We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the “downtrodden denizens of the sweat-shop” and the “homeless wanderer searching for honest employment,” and with it all often go many hard words for the men in power. Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne’er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long, patient striving after “help” that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on.

The employer is constantly sending away “help” that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues: only, if times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer –but out and forever out the incompetent and unworthy go. It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best–those who can carry a message to Garcia.

I know of one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to anyone else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress him. He cannot give orders, and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would be, “Take it yourself!”

Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular firebrand and discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled Number Nine boot.

Of course, I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in our pitying let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold in line dowdy indifference, slipshod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry and homeless.

Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds–the man who, against great odds, has directed the efforts of others, and, having succeeded, there’s nothing in it but bare board and clothes.

I have carried a dinner-pail and worked for day’s wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and all employers are not rapacious and high handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous. My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the “boss” is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets “laid off,” nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long, anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted. He is wanted in every city, town and village–in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such: he is needed and needed badly–the man who can “Carry a Message to Garcia.”

Pretty good, isn’t it?

After doing some digging, I found that the story of Colonel Andrew Summers Rowan was turned into a movie twice (1916 silent & 1936 talkie), and that Hubbard died during the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. Although Rowan didn’t ask many questions about his mission, there are a few of us who have questions about how Rowan was able to pull off the mission, and so I give you, from Foundations Magazine:

How I Carried The Message to Garcia – by Colonel Andrew Summers Rowan

Enjoy.

“Here you pass me by with barely a glance, absorbed in your own world, passing judgement based on what you see – not what you know. You don’t know me. You don’t know the life I’ve led, or the choices I’ve made. I’ve made decisions – some of them were good, and some of them bad. Have I not paid the price for my decisions? My actions? Do I not wish that I could go back and change the past? Deep inside, you know how close you came to being where I am today, yet I am the one here, not there amongst you. You are quick to judge me, but let me ask you: Would you even try to help if I asked?”

And Failure simply lay there, with nothing to say.

“By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.”

Last week, Robert Hruzek wrote a great post on Where’s Your Focus? where he told the story about a flight with only one engine. The point to his analogy was about not focusing on the engine that wasn’t working, but focus on the one that was! Or rather, where are you focusing in your life – on the things that aren’t working, or the things that are?

This particular analogy got me thinking, and although I agree with not focusing on that which isn’t working, my brain decided to take it one step further in that focusing on the engine that is working is of no use either…

On a plane with one engine working, and one that is not, as a passenger there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it. If you’re looking out the window at the engine that is working, there is nothing you can do to keep it working and there is nothing you can do if it happens to stop working..

If we shift our point of view to the pilots of this particular flight, their focus was directed at the engine having troubles, a decision (to shut it down) was made, and their focus then shifted to the one that was working to ensure that it was OK. Once it was determined that the engine was functioning properly and that they could land with only a single engine (planes are built this way – well, the good ones anyways), there was nothing more that could be done there and so their focus shifted once again. It shifted this time to their clients (passengers) with the intention of letting them know what was happening, and that they need not be alarmed when they saw the bad engine shut down. Once the passengers had been updated and reassured that they wouldn’t be creating a large hole in the ground in the very near future, the pilot’s focus shifted yet again to the things that could be controlled.

I agree with Bob that focus needs to be moved away from the things that aren’t working in our lives, however, to take it just one step further, things that ARE working simply need to be recognized and our focus needs to be directed to the things that we can control (or influence) to keep things working.

As a passenger on that flight, focusing on either engine really serves no purpose at all simply because there is nothing you can do about either one. Nobody is going to come running back from the flight deck and ask you to focus on the working engine in order to keep it running for them.

So what can we focus on that we can have control or influence over? Well, in this particular situation, we can focus on our own emotions over the situation. We can keep ourselves from freaking out and adversely affecting others around us. We can focus on helping our fellow passengers who don’t understand the fact that the flight is still ‘safe’ by explaining that planes are designed so that landing can be accomplished with only one engine. There are always things we can do in situations where our focus can be of benefit, even when the main issue is out of our control.

Don’t focus on the things you can’t control – focus on the things you can!

Photo by zerega

Although a very nicely designed clock, I wonder if the world really needs it.

Yes, yes, it brings awareness to the problems in the world, however, that is just my issue! At what point do we stop focusing on the problems and start focusing on the solutions?

Every single person that goes and views the clock comes away a little depressed. Those who don’t must be able to look at the 2% of the content (Births) and feel good that there are more babies in the world. (?!) That’s right, out of 50 items tracked, 2% is actually considered POSITIVE while the remaining 98% is decidedly (and intended to be) NEGATIVE.

I find myself asking the question: Why so much time on a downer, and not an upper?

Could a clock not have been created that shows (for example):

1. Cancers Cured
2. Diabetes Now Managed
3. Swimming Lessons Taken
4. Sought Help Rather Than Killing Themselves
5. Condoms in Use
6. Little Malaria Pills Taken
7. Acres of Improved Agriculture
8. Species Discovered

And the list goes on. Yes, I do hear the arguments welling up inside about the fact that we must draw attention to these problems in the world, and yes, I do agree that more people should know what is going on around them, but is this the way? In order to solve the challenge, do we focus our attention on the challenge, or do we focus on the solution? We know what the challenge is and we know why it is a challenge, yet where is the progress meter?

Changes in the world and changes for the better are happening constantly, and not by accident. We are aware of cancer, suicides, extinction, and leprosy and yes, there are numbers to go with them – heck, absolutely anything can be tracked, yet are these the numbers we want to be tracking?

Should we track the number of times you didn’t tell your significant other that you love them, or do we track the number of times you did?

Should we track the number of times you didn’t simply smile and say ‘Thank you’ when offered a compliment, or do we track the number of times you did?

Should we track your selfish acts, or your generous acts?

Should we track the bad things about your life, or the good things? What? The good things?! But if we take the bad stuff, make it into a fancy clock, and put it on the internet, surely it must be a good thing, right? It will make people more aware of the problems in your life, the number of incidents so far this year/month/week/day, and we can just watch the numbers grow! Won’t the world THEN be a better place? Oh, it won’t? Huh…

So then why do we accept the double-standard? The reality is that they are just simply numbers and we are the ones who are attaching meaning to them. If there was a number below ‘Cardiovascular Diseases’ that was increasing at a faster rate and was labeled “Cured Cardiovascular Diseases’, would we not attach a different meaning? The challenge is that there is no comparative information given, and the engineered meaning is that this clock is bad – fascinating – yet bad.

“Engineered Meaning”, in the negative sense, is quite possibly the worst thing going. It relies on speculation, and the general pessimism of society to attach meaning where there ought not to be any.

Take for example, a police car going down the street with it’s lights flashing. For most, the first reaction and meaning would be that something bad has happened and the police are responding. Could be an accident, a robbery, a domestic disturbance – whatever. Now it could be possible that that particular car is racing ahead to the next intersection to stop traffic to let the charity marathon pass through… All that happened is that a police car went by with it’s lights on – what we attach as the meaning is entirely up to us.

When we look at the clock, right now (as of my “now” when writing this), there were 700 injuries due to fire. So, is that good or bad? Well, bad if you’re one of the 700, yet good if you’re number 701 and the number is down from it’s usual 710.

Without comparative data, the numbers provided in the clock are simply that – numbers – no more, no less. With engineered meaning however, they have been selected so that the majority of the population will look at them and attach negative meaning. There is no comparative information to state facts that “yes these are bad numbers because they are up from last year” – no, they are just numbers.

Be careful what you attach meaning to and make sure it is indeed YOUR meaning… it affects how you view the world around you.

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