Too often get get lost in the smaller details of our world, and we focus too much on our own problems, and we do not look at how large and how amazing things really are around us. We forget the great things we can do, that what we do can be great. Everything we do matters, everything we do is important. Anything and anywhere, if looked at close enough is simply magnificent. It is one of those "a butterfly in South America flutters its wings and it results in a hurricane in Asia" type of things. I truly believe doing everything you do as well and as consciously as possible matters, it just does, and it is obvious if you look at the results of small actions in your life. Today's world puts tools that used to be only accessible to large companies or countries into the hands of one person. You have more access to more information and to more tools for creation than anyone else if history, more than Leonrdo Da Vinci, more than Socrates, more than Edison, more than Einstein. It used to be possible to read evey book in the world, there were maybe two hundred. Today, you have tools and knowledge that are simply staggering in power aand scope, and these tools truly are infinte. What are you going to do with it? Problems happen, things go wrong, but don't let what happens limit your world. You have the tools to solve any problem in the world. Make your life a spiderweb of networks of people and options and tools and knowledge. Make sure you use all your tools. Your potential future is infinite and it is filled with multiples of paths, and you should jump from option to option, choosing your own way among an infinite amount of possiblity, making the world better, one piece at a time. We need to be people who are raw pure expression, of pure commitment, of pure being. Action: This week use one tool you have never thought of using. Any. Twitter or a power hammer. They are the same. D I realized that this world is just a series of sunrises and sunsets. And that's it. - David Blaine7/26/2011
“My chief task has been to conquer fear,” he said. “The public sees only the thrill of the accomplished trick; they have no conception of the tortuous preliminary self-training that was necessary to conquer fear.… No one except myself can appreciate how I have to work at this job every single day, never letting up for a moment. I always have on my mind the thought that next year I must do something greater, something more wonderful.” Lucky for me, I didn't suffer from any of those afflictions when I was standing nearly ninety feet above Manhattan on a twenty-two-inch pillar for almost thirty-five hours. In fact, for the first time in my life, I had a clear understanding of the world. I realized that this world is just a series of sunrises and sunsets. And that's it. My Dream Manifesto In order to live a fulfilled life, one must resist the temptations surrounding them: Never overindulge. Have few extravagances. Resist addictions. Respect all life. Remember that a mistake is only a mistake when you fail to learn from it. Accumulate knowledge. Listen. Read. Observe. Visit the ocean. Try to interact with all different types of people from all walks of life. Wonder and be amazed. Love and respect those close to you. Learn to love yourself. Pursue your dreams and goals with passion. Our potential to create is limitless. Mysterious Stranger: A Book of Magic by David Blaine A Few Tips on Negotiating ( from How to be Rich by Felix Dennis)
Remember that few of us are any good at detailed negotiations. That includes your opponent, by the way. • If you are a poor negotiator, like me, then set a limit on what you will pay or accept and on any conditions attached. Do not deviate. Your first thought is your best thought. • Most negotiations are unnecessary. Don’t enter into them. Remember that “the fortress that parleys is already half taken.” Save serious negotiations for serious occasions. • Do your homework. And do it rigorously. What you don’t know or haven’t bothered to find out can kill you in any type of serious negotiation. • Despite my jungle book examples above, the devil really is in the detail in serious negotiations. Get all the professional help you can trust. But do not surrender control of the negotiations or the agenda to such professionals. They are not the ones who will have to live with the consequences—you are. Professional advisors are there to explain and advise, not to decide. • If your advisors are leading you down a path you don’t approve of during your negotiations, call a “time-out” and tell them privately that if they continue along that route you will get yourself some new advisors. The world is full of them. • Never fall in love with the deal. A deal is just a deal. There will always be other deals and other opportunities. • Avoid auctions in business like the plague—unless you are selling something, that is. You will nearly always pay more than is wise if you are the “winner” of an auction process. • The negotiator opposite you is not your new best friend. He is not your partner. He is not your confidant. You have no obligation, outside of ordinary courtesy, to please him or satisfy his demands. He is the enemy. If you do not understand that real winners and real losers emerge from serious negotiations, then you will be robbed, whatever the circumstances. • Take no notice of management manuals that tell you to leave passion and emotion out of the negotiating room. If you are emotional or passionate about something, then let it show. But leaven emotion with courtesy, and, if possible, with wit. If you’re not the witty type, then flattery and self-deprecation are good substitutes. • Listen when engaged in serious negotiations. Then listen some more. You are in no hurry. Nobody ever got poor listening. Also, use silence as a weapon. Silences are disconcerting. People tend to fill silences with jabber, often weakening their bargaining position as they do so. • Choose a rogue element to your advantage and bring it into the negotiation at a late stage. You’ll be amazed at how often this tactic produces results. • The British created the largest geophysical empire in the world with one tactic: divide and rule. It always works. It never fails if you can get to exploit it. Get to know the other side. There may be slight differences in the individual approaches of their senior managers and, possibly, in their goals. Drive a wedge and keep hammering. • Permit no such weaknesses in your own camp. I have often banned senior executives from taking part in negotiations simply to avoid this trap. Better you are in there on your own, outgunned, outflanked and outmaneuvered, than to have two or three of you silently squabbling. • Everyone thinks they are a great negotiator, but most of us simply are not. If it’s your company, then, for better or worse, you are the final arbiter. That remains true whether you are a good negotiator or a bad one. • If you suspect you perform badly on such occasions, do not attend, even if you are the 100 percent owner. Get someone else to do it after setting out your response to every conceivable option that might arise. This tactic can be devastating to the other side, and Peter, Bob and I have used it on many occasions in the past. You have to trust your nominee completely, though. • Above all, establish where the balance of weakness lies in any serious negotiation. Most strengths are self-evident. Hoping is for people who are out of ideas and not listening.
I have read several random things lately that all link together and have me rethinking how to approach each opportunity that comes my way. Ideas are always there, if you look close enough, and listen to others around you. We always have resources left to invest, they may not be resources that we see immediately, but they are there, and they are useful. Find those resources. If you want to make money, the most important principle is to be incredibly helpful. Be useful. Provide something valuable, and people will be eager to support The two most important things you can have is capital and a network: and if you don't have capital, start build the network. - Dan Andrews Great book I have started to read by Isaac Watts who shared his philosophy on understanding the The Improvement of the Mind. Which was written in 1815 toward the end of his life, and it had tremendous influence on generations of students and teachers. It is better to do than to think and by do I mean collect data. It is better to do an experiment than to think about doing an experiment, in the sense that you will learn more from an hour spent doing (e.g., doing an experiment) than from an hour thinking about what to do. - Seth Godin I like John von Neumann’s characterization of this the best, in the following quote, “The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construction which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.”All my writing is basically model-building. Though in my blog and book I don’t use mathematics, my approach is basically the same one I adopt for my mathematical modeling work. - Venkatesh Rao I see now that there are always options, and the key is to create many models, tiny experiments, to see what works, and then double down. D One does feel tremendously, when one is in this beautiful country, that one is part of a larger soul, which embraces everything … It looks as though the amount of good and evil were about the same in the world. I think the good will probably win in the end – though not necessarily, unless the most persistent and tremendous efforts are made … But I’m not a pessimist, and I think it will be all right. I think we shall ultimately work all the disorder into a single principle, which will be an Absolute – but which at present exists only potentially and at the nature of which we can only very dimly guess. aldous huxley The ceiling is high and so are the windows. There, in the soft light streaming down from above, I too washed my face in the clear, knife-cold water of early spring that flowed from the mountains. Seeing the small amount of water in the basin made me feel it was extremely precious. Bending over, I scooped some of it up in my hands, which promptly went numb with cold, and washed my face all at once. It felt as if my skin were being sliced away. Taking in the harshness of the shock, I splashed myself again. The cold, clear water trickled over the contours of my head, quickly evaporating into white steam that rose into the cold air. Eat Sleep Sit : My Year at Japan's Most Rigorous Zen Temple by Kaoru Nonomura, Juliet Winters Carpenter "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones." — Arthur Conan Doyle (A Study in Scarlet) Sometimes you need to take something apart to make it better, either literally of figureitively. Writing notes over and over, taking my ideas and new concepts and breaking them down, I realize I am like Philip Glass, in his music, in that reptition there is power. Taking pieces of thought, taking your thought patterns, taking how you see the world, and then writing pieces down and repeating, and changing elements only slighty, pushing all the possibilities, until you discover the power of the idea, and you learn how slight changes of thought can bring large changes to your life and your concepts. Writing can methodically change how you think, so that you can change how you think. When you understand the concepts of neural plasticity, you know that your brain is not fixed in time, that it can change and will change, and you can control that change. Write down all the possible variants of an idea. Do no editing. Truly explore ideas and concepts, slightly change it each time, and bring the power of repitition to the process, so that you csn start picking what ideas you like, and then reinforce those ideas that you want to internalize. You write about what you want to be, how you want to live, write about what about what you want to become and then explore what it would be like, how it would be to live that way, what you would see, what you would do, how you would be, write until reality starts to match the idea. Writing activates your mind. It is a visualiztion technique that also uses the physical. I like literature because it shows all the possiblities of what a person can be, all the ways to be human, and writing lets you do the same thing. It allows you to see all the possible variations of you, and to see all the possiblity in you. It lets you think and feel and act your way to what you can be. See what you truly think, because most of us do not know ourselves, and we have over time built layer upon layer of persona, which we need to strip away until pure and then rebuild those aspects of persona we choose to be. We build our future selves. "Whatever the source of emotion that drives me to create, I want to give it a form which has some connection with the visible world, even if it is only to wage war on that world....I want my paintings to be able to defend themselves to resist the invader, just as though there were razor blades on all surfaces so no one could touch them without cutting his hands." — Pablo Picasso "He wanted to impart some of the truths Bruce Denton had taught him, that you dont' become a runner by winning a morning workout. The only true way is to marshal the ferocity of your ambition over the course of many days, weeks, months, and (if you could finally come to accept it) years. The Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials. How could he make them understand?" "In mind's special processes, a ten-mile run takes far longer than the 60 minutes reported by a grandfather clock. Such time, in fact, hardly exists at all in the real world; it is all out on the trail somewhere, and you only go back to it when you are out there." — John L. Parker Jr. |
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