How to Make a Living…

What does that even mean? How does one “make” a living? Doesn’t living just happen on it’s own, and the way in which we invest our limited time on this planet define how we perceive not only ourselves, but how people perceive us?

Self satisfaction isn’t necessarily tied to what we are seem as skilled doing.. Now, conversely, anything can be manifested as an art form so long as we spend so much time doing it that the actual core principles become automatic, and we start to add artistic flair in order to continue to stay actively engaged with the tasks. Take this street vendor as an example. His hours of practice have evolved into a passion for flair

As we continue into the new millennium, how we make a living only becomes more flexible and varied in its choices. We can operate an online store, delivering products from Thailand directly to other westerners without the products even touching our hands.. we can sell ideas: ebooks and online courses that teach others how to live healthier, more productive lives.. even informing others how to follow our footsteps and to become entrepreneurs themselves!

Setting our own hours lets us take even more control of the ship that is our lives. By taking responsibility of “paying” for our own space in the world, it only serves to strengthen and further boost self confidence and lessen anxiety. In fact, even those who supplement their normal jobs “working for the man” with part time endeavors can often build a platform that provides a slowly growing and stable business.. so that once it’s stable enough, and generating enough income, they can “jump ship” and work for themselves full time!

So, perhaps you’re now chomping at the bit.. “How do I get started?” you’re saying.. “What’s the first step?”

Now as alluring as all this sounds, know that most people don’t embark on this process without encountering, and conquering, fear.  It’ll seem insurmountable at first, and when you think you’ve finally knocked it out cold and persevered, you’ll find it lurking in the darkest corners of your success, where you least expected it to be. Don’t worry. This is normal, and how you continue to fight fear, and past it, is what will continue to fuel your passion and your ideas.

Start with Chris Guillebeau’s $100 Startup, and go from there.. There’s plenty of other resources, plenty of which you can search out yourself.. or you can comment below and we can discuss it right in the comments. I’m eager to see the fruits of your labor, and what your potential will produce!

And yes.. vlogs are finally back, as is the warmer weather. Enjoy!

 

Connections

The digital world facilitates connections. Someone half a planet away can quite easily find you if you’re both somewhat public about announcing your mutual interest in a shared topic. New tools, platforms, services.. They all exist to make these connections easier, automated, and more transparent.

Yet they all facilitate virtual space. Even those that promote shared activities like hiking or running groups can also be host to dozens of participants that live too far away from each other to make actual “meat space” connection either impossible, financially improbable, or inconvenient. As the rarity of the time we spend with others in physical space, the more valuable that interaction becomes. Or it should…Yet the majority of social situations are rife with faces illuminated by handheld devices.. Each connected device is a fully user dictated portal to access specifically controlled content. No matter what physical space we inhabit, we can retreat into this screen and have total control – Any lull in the conversation, any discomfort.. All addressed by handheld escape.

What only exacerbates this situation even more is the specialized content that is available through mobile screens. Since it has such complete penetration in the developed world, the social rules that surround it make it a fairly acceptable activity.. Or at very least silently tolerated by all but the most outspoken pundits in most situations that might be much less flexible with other activities.

Of course, everything above that I’ve written is common sense, but still helps set the scene, to illustrate the new “norm” that’s taken hold in as little as maybe 8 or so years…Most of my content always comes back to self control, moderation, balance… Human beings as a species, especially in 1st world countries and civilizations are always seeking the route of minimal effort.. By not being challenged by basic elements of survival, we tend to create alternative stresses and still want to spend considerable time escaping those artificial situations.

The more time I spend away from other people, the more excuses I’m make to continue to hermit away. Perhaps it’s because my job can be easily accomplished from anywhere with a laptop, but I have to physically force myself to get outside, to get in front of people.  The real kicker is that when I do I realize how much I missed it. How much I need it, how much I thrive in the interaction.

Tonight I had a drink with an old friend. Our parents were social when we were kids, we went to high school together (albeit a year apart, and so there was less academic social mixing)  As we sat and chatted about various tech solutions, and what we’ve been up to for the last decade or so, it was refreshing to be spending time discussing the human element within all these faceless services, tools, and ideas. We didn’t pull out a device once.. And it was glorious!

It’s prompted this rant, and only motivated my writing anew. I have committed to engage in something similar at least once a day, whether it’s seeing my folks, or talking to a stranger at the bus stop.

Try it. Keep your phone in your pocket and say hi to someone new, or make plans to have coffee with an old friend you haven’t seen in ages: you’ll thank me for the suggestion, and perhaps feel as rejuvenated as I do!

Changes

So it’s confession time. I’ve not been sitting for a couple months now, since getting to my new apartment. I’m definitely missing the positive effects it carries with it, but I still find it incredibly easy to procrastinate even taking ten minutes to myself to just breathe.  For someone like me who is such a fervent supporter of meditation, and a champion of just how many areas of life it changes for the better, I’m almost scared to get back into it again.

Now I’ve written about fear before, but I’ve never experienced it like this. The last few months have led to increased anxiety; what’s the solution? Medication? Moving to Thailand and selling coconuts on the beach? I’ve been looking for answers in all the wrong places: I can easily admit that it’s a common behavior for me.. I’ve been doing it most of my adult life. In fact, it’s become so ingrained that I often find myself following patterns and behaviors where I am in complete awareness of the impending negative outcome.

Am I along for an oblivious ride? Not even.. I am fully  cognizant of the destination to which I am headed. Despite common sense weighing in, prompting me to turn the wheel.. nothing happens. I’ve been trying to understand this repetitive process, perhaps looking for the easy way out, how to stop getting in that car in the first place. There’s a few things that I have identified (and continuing with the automobile imagery)

1. I take some modicum of comfort in the familiarity of the destination. I’ve been there before, and it’s actually an easy, self-fulfilling process
2. Steering the car in a healthier direction becomes harder and harder as the journey and time spent in the car increase
3. Identifying this pattern before it begins, stopping myself from even getting into the car, would probably be the best decision in avoiding these scenarios in the future, but this doesn’t effect any current travels I’m still undertaking
4. A general sense of self-approval and internal gratification model is woefully absent from my psyche. While this sort of thing is not uncommon (as humans, we all wax and wane on the happiness scale: some controllable, some inevitable), I feel like introducing one at this stage would require far more resources than I have available.
5. I’m more used to failure than I am success. In fact, so much so that I often sabotage efforts before they begin. Am I afraid, not of change, but of happiness? What on earth has convinced me of something so foolish? (Bit of an epiphany here. Blinking back tears)

There may be more to add, but I’ll stop there so I can continue with my train of thought. Now despite all the history listed above, I don’t live entirely obliviously, without any effort to break the pattern. If you’ve read anything else I’ve posted, you’ll already be acutely aware. I will admit here that perchance I might not work on it as dilligently as I should, or put in the energy and focus that is required to clear results. And here’s a further obstacle pointing to that portion: When I decide to actually implement a positive change in any area, including this one, I am ridiculously inflexible, unbending..there can be no room for error. Obviously this self-imposed stress only exacerbates the situation and I abandon any beneficial changes almost right away

So what now? Where do I go from here? I think I’ve identified a number of things in this post that could use attention. Most of them I’ve known about for awhile, yet there were some revelations as well. I’ll post a follow-up in a couple weeks with updates and (hopefully) a strategy

Headspace

I’m often asked how to approach meditation.

Well there isn’t much to it. Sit, breathe, repeat.

Yet in our hectic society, the very action.. (or inaction, so to speak!) of turning off our minds can be quite challenging. Naturally there’s a number of books out there worth reading, and I’ll go into those in another post.

This one is all about Andy Puddincombe. A Brit who gave up his studies to become a monk, he eventually returned home to set up a clinic to promote mindfulness..

This eventually became Headspace, and helps anyone get into a meditative, mindful practice for 10 minutes a day.

While I’ll be linking my daily vlog at the bottom that accompanies this short post, I’ll fist embed Andy’s “virally popular” TED Talk.

Now mindfulness is something that’s received immense attention in the western world, and it’s only increasing.

Granted Google is a global “product” or service, but it seems most of it’s use in the more developed cultures who are often less in touch with their spiritual identities. I don’t intend this to be a discourse on religion, but on spiritual behavior, which I think transcends all faiths. In fact, searches for meditation using the search engine have climbed dramatically since 2004.

I am, for one, immensely excited to see where this trend takes us. While I got into mindfulness and meditation a bit late in the game, I do feel that I was able to get in right as the wave as started to crest.

I’ve often maintained that genuine, personal, spiritual connections with ourselves and with a similar respect for thah headspace in each other has been missing and vitally important in western urban environments.. We all live in a very dense physical space: mindfulness provides a key for coping and identifying as healthy individuals.

Little Things

When you’re in a bit of a funk, or surrounded with a dark fog, finding that first step to bring yourself back out is often challenging, if not wholly insurmountable.

It’s easy to overwhelm ourselves with a massive list that sets ourselves up for failure before we even begin. While it seems like an optimistic goal in the moment, it’s effectively sabotage.

What we need is the linchpin (Word of the day?) that starts the ball rolling.. We need a single habit that is simple and easy to execute.

For you it might be letting your dog out into the yard, turning on the coffee machine, or meditating. For me it’s sitting up the moment my eyes open, and stretching, getting the blood flowing, so that I don’t lie back down and procrastinate.

Then I follow it up with a number of other small habits, each taking less than 5-10 minutes. This process is known as stacking, and is much more effective for creative positive habits, as each builds on the success of the last.. and since each one is tremendously easy to accomplish, you feel great for finishing each one!

I like to further build on this process by ensuring that most of these rituals creates some small instance of joy or happiness. For example, making the bed; takes under a minute, but provides a welcoming environment for me to collapse into at the end of a hard day. I also fill a bottle with some slices of lemon and filtered water… This give me an excuse to be mindful each time I take a sip throughout the day, keeping me positive and healthy.

So what are your “little things”? What gets you up in the morning and puts you in a great mind frame? I’d love to hear from you!!

Guided Assistance

I returned to Canada from a trip overseas for a family funeral, elated and awoken, like I was being reborn. A few days before I left, I started to sit daily again. Today marks the 17th day in a row that I’ve sat on the mat, and is the longest daily streak. One of the techniques that I have employed that has allowed me to reach this ongoing goal is to not employ any one technique.

Instead of creating a strict time period to spend on the mat, or to practice a single doctrine or “established Buddhist path” (such as Zen, Vipanassa, and so on) I’ve just made it a priority to sit daily. While in the UK, I experimented with counting breaths using a Zen Mala, a gift from an old friend who returned from Korea, and his own family funeral, discovering that a 20 minute session is approximately 160 breaths. This awareness now allows me to meter my sessions without having to rely on a mechanical or electrical timer. My sessions were also almost exclusively late evening sits just before midnight.

Since my return, I’m back to morning sits, and today, I experimented with a guided meditation. This ~25 minute audio session takes the listener through relaxing their entire body, one piece at a time. While it instructed the listener to lie down for the session, I elected to sit Burmese on my zafu, as is my normal posture.

By the end of the session, I was truly present, mindful, and extremely relaxed. I also felt connected with myself, and with the world. Confidence is but a side effect of being present, and I’m pleased with the results. I plan on repeating this guided audio journey a few times a week to see if it cultivates a laid back, broader awareness not only during my “regular” zazen sessions, but also in the rest of my life.. I hope to recognize my discomfort in my anger, sadness, stress, basically “caught” a state of “reactivity”.. There’s something that feels off..

Our minds have a natural pull towards mindfulness and peace, but we’ve taught ourselves to accept this reactive state, that it’s normal to dwell and overthink this feeling of disquietude. Yet the more we sit, the more we actively train ourselves to relax and to become mindful, the more we recognize how alien this philosophy is, and how unhealthy our vibrations are as we stew in this discomfort.

I’m sharing the guided meditation with you now, as a public Dropbox link. Unfortunately I found it quite by accident, and have no one to credit for the file. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.. It will give many of you a way to sit for almost 30 minutes, perhaps impossible to imagine, or achieve, without months of practice and training.

If it helps even just for today, please share it, and this post, with others, so we may elevate our consciousness as a whole, and eschew the “normalcy” of living in stress, fear, and anger. Live in the now, not in the past or future. Nothing is certain, nothing is written. All you have is Right. Now.

Getting back on the horse

I sat on the cushion this morning, and my 10 minutes was up in the blink of an eye. I was a little astounded as to how thirsty I was for some sitting practice, but looking back, I was even more shocked to see that its been over 6 weeks since I spent any time meditating.

No wonder I’ve been overly anxious and my path towards my goals clouded.

Diligence is essential to progress. Goals remain dreams without forward momentum, and can actually cause more stagnation when they don’t instigate completions.

After seeing my mentor last week, I was pleased to hear that he believes we actually exist as a co-mentor dynamic: that as I learn, he too benefits from the conversations similarly.

If you don’t have someone like this in your own life, seek them out, or be open should they present themselves to you. The relationship is worth the investment of honesty and trust.

Crossroads

While we make decisions on a daily basis, some have more “weight” than others. Really, it’s all about the depth and brevity of the consequences. Choosing between chicken and fish is pretty trivial, whereas choosing to go back to school or to quit a job is a bit more serious.

The choices we make can define us, just as choosing not to make a decision can be equally limiting on our personal journey.  Recently I’ve joined a think tank of men and women from different physical and intellectual disciplines.

They humble me with every word, not purposefully, but because they are so passionate, so fanatical, about their discoveries. It excites me to be part of their small group. I am contributing more as a disciple, or a scribe, by helping to organize their concepts, thoughts, and research through a wonderful collaborative online tool called Quip).

One of their number is Kita Szpak, a “Happiness Expert”: a motivational speaker and author. She and I have connected on a level where she is coaching me to listen to my inner voice, to have confidence in making postive changes. She has taught me that the fear that holds us back from realizing our dreams is one of the most crippling emotional states we can become trapped in. Anything that falls outside the “normal” way of doing things, living, behaving, is not only seen as truant, but also as undesirable: this only causes us to fuel our fears with our own doubts, eroding our self worth.

These thoughts have spurred something interesting for me.. Almost everyone is always  at a crossroad. At the back of our minds, is a split in the proverbial road of life. What’s so conflicting about this decision is that we feel that by neglecting to make any sort of choice, that we’ll always have the eventual option to do so; like we’re waiting for something to push us down one of the paths.

But not making any decision is even worse than making mistakes: there’s no lessons without change

Without choice, there is no direction, by standing at this crossroads eternally, we waste our lives always wondering “What if?” Now I’m not necessarily condoning selling all your possessions and moving to a monastery in Tibet, but start prioritizing your dreams.. If you need to prepare yourself, physically, mentally, emotionally, in order to be more successful when you do leap, then do that! Work on improving yourself, your life condition: when you look back, you won’t see your decision to change being when you actually chose to take that leap.. You’ll see that first step as the true agent of change.

Channeling

Living in the city isn’t easy for many. At least not those who crave some quiet solitude.

We often yearn for some “downtime” spent at a familiar cottage, or even desperately feel a burning connection to a photograph or painting of a place that elicits the promise of an immediate sense of calm.

Yet that very craving we feel can be refocused and turned into something positive, versus a tight, uncomfortable frustration.

The next time you feel the need to be somewhere else, you just need to channel it.

Close your eyes and see the immediate area around you. See familiar details, or create objects that you personally connect to as relaxing.

Now here’s where the magic happens..

Recall a time you were in a similar space.. Remember what it sounded like, the temperature of a soft breeze against your exposed skin, the scents and smells that breeze carried..

Recreating these details (especially the senses other than sight) has been proven to elicit a strong memory, making it easier to return there in our minds.

Now that your brain has recreated a memory where you are in a space of calm and tranquility, drink it in. Breathe deeply, and picture that breath as filling you up with peace.. Hold it, and enjoy this feeling, let it spread through your whole body, all the way to your fingertips.. Imagine it replacing all the stress and frustration. Now, as you forcefully breathe out, imagine all those unwanted feelings leave with the stale air.

The more you repeat this habit, the better you’ll become at it. Also, next time you are somewhere where you truly feel relaxed, be really aware of how all your senses are being stimulated.  Being mindful in these situations not only wrings the most out of it in the moment, but makes it easier to recall and reap its benefits in the future

Active relaxation

in a few weeks, I’ll be moving out of the city. I need to breathe, I need to relax… Over the last couple months, upon actively taking stock of my general well-being, I usually find considerable tightness in my shoulders, neck, and face. Consciously releasing this energy can be achieved in a few ways, depending on how much time and space is available

1) Actively relaxing each body part.

This might sound obvious, but I find that I often have to tell myself to relax each part two or three times before it’s completely loose. This is the result of unconsciously setting our base level much higher than it should be. It’s surprising just how much stress we can carry around on a daily basis, completely unaware

2) Take deep breaths

Start inhaling into the belly, and once it fills up, keep inhaling, lifting and expanding the diaphragm. Hold it for a fraction of a second, letting it absorb the negative energy in your chest and shoulders. As you release it, measure it out evenly and consciously, feeling the stress leave your body. Color visualization further enhances the beneficial effects of this exercise: imagine your breath in as a cooling blue color, and the breath out as a warm red.

3) Stretching

This one takes a bit more time and space, and be very diligent that you do not rush! If you don’t have time for a full stretch, try massaging your face, especially your upper brows and eyes. This quickly produces a rush of relaxation. IF you do have fifteen minutes and a space where you feel comfortable, go through each body part mentally as in activity 1, and identify your problem areas. No need to do any formal movements.. just experiment moving then slowly and purposefully: once you feel a stretch, hold it there for up the 20 seconds. If it feels like it could use longer, either increase the stretch and/or hold it for an extra 10-15 seconds.

As you’ve read through these simple activities, I trust you’ve noticed a similar thread among them. Take your time. It’s your life, your schedule. It’s so easy to move from one responsibility to another without looking after our own well-being. Trying to just be actively aware of our needs and energy will create a daily habit to check in with ourselves, giving us each the impetus to take the time to relax