Schwarzenegger: Keep Our Beaches Open! Move Towards At Least Commensualistic Symbiosis

Dear Governor Schwarzenneger,

(From John Thomas "Kooz" Kuczmarski)

I'm a strong believer that the purpose of a city should serve Nature. Nature -- wildlife, animals, we homo sapiens ARE Nature -- should be the intention of anything municipal, or city-based. Therefore the idea of actually closing beaches, closing a way for humans to enjoy nature (the ocean and beaches) would be undermining the very purpose of a city.

Do you really think people will stand for not being able to access beaches? Have you any idea how ludicrous that sounds?

I think anyone who believes eliminating parks-nature-Beach funding for the purpose of redirecting those funds to something non-Nature-based needs to re-evaluate their mission, don't you?

If the significance of Nature (the oxygen we breath from the botanical plants of parks) and the body of water that keeps us alive (planet earth ecologically could not survive if it were not for it being covered with over 70% water) is eclipsed, all is lost for EARTH and humans. This sounds extreme and that's because it is. If anything, funding needs to be redirected to opening MORE beaches and parks to remind us homo sapiens that we are just highly-evolved primates, elements of nature and truly do deserve to connect with Nature readily and frequently.

I think one problem with American government is that it HAS too much funding!! IT has so much funding that it redirects it's energies, finances, and time away from the absolute necessities (nature, oxygen, planetary perpetuation and survival).

What would be the result of this situation? What would the HUMAN RACE look like couped up in offices and buildings withotu access to Nature (our origin). To euphemistically refer to the chaos, inhuman treatment, loss of identity, uncertainty of values, drop in wholistic health, and slow disintegration of the third planet from the sun -- Bad things would occur to our planet and humans.

Closing parks is analogous to saying "we dont' need to focus on nature, on beaches, on the very oxygen we breath - the most fundamental survival necessity of us humans, mind you" And that is indirectly saying "it's okay for people to suffocate and die". I wont' go as far as saying that choosing to close beaches is identical to some kind of asphixiation concentration camp -- because that would be extreme -- but I think the analogy does exist there in some form.

For the Health of Homo Sapiens (and other flora and fauna on the planet), I urge you to make the decision to NOT close the beaches and to instead maybe apply funding to actually creating more (instead of less) of an awareness of the Significance of the health of our planet. The Pacific Trash Vortex, for example....that's something more people need to be aware of, in order to stop trash accumulation in the oceans. We're failing as a species, dumping trash into the ocean?! No other species does that.

The very LEAST we can do is keep beaches and parks open to ensure that the deteriorating of our most vital resource -- OUR PLANET -- does not continue.

And we do not possess the earth. The earth does not possess us either (for we can take flight into space and leave earth), but homo sapiens MUST have a MUTUALISTIC relationsihp with the earth and we are failing because The relationship of homo sapiens and Earth has become PARASITIC. We are feeding off and hurting the ecology or our own home (earth) and not giving back. A commensualistic Symbiosis would be better than the Parististic symbiosis that humans currently have with our planet. We Should be having a mutalistic symbiosis but are in fact, having the complete opposite of that.

So again, I urge you, could you try to elevate our already-suffering relationship with the planet from parasitistic to (at the very leaast) commensualistic symbiosis, and direct funds towards cultivating attention TOWARD the necessity of beaches and parks, not away from them?!!!

Thank you!


-- Johnt Thomas "Kooz" Kuczmarski

Get er Done! Why Sign and Utilize Contracts?

In the business, professional, internet, or any world with which you associate yourself. Professionalism, formality, closure and safety are all important. Read on to see why contracts move goals forward!

1. Formality. It adds to the REALNESS of the coaching relationship for BOTH the client and coach. As a coach I don't want some client joking around wasting my time if they aren't committed to changing. I take coaching VERY seriously. I've deliberately started and stopped smoking for 2 month segments specifically for the purpose of learning about the addiction so I could educate myself on how to help clients break it! I take coachign incredibly seriously and I need clients that are committed to changing as well! From the Client POV, I'm sure a sincere and focused client who' serious about achieving his/her goals WANTS a serious coach who's determined to make them realize their goals and potential!! A contract creates this formality to the coaching-client relationship.

2. Closure. A contract creates closure and certainty on the duration of the coaching. This is ESSENTIAL for goal-setting because it shows the coach and client how fast they ahve to move and what they will have time to cover or not. If the coach and client only have 2 coachign sessions, they'll most certainly have to focus on different things than if they had 10 coaching sessions. A contract creates closure.

3. Professionalism. This is the most simple and obvious reason for using a contract -- Professionalism! Real coaches, real clients -- real professionals, be it a businessperson, an actor, a performer, a therapist, anyone exchanging in a business agreement with a person who expects to get anything done, does work AFTER signing a contract.

4. Safety. Again, another obvious, but vitally important reason. Contracts ensure that expectations and needs are agreed upon and it provides the comfort of knowing that the client and coach both will provide the details of the exchange! From the service-provider point of view, this ensures you get paid, and from a client point of view this ensures you don't get ripped off! That mutual safety creates for a more lucid experience.

Buying Bulk Saves Money, Time, the Environment: Win-Win-Win

Buying in bulk solves three problems very vital problems in life. Buying in bulk boost finances, is healthy from a temporal-sentient point of view, and keeps our planet cleaner and less polluted. Oh, you don't understand how did my mental-math? I'll show my work:

1. Saving money. Anyway you cut it, whether it be bulk salmon or bulk soap, purchasing in bulk means less marketing costs for the individual items and a closer to wholesale price which means less expensive, and more mullah (that stays) for your pocket!
   
2. Saving Time. Buying bulk decreases the amount of times you have to go to the store and purchase refills. It's a hassle to have to write "buy more hand soap" on a grocery list, what? maybe 6-7 times per year if you go through one of those every 1-2 months?! Well, with bulk, you write "buy more xyz" as little as once per year, and food items as infrequently as once per month! Most of my soaps, and cleaners (with the exception of bleach and ammonia, because I go through those quickly but they're extremely cheap) I buy in huge large quantities and seriously, laundry detergent and dishwasher detergent (I wash a lot of my own dishes and ration out the laundry detergent well) for example, last me a year. That's just a huge relief either way, to only have to worry about buying laundry detergent or dishwasher detergent ONCE a year (or more likely ONCE every two years)?! That's awesome. We have 365 days per year. What are some other cool creative, successful things you could be doing with your time now that you don't have to go to the grocery store for almost any kind of cleaning supply for the entire year?!! That's just rad! Here's a mini list of the items I buy in bulk
   • Handsoap (1x/year)
   • Dishwasher soap (1x/1-2year)
   • Laundry Detergent (1x/1-2year). Yes, the same thing of laundry detergent and soap has lasted me almost two years!
     
   • Toilet cleaner (1x/year)
   • Fish (1x/1-5month). (I freeze all my fish so you can easily buy a ton in bulk and freeze it for 5 months and if you get canned tuna, that can go for 6 mo. easily).
     
   • Vegetables (1x/month)
   • Cheese (2-4x/year). I'm dead serious. I freeze all the cheese and when I packet is gone in the fridge, just chuck one in the dairy bin from the freezer. You buy in bulk, you can buy cheese sooo infrequently but always have a ton.
     
   • Pasta (2x/year. I'm dead serious. You buy bulk pasta and even if you eat a lot of pasta, you only have to buy it twice per year!)
3. Saving the Environment. Buying in bulk is a direct enterprise in helping the environment because buying in bulk means less purchases which means less left over bottles and plastic wrappers simply because you'll be purchasing less plastic bottles and plastic wrapper and marketing packaging, and less plastic containers. Read up on the HORRIFYING Pacific Trash Vortex to fully understand the global wide "too much trash" problem. Basically, we're pumping so much plastic wrapper and bottle refuse into our ocean. Seriously. Seriously. How f$@ked up is that?! Couldn't we re-use our bottles instead of litterally pumping them into our ocean water?! The disgusting physiological ramification of this is mini fish eat the mini shreds of plastic, bigger fish eat the mini fish, we eat the bigger fish and therefor consume plaste. Read up on the PTV, it's nasty, very real, and very frigthening stuff; I'm becoming very interested at the very least informing myself of that problem and I donate toa charity that helps solve it. So, but buying in bulk, you purchase one huge one huge container that you can likely reuse and that saves the environment, the ocean, and our planet!
   
4. *Saving you from Disorganization. My little bonus perk idea. May not work for everyone, but truly works for me! This one seems like an odd ramification, but truly, I reuse over 50% of the bottles and containers I get that are "wrappers" typically discarded after opening something or using something for 1)organization, 2)environmenal safety and 3)cheaper. Some of the containers that contain products are as sturdy and useful as one you'd spend $14.99 on at the Container Store! True!. I'm an organizational freak so buying in bulk works toward this end, too!
   

Buying in Bulk saves the environment, saves you money, and saves you time (less trips to the store)! Bulk is a win-win-win!!

Honor Your Own System

I think one thing going on in life is that I'm discovering what systems and methods work for me. And career is part of this.

This is a reference to

1. Organization systems -- the literally dozen and dozens (over 50 easily) organizational system methods for emails, todos, phonecalls and life, and none of the systems work, but I've created one that works for me
2. Diets -- Again, found what works best for me after an exhausting and disturbing trial of fallacious food products and things that don't work. Again, for me personally, i've discovered simplest is best. I cook and make almost all my own food. Because 1) it's one of the few things I can afford, 2)food you make tastes better and 3)it's usually better for you because you avoid prepackaged crap and make more wholesome meals.
   
3. Exercise routines - when I go to the Gym I see people doing really stupid things with weights, really intelligent things, poor endurance programs, top-notch cardio circuits -- the whole gamut. Each one works or doesn't work for people.
4. Errands -- I have to use lists. I have electronic organizers on my phone to get things done. To some people it would drive them insane having lists of things to remind them what to get or do when they go out, but for me it's freedom and makes my life easier. Again, we have to honor our own system.
   

Everyone works out differently and everyone has their own unique style and approach. That must be respected. Respected not to "honor their individuality" but rather to honor your own. And to acknowledge the fact that because some person gets jacked doing one thing and is healthy doing xyz diet and is on top of their game with abc organizational system, does not mean that you'll be jacked, healthy, and organized with their system.

Part of life is discovering how you work and what's the best method and system and concourse of health and organization and exercise for you with your unique goals, dreams, fears, problems, and certainties, and then how to optimize interaction with others and co-existance with others despite these large differences.

No More Religious Board Games! Anti-Christianity and Human Herbivore!

Finally, the best article on (anti) Christianity that I needed to read to reaffirm my new intentions, emerging beliefs, and values (Basically I've realized that all religions are just clever cult-worshipping myths. They're just elaborate myths, fables. Jesus isn't any different from the Hare in the tortoise and the hair or Buddha isn't any different from Prometheus (the god of fire from ancient greece). Religions are myths. They are not true. Jesus, Buddha, Allah...they never existed. That however is not condemning hope and faith. Hope and faith are very strong great things and MANY myths teach the lessons of hope, faith, discipline, etc. Religion is merely a myth. It's astonishing how BLIND so many people are in regards to how obvious it is that those figureheads truly did not exist, but they blindly go on believing...people that easily duped (i.e. devout christians) are frankly quite frightening because if they could be deluded into believing that a mythological figure like Jesus had as much evidence for existing as Paul Bunyan (see this great article on that) then...wow.

El Jesus Verdad (lmao!)

Great article. Discusses how all accounts of Jesus existing are hearsay. I think the most award-winning quote from the Great and truthful article was :

We know from history about witchcraft trials and kangaroo courts that hearsay provides neither reliable nor fair statements of evidence. We know that mythology can arise out of no good information whatsoever. We live in a world where many people believe in demons, UFOs, ghosts, or monsters, and an innumerable number of fantasies believed as fact taken from nothing but belief and hearsay. It derives from these reasons why hearsay cannot serves as good evidence, and the same reasoning must go against the claims of a historical Jesus or any other historical person.

They could seriously be deluded to committing seriously destructive acts possibly. I mean it's not "sane" to be that delusional. Additionally, people are alwasy messed up in life when they start speaking of Christianity and religion extensively (like Mel Gibson people gave him hell after his Passion of the Christ movie). Additionally, I was prosetylized pretty severely in Costa Rica a few times. To say the least, it ruined the vacation. I despise the delusional stubborness inherent to many Christians, so coming across the blog article felt SOO validating!!!!!! It felt validating because it made me realize that yes while 2.14 billion people in the world are Christians; 2.14 billion people are misled and delusional; their still exist who see through that illusion, that religion is truly merely a myth! So it felt validating probably in the same way that seeing a pink elephant in your living room that all guests deny exists and finally someone else admits that yes, they do see the pink elephant haha!! Or a more realistic analogy is maybe during a math test, everyone gets a certain answer wrong, and it's because the solution itself was inaccurate, but the teacher denies that the answer is innacurate and then you take the problem to a head of math board or something and they provide the real answer, proving that the book answer was inaccurate and everyone's "wrong answer" was in fact right. The clarity and validation I feel into seeing that someone else truly does "see the light" (and by see the "light", I mean, see the darkness in Christianity ...after all, it killed millions of people in the Crusades), is joyful.

It feels joyful to understand that finally someone else sees what I see (the author of that blog entry!) and that I can and should commence connecting with like-minded people who share similar spiritual beliefs. Just as a marathoner would feel uncomfortable around people who weigh over 300 pounds and have atrotious diets, I feel uncomfortable around Christians. Similarly, whether it be your behavior, diet, beliefs, and/or spirituality, it just feels validating to connect with people who share your similar behaviors, diets, beliefs and/or spirituality and capacity! Cool!!!!

This is major not exactly "changing point" in my life but "emerging point" of a change that's been occurring internally but hasn't had a place and time to emerge. Because for the longest time I'd known these Gross obviousl sources of untruth associated with widely-believed beliefs like Christianity, but was afraid of acknowledging them because:

• of fear of labeled as a demon-worshipper (a common fallacious argument of Christians. That if you don't believe in Christ, then you worship demons. A LUDICROUS argument. I don't believei Christ, or Demons, or Leprechauns, any more than the Pink tooth fairy eating a fig newton; they're all mytholgoical constructs!
• of fear that the cult-like warnings of christianity such as going to hell, not having salvation, being directionless, lost and confused would come true.
  But in Reality!! Confusion, directionless, and hellish condemntion, ironically, I feel is the grand result of Christianity (from personal experience and 'eye witness accounts")! haha
• just the fact that 2.14 BILLION people could be that deluded. This is the one that's scary. But then again. Tons of people do stupid things (like smoke or eat unhealthy food, which is somewhat delusional, too).

G.I. Joe Jesus



Squirrel Buddha

So again A lot of the reasons why I didn't validate my serious disbelief in Christianity was fear, the appeal to fear, appeal to the cudgel fallacious argument tactics that Christianity uses, and just atonishment with how many dumb-founded people there are! But these personal declaration is a MASSIVE vindication and personal exoneration because it means that instead of trying to "mull with" or "change" or try to see, or help, or interact with people who believe in Christianity, I can just know and deeply understand that on a spiritual level I hold completely concretely different believes from them and I will not expect to have a friendship on a spiritual level (on a belief, identity, social, behaviorial, level quite possibly friendship however!), but on a spiritual level, I deem Christianity an inferior spiritual belief simply because it represents a type of person who has not utilized their mind. Anyone who utilizes their mind will see that Christianity is just a myth and they should utilize and apply their mind to discover what ultimately brings them truth.

Kierkegaard writes, "I must find a truth that is true for me'

Very true, Soren! ;D

It makes me feel proud that while I can find a way to respect Christians, and can elicit a way to discover a respect for anyone who has belief and faith in something, I can do all that, but it does make me happy -- geuinely, deeply happy -- to say and know and validate that I hate Christianity. I hate the cult-like customs, myopic delusional methods, the appeals to fear that it utilizes, and most importantly I loathe and condemn Christainity's shadowing of many of the world's truths and leading 1/3 of the people in the world to beleive falsities, lies. I find this strong realization of mine, clear and validating because I know it resonates with my mind, my personal experiences, and it makes it easier to breathe (in life) knowing that I believe that. I think in the past, there was so much pressure (so immersed in the cult of Christianity) that it was difficult to even dissect what you genuinely believed. Nevertheless, I know I am true gentleman, I am not a demon-worshipper, I am not "going to hell", I am not any of those repurcussional traps that Christianity has set up to falsely categorize non-Christians, so I know I am none of those things, and I know that I am confident, and immensely clear, and happy, and I know that I hate Christianity! yippee!!!!!!!

Now that said. I thought it important to note that I don't have much anger at Christianity. Sure, I encountered some very brash, dangerous, and narrow-minded Christians in life, but I've had discussions about this and encountered devout Christians, people who are indiffernet to religion, people who are questioning of it, strict aethists, agnostics, etc all these different types of relationships to religon, and I'm finally realizing that I am not formulating my own view on religion but I already have deeply formulated my view on religion and have just awaited for the validation for my "equation" to emerge, so to speak. And it's thus: quite simply, I think faith, belief, good morals in life are very important; principles are essential! However, my source of those principles are what I consider safe resources, resources that are genuine and scientific and utilize reason, evidence, and are extractions of what works in a variety of areas:

1. Exercise
2. Nature
3. Emerson's Self-Reliance
4. NLP
5. Math
6. Understanding of Human Biology, Anatomy, Chemistry, Physiology
7. My books Validate Your Life, Compassionate Reservoir, and Expressing the Observation

Those are the basic "tenets and tomes" if you will of my personal creed.

There's no question about it, those 7 things, genuinely provide me with and embody IMMENSE clarity, energy, fulfillment, belief, trust, liberation, happiness, and success. I have so much clarity from those 7 things, that I can literally mentally run circles, thousands of circles ;), around Christians and people who have simply chosen to not utilize their mind. (Yes, while I respect Christians for setting up anchors to an idol figurine and associate hope, or faith, or penitence or whatever they want to it, I ultimately consider a devout Christian someone who hasn't fully utilized their cognitive 8-pound muscle that rests in their cranium. However, I do want to be clear on the distinction between :

1. valuing and respecting someone who has engaged the capacity to believe and follow a set of principles and rules (albeit an unintelligent set of believes)
2. someone whom has fully learned to utilize their mind on spiritual level

I'm saying that Christians have 1, but lack 2, meaning that I respect them more than a person who has neither 1 nor 2. However, I'll connect with a person who has both 1 and 2 with MUCH more respect than a Christian, obviously!

I've learned that religion (for me at least) not only does not bring clarity, peace, and happiness, but out of all the times in my life where I've studied and/or practiced a major religion I've experienced the opposite. I've experienced obfuscation, distraught, and distress. For ME Exercise, nature, Math, and Science are the ultimate forms of faith, clarity, fulfillment. I know that as truth. And it feels quite dandy understanding that about myself!!

Steve Pavlina's Brilliant #3 step for graduating from Christianity I resonated with SOooo strongly. Why? Because I'd done part of that. I picked up a Gideon's (isn't it clever that GIDEON is also the acronym for Global Infectious Disease & Epidemiology Network) LOL!! And I started in Genesis and then Exodus, etc. And I was like "Isn't it a little ridiculous that these people (these fictional characters in the Bible) live to be 800, 900 years? In the cult-worshipping-centers...erm I mean Christian Churches you don't hear priests blabbing about your 792nd birthday coming up "like the people in the Bible", right? No, of course not, because what goes on in Churches is part "semi-legitimate" anchoring of good values to words like "Jesus" and such and a lot cult-tactic. Churches leave out the utterly ridiculous stuff that's in the Bible. And the fact that so few Christians have actualy "read their textbook", read the Bible, is a testament, if you will, to their delusional and lost state! :D

"If you’re going to call yourself a Christian, then at the very least, you should read the entire Bible cover to cover. Wouldn’t you agree? After all, it’s touted as the most important work of your entire faith. If you’d rather watch TV than finish reading the Bible, perhaps you aren’t cut out to be a Christian. Don’t worry — my blog will still be here in a few years when you’re done." -- From Steve's Blog

Oh my god I love this guy!! That's BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

Whenever I run into another brainwashed Christian, whose haranguing me for being a religious miscreant or some other absurdity, I now have the option of just labeling him as a delusionally obdurate and clouded person or grilling him on the Bible, the very text that he/she will likely know so little about!!! :D After all, the catch is, that upon reading the Bible cover to cover, any 100-IQ, average-minded individual or more intellient would realize that Christianity is just a mythology and the Bible, simply a long Wayyyy overrated, overtalked about fable (the Bible also serves as the backbone for the cult tactics utilized in Christianity as well!). Damn this is a liberating blog entry and era of vindication in my life! :D

I'm just going to go ahead and respond to a few VERY eloquent, VERY lucid, very reassuring, and joy-inducing paragraphs of validation I read on Steve's awesome site:

Now if you actually attempt this, it’s a safe bet that you’ll be bored to tears.

LMAO!! Exactly!! Genesis and Exodus were seriously some of the most Boring reads possible. And it's clear how the monotony and horrendously boring scripture of hte Bible was purposely meant to make it unbearably difficult to read and long, because a "core text" unread is more easily the source of delusion and brainwashing. And it's this aim, how the Bible was seriously literally engineered for cult, brainwashing, that angers me. But I digress and find salvation and humor in Steve's awesome and authentically true analysis!

The vast majority of the Bible’s content is very, very dull. It’s filled with long-winded genealogies and badly written stories. There’s a lot of aimless wandering in the desert. Very little of the Bible’s content is likely to be relevant or interesting to you. The good parts are few and far between. It’s an ideal cure for insomnia.

LMAO!! So true!! Go steve pavlina blogger friend!!

If you somehow manage to read the whole thing (an act that requires significant persistence), you’ll be left wondering what the big deal is. You’ll probably wish you’d spent that time reading something more interesting or educational.

The Bible is simply not a very interesting or useful book. Aside from the general dullness, it’s also filled with internal contradictions. This is intentional. You aren’t supposed to be able to make sense of it or discover profound truths on every page. The book is designed and marketed as a mystical work, such that you’re beholden to the Church as your interpreter.

Yikes! And that's true. I remember seeing a costa rican friend studying the Bible. The way he studied it, it was almost like he was trying to read a book but had forgotten how to read. He was always flipping pages and circulating ideas, and trying to "figure it out". I think that reaction is normal because there's absolutely NOTHING to figure out! The Bible is the biggest marketing scam on the planet!! Additionally, it's extremely circumventing. DELIBERATELY CIRCUMVENTING I think is the word of the day of the Bible so that it draws you into the church to "figure it out" (but remember there's nothing to figure out, except how to give alms out of your pocketbook into the church) lmoa!! scary and true. Truth is stranger (and scarier) than fiction. For Christians, this truth may hurt at first, but ultimately, understand the religion for what it is , an over-inflated, over-marketted, hyped up mythological marketing cult sham, it will be liberating to know that later on from a personal validity point of view!

Okay...great. So I know all of the above to be True. 100% true. I no longer fear the false cult-repurcussions and appeals to fear of firmly being a non-believer and firmly seeing Christianity as very poorly worded, incredibly hollow, and boring "myth" utilized for brainwashing. Great. But what do I do about the anger of so many people believing that and having been raised with that brainwashing and having done communion and then during my teens having wasted soooooo much time actually partially taking the time to question and maybe on-off believing in christianity?! What do I do about the anger of having been duped into thinking that for so long?? Well, I guess my exoneration from the anger arrives in teh form of the joy I feel in knowing that I'm liberated from the sham of Christianity and validate the future experience and joy of connecting with like-minded intelligent people like Steve Pavlina and others who share like-minded expansive and lucid spiritual vistas!

Steve writes "#4 Assess What You've Gained".

I think that is important especially for overcoming the anger of having been deluded for a good decade into partially believing Christianity. What did I gain from Christianity?? hhmm hhmm hhmm . Actually I don't have to think about it that much. I know very quickly what I gained:

1. Anchoring Awareness. I learned the power of anchors. A preacher can sit up on a pedastal and anchor the emotional states of "belief, hope", "discipline", "salvation from your problems" to a little t-shaped figurine and a five-lettered word beginning J. That's NLP at work, and that, mis amigos, is simply auditory and visual anchoring! The preacher gets people in this state of "respect", most people dress up for church, after all, and then all these anchors get fired off. So from any religion the anchoring done to the purely cognitive idea, the purely cognitive picture representation of a peaceful Buddha, or a compassionate Jesus, or an all-seeing Allah or something ARE great anchors to draw up. But all you're doing is mentally recalling those manufactured images, which is fine, because those peaceful, clear, states are poweful and good to be able to tap into any way that you can.
   
2. How a Cult Operates Awareness. The other thing I gained from Christianity is awareness how a cult operates. This knowledge is useful to 1)prevent getting trapped in a cult again and keeping yourself free with rational-minded intelligent people and 2)
   

Disconnecting from the "all non-christians are evil" mentality is huge. I

"If you study a lot of different belief systems as I have, you’ll learn that no one has a monopoly on your soul. All of these belief systems are man-made and flawed. Some are driven by powerful marketing machines. Whether you subscribe to any of them or not is of little concern to the rest of the universe."

I really like that one: "No one has a monopoly on your soul". So incredibly true and well-phrased! In a way, I did a lot of what Steve did. About 9 years ago, during my Junior year of highschool after I had this immense awakening and calling to lifecoaching, I spent hours and hours day after day for months in a local Barnes and Nobles perusing every religious tome, book, or encyclopedia (yes their are Eastern and Western religion actual encyclopedias). I studied religion simply like learning about the tenets and customs of ancient civilizations. The eight fold path and 4 noble truths of Buddhism, the very cool tonal scale of scientology, the commandments and proverbs of christianity, the 5 pillars of islam, the three deities Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, of the polytheistic religion, Hinduism, as well concepts such as Boddhisattva and Maya (illusion). I discovered there's an incredible amount of "junk" woven into religions! Each religion seemed to have this all-powerful, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent deity that they just called different names (a Buddha, an Allah, a Jesus, a Kali) that were all basically the same thing and yet each religion vehemently and vicerally heralded their own "nickname" of thise all powerful force as the best and that all other "nicknames" were blasphemy. Additionally, each of these tenets or truths of the religion had a lot of similarities. The 8 fold path and 4 noble truths of Buddhism, for example were almost identical to the 10 commandments of Christianity. I thought, "Man! Did the creators of these religion all meet in a "Create Your Religion" club thousands of years ago, brainstorm similar ideas and all use their own marketing scheme?!" It certainly seemed that way. So I put enormous hours of study (probably close to 150-200 hours) into learning that religions are kind of like a board games! In monolopy or Chutes and Ladders for instance, there's always:

• an end (the Finish Line in Monopoly or Chutes and ladders that you have to get your piece to, or heaven for Christianity, Nirvana (Buddhism), or Moksha, "Exoneration from a cycle of suffering" (Hinduism)
• there's negative consequences for certain actions like "Going to Jail" (monopoly), falling down a Chute (Chutes and Ladders), Sinning or going to Hell (Christianity), Samsara's Cycle of Suffering (Buddhism)
• then there's weird little things that happen in the game: "Like buying houses or hotels" (monopoly), "getting a wild card" in Crazy 8s, Communion in Christianity, experiencing Meditation (Buddhism), Focusing on Rama and Sita (to made-up mythological characters of Hinduism).

One of the reasons why sharing this analysis become so uplifting to me was this exchange I had with a woman I met through one of those cheesy dating services. I had met quite a few women on it and non of them matched up to what we were each looking for. So when I found this one woman and we clicked it was exciting. She had majored in psychology; we were the same age; we were looking for identical qualities NOT in a relationship and IN a relationship (in other words, we both wanted and did not want the exact same things!), physically she was decently attractive, and we had a meaningful exchange. So it seemed like on our levels of capacity (I had a passion for and history of personal study with psychology a lot, too), belief, and maybe even identity, we clicked! It was exciting and it felt romantic. However, then I discovered that she was a Christian and that "her family was strict Christians" which meant that dating a non-Christian was impossible for her and she cut off the relationship like that!! My first reaction was astounded ridicule: Really?! This religion had really infected her so much that she couldnt' see that a potentially could match for experimenting with a meaningful relatinoship wasn't an option? It was just so incredibly illogical! My second reaction was frustration. I was frustrated that we seemed to connect on so many levels except spirituality and her spiritual level "wrote off" all the other parrallels! My third and final reaction was that of relief. I realized that if this woman was as close-minded as not being able to connect

So religions were just a silly board game with funny names and markers and a made-up "finish line" all heavily-marketted as this "spiritual necessity". Was about to take a board game seriously? So seriously that I would actually exclude people who didn't play my board game? In a sense, a Christian convening and associating with only Christians and frowning on non-Christians or Buddhists frowning on non-Buddhists is about as ridiculous as you chastising and looking down on non-Monopoly players or "non-Crazy 8s" or "non-Chutes & Ladders" players!! The whole reality of religion was so moronically peurile and pathetically manipulative and of all "SILLY" -- religion is so righeously absurdly silly -- that taking it seriously wasn't an option for me. I didn't have the qualifications of stupidity to continue to take any of these pre-ordained religions seriously. I wasn't stupid enough to believe in any of these religions! Now, it's VERY important to note that having a personal set of hand-crafted principles, beliefs and tenets is very uplifting and nourishing and something great to use as a guide in life. But hand-crafting your and structuring your own set of beliefs and principles is completely different than subscribing to these pre-packaged overly-spiritualized board games of religion. I think the best analogy is religion is like buying those pre-packaged frozen food meals that include the veggie, the meat, and the desert all in little microwaveable shrink-wrapped trays and eating the EXACT same meal for breakfast. lunch, and dinner for the rest of your life. What I encourage of cultivating your own set of principles and personal beliefs to guide and structure your life, is like gathering up fresh fruits and vegetables, maybe some fish, a bunch of spices, cutting, and cooking your own 3-course meal everytime you need nourishment. The result of cultivating your own set of beliefs and principles is that you get a much more nourishing, fulfilling, uplifting, and more "tasty" life! :D


Anyways. THIS Blog is FANTASTIC. OMG I love it!! From the Article on How humans are more anatomically designed as herbivores to this great article on moving beyond the nuisance of Christianity. It's a fantastic blog. I highly recommend it.

I don't think ANY post on these theme of liberating yourself from religion could be complete without Mentioned Richard Dawkins. Read Richard Dawkins. I just finished his book The God Delusion and hearing such a massively well-scholared intelligent dissection of religion and the commitment to understanding truth restored my faith in humanity and mankind.

Some notes on Dawkins's work.

1. Richawrd Dawkins. (anti-religion YAY!) To cap it all, Adam, the supposed perpetrator of
   the original sin, never existed in the first place: an awkward fact -
   excusably unknown to Paul but presumably known to an omnis-
   cient God (and Jesus, if you believe he was God?) - which
   fundamentally undermines the premise of the whole tortuously
   nasty theory. Oh, but of course, the story of Adam and Eve was
   only ever symbolic, wasn't it? Symbolic? So, in order to impress
   himself, Jesus had himself tortured and executed, in vicarious
   punishment for a symbolic sin committed by a non-existent
   individual? As I said, barking mad, as well as viciously unpleasant.
2. George Carlin (in Richard Dawkins Book God Delusion). "Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible
   man - living in the sky - who watches everything you do, every
   minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten
   things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten
   things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning
   and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer
   and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the
   end of time . . . But He loves you!" (lmao. great ridicule).
3. GREAT Atheist Commandments (BEST!!)
1. • Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to
   you.
   • In all things, strive to cause no harm.
   • Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and
   the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and
   respect.
   • Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but
   always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and
   honestly regretted.
   • Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.
   • Always seek to be learning something new.
   • Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and
   be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not
   conform to them.
   264 THR GOD DELUSION
   • Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always
   respect the right of others to disagree with you.
   • Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason
   and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by
   others.
   • Question everything.
   
4. Dawkins' Atheist commandments GREAT!
   
1. • Enjoy your own sex life (so long as it damages nobody else)
   and leave others to enjoy theirs in private whatever their
   • inclinations, which are none of your business.
   • Do not discriminate or oppress on the basis of sex, race or (as
   far as possible) species.
   • Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think
   for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree
   with you.
   • Value the future on a timescale longer than your own.
5. Alfred Hitchcock (from Richard Dawkins) "It is said that Alfred Hitchcock, the great cinematic
   specialist in the art of frightening people, was once driving through
   Switzerland when he suddenly pointed out of the car window and
   said, 'That is the most frightening sight I have ever seen.' It was a
   priest in conversation with a little boy, his hand on the boy's
   shoulder. Hitchcock leaned out of the car window and shouted,
   'Run, little boy! Run for your life!' "
6. Richard Dawkins -- "Religion has at one time or another been thought to fill four
   main roles in human life: explanation, exhortation, consolation and
   inspiration." (Science now completely Explains life. Religion provides no moral bearing on how to live; terrible group rapes and outdated commandments in religion. This is great because it shows that religion TRULY is obsolete!! A need for defining our own morality, however, IS VERY necessary and VERY present and that's why personal principles are essential!)....
7. Richard Dawkins -- Consolation, according to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, is the
   alleviation of sorrow or mental distress. I shall divide consolation
   into two types.
   1. Direct physical consolation. A man stuck for the night on a
   bare mountain may find comfort in a large, warm St Bernard
   dog, not forgetting, of course, the brandy barrel around its
   neck. A weeping child may be consoled by the embrace of
   strong arms wrapped around her and reassuring words
   whispered in her ear.
   2. Consolation by discovery of a previously unappreciated fact,
   or a previously undiscovered way of looking at existing
   facts. A woman whose husband has been killed in war may be
   consoled by the discovery that she is pregnant by him, or that
   he died a hero.
8. (This is VERY interesting because to me, science, math, and the awe and mystery of mathematical precision and scientific technology found installed in Nature, in cellular technology, in science is the most inspiring. Again, this is MASSIVELY validating because for me the only thing religion has brought was the ANTI-THESIS OF CONSOLATION. Religion brought me being prosyletized in costa rica, religion brought me fear of fiery pits, screaming irate peope ranting things about trinities...religion brought discord and has never brought consolation! Why is that so many homeless people are connected with churhces? Because churches attract and manufuacture lost people! Science, in contrast, brought me deep truthful consolation. Science is something I can honestly absorb. I can pour over the "tenets" of the cellular respiration or the "tomes" of euclidian geometry and photosynthesis. Science and math are my source of explanation and consolation, and inspiration. And for exhoration, I combine and use a combination of science, logic, and my own principles! Seeing how much WELL-written (dawkins') material there is on anti-religion and how little well-written material on religion these days, restores my faith in humanity and mankind! :D
   
9. Carl Sagan (Science as truth!) -- "Not explaining science
   seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the
   world. This book is a personal statement, reflecting my lifelong love
   affair with science."

Non-Brand ≠ Bland. Generic Brand or Making your own Stuff Generates Confidence and Soothing Reward.

I'm beginning to see how the working world works. How people invent products that are completely useless, copying various competitor brands, when always the simplest (and cheapest) is always the best. The simple best cheapest products stand out on a store shelf. Example: I went to go pick up dog shampoo. I knew the only thing I need for my awesome dog is 2 bowls (1 for food, 1 for water), huge bag of food, a deshedding brush, and doggie shampoo. SCREW all of those mini expensive toy, chemical, brushy, foofy, petty products; they're ALL scams to make money! And the store-brand (generic) bottle of doggy shampoo is like "glistening" on the shelf, it's by Far the best one!! Largest quantity, cheapest price, vanilla cent, does the EXACT same thing as all the other "designer" (designer dog shampoo OMG!! ffs!) shiny coat, oiled, good dermatologically, etc. The simplest, cheapest, and minimal items are ALWAYS the best. It's so easy to get lost and confused in the world of "brand". Of buying something not for it's purpose nor utility but it's brand. Such a concept is utterly ridiculous to me now! Now, don't get me wrong their are some brands that I use because I invest a lot of time into a certain resource; namely Apple brand computers and mabye Shell gas just because of good experiences from those stations, but other than that, NOTHING else really should be brand-bought! Even food, beverages, household items I always go to the cheapest bulk, "generic" label brands 1)because I don't have the option of affording another kind and 2)because it's Liberating!! To know that I didn't waste money on a packaging configuration of brand letters!! The intent with providing a solid brand is to ensure consistency and reliability, but you know what? The generic simplest naturalist product (be it strawberries or shampoo) is almost always the best, especially if it's something you need that isn't an everyday thing.

So as I passed these rows and rows and rows of trinketty ridiculous pet items, all your canus lupus needs to be happy is good, fun exercise outdoors, social play time with other animals (including homo sapiens), food, water, and staying clean/bathed! But I thought to myself, I could've been one of those people that invented a product and went through the HELL of branding and patenting paperwork and approvals, just to get my mini row of 10 or so identical invention items up on the shelf...NEXT TO 2-10 other types of competitor inventions that emerge with their own marketing advertising, labeling, twist angle just to make money! So I feel galvanized having chosen to just take a deep breath, pass by all that superfluous shit, grab the simplest, cheapest product, and not clutter my life with items that have little bearing on a person. I purchase items for utility (or if it's an investment, to sell later, but that's a different strategy); that makes me feel resourceful!

Purchasing the generic brand encourages creativity and modularity. This may sound ridiculously complex and unnecessarily over-scrutinized, but it's undeniably true! When I purchase generic "no-brand" cereal or vegetables, or rice, for example, I find it joyful to then resourcefully plugin interesting recipes to make that "bland no brand" extremely tasty or resourceful and exciting. It makes you feel self-sufficient to make things, construct things you need (if possible) instead of going to go purchase them. The experience of self-sufficiency of creating what you need if you have the necessary components (some things items like basic food ingredients feel good to purchase) to just make the tool or implement feels extremely rewarding, soothing, and confidence-boosting!

Changing Your Life Program

Basically what you're going through is changing your life program. Everyone has a life prgram -- a series of steps and procedures, strategies, and environmental cues that make what they do simpler, easier, and feel more productive. I remember doing some work for a comedy club in North Hollywood. I planned to make some calls to invite more people to the club. To do that I had access to the back office which cut through the kitchen, where I could see the chef at work. Now the chef had all of his ingredients laid out. He happily rolled some kind of tortilla while he had multiple burners cooking food. You could tell his life program was comfortable cooking. He could and did crunch out 40-50 full meals that evening and he did it simply, smoothly, and in a way that felt like he was getting stuff done. An hour later after making the calls I watched the comedian on stage. You could tell, by how relaxed he was, but simultaneously confident, and happy he looked on stage making people life with his set material, that he had manufactured a life program that enabled him to feel comfortale on stage telling jokes and making people laugh!

We all have these life programs -- a sequence of steps, procedures, environmental cues, stimuli, and internal responses combined with techniques and strategies -- that make something feel natural, simple productive and exciting! The trick is to learn what makes one life program work and apply those same qualities and strategies to another task (like if the comedian had to work in the kitchen, I'm sure he'd use similar strategies of engaging other chefs to learn what to do or if the chef had to work as a comedian, he may have a procedural approach that he hused preparing meals and dishes to presenting his material!)

If it sounds like you're interested in shifting from a life program of continuing to be able crisply, clearly, and actively provide help to your clients during your business appointments but to additionally add-in the capacity to have that same crisp, clear, focused, helpful problem-solving state where you know what to do and how to do it with your own challenges and tasks for your own personal (organizing, earning, and building muscle health) life, send us an email! We're here to help install that change!

Thanks again. We look forward to doing a Great doing the lifecoaching session with you.

http://www.validatelife.com is a blog site
http://validatelife.blogspot.com/search?q=pop is a link that goes to a series of organizational articles, but most of them are for computer data.

and
http://www.destinationescapade.com is the lifecoaching site.

I'm working on combining all those sites into one.

I'd sincerely appreciate if you'd recommend me to any friends that have an interest in life-coaching and/or improving the quality of their life, health, relationships or organization! I'm still doing free lifecoaching sessions (with NLP) and plan on trying to accumulate as many of those experiences before hopefully doing the inexpensive $59/3 1 hour sessions. Thanks again!

Sincerely,
John

Getting And Staying Organized with UMSD

Basically this specific part is messy and infected with a lot of David Allen's GTD muck. Frankly GTD is too bloated of an organizational system; you take on a lot of crap you don't need if you use it. It has some great concepts but as a whole the system sucks. So I'm on the process of writing up details of my own system. For computers, it basically uses all online documents, almost all documents on hard drives are backups. It consolidates consolidates consolidates!! All like files. It gets all your outcome project files in one spot. My system really works, and it goes where GTD failed to go and takes you to place where you end up just jotting stuff down you need to do and doing it instead of all this WF, M-S (when the frickin hell am I ever going to look at a maybe-someday list to see what I maybe someday will do? That list is a bunch of crap), crap it just has a simple todos projects and you don't need seperate folders for project,s that's like kids r' us. I have one online file accessible from my phone, laptop, or desktoop that has things to do and if it's complex, an outline of how to accomplish it all in THE SAME ONE FILE. The file is organized into "computer" "videos" "books" projects because all outside tasks I keep on a ZenBe lists. So yeah, basically what i wrote last year is practically 80% obsolete and the new organizational system is much clearer, sharper, and most important -- SIMPLER!

NLP Associated/Dissociated State

“A state is our way of being in any moment It comes from our physiology.
thinking and emotions, and is greater than the sum of its parts. We
experience states from the inside, but they have external markers that can
be measured from the outside, like a particular frequency of brain waves,
pulse rate, etc. But none of these can tell you what it is like to feel angry
or to be in love. “
Oconnor.
SOOOO TRue. so awesome!!! OMG so helpful.

My baseline state changed in 00 (after meeting the devil worshipper bitch maya). Before I had different energy level, different representational system. My newer state became more chaotic. I held different values; predominant emotion of anger or so! I am blue energy (knowing what’s up with people emotionally, highly emotionally, easily overwhelmed a bit) so definitely good to stay connected with personal history, journals, etc!

GREAT general rule. Experience pleasant memories in associated experience to get the most out of them, and unpleasant memories in dissociated state to avoid bad/unpleasant feelings and to avoid getting overwhelmed. COOL. This is like a protector or integrater. If you’re in life and feel overwhelmed,just pop into dissociated state! If you’re doing something and you realize “hey, this experience rocks!” pop into an associated state to soak it up and get all the good emotions to generate a more uplifted state!

POP Suite Part 5: Email Organization

Welcome back to the Productivity and Organizational Progress (POP) Suite. Today we're talking about Email Organization.

Here's my two cents on email productivity.

THE source for clarity on [Gmail] IMAP bugginess.

When add the [Gmail] Pretext to my Gmail account only certain gmail folders pop up:
All mail
Deleted messages
Spam
Starred
and One other folder

When I remove that, my massively annoying byzantine infrstructure of google labels pops up. What the hell is going on?

Well, any "prefix you use" [Gmail] will be the only folders that Mac Mail loads. So if you have 7 folders called [ABC]/Folder1 [ABC]/Folder2, etc. Mac Mail will only load those seven folders.

Google is so infuriatingly buggy, I can't even begin to describe how much its IMAP features suck.

So many 3rd-party programs have done that. Even open office (neooffice is slow as fracking hell). So I've made an ultimatum with myself. I only use Apple software. Period! I'll likely switch to mobile me within a few months because that looks so smooth and inecredible.

I'm talking EVERYTHING mac. Sure, I'll use quicken, and one or two other third parties, but everything else: apple. Why not? It's complete, it works great, its's designed for yoru ocmputer by the company that designed hte hardware, too. It's smoother to keep the kinds of software congruent and do you actually "need' all of those crap, hack third-party programs? Definitely not. Most certainly not. They're all impulse buys. Anything that you can do with apple software is all that you need. They have a built in xcode sdk and script editor for applescript for crying out loud! They give you the tools and the freedom to create your own apps! Signing up for non-apple email, apps, upgrades, etc. before was just something I had an aversion to, (Being a devout apple fan), now signing up for or using 3rd party programs has ceased being an aversion and has simply become a massive source of pain and sheer frustration. I hate non-apple apps. I frankly hate tehnology right now I ahve spent so much time debugging and trying to get things to work, but if I can take a few small doses of technology, I'll only settle for Apple.

I just got fed up reading reviews on Macword because what use is a review from a really awesome program that I can't afford in the first place?!!! Untill I can actually afford this software, reading about it seems kind of boring.

I'm seriously at the point where I'm so sick of these little installations from xyz software that wreak disgusting, foul, putrid discombobulated havoc and disgusting clutterfests on my life. One of those, most undoubtedly is google. I hate google. Their IMAP configurations wiht mail.app are so sickenling buggy, it's basically like setting up and debugging your own email server in the beginning ages of the internet. It's causes me so much painful frustration for hundreds and hundreds of hours of my life. I didn't even realize that google mail was the cause of it. I had a couple gmail accounts and I finally "settled" in one

Email Folders
We've got @Later, @Noisy, @Archive, @Action, and @Respondto. Now honestly those are a bit redundant. I like the A, B, C method of prioritizing all those folders, meaning
C
Noisy
Laters
B
Respondto
A
Action


Because A, B, and C reflect the amount of mental energy you should put towards a response. If you don't want to right a long response, drop the message in C! C messages should be limited to 5 lines maximum for each response. NO MORE! Stickign to that methodology will give you so much freedom in life because instead of seeing dozens of emails where some might involve actions or long or short responses, if you have collected 10 emails in "C" just dash out responses to those and it should take you 10 minutes, tops!




Rules about rules!



Key word to the wise regarding Google Filters or Mail.app Rules. Use them sparingly and ONLY if you have absolute 100% assurance that the rule will get highly utilized. think of the filters/rules as large conduits -- the main "plumbing" if you will, if your email. On my gmail account at one time I had over 30 filters -- Thirty! That just creates (trust me. I know from experience) a fragile, and convoluted email routing system. I think rules and filters should max out around 10, with a few strange exceptions. Good reliable filters that i always use are routing my Facbook and Myspace emails into @LATER/C and @LATER/Myspace, respectively. I get a lot of those updates Consistently -- the consistency is the key parameter for making a rule --and this way they're all consolidated in a seperate folder that I peruse leisurely, "@Later". Consistency is key. At one point, I set up all messages from certain friends to be automatically labelled as "friend". That's cool. Except that when you do that with 10-20 email address and then those people write irregularly, you've got 10-20 extra filters/rules clogging your "email plumbing" which just adds ot confusion, instead of subtracts it. Bottom-line: Rules/Filters should have a high threshold of criteria before they're applied:
1. Regularity -- You must Consistently Receive certain type of email (like Social-networking updates)
2. Consolidation -- Would prefer to have this messages redirected out of the inbox in a seperate folder
3. Decreases Confusion & Clutter -- Adding said filter/rule decreases confusion, instead of adds to it.

With the "Auto-labelling-as-friend" filter, I'd have a friend email me every month or so and "miss" the email because it popped up in "Freinds" instead of inbox. All emails that are irregular (meaning that it's up to the recepient, instead of some auto-responding program like Facebook notifications) should be unfiltered and go to your inbox for you to process directly. Here's an example using all three criteria: Filtering newsletters rerouted to @LATER or @LATER/Newsletters fits reflects "regularity" because you'll recieve those like clockwork weekly or monthly or whatever the scheduled frequency was; "Consolidation" fits because why would you want to read a 4-page newsletter in the midst of processing your main email. You want those in the "@LATER" folder, consolidated and out of the way to optionally read after you've handled stuff that could potentially "blow up". Finally you can check of "Decreases confusion and clutter" because seeing a swelling "Inbox" can cause alarm but if all of those are "Newsletters" you'll just see a swelling "@LATER/NEwsletters" which decreases confusion and panic!

Another example: Bank and Financial NOtices. Any important alerts that you want to receive immediately should, obviously not be filtered, but your weekly or monthly bank statement that sends via email, as long as it can't possibly contain something that could "blow up" or an action coudl be routed to @Later or @Later/Finances, for your Liesure perusal of your financial emails.

On the Nature Of @LATER Emails: Stopping the Dam
It's important to note that all emails directed to @LATER should be emails that could potentially go unread for months or years and nothing "would be missed". Anything important or tied to an action should never be filtered. This is why you don't filter friend's emails because they could have an action buried in there (the rare exception is the loving aunt who only always sends just "Checking in" emails). Don't Assign a rule to something you need to see in your inbox! So given that everything auto-routing to @Later or its sub-folders is just "Leisure reading", the question arises "If I don't Need to read that stuff, why do I even subscribe to it?" Answers will vary, but it's immensely valuable to just plug the leak and simply unsubscribe to junky newsletters or updates you rarely read in the first place. Redirecting All newsletters and automated notifications to @LATER is half the solution. The next solution is eliminating via unsubscribing the junk @LATErs (i.e. the junky newsletters or notifications that you dont' care about in the first place). This is just stopping the dam intstead of redirecting the fluidity of your flow to another folder. If what accumulates in @LATer is primarily "sewage" in other words, eliminate the sewage from the source and stop just "redirecting it around" for goodness sake!

So to conclude we've talked about the "Rules for Rules" or the Three criteria of Regularity, Consolidation, and Decreasing Confusing for assinging a rule and we've talked about just eliminating and being SELECTIVE about the @LATER emails you recieve in the first place.

Those to excellent solutions is your calling card to the delightful and enlightening experience of lightning fast inbox-zero anti-clutter email.

Here's the down-low summary on how to work email with the most simplistic methods possibly (i'm drawing from merlinn mann, David allen, some macworld gurus and other productivity experts and my own experience).

I've detailed the horros of the overly-byzantine system above.


Possible Emails -- Email_IDEAS
Responses
This folder should contain REsponses that you foresee as plausible. When I email. I typically already know what a person will say in response so This way I have the responding part covered. Alternatively, which is the best to do, this should be in Drafts and labeled a different color indicating that it's a "canned response" to a pre-written email. When you know how people think, you already know the type of response you expect to get, so just write your response to that future response then so you don't have ot worry about thinking about in the future.

Edit GMail Filters -- remove most
Ensure I'm aware of what emails are skipping inbox.
AFter some consistency has been established with these folders add in mail-acton and mailtags features ONLY if those programs are non-trial
READ about Mail-acton
Read about Mail-Tags
Get Mail-acton to work
Get a license for it for free or buy it before fully using it
Learn how it works and create some useful rules
Set up mailtags
Elminate all archiving folders after setting up mailtags
Find Mail Aggregator for myspace and facebook accounts

Productivity & Organizational Progress Suite 1: Intro Part 2

[2)Some solutions people have have just so much absence of logic and lack of practicality imbedded in them it's hilarious.] Cont...

I'm seriously thinking of submitting "Stupidest Productivity Ideas" to some kind of segment for the Jay Leno Show. I hear people rave and talk about how these "productivity systems" work so magically well, when they're really wrought with stupidity and inefficiency. One of my favorites of this category is Google Notebooks.

Laughing at other methods. Here's a "genius" method I've seen people raving over. What is with it with these people? I just start laughing at how much infuriation they create for themselves (and I've experienced it by trying out their system with my own tasks) with such idiotic systems! Here's a brainbuster: loading all your tasks and projects into numerous Google notebooks. Why this works: it doesnt'. Why this doesn't work: Endless reasons, but some important ones are: What do you do when you don't have internet access, genius? All of your tasks and projects are inaccessible. Never a state you should ever want to come across. Secondly, the loading delays: waiting and extra 5 seconds while google loads information for EVERY task I update? I don't think so, mabye if I was an 80 year-old grandmother who liked watching the "colors pop up" on the computer. Productivity needs to be electricity-like fast and google notebooks doesn't cut it. Finally, advertisements. Period. What kind of moron delights in seeing countless advertisements when he's trying to go into a zen-like mode of organization and productivity? There you have it, I dub "google notebooks for productivity" "mind-bogglingly dumb" because of Inaccessibility, Loading delays, and Distracting advertisements.

But it astonishes me how someone could not only deem such a "mind-bogglingly dumb" system not only "efficient" (when it's anything but) but worthy of sharing with others. I couldn't believe when that the author of that productivity post actually thought he was helping people providing obtuse methods.

Frank Addante, A brilliant start-up guru, whom I respect, suggests we learn how to make quick decisions and then as quickly as you effectively and swiftly make the best decisions you can, try to find out if that was a bad, poor, or good or excellent decision! Moving to california was definitely and excellent decision. Using google notebooks was a bad decision and going back to chicago last year was a pretty poor decision, but didn't have much choice in that one, that one was neutral. California uplifting decison.

Now, I'm making such a huge deal out of this because, frankly, I used about a month of my life up dealing with the daily infuriations with the idiotic google notebook method. I find all gmail sluggish, buggy iwth IMAP, and full of plain awful, but flaws. But I just blindly took that person's suggestion and "tried out" that google notebook system.

I think the most moralistic "fable" lesson here is stop listening to the advice and suggestions of others. If it's a suggestion so off-base from your own "doings" it will wreak havoc and not solve anythign and if it's close enough to how you operate then a suggestion to "keep doing what you're doing" is redundant! So advice is pretty pointless. You'll connect with what you need to by gathering more information and knowledge. Knowledge is not so much "power" as it a solution for generating massive clarity.

Also on that note. I'd almost much rather read about all these different systems while just using mine that works than go through the pain and anguish of trying out a system and having it falter.

While my system may not have perfection, it at the very least has perpetual accessibility, instantaneous (zero loading delays) updates, and of course zero advertising distractions. I won't go as far to say that my system is "mind-bogglingly intelligent", but in many respects it embodies everything the "google notebooks" system is not, the anti-google-notebook method, if you will.

Stay tuned for the next installment of the Productivity & Organizational (POP) Progress Suite.

Productivity & Organizational Progress Suite 1: Intro Part 1

Thus begin the first installment of the Productivity & Organizational Progress (POP) Suite. Stay tuned for the next 5 (or more) installments detailing everything from organizational mastery within email, on the homefront, within your office, how to douse email insanity, and get clear and stay clear on your todos...

This may be one of the most curmedgeonly posts in the history of blogging. Okay, that's a little extreme, but this does have a critical flavor to it.

One of the most brilliant "insulters" of the 20th century was Roald Dahl.


While I think South Park has become the 21st century internet-infused electronic "Roald Dahl" of sorts, he definitely has a knack for clever insults.

In addition to his ability to "conspire with children against adults" in his stories, one of the things I like most about Roald Dahl (my favorite childhood author by far) was his his affluent allocation of alliteration to assemble literally adroit disparagements. Phrases like "Clotted Carbuncle" and Whangdoodle" or how about "soggy overboiled Cabbage" on for size, astound me in their brilliance and creativity in remaining intelligent while insulting something.

On the nature of disparaging, I've tried reading countless ideas posted by productivity people in a various forums or every article someone writes regarding productivity with as much objectivity as possible, gracefully accepting suggestions for productivity, downloading the necessary apps, and testing out those ideas. I've learned two things from doing this: 1)Remedies for productivity are subjective and 2)Some things you simply must label as "mind-bogglingly dumb" be done with it, and move on.

1)This one is simple. If I'm a farmer

and the bulk of the things I have to do as "@errand tasks" are buy massive amounts of grain for sewing, my "@errands" list is going to look a LOT different and need to have a lot more sub-folders, filtering methods, and reminder methods than the college kid

who needs to load up on Pasta-Roni. Okay, that's a little extreme, but the essence is clear; systems work best for the authors who advertise them. Keep that in mind even while you're reading my suggested methods.

2)Some solutions people have have just so much absence of logic and lack of practicality imbedded in them it's hilarious.

Can Our Culture Keep up with Technology?

What is it with technology? How can we keep up with technology and do we futilely use technology to fill emotional voids? 

From the 11th hour, Thom Hartmann, author of "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" asks, "How can we use our understanding of science and technology along with our understanding of culture and how culture changes?"  For planetary sustainability as well as simple mental stability, the two must be joined hand-in-hand, growing and expanding as one.  Sever culture from technology, and vice e versa, and one's life experience becomes wrought with problems.  Take the stone-age Homo habilis 

2 million years ago who simultaneously  to creating fire,  discovers a cell phone, exemplifying a massive schism with the hyper-advancement of technology, leaving culture in it's wake.  Such an anachronism couldn't be utilized.  The cell phone would be utilized as and equated to a the functionality of a colorful rock, because the culture wouldn't yet have the advancements to understand the benefits of global telecommunication.  Hyper-advancements in technology where there isn't the similar level of cultural advancement to support it, are treated as alien. Back then,"technologies" such as exothermic combustion reactions satisfied the current level of cultural reaction.

To be curt, we're way beyond combustion, but we're still interested in anchoring technology with culture to avoid a schism.  Every house comes standard with with countless electronic outlets because our culture has evolved with electrical power, this cultural "installment"  occurred shortly after Edison's successful lightbulb test in 1879.  

So we've got cultural installments that must reflect the current level of technological installments on a global and personal level.  Globally, solar panels technologically serve our current level of culture, but individually, many people aren't ready for solar panels because they may still be trying to figure out how their RCA plugs on the Tivo connects to their flatscreen.  For good sustainable energy practices such as solar panels to become a cultural standard, that technology has to symphonize in unison with the cultural level.

Here's another example: fireplaces.

 Amidst central heating and thermostats, almost anyone today thinks of a fire-place as something "old-fashioned" and out-dated.  Our culture has long-surpassed exothermic combustion reactions of our neanderthal ancestors as "technology".  But relative to those neanderthal brethren, a fire-place that redirects smoke out of an abode is highly advanced technology.  The "fireplace" embodies a technological emblem where culture has "a-okayed" it's placement and utilization.

A microwave oven expedites one area of our life -- cooking food -- by emitting microwavs from a magnetron to excite polarized particles (namely H20).  That type of technology has become "a fireplace" because of it's utilization and freedom from trouble-shooting.

The question is, is there anything other than passage of time that can instantiate technological devices into culture?  In other words, cell phones are becoming a cultural standard because of a)their utilization b)the passage of time that's passed since their initial acceptance into society.  Flash-forward 50 years, take into account the rate of cellular growth, wireless bluetooth headsets, and the like, and some kind of ultra-portable, possibly even biological "cell phone" will be the emerging cultural standard and a blackberry or iPhone will be our "fireplace".  

Technology grows at such an accelerated rate because it a)satisfies the goals of economy -- and economy's goal is  simply to just expand -- and b)it supposedly upgrades efficiency.  But culture is the "container" for technology, Neanderthal brethren. 

 

An author, architect, and just all around brilliant dude who grasps the philosophy, chemistry, and industrial layout for installing a new kind of technology that safely nurtures the cultural pace for global ecology is William McDonough.  He has numerous fellowships and prestigious achievements of accolade, and I encourage you to catch some of his writings on new paradigm and architecture if you hold any interest in the advancement of a safe correlation of technology with culture with proportionate growth ratios.  Future blog posts will likely detail some of his writings.

So let's dash over to the technological marketplace where there exist these technological icons who transgressively push the frontiers of gaming, computers, and internet.

When it comes to gaming entertainment technology, you can't get any further up the ladder than Shigeru Miyamoto

 the guy who created cornerstone games such as Super Mario Bros., Zelda, and Donkey Kong.  

In recent news, on July 1, 2008 the richest man in the world is stepping down from his command post at Microsoft.  What cultural changes will this manufacture from the technological landscape?  JFK reminded us that "a nation may rise or fall, a man may die, but an idea lives on".  Being an all-time Mac-Apple fan and affiliate, it's hard to have sympathy for Mr. Gates, but no doubt his competitive leadership set an indelible notch for business efficacy.

These guys push the technological consumer's concept of "what's fireplace" and what's mind-boggling new.  The greater the immersion in "common place technology" the greater the habituation to that technology.  Time involved with something directly relates to the familiarity with that thing.  That's great...if and only if we immerse ourselves in galvanizing technologies.  Habituating ourselves to maladaptive technologically or inopportune technologies denigrates our cultural peace of mind or shatters the delicate balance of our earth's ecology.  So that's something to obviously keep in check.

Additionally, what happens when there's a schism between technology advancing and cultural peace of mind?  A forest fire of global devastation due to global warming, russian models jumping out of windows, and just general out-of-alignment.  The cognitive dissonance of a culture out of pace with its technology is deadly.  Sure, it might be easier to pinpoint global warming as a consequence of incommensurate cultural and technological levels than a Russian model killing herself, but taking one's life is just a behavior of being "out of sync" and out of touch with one's personal goals and we've got to expand upon the cultural horizons to ensure the pace of technology doesn't get become out of sync with our cultural tier.  

One thing I've recently done is take a break from trying to have the most cutting edge phone or reading the news items 2 minutes hot off the blog press and just reacquaint myself with my long-time hobby of chess.  Reading some theories books on the logic, intuitive, creative, and even psychological vantage points of chess provided EXACTLY the type of technology I needed to create balance in my life.  And yet chess is a 6th century Indian game (derived from chaturanga, which sounds like some kind of yoga pose).  The Knights Templar, made famous in the Da Vincio code, played chess in the 13th century, and "modern" chess kicked in at around 14oo.  Either way it's respectively, 1500, 800, or 600 years old.  It goes without saying that chess is a "fireplace"; it's a technological game so habituated into acceptance that it has been dubbed as something "old-fashioned".  And yet that "fireplace" technology, that oldest of oldest games, was precisely the technology I needed to restore balance and provide emotional well-being to my life.  Technology, therefore, doesn't have to be exist as something "new", it just must have the relationship to our emotional needs to create a fusion of balance and efficiency, instead of merely a "replacement" for some void.  

Basically what I'm saying is in a state of disarray, instead of jumping to the next technological gadget, play a nice game of chess!

Productivity Heros

This details the list of all productivity heros of which I can conjure

• David Allen -- The "Father" of modern productivity. His GTD is referenced in myriad productivity apps, resources, and books. The uber-productivity trend-setter, David coined words like "mind like water productivity" "blackbelt GTD" and other Zen-like terms. He has a martial arts background, lives in Ojai (sweet, a neighbor!), and has to have some kind of computer programming background with his references to LIFO, FIFO, and the entire "closed" loop GTD system is set up like a computer program with if-then statements. If anyone wants to know about productivity, they've got to understand or at least get the gist of Collect, Process, Organize, Review, Do. Here's David giving a stellar speech to Google:
  I suggest you subscribe to some of his RSS Feeds and checkout the DavidCo Forum.


• Merlinn Mann -- If anyone knows GTD high-tech style, it's Merlin Mann. In a way he's like David Allen 2.0. He invented an amazing program called Quicksilver for the mac. With that handy gem you can load most any program or document with the keyboard, making it an essential for keyboard jockeys. Using words like "byzantine", "email bankruptcy", and "attrition" all in the same paragraph, he really cracks me up and reminds me of a high-tech jim Carrey infused with hyper-intelligence. Check out his hyserical mockery FlockedUp site debut.
  or the more traditional presentation of his essential productivity material "Inbox Zero" with this video presentation at google or at the main Merlin Mann hub. The guy has numerous pages, blogs, and sites, so it's hard to pinpoint a central hub, but if one existed it would be 43folders.com.

• Cameron Johnson -- This may be transforming into a "leaders of business" by listing Cameron, but I had to include this guy. Cameron wouldn't typically make the productivity list because his expertise is entrepreneurialism, not productivity. But, come on...if you started 12 business by the age of 21, how could you call that NOT productive! Here's a rundown of his startups:
  TrueLoot.com 2004
  CertificateSwap 2004
  KazaaGator 2003
  AimBuddy 2003
  ChooseYourPrize.com 2002
  Zablo.com 2001
  SearchOmega 2001
  VoteStation.com 2001
  SurfingXChange 2001
  SurfingPrizes.com 2000
  EmazingSites 1999
  MyEZShop.com 1999
  MyEZMail.com 1998
  Cheers and Tears/
  Beanie Wholesale 1997
  Cheers and Tears
  Printing Co.
  His book is well-written, well-organized, and massively helpful for anyone eager to launch their own business. The best part? Cameron writes from my (Generation Y) generation, so instead of hearing some garbage about 1980s reveries at Harvard or how "back in the day we didn't have computers", you just get waves of solid, clean, lucid business advice...plus the guy's just massively intelligent. Additionally, he wrote "You Call the Shots" like an autobiography, giving it the "true novel" flavor to the prose.

No Advice Please!

In my years I’ve given and received a lot of advice. Sometimes I’ve lucidly expressed and shared wisdom or my own or received brilliant tokens of wise suggestions from others. However, not until recently did I start to scrutinize the Value (or lack-thereof) of the advice I received from others. Upon this scrutiny, I quickly realized that some advice is not so valuable and is possibly dangerous!. We all are told to “listen to our elders” and heed advice carefully, but we’re rarely told to watch out for advice!

I have and express gratitude and massive appreciation for most advice from people. A portion of the advice I’ve accumulated in life has brought me to where I live and thrive today, coalescing together an exciting profession with web design, life-coaching, and acting-performance. Additionally a lot of my health and friendships thrived or endured because of great advice from others. However, you may discover, at times, that not listening to others’ advice, holding true to your inner voice, and galvanizing trust in your own actions, can an activate just as much (or more) clarity and confident initiative than following the advice of others!

Here’s my Two cents on why to not accept advice from others as a turn of the tables.

Whether you’re requesting advice on an essay to write, a problem to solve, how to approach it, putting your intention on someone else’s advice or your own has it’s place and time. Here’s 5 great reason why should occasionally avoid the advice of others and how such a practice could benefit you greatly. (I am aware that “not taking advice” is a form of advice!).

Not listening to advice can often increase your Intuitive voice, professionalism, listening and acoustic skills, inner alignment, and conversational selectivity!

--Intuitive. Receiving advice is counter-intuitive to a giving person’s mission and interest in life.  I've written 5 books and have done a tremendous amount of accomplishments that manufacture an uplifting and colorfully effective set of insights to give to people. While receiving insights from others is great, my entire personality, motive, and desire revolves around giving not receiving advice! Do you have a similar “giving first, receiving mindset”? If so, getting advice from others could be counter-intuitive and thus counter-productive to your core values. Not listening to your core values causes your relationships and career success to suffer. It’s best to listen to your own inner message!

--Professionalism. You'll feel more professional listening to your own advice.  Clear and simple.  If someone is constantly giving you advice, it's easy to feel belittled, depressed, or always the passive role of a watcher, learner, or receiver instead of an actor, teacher, or giver..  I'm interested in sharing and helping, not necessarily with "advice" which can be frequently unhelpful from certain people on certain topics, but by eliciting one’s own professionalism and core values.

--Acoustics. You'll listen more intently and comprehensively if you ease off and take a break from requesting advice from others!  I don’t know about your brain, but when I want to be giving advice instead of receiving it, my brain blocks out advice upon hearing it, when you aren’t thinking “I really want to hear what this guy has to say”.  Frequently our mind gets frustrated upon hearing someone else’s opinion being shoved at you. This is not ego, but just your own inner voice trying to have a presence. Led your inner wisdom speak and guide you to your career dreams! The less advice you hear, the more open you’ll be to listening to what non-advice things people have to say! You’ll pay attention more because you won’t be putting up “auditory walls” to what you hear, knowing that the messages others have to say are not advice, but a friendly discussion!

--Alignment. You run the risk of deviating from your own path when you listen to others’ advice.  Others' advice may be great but there's no guarantee that you'll stay true to your own path, maintain your moral and value integrity, and just continue towards what you're heading.  Others advice should acknowledged advice given with a "Thanks" and gratitude, but almost always quickly discard the external advice in one ear and out the other without a thought about it, to ensure you stay true to your path and goals.  Here’s a simple example: a bicyclist tells you to bike more to get in shape, but you're a surfer.  Listening to that advice would derail you from something that provides fulfillment in your life. Or another one: A professional counselor tells you to go to sleep earlier to get out of feeling down in the dumps, but your friend reminded you that when you stay up and talk with people, you frequently feel refreshed and energized the next day! In such a case, listening to the counselor would have derailed you from your life path, but your own inner voice, or your friends suggestion would have brought the most effective results! You risk eclipsing your idenity when you listen to advice given by those far removed from your path. Listen to your own advice and advice closely aligned with your own life path.

--Be selective. Are their any topics that you absolutely will not hear advice on? What are some topics that you absolutely are not open to hearing advice on? Maybe you consider yourself an expert on the topic, or maybe you simply have heard the bulk of the advice that people have to say and hearing “new advice” is just having old trite hackneyed utterances shoved back at you. This depends on the person, but what are some advice topics that definitely do not resonate with you? These could range from romantic relationships, to professional topics, to appearance topics, to scheduling advice topics, and more.

Conclusively, be wary of those who dump their own opinions, views, and perspectives on you in the form of advice! The best advice someone could ever give you is to listen to your own advice! When someone utilizes advanced questioning and elicits your core values and enables you to provide yourself with the advice you need, that’s the best type of advice you could ever receive!

If you want to experience an increase your Intuitive voice, a new-found professionalism, enhanced capacity, inner alignment, greater choice in conversations, maybe should ease up on the advice of others!

I encourage you to look for friends or wise souls who offer this ability of creating your own “intrinsic advice library” through advanced neuro-linguistic questioning! If you can’t find anyone with that skill amongst your peers, feel free to call Validate Your Life coaching at 773.991.6391 or validatelife@gmail.com and set-up a free appointment to elicit the best advice for you -- your own wisdom! http://www.validatelife.com.