You, Simplified

Sunday Drive Around the Blogosphere

by Charley on March 7, 2010

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I haven’t done a link love-type post for awhile but there’s definitely some cool stuff that I’ve come across lately, some cool eBooks, articles and assorted loveliness.

First things first…I don’t know if there are any long distance runners in the crowd, (looking in your general direction SimplyJo and David Damron) but I find myself very frustrated with my training. This morning was supposed to be a 7 mile run (am training for a full marathon race to be held on May 30th) and I decided that, since this was the first day where temps were supposed to be above freezing, that I’d do it outside.

I know from past years that training outside on the pavement beats the pants of any treadmill training you can do.

And I also admit that I am 30 lbs heavier than I would ideally like to be, 24 lbs from making a serious go at this race without injuring myself. I’m prone to hip pain after runs, rather substantial pain that lingers and affects my ability to walk the following day.

And yes, I’m turning 37 in two weeks so I don’t seem to recover as easily as I used to.

So, anyway, I tried my seven mile run, which I can do on a treadmill. I’m out there with a knit hat, thermal top and bottom, running shorts, good toonage on the IPod and…I crap out after a mile and a quarter. I manager to walk a remaining one and three quarter miles around my “track” to get back home, but man…I don’t know what to do. I am having a helluva time breaking through my running barriers and I only have about 11 weeks left till the race.

For the record, I’ve run two half marathons before, in 2007 and 2009, so I’m not new to the sport, but I am just seriously discouraged with my ability to get it going this year. Now I think I have to jump on the treadmill later just to try to get a good five miles in.

My training program is posted at myradicaltransparency.com if you want to see what I am trying to do. Don’t get too used to that site, I am thinking of porting it over to charleyforness.com. Also note that I missed three and a half weeks of training due to a hip injury and persistent chest cold but I have been running again for the last two weeks

Looking for tips, tricks, good resources on the web and a swift ass-kicking from you other runners if you would be so gracious to share in the comments.

Coolio eBooks:

- File this under the category of, “I should have told you Friday,” but Karol Gajda is a pretty amazing dude. He’s a location-independent entrepreneur who, no disrespect to the young guys who are fresh out of school doing this, has been making money online for the better part of a decade.

He put out an eBook about being location independent including how to fund your new lifestyle by making money online. Called How to Live Anywhere (NOT an affiliate link), the price started at ten cents on Friday at midnight and goes up ten cents for each copy sold. I logged in right at midnite and bagged a copy for $1.30…I feel just a little bit guilty for basically stealing this eBook…a little bit…ok, it’s gone now.

It’s selling at around $15 right now so don’t dawdle. This eBook is meaty, ever evolving as it lives on the web (HTML book), and there are a couple of chapters on how to make money online that I had not previously heard of before.

- Everett Bogue put out a short eBook today, about 20 pages that looks to be about 1500 – 2000 words or so and as such, is a nice quick read. It’s called How to Create a Movement and it’s FREE with no strings attached so have at it.

- Ms. Tammy Strobel of Rowdy Kittens put out a nice eBook on Car Free Living called Simply Car Free (NOT an affiliate link…do I have to keep saying that?). I admit that my family cannot do this at this stage of our life, 3 babies that can’t sit up yet, living in one of the snowiest areas of the US (good ole Buffalo), but I do ride my Trek bike to work most days between mid April and mid October, and my car has been paid off for five years now, so it doesn’t cost me much in gas with a 5 1/2 mile commute, but this would be helpful for a large cross-section of the population.

I’ve read it and I highly recommend it.

New (to me) Blogs

Rock Star Triathlete – I don’t recall how I ended up on this eMail list but these guys send out one or more hour long interviews a week on Triathlon training. If I spent as much time training as I did listening to these interviews I might do all right. I’m a new(wanna)be triathlete so I don’t know jackshyt about it but I’ve learned a ton listening to these guys. I think if you just sign up for the email list you get the freebie audios coming regularly and the interviews are with top professional triathletes. Here, I’ll do you one better, I found a link to the audios page.

Pursuit of Change – This is a personal development blog that’s new to me as of today so I’ve just started fishing around on there for material to steal and claim that it’s mine. I’m liking what I’m seeing and if you’re into the 100 Thing Challenge, the author happens to have a page on the site devoted to his own quest.

Blog Articles

The Iron – Karol Gujda is gonna start thinking I’m a man-Stalker but I’m not…seriously. Because if I was, I wouldn’t have misspelled his last name in the last sentence. A stalker wouldn’t do that, would they (laughs nervously)?

It’s Karol Gajda. And he writes a great blog at Ridiculously Extraordinary.

He put up a Tumblr page of this wickedly awesome article written by the brilliant and inspiring Henry Rollins called the Iron. I used to listen to Henry Rollins spoken word audio tapes (them thingies back before CD’s. Whaddya’ mean, “what are CD’s?!?!”) back in ‘92 when I was a college idealist. This article is pasted up in my Evernote. After I read this, I immediately grabbed the car keys and hit the gym to lift minimalist weights with my puny boy arms…two days later I’m now having some difficulty picking up my car keys.

Hmmm, I was gonna add some more articles but I’m hanging out over a thousand words here and this was supposed to be a leisurely drive thru the Blogosphere so I’ll stop here. Enj0y.

Don’t forget to leave me your runner’s training tips below, please.

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You Down with NLP? Yeah, You Know Me

by Charley on March 4, 2010

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This one turned out to be a pure rambler…making it up as I go…and I think my IQ dipped another five points (how low can you go!) for having written this…but hey, it’s entertaining and you just might learn something:

The last week or so, being hectic as sometimes life gets, I haven’t had much time to read (or write, for that matter).

To combat, I’ve committed the cardinal minimalist sin of multitasking on purpose lately by popping a few seminars on MP3 while shoveling scads of Buffalo snow and while driving too and fro (yeah, I said “fro”) work.

Forgive me minimalist bloggers

for I have sinned.

My last minimalist moment was

six days, nine hours, twenty seven minutes and eight seconds ago.

I’m working my way through Anthony Robbins’ Get the Edge right now, which I acquired several years ago in the usual way and have revisited repeatedly.

Yes, he may be the McDonald’s of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming…nothing funny there…I know I usually write something funny in parenthesis…followed by some ellipses…but not this time…) but you can’t argue with One Billion Served and it’s hard not to feel like you just got a kick in the ass after listening to him (which is better than getting your ass kicked…trust me).

So (I say “so” a lot too…which is different than “sew a lot”…which I don’t do), I’ve been meditating (read = zoning out while bottle feeding babies) on two related concepts in the program lately (I’m only on Day 1, but there’s like eight, forty minute plus programs to listen to before you can go to Day 2).

The first is the concept that the two primary human motivations are to move toward stimuli that are pleasurable, and move away from stimuli that are painful. This is NLP 101 and despite it smacking a bit of Pavlov’s pooch (ding!), it’s a perfectly adequate working model for figuring out what the hell is wrong with us (or maybe just me).

So, we likey warm fuzzy thingies, we no-likey cold icky thingies.

Concept 2 – The powerful tool for change comes in the guise of Neuro-associations (which is different than Nero-associations which involve parading around in a Toga all day and committing tyrannical acts like hogging the TV Remote, or drinking the last of the milk and putting the bottle back in the fridge) that essentially drive our behavior. And you’re a Neuro-associative machine all day long, linking pain and pleasure to every decision you make. What you link pain to may be something that someone else links great pleasure to (leaving out any discussions on Sado-masochism)

Pause – I realize I’m just some thirty-something jackass blogger with no degree in psychology (though I do have degrees in Anthropology and English Lit… so if you ever want me to run down the Genus/Species classifications of all Primates or discuss why Shakespeare was a Misogynist pig I’m yer man) so if you want a better explanation, go listen to Robbins (who, incidentally, as far as I can tell, has no degree at all…the silly, miopithecus ogouensis fool ).

Play – So, what happens when you associate pleasure with the bad habit and pain with the good habit? You get shyt out of life.

I struggle with my weight because when I was in high school running made my shins bleed internally and this one time, at band camp, during a five mile run my pants fell down around my ankles and I tripped and fell thus exposing all the inglorious minuteness of my manhood (I just got out of the pool, I swear) to a roving pack of feral cheerleaders who subsequently cackled at the absurdity that was me. Not only do I hate running but I love junk food and M&M’s rock the house.

I struggle with my writing productivity because thinking makes my brain bleed and this one time, at band camp, I wrote a beautiful poem for one of the female counselors and she ripped up my poem, rubbed it in bear pooh and forced me to consume it while standing in my underwear in front of everyone who was (were?) laughing at me because all the inglorious minuteness of my manhood (the pool again, I swear) could easily be seen thru my tighty whiteys…and it’s more fun surfing the internet to read other peep’s stuff (while eating M&M’s because they rock the house).

I struggle with my finances (actually I don’t, but let’s pretend) because mom and dad used to always make me save 99% of my allowance for band camp and…well…you’ve seen what happened there…and besides, M&M’s ain’t free and me gots to have some…because they rock the house (4 “and’s” in one sentence! or is that five because of the parentheses?).

There are two sides each here, and they’re both working against you (ok, me). So how do you (I) change it?

Once you’ve identified the motivations, why you’re running away from something and why you’re running toward something else, I think you’ve really done the hard part. You intellectually know what needs to be done next. You need to change your associations on one or both ends of the pain/pleasure spectrum.

If you can associate more pain with M&M’s (sacrilegious, I know) than the pain you feel about your shins splintering in a bloody mess from running, then you may have enough power to move in the right direction.

If you can also associate massive pleasure to running (or some substitute form of exercise) then you’ve got your stoppages licked.

That’s the theory and it sounds great, but for me, a laboratory of one, the proof will be in the pudding (seriously…why the f*ck would there be proof in pudding and would I want it if it were?).

So I’m busy trying to figure out clearly what I want and what I’m doing to sabotage myself from accomplishing it. I’m good at the what I want thingy. I know that I want to become my own boss, making sufficient income from my writings, music and other creative endeavors to replace my jobby income. This is a longer term goal. My second major goal, more near term, is I need to drop this thirty pound spare tire post haste and get trained up to running 26.2 miles before the end of May.

I’ve figured M&M’s are evil (I think) and I’m learning to like brain and shin bleeds, feral cheerleaders aside, but other than that, I’m just figuring it out as I go.

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Finding Gratitude on a Sunday Night

by Charley on February 28, 2010

Thank you very much!

Before I had children, weekends were for recharging the batteries, so to speak, from the frustrations and mundanities (new word – I made it up) of the week. Weekends with infant triplets are decidedly unrestful (another new word). When you have three there is more than likely one or more crying or whining at any one moment. Not bitching here, it’s a fact. It’s also a fact that my wife handles it a lot better than I.

There are truthfully moments when I wonder whether it’s worth it. It’s a shift in perspective when I actually look forward to the work week for more structure and less stress, for time to work on artistic projects which make me feel more alive and fulfilled. These are a form of recharging in and of itself.

It is 8:00 on a Sunday evening and these are the first moments I’ve been able to steal away to do some writing apart from a comment I spent three minutes on this morning after spending nine minutes reading an article by Everett Bogue.

For the abundance of ideas that spark conversation and sharing on the Internet, I am grateful.

So I popped on an MP3 of Endless Reverie by the remarkable and beautiful Azam Ali and in 5:48 I am feeling more at peace, the words now pouring forth.

For the beauty in music and the peace it can provide, I am grateful.

I am lucky in many ways and there are moments when I catch myself just before my head is about to explode. I know of people who have attempted In Vitro Fertilization ten or more times without success and yet we were thrice blessed on our second attempt. I suppose I should share that story sometime, in the hopes that it might help others who may have despair over building a family, but this article is not for that.

For the doctors, clinicians, scientists, nurses, and all of the shoulders they stand upon, I am grateful.

I am seemingly amongst a shrinking minority of first world families who can live very fruitfully on one income and I have a wife who has developed infinite patience for raising three babies and dealing with a fourth who often acts like a baby (that would be me in case I was being obtuse).

For my job, the generous Healthcare benefits provided by my employer, and the generous salary I reap, I am grateful.

For my wife who by all rights could do much better than me, I am most grateful.

My children are a miracle, two of them born under two pounds and the third just over that mark. There were many times in the early months when the slightest movement in the incubator prompted joy. When they would cry as the doctors took blood, we would feel their pain yet we rejoiced as the cries were a sign of the progress they made. Now, seemingly, when my daughter has spent most of today screaming, whining and crying, I remind myself of those early days.

I am thankful for the fight that my daughter has in her, and my two sons. They’ve been through so much and have stared death in the face numerous times. For them and the example they set, I am thankful.

I went to the gym today, it is my third time in a week, but previous to that I had gone four weeks without any training, despite my New Year’s Resolutions. I have a goal to run the 2010 Buffalo Marathon at the end of May and I had built a schedule of what days I should run and how many miles. Today I was to run ten miles if I were following it precisely, but on Friday I was only able to run a mile due to my lack of fitness and the amount of time I had taken off.

I ran seven today and though my right hip makes me wince in pain every time I bend to grab something, I am very grateful for having the faculties to be able to run, the opportunities to do so, and enough perseverance to break through my perceived barriers.

For the United States Olympic hockey team and our hometown goalie, Ryan Miller, despite the heartbreaking loss today, I am very grateful for the effort you all put forth, and how you defied the odds-makers by taking Silver.

And now, twenty minutes have passed, my fingers have typed about eight hundred words, I am feeling much better having acknowledged these small, but beautiful things in my life.

For my ability to write and for those of you who take the time to read this, I am very grateful.

Namaste.

Now off to soothe a screaming baby…

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reFocus of the Site and Upcoming Plans

by Charley on February 25, 2010

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I made a decision today that’s probably going to be a bit unpopular. I’ve pulled down all the affiliate ads on my site for other people’s eBooks. I did this for a couple reasons, which I will outline below but let me state for the record that I did NOT do this because of any question on the quality of the eBooks I was previously promoting. If anything, the problem is that I’m getting too many quality eBooks coming my way.

After I did a few reviews, I started receiving a lot of eBooks both in the minimalism niche and outside of it. And I felt a strong desire to help these writers out because 1. I know that I would appreciate some help if/when I put something out for sale and b. it’s stuff my readers might be interested in.

But given my two to three posts per week publishing schedule, I was not able to keep up with the eBooks that were being sent to me, and still be able to put my ideas out there. This is the selfish reason. I write this blog to share my ideas and my writings.

I follow about two dozen plus minimalist bloggers out there, even the new ones who are popping up and only have a dozen or fewer subscribers and I noticed a trend that I was uncomfortable being a part of. Most of us are using Thesis, the default settings no less, most of us have the same affiliate ads up, and most of us post the eBook reviews of the same books on the day that a new Minimalist title is released.

So, selfish reason number 2 is that I’ve always had a strong desire to walk a different path and I feel like I’m not doing that right now. Seems weird to say when one of the precepts of Minimalism is to be different from the mainstream and walk your own path…but I feel I’ve been walking the mainstream path of minimalism lately.

Makes sense?

No?

Good.

When I do write my own articles, I think they have a distinctive voice, but if many of us are blogging about the same eBooks and the same concepts, what are we really doing other than reinforcing what we all already know?

Perhaps I’m just be cranky tonight and I’ll regret this decision tomorrow. I know I’m god-awful tired from another eleven hour day at work and then trying to calm three babies when I get home but I somehow feel less cluttered, more minimalist after pulling the ads down tonight. My blog is my sanctuary from when everything else gets too harried and it should reflect the unique characteristics of me, not act as a conglomeration of everyone else’s terrific writing.

Now, I can’t say what the future brings, but I don’t think I’ll be doing front and center reviews for other people’s eBooks. I may mention a blurb (with or without an affiliate link), particularly if it sparks an idea for an article that I can build on, and offer value with. I won’t be placing affiliate link ads on the site to eBooks for the foreseeable future. If something cool comes out, I’ll mention it as part of sharing links, like I know that Tammy from Rowdy Kittens has a cool eBook coming out about Car Free living and I think she’s an awesome writer and (lot’s of and’s in this sentence) I plan to give it a read this weekend, but other than passing on a link so that my good readers can find it and make their own decision, I think that’s all I can comfortably do for now. I know she’ll get some nice affiliate sales coming in from other bloggers and she definitely deserves it.

Karol Gajda is another of my favorite bloggers, in the Lifestyle Design niche, and he has a book coming out in the next couple weeks at Ridiculously Extraordinary and I’ll read that one too. If it’s great, I may plug it at the end of a post.

I’ve read Cloud Living this year from PluginID and that eBook is really terrific. Seriously…great stuff about turning your blog profitable….and I just broke one of the rules by pulling down my ads.

I’ve read Tynan’s Life Nomadic this year which is freakin’ great if you want to become location independent.

I’ve read The Art of Being Minimalist – awesome

I’ve read the Minimalist Handbook – terrific

I’ve read the Nu Nomad which is great.

I’ve read simplify by Becoming Minimalist which is great.

I’ve read Project M-31 by David Damron which is great.

I’ve read How to be Remarkable by Colin Wright. Great.

Oh and I just finished Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell today (Kindle version). F*cking terrific book.

These are just the eBooks by bloggers I’ve read in 2010. I have another dozen sitting in queue and I’m feeling nearly overwhelmed by all these great books out there…so much to read and so little time.

If I did blog posts reviews of all these I wouldn’t have time to write any articles of my own. If I put affiliate ads up on my home page for each of these books, my own stuff would be lost in the jungle.

So (I had an English teacher that used to ding me for using “so.” Never got over that), yes I’m thankful for everyone’s great writing, and even for the review copies that get sent to me. And I’m thankful for the modest affiliate sales that have come in. It’s enough to buy a few cans of formula for my babies and keep them plump and happy for a few weeks, not that we’re hurting for money. I also pay for the licenses on the higher quality pictures I display on this site, and webhosting costs and Thesis etc. I know this is a funny way of showing my gratitude, but my blog is still only three months old and I’m still trying to find my voice. I’ll only do that by writing my own articles.

Also, by reading all these eBooks that come my way, I’ve fallen way behind on my 2010 Education Syllabus. Were this a college course, I’d have been kicked out of school already. All the books I’ve read and I’m still only halfway through Tim Ferris’s 4 Hour Work Week. F*CKUS! Sorry, I meant FOCUS!

By the way, the Syllabus is going to get a facelift. My directive this year is learning to be a productive writer and blogger with a secondary aspect of continuing to simplify my life so some of the Syllabus books don’t fit the bill.

Anywho, with that being said, I’ve been working on a few book manuscripts and expect to have another freebie out there by the end of March. I’ve started developing a line of books under the premise of “Everything I Think You Need to do to Be Successful at…” which is a nod to the great Zig Ziglar who said that every person should write such a book on the topic of success if, for no other reason, that the research alone would make you a better, more successful person.

Each day, on my lunch break, I squirrel myself away from any contacts, plop on some Gamma Brainwave entrainment and write pieces of a few book manuscripts for a half hour or so. That’s when I do get a lunch away from my desk, which is not always possible. Monday had seven hours of meetings, not including double bookings. And of course there’s actual real work to do that doesn’t go away when you’re in meetings. I can’t remember the last time I’ve taken a social lunch with anyone. It’s been probably close to a year but if you really have a desire to create, sometimes you have to make the sacrifice.

Oh, and if I read another blog about blowing off work meetings to simplify your life, I’ll probably resort to violence. It is a fact in a large corporate environment that if you have any importance to any medium to large sized project your subject matter expertise will be called to the stand several times per day and in that environment, if you blow off meetings, you are directly leading to the failure of the project. Sorry to pop that minimalist concept (yes, I’m a jerk today…most days really). Not only that, but if you no-show and you’re a subject matter expert, you just wasted everyone else’s time as they try to struggle through the meeting without you. Be considerate of their time, if nothing else.

Yes, the corporate machine is highly inefficient and there are certainly a fair share of pointless meetings but I assure you, after fifteen years in the large corporate arena, getting people in a room (or Webex) works far better than putzing around with emails while everyone tries to interpret whatever was written in the email chain.

Sorry for the tangeant.

So, to recap, less ads of someone else, more of me. If you don’t like me, then go visit someone else.

That was about 1200 words longer than I thought it would be.

Finally, I had a contest a few weeks back in which I put up for grabs a $249 program called Dao Zou by fitness expert Matt Furey. I did the old Random.org number generator thingy and our winner was Commenter #4, Ms. Vita Reid. Congratulations Vita!

Random Number 4

Okay, my right leg is twitching. That means I’m f*cking tired.

Ciao, Bella (my daughter’s name)!

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Damn the Man, Save the (Minimalist) Empire

by Charley on February 23, 2010

I like clever (opinion) pop-culture reference titles. They don’t score very well in Search Engine Optimization land but who am I to give a f*ck? I’m curious to see what ads will display for this article in RRS readers.

The title above comes from the movie Empire Records that starred a delicious Liv Tyler in the mid-90’s (whatever happened to her?) and is, in some tertiary capacity, related to Cousin Matt’s comment below that he left on my last post, a book review for simplify.

Quoth the Raven:

Every time I read a post on your blog I have this question in the back of my mind while I read: can you really be minimalist (I like “live deliberately”) while working 40+ hours a week for the man? “Forced” to work for the man in this way due to keeping a certain (high?!) standard of living; that is, specifically having a large mortgage on your back. My opinion is no: it doesn’t follow. Your thoughts?

Don’t mind if I do.

First of all, Cousin Matt is one of those guy’s living deliberately (at least my perception from 3000 miles away) and has been (and continues to be) an inspiration to me. I’m sure some of my family practices might appall him but as I’m a Deliberate Liver in training I’m going to fall down several times. Hopefully I get up again each time.

Using my life as an example, since I’m kind of an expert on all things Charley, I can say that I currently, without question, work for the man. I work for one of the largest financial institutions in the world (no, we didn’t take any government bailout money) as a Project Manager. While the people are totally awesome, and there is some satisfaction in knowing that my actions have some importance on change within this institution, it certainly isn’t what I’d be doing if I had been more mindful about crafting my life plan five or ten years ago.

I am lucky to have my primary home paid off, so I don’t have a home mortgage, though I do have three other investment properties with outstanding mortgages. I don’t keep my job because of the mortgages, I keep it because I am the only wage earner in my family of five and without the excellent health insurance provided by my employer I would be out more than a million dollars from my triplets living in the hospital for five plus months last year and my wife being in the hospital for more than six weeks prior to their birth.

This I am thankful for, though I yearn to be more the master of my domain and so I’m crafting a new life plan for the next ten years.

So, not to make this a complete defense of my decisions, because I don’t think that’s what Cousin Matt was looking for, but I am trying to make the point that Minimalism is a journey, a very personal one at that.

The journey has to start somewhere and for many it begins with an epiphany, that the consumerist lifestyle they’ve been living is paved with fool’s gold. It is often easier to appreciate the beauty of simplicity when you’ve tasted the excess of consumerism and found it completely lacking in any redeeming qualities.

So, the path has begun…but where does it end?

When can one truly be said to have arrived at Minimalism? To have arrived at a destination of Deliberate Living? Is not Deliberate Living a philosophy of life applied to every day decisions? And not just big decisions like the huge mortgage and the large car payment? But down to, do I buy my produce at the Mega Mart shipped in from another country or do I patronize the local farmer? What if the Mega Mart farmer uses more organic practices than my local farmer?

Do I buy a Vegan briefcase or do I buy the leather one guaranteed for 100 years?

Does living deliberately mean only having a 100 items, or 75 items, or 50 items? What about the traditional monks who may carry only eight things? Which definition really applies?

I think that you’re a Minimalist and a deliberate liver once you’ve resolved consciously to take this path. You’ve assessed every item in your life, every time obligation you have and you’ve decided, based on your own set of values, what is essential and then have chosen to part with the rest.

For me, the healthcare is essential because I value the health of my family and I value not being a million dollars in debt. It is an unfortunate byproduct of living in the United States that Health Insurance is out of reach for the average consumer. And so, for now, my path includes working for the man.

But each day, I take strides to bring my life more in line with my values.

I definitely f*ck up sometimes, but I am still amazed at the progress I am making.

I’m learning to build blogging as a business, endorsing products that I believe follow the Deliberate living message (incidently, cousin Matt, love your definition of minimalism as Live Deliberately) and sharing them with others who are also interested in this subject.

I’ve eliminated all consumer debt except for the three aforementioned investment properties which are really on auto-pilot as they pay for themselves.

What’s my worry? Being a new father, I have Worst-case Scenario syndrome. i.e. If I lose or quit my job my family will be homeless and they’ll be feeding on my cold, dead carcass in the middle of another nasty Buffalo winter.

It’s been a difficult enough transition losing 33% of our income last August when my wife and I decided that the cost/benefit analysis of daycare for triplets was not favorable (understatement) and she elected to leave the corporate world to raise them…that was our first important decision in support of living deliberately.

Could I get by on a smaller salary with a not-for-profit, till I turn my blogging into a sustainable venture? Possibly, but I’m not willing to take that chance with four people in my household dependent on me right now. Given time, I think a year or two from now, this conversation goes quite differently, only because I will have lived deliberately for a longer period of time and would home to be reaping the accumulated benefits of that.

I’m very comfortable with the decisions I am making now.

I fear that I’ve failed to adequately answer Cousin Matt’s query and so I’d ask the good readers here to give their honest opinions on whether giving your best hours to the man is in line with living a deliberate life?

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Book Review – simplify. by Becoming Minimalist

February 21, 2010

Today I am reviewing a new eBook by Joshua Becker called simplify – 7 Guiding Principles to Help Anyone Declutter Their Home and Life. (- affiliate links). Joshua is the principal blogger over at Becoming Minimalist.
Joshua is a thirty-something husband with two young children who shares his story at the beginning of this fine eBook [...]

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Paulo Coelho and the Law of Jante

February 19, 2010

“You aren’t worth a thing, nobody is interested in what you think, mediocrity and anonymity are your best bet. If you act this way, you will never have any big problems in life.”
That’s a nice way to start things, huh? Part of it rings true, that’s how these things take hold and spread. If nobody [...]

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Brainwave Entrainment – My Experience with Meditation Products

February 16, 2010

This article started out as a treatise on eustress which is a positive form of stress and I treated it in such a scientific fashion that I wanted to jab a pencil in my left eye socket out of boredom. Not wanting to be counter-productive (and a cyclops who wears glasses) I ripped out the good [...]

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How to Achieve Peak Motivation

February 11, 2010

This post was written by William Womack from www.conscious-growth.com a Blog Dedicated to Entrepreneurs and their own Personal Development. For more great motivation articles, please visit his site.

Polarizing Your Motivation
Motivation always seems to be an uphill battle, doesn’t it? It comes and goes with the moods of a teenager, with no real rhyme or reason. [...]

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The 3 Percent Solution – Finance Your Personal Development Plan

February 9, 2010

To date I haven’t talked a lot about Personal Finance though I work in the Finance industry during the day and I have historically had quite a passion for it.
An interesting observation, though not the point of this article, is that when I was tens of thousands of dollars in debt I was much more [...]

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