Sharing

I have started reading "What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption" by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers. I am through the intro and the book focuses on the rise in Collaborative Consumption. Collaborative Consumption from what I can tell are 3 things:

1. Sharing something you own

2. Sharing something owned by an organization (company, communal)

3. Swapping of something you own for something similar via barter or to give it away completely

4. Collaborative Lifestyles – Which I have no idea what it is yet, so I will update once I figure it out

Key attributes to the shared item is:

A. That it sits idle for the majority of the time when owned by one.

B. Required by a diversity of people periodically. (the book calls it Critical Mass)

C. Trust that what you share is returned in a similar state or will be replaced if damaged

D. Is expensive or wasteful to purchase/maintain. (optional, but makes it economically easier for those wanting some $ for their sharing)

So far pretty common sense, but laid out in a nice narrative with good examples. Additionally the book states that for Collaborative Consumption to work you need belief in the commons which I will talk about once I get to it. Look forward to updating this in a week or so when I finish the book.

US Healthcare System Comparison

Halfway through Frontline: Sick Around the World. Reviewed 4 other healthcare systems besides the US. Seen UK, Japan, Germany. USA ranks 37 in healthcare from the World Health Organization in terms of quality and fairness.

1) Healthcare designed to be used frequently end up keeping people healthier and are lower in total costs for government per capita and end-users. They lower cost by market forces through increasing supply of users or through government regulation causing lower prices which increases supply. This eliminates or significant reduces profits for healthcare insurance companies, however administrators and doctors can still be well paid while investors lose an industry to invest in. Japan at the time had taken price regulation to the extreme ($10 hospital stays, $5 to stich a 3 inch wound) to the point where 50% of their hospitals were in serious debt instead of breaking even. At the time of the film they were going to increase prices so hospitals could break even.

2) In other countries the majority believe that the healthy and employed should take care of the sick and unemployed. I can reinforce this with my time in France, Italy and Peru. This means people do not go bankrupt from paying for healthcare.

My Spiritual Signposts

I have beat around the bush regarding my spirituality in this blog and have talked to a lot of topics around it. I had fear about posting my spiritual beliefs as I was unsure of those beliefs at the time. In reality I still have uncertainty and do not have all the answers for my path in spirtuality which I will endeavor to explore and answer in my own time, but this is what works for me. I'll discuss what exactly works for me means in my next post.

1) Surrender and forgive every situation, every person and everything every second of the day. Life is, I am, You are. From this surrender and forgiveness find inner peace. Good and bad are filters we as mankind put on everything. Reach the state of inner peace and then take action.

2) Do not seek salvation in the future nor in the past. Salvation is living the present moment of life to the fullest as it is the only thing which exists in any moment in time. To do this make sure the mental hamster is turned off and focus on the task you are doing no matter how mundane and boring you may perceive it to be and give it your full attention. Salvation is not a monumental task, but is a simple feat that is inherent in all mankind always, we simply veil ourselves to it.

3) A collorary of 1 and 2. Joy is conciousness and conciousness is internal and eternal. It depends on nothing external. No external action, approval, activity, assignment and label. A concious homeless man can have equal joy and spirituality to a concious Bill Gates. A concious criminal can have equal joy and spirituality to a concious Barack Obama. Everything else in life is external and temporary/changing. Find and be the eternal and internal peace and joy. Respect and appreciate the external, but do not tie your joy and peace to it.

Until next post!

Physical Pillar of Happiness: 2000 calorie or less per day

I decided to mix it up and take a break from the spiritual postings. One of my key pillars to a happy life is eating a 2000 calorie or less per day diet. I would like to amend this to also include eating a diet that contains my daily nutrient requirements, is diverse (different foods each day) and has a 30/40/40 structure for fat, carbs and protein.

A good diet contributes just as much if not more so to healthy living than exercise and is pretty equal to sleep. It's all about harmony and balance. By keeping my meals balanced I feel emotionally and mentally balanced. I perform better and it is easier to access my spiritual side. By not eating a good meal the body and mind is tired and I am unable to keep my focus. This causes me to fall into bad thinking habits and emotional viscious cycles which further promote bad diet.

Until next time, eat healthy and harmoniously

Why I neglected my spiritual side part 3

Continuing on my previous post I will explore a couple more reasons why I neglected my spiritual aspect. As I type this post I noticed there was more I had to say and there will likely be a part 3. As I mentioned before the amount of effort required to attain enlightenment felt greater than the return I would receive. Also I did not know what the return possibility was. Now that I have a taste of what enlightened thinking is here’s a couple more reasons why I neglected my spiritual side.

After reaching enlightenment, staying enlightened requires energy and upkeep. A key point many people forget and thus return from an enlightened state of mind back into what many of us consider the regular grind. Enlightenment is not a goal one achieves like a trophy and then puts it on a shelf and can say one has been enlightened. It’s a continuous way of life which at first requires much effort until it is a regular habit, like working out. One doesn’t magically one day say “I am in shape” you’ll stay in shape forever. It takes upkeep of good diet, healthy living and exercise to stay in shape. This upkeep requires a conscious acknowledgement that enlightenment is not a goal that is achieved, but is a lifestyle change which requires much energy.

It requires more upkeep then mental, physical and social aspects and perhaps the human mind is not naturally wired that way. Social and physical is fun, mental is fun. Perhaps it is more that not enough of us have found spiritual joy and therefore do not and cannot put a heavier emphasis on it than social and physical pleasures of life, however temporary.

Why I neglected my spiritual side?

Before getting into detail about how I practice and view spirituality, I wanted to blog about a couple reasons why I had neglected the spiritual side of life until now. As I wrote this blog I realized I had much more to say about this and have split it into 2 parts.

If you knew me from 2001 to 2008 you would know my world was driven purely by results. I sought out return on every activity I performed. I was in college in 2001 and in that point in my life the return for getting a degree and good grades was a good paying job. So I slaved away to complete my bachelors in 3 years in order to get the good job. In my mind the spiritual aspect did not even enter my life. As I reflect and learn from the past I see the 1 key reason the spiritual did not enter my life and 1 key reason that even if spirituality had entered my life I would have not taken advantage of it.

The first was I did not realize how much there was to gain in life by being my spiritual self. I was caught up in the day to day and not appreciating the beauty everyday life has to offer. It’s like chasing a one dollar bill through a maze without realizing that the walls of the maze itself is made up of billions of dollars free for the taking at any time if one were to just stop and look for it.

The second would be that even if I saw the money on the walls of the maze I thought it would take me too long to be able to get the money into my pocket. The return on investment for spiritual reflection and practice takes much longer than many physical things in life. It is a life-long practice and process. It’s like someone telling you there are huge amounts of money on the walls of the maze, but you can’t see it. They keep telling you to stare and be patient and you’ll see it one day, but you look everyday and you can’t find it. Some spiritual leaders would even say that seeking or desiring a return from spirituality is the exact antithesis of spirituality. They would say to gain a return on spirituality one must have no desire to seek any result, but to appreciate the process that is life and from that to gain enlightenment. My mindset was very results oriented and even if I knew the benefits of spirituality, I would have difficulty in not chasing that 1 dollar bill around the maze.

More discussion on why I neglected my spirituality in a future post. Until then, stare at the wall of your life and try to find the hidden wealth there.

What is Spirituality?!?

Before blogging anything about spirituality I thought it would be worthwhile to give my definition of it. Let me know if you agree or disagree and what you would change or add.

I’ll start the answer to a question with a question. What do you seek in life today? I know many people would list material items, behaviors that they want themselves to perform, goals, better relationships and many externally empirical items. If I were to dig deeper and ask, why do you want these external and empirical answer and continue to ask why like a curious young child does, I would get to the root cause of “this external item will make me happy/at peace/joyful.” Spirituality to me is finding that happiness, peace, and joy internally without the use of external items. The external is ever changing and dynamic.

Proof in this would be if I were to ask the same question “what do you seek in life today?” to the same person in a month after asking the question the first time I would get some similar answers, but also many different ones. The truth of the matter is the external and empirical items we desire are constantly changing like all structures will do. Spirituality is a constant and a great equalizer. Regardless of your personal life situation you always have the ability to find your spirituality. Some environments make it easier and others more difficult, but it is a constant internal capability we always have (unless we are unconscious which I will discuss in another post). We as humans all have the same capacity for spirituality. It may not be recognized, but it is there.

In short, spirituality is finding, practicing and being the inner peace and joy that is within each of us every second of every day. To always being that peace. Until next time, be spiritual!

P.S. Majority of my views and even some words I use in my blog posts come from Buddhism and Eckhart Tolle’s books.

Social Pillar of Happiness: Being Social

By nature human beings are social animals. We survived for millennia by working together in packs and sharing our labor, resources and knowledge. We are hard wired to survive and in order to survive we recognize the need to be in groups. It makes sense that in order for our natural survival instinct to be satisfied we require daily social activities. In the near past it was impossible to survive day to day without human interaction.

Within the last 15 years with the internet revolution many of those human interactions can be skipped for the sake of time efficiency. While we are becoming more and more time efficient, we are exchanging and fighting against out natural instincts. While we have entered into a new state of consciousness as a species, the challenge of a hermit life may still be too much for most of us to bear.

So my recommendation is simple. Do 1 social thing every day for at least an hour outside of work. It can be lunch with a colleague or a happy hour or working out with a friend as long as you do it you’ll satisfy that instinct and it will be that much easier to be conscious and happy in everyday life.

Until next time, be social!

Side Note: If possible, try to be socially inclusive. Unfortunately humanity also developed the instinct to create “others” or the enemy, those not within our group. Conflict first arose out of physical need and hunger uncontrolled by consciousness. This created the concept of “the others” who tried to take “our” food and resources. This has mutated “others” based on the desires of man and not the need of man, both which are follies. So be inclusive and do not create others. We are all living beings together on this planet.

Incompetence

We’ve all known somebody who we could tell was talking out their ass about a topic. They were not knowledgeable about a topic, yet spoke as though they were. I am certain all of us (myself included) have done this whether or not we knew it. I wanted to explore why this behavior occurs and possibly provide a solution to reduce it.

Why do we talk out of our ass? 2 big reasons out of the many I see are an unnecessary desire to impress and we don’t know we are talking out of our ass. The desire to impress is a defect caused by our ego. Our egos seek validation and the satisfaction of being superior to others. True we can be superior in form and knowledge to others, this is of only relative importance. At the end of the day we all have equal consciousness. Without getting any more confusing, I’ll delay this discussion to a future post.

The 2^nd reason we talk out of our ass is that we don’t know we’re doing it. I refer to the Dunning-Kruger effect. In short “You are a novice on a topic. You think you are an expert in it. This is because you are a novice and have little knowledge on the topic and therefore are unable to gauge where you fall on the expertise scale” This happens regardless of the intention of the ass-talker. This makes me think about the popularly held belief that it takes 10,000 hours of activity to become an expert at it so how many of us are incorrectly calling ourselves experts at something after reading a couple internet articles. I even get the sense that even I am talking out my ass a little bit about talking out the ass. To caveat, I am no expert in incompetence even though I may have reached that 10,000 hour mark long ago.

What’s my solution? We can all sense when we begin to talk out of our ass a bit. If you feel the slightest bit uncomfortable about the info you’re giving then be sure to caveat it. Call out ass-talkers, so those who believe them may be better informed. However, do so gently and understanding regardless of the reason why they are doing it. If it’s clear that everyone can see they are full of it, then wait until they are alone, pull them aside and inform them. The goal is to increase knowledge and awareness which can not be done if people just end up annoyed and shouting at one another…until next time.

Mental Pillar of Happiness, Creative Thinking

How does thinking creatively create an environment allowing one to live a happy life?

The majority of humanity is driven by a sense of inadequacy. I do not have enough, I am not enough, I need to do something in order for life to fulfill me. This results in boredom, feelings of routine and nervousness about doing nothing.

This sense of inadequacy is false and the root cause is something internal to each of us. While creative thinking does not solve the root-cause of the inadequacy, it provides strong relief. This relief will improve quality of life, but like any other object is only temporary.

Creating something you normally do not do breaks the routine of everyday life and disrupts the feelings of inadequacy, nervousness and doing nothing. The act of creation requires a level of focus which does not allow us to have the negative feelings mentioned above. I have often heard of people who are performing different acts of creation entering into a realm of focus that they do not have in everyday life. There are no limits with creation. Even if you can not physically make it, mentally you are only constrained by your imagination. However it is important to take the imagined and make it physical, much like taking a dream and making it reality. Only then will you maximize the experience. This will be a little difficult require some discipline to reach initial success, but once you overcome the initial hurdle you’ll find yourself absorbed by creation.

Until next time, create something!

Why is it so hard for me to ask for help?

I have struggled with asking for help my whole life. Asking for help is not my natural mind set. I believe one cause of this is how I studied for my engineering degree.

As an engineering student I often chose to figure things out for myself first and then work with others and provide them solution. It was faster for me to work alone and think through the solution and then share my answers with others to see if it made sense. It benefitted me and those who I checked my solution with. This mode of working was efficient to handle problems which were set up like college homework, especially as I had a heavy workload. Here’s the exact problem and there is indeed a definite answer. By following this mental pattern I became accustomed to not asking for help unless I was stuck and had been stuck for a long period of time.

However, in the workplace and in life issues are not so cut and dry. Team work and help is needed to not only complete the work, but to even define the problem and then to help communicate and spread the message. As I move forward I will try to define a new mental pattern of asking where can people help speed up or improve the quality of the end result. Please post your experiences.

Pillar of Happiness Physical: Sleeping 6-8 hours a night

So why do I value sleep so highly that it is a pillar to happiness?

I struggled with sleep for a period in college. Senior year I was sleeping Monday-Friday 4 to 5 hours a night due to heavy course load and late night 2-3 hour exercise routines and making up for it be sleeping 10-12 hours on the weekend or just sleeping in class. Toward the end of senior year I was beginning to have random nosebleeds and had high blood pressure even though I felt physically fit. My grades began to suffer and I could tell I was not truly learning the material as I had before. Socializing was difficult as I could not keep a level emotional level and did not have the energy to feel empathy. Spiritually I felt like I was everywhere instead of in the present moment. While there were other causes to these issues, if I had slept more the effect of these issues would have been much diminished.

Sleep is the foundation to living an enriched and fulfilled life. While sleep can not guarantee a happy life, it is a critical component in creating an environment for oneself that allows for good and easy living. Lack of sleep effects physical fitness, mental ability, disrupts spiritual peace and makes socializing harder. While there is something to be said about having a little bit less sleep in order to operate better, I will save that for a future blog post.

While different people in different periods of their life will have different sleep requirements, but I think we all have a good sense when we have not slept enough the night before. So please, take care and get the rest needed. You and everyone around you will be happier for it.

Steps to Change

I was originally going to write about metrics, but hit a writer’s roadblock. I decided to talk about the basic steps for engaging in change activity. In my career almost all roles I have played were and still are as a change agent. The ability to see change happen because of direct activities is immensely satisfying as human beings.I recommend we all participate as change agents both in work and also in life regardless of what we do or the lifestyle we lead. The basic steps for change are…

1. Identify the 5 W’s (who, what, where, why, when) to change. The key focus should be on the why, don’t worry about the how, that will come later.

2. Measure the current situation today and create a baseline to see the change from..

3. Using the 5 W’s Set a Goal of Tomorrow including a definite deadline and a measurable goal.

4. Create a plan to reach the goal of tomorrow or the how.

5. Communicate and execute plan to reach the goal of tomorrow including measuring and taking corrective action needed to reach the goal of tomorrow

6. Reach the goal of tomorrow. Celebrate, review and communicate why the goal was successful. Or because deadline passed review why goal of tomorrow was not reached, but still celebrate and communicate the success that was reached and/or the effort that was put forth.

7. Start over from step one. Do not let inertia stop you. (Reference Eli Goldratt, Theory of Constraint).

Same with the Pillars of Happiness I will take about these Steps to Change in detail in future Blog Posts. Please comment about what you think and let me know which step you think people tend to not put enough focus on.

Pillars to a happy life

Pillars
My past 3 blog posts have been about my daily workouts which keep me happy. I thought I would expand on that. What I have below are the pillars I feel create an environment where humans can be at peace and find the happiness inside all of us. I think I will elaborate on each of these points in future blog posts.

Physical
- Working out 30 minutes a day
- Sleeping 6 to 8 hours a night
- Eating a balanced diet of 2000 or less calories, or eating until slightly hungry

Mental (All of these are outside of your regular work day)
- Training the mind for 15 minutes a day. Meditation or some form of brain training (lumosity.com)
- Creative thinking for 15 minutes a day. Writing a blog, painting a picture, creating a food dish. The key is doing an activity which requires out of the box creativity on your part.

Social
- Do something daily involving people you do not see every day (share a meal, grab a coffee, attend a happy hour or networking event) or try something new with people you do see everyday (new restaurant, new bar, different activity or modified activity) for 15 minutes each day

Spiritual
- Train your spirit and find the inner peace inside you for 15 minutes a day.

Part 3: Spiritual Workout

The past 2 days I have talked about 2 of the 3 workouts (physical and mental) I do daily. The final of the 3 workouts I do daily is a spiritual one. This may seem weird to the majority of you, even folks who may identify themselves as spiritual/religious.

Before I talk about what I do for my spiritual workout, I think it’s good if I define spirituality. Spirituality is a tool I use to find my inner peace, awareness and joy. Like the body is a tool used to perform physical tasks and the mind is a tool used to perform thinking tasks spirituality is a tool used to find my inner spirit/peace. I view religious practices and rituals also as tool to help one find inner spirit/peace and they have their place.

So what do I do for my spiritual workout? Right now I am primarily re-reading the Power of Now and Awaken a New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and using them to find my inner peace. I find that his writings help me find my inner spirit/peace much as reading the Bible or Koran help others. As I finish the books and start another re-reading of them I plan to start writing a document about how best I can re-find my inner peace. I may even put together a power point for me to reference like an exercise training plan or my Lumosity training courses. I spend around 15-30 minutes doing this workout.

Finally out of all of the workouts I do that, I know that the spiritual one is the most important to my well being. It is unfortunate in the US society today the focus is heavily on the physical and mental with less focus on the spiritual. Even then some of us regularly skip the physical and use our everyday work as a reason to not have to do the mental even though we know we could use a mental refresher of trying something different.

I guess my key message is that if in the US we spent 1 to 1.5 hours a day out of our busy schedules to exercise, train our thinking to think differently and focused on our spiritual well being we’d better enjoy those remaining 14.5 to 16 hours and lead happier lives.

That’s it for now. I think my next post will be about my pillars to leading a happy life. Until tomorrow, Ciao.

Part 2: Physical Workout

In yesterday's post I posted about my 3 daily workouts. They are Spiritual, Mental and Physical daily workouts. By doing these 3 daily it makes keeping me peaceful and happy a lot easier. While I can be at peace and happy without doing these, it is much harder.

Yesterday's post focused on the mental aspect, today I will focus on the physical. In general the physical workout is a sub-portion of an overall physical well-being regimen which I will talk about in future posts. The physical workout is a daily 30 minute activity or longer. It can be as easy as a 30 minute walk or more intensive such as weight-lifting and swimming. The key is to do it daily and right after waking up. This helps warm up the engine and makes the rest of the day easier.

So remember, daily exercise for 30 minutes right after waking up.

Alex

Keeping the Brain Active

Bringing this blog back hopefully. I took a Lumosity.com brain grade test and it recommended I start writing daily to help further keep my brain healthy. I am a member of Lumosity. It costs $70 a year and gives me access to all their brain training exercises. I have found it worthwhile for 3 reasons

1) I do feel an improvement in my brainy brain capabilities and general mental alertness
2) The courses make it easy to do a brain workout of at least 15 minutes a day
3) The brain workout is a great part of my start of the day spirit, mind, body workout routine (next blog post)

So sign up for Lumosity.com if you feel your brain could use a tune up. And finally I was not paid my Lumosity.com for this post :)

Alex