Validate Your Life

…and not watching movies. (This is in reference to non-fiction books, btw — and quality reads, not crap).

1. Movies leave you under a spell; an illusory haze so you cannot see. Books give control of the haze others are under.
2. Movies manufacture illusion without you knowing it, while books allow you to choose experience illusion, without decoupling awareness from experience.
3. Books enable to you to explain and teach about illusions and reality, placing you at “cause” instead of at “effect” where you are a victim of illusion. You’re in the driver’s seat reading and writing books.
4. Books clarify and provide understandings. Movies merely create suspence and foreshadowing. Movies are hollow, they foreshadow and build suspense, but they leave you empty with no treasure, no gem. Books have the gem. Books, sure, create suspense, intrigue, and connection. I remember countless “on the edge of my seat” reads of Sherlock Holmes and bawling at the end of Where the Read Fern Grows in early elementary school. And just in 2008, I was completely engaged and in awe of the adventure created by Jules Verne in around the world in 80 days. Those fiction reads provided massive suspense, BUT BUT BUT, unlike movies, the books also provided incredible value and understanding!! I learned so many lessons from those books above. For example, inductive observational skill from Doyle’s book (Sherlock Holmes), the touching experience of pet comraderie (from Where the Red Fern Grows), and the necessity of time, precision, and the cool collected travel making things happen skills of Mr. Fogg from Around the World in 80 days. Because I READ those experiences as books as opposed to watch what was blasted at me with pixels from a movie, I experienced them more wholistically and I acquired the lesson and understanding, with the entertainment and fun of a very absorbing and exciting read!
5. You think more clearly with a book because your brain gets neurological activity firing that is congruent with the logic of the book. Kind of like a “mental-cerebral” version of “if you smile, you’ll feel happy”. If you read a smart book, you’ll think more intelligently. Movies trick and obfuscate intelligence.
6. Books, you have total control over the pace, and “order you read”, movies (unless you fumble with FF and RW buttons, you do not have the same control.
7. Books, your vision is the movie and you are the director; movies lack that customization.
8. Books teach and entertain and create more cohesive thinking; movies, merely entertain with an inkling of “teaching”.
9. Both movies and books inspire, but books provide an inspiration that is more enduring beacuse it is “your own version” of the inspiration.
10. Finally, books don’t need electrical outlets, high-tech dvd players, surround sound and the like. Books are portable; you can bring them anywhere. Laptops are fixing that with movies, but with a book, you use your “built-in” surround sound, imax, widescreen mental imagery vision, which is infinitely more crisp, alive, and exciting than a movie screen.

I’m a former movie junkie (thousands and reruns) and have rediscovered the joy of reading!

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I am not you, and you are not me.  That is the way things are.  I like that.  As you ponder that, let me explain to you why I find tremendous value in that distinction.

Distinctions create boundaries.  Without distinctions, everything would be porous and absorbing this information or that information would generate confusion.  But that confusion is instantly absolved when we utilize distinctions.

There’s a tendency for people with whom I communicate to think that we have some connection, as-if they “know me”.  The way they communicate and the advice they give comes from the perspective of “I know this person in every dimension and in every aspect”.  But then I mention something that I have done that the person with porous distinctions has not done, like ran multiple marathons,  the person shirks back and immediately says “Oh, I couldn’t do that!”.  Instantly their slurring and blurring of our distinctions of you being me, and me being you –gets mutilated when an element of capacity enters the conversation.

You see, as you listen to this closely and intently you realize that intention should govern our behavior (and often it does when we are not being persuaded, manipulated, or under a hypnotic trance by the media), but  many times our perception of capacity limits our behavior.  When I mention to someone actions I have taken that they deem outside of their capacity (for example having written 4 books, or ran multiple marathons, or any other task of which people are incredibly capable of doing, but don’t believe they have that capacity to do so) who has a ruptured their perception of boundaries, what happens in their mind?  First they recoil.  They instantaneously have a thought process of “this person is not whom I thought they were and there exists a distinction in our capacity”.  Such distinctions are good.  Because in many ways, what makes you you, and me me, is our logical levels, which of course, include beliefs, identity, capabilities, and behavior.  If I am talking to you in person, we share the same environment.  That is it.  I’d say environment is roughly 3% of “who I am” and “who you are” at best.   Without logical levels, we are all practically identical twins because our only differences would be blemishes on our epidermal layer of our skin, hair coloration, simple, trivial distinctions bound into the same sequences of deoxyribonucleic acid.  So it’s truly our logical levels that spark this kind of Lamarakian

For awhile in my junior year in college I engaged this belief that we were all this spiritual, interconnected, “Universal One” person.  I enjoyed entertaining that belief because of many reasons.  Reasons for entertaining the “universal one” delusion: (more…)

This article is primarily about the outcome frame: applying it, it’s inherent awesomeness, and connecting up with what you want, need and deserve in life through utilizing the outcome frame.

Picture your life — I’m serious.  Actually do this.  Visualize.  You’ve discarded all your crappy cult of hollywood movies by now, right?  So you have to start to visualize.  Do this. — after everything’s done.

Picture your life after:

• The website is up and completed
• All your sales, all your products are not just available, but there’s a high turnover rate of sales
• Your services are not just available, but business is booming and you have clients.
• Your books are not just finished, but published and selling.
• All those nuisance annoying errands like get the “car’s brakes fixed” and “update xyz” are complete.
• All the loose ends to all projects are complete and filed and finito and done.
• Everything your reading, watching, or listening to from podcast to magazine, to web article to book, to research, to novels to important non-fiction reads you’ve already read high-lighted, taken notes on and fully processed and archived.
• All of your notes are applied triple-synced, archived, and used in your profession.
• You have a consistent health routine and all your health goals are achieved.
• In short, all of your “todos” all of your projects are DONE.  Finito.  Complete.  Total. Comprehensive.  Completion and Victory.
• RAD!!

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