motivation - Ina Disguise

Stranger in a hat Disease

May 11, 2016 No Comments

I come from a country which suffers from this to a ridiculous degree, as a way of preventing people from developing any pride or ‘giving themselves airs’. It is a form of low self esteem which is particularly prevalent with people who wish to avoid responsibility. I cannot tell you how stultifying it is when it is a national characteristic.

Another form of it is small person’s disease. I don’t mean that the suffers are small in stature, they are small in outlook. Some people don’t get it until they get older, some people always suffered from it.

Stranger in a hat disease

In this form, the sufferer refuses to listen to any new information unless it is conveyed via a television set, or physically attractive stranger in the case of many men. Any information imparted from people that they know is instantly refuted, making it pretty much impossible to converse at all, in some cases, since they will argue with anything you say. Elderly people get suckered into this one, even when all the evidence points to you knowing exactly what you are talking about. ie. You have a postgraduate degree in the subject, versus a minor celebrity mentioning it on TV.

There is no known cure. You are doomed to being disrespected as a seven year old child for the rest of your life with a sufferer of this problem.

eg. “No, of course it isn’t autumn, it is spring.”

“Would you like me to find a stranger in a hat to tell you what month it is?”

Small person’s disease

This is the one all motivational speakers seek to cure, in a myriad of expensive and time consuming ways. This is the assumption that anyone in a public arena or position of any power whatsoever is different from you, special, untouchable and morally superior. Even if the celebrity in question has committed a murder, they are still deserving of a mysterious form of worship that makes anything they do of considerably more importance than actually doing anything yourself. This one is more dangerous, since the sufferer abdicates all responsibility for their progress and self worth, in favour of accepting a perceptive state where everyone is luckier/better/more important than they are, and end up playing hours and hours of Candy Crush Saga, Farmville etc., whilst seeking validation from a group of similar peers. If challenged, they become fearful and retreat into these futile pursuits, effectively becoming a form of zombie. The idea of actually challenging anyone with any status at all is effectively rendered to mean the challenger is in a state of insanity. This is what befell most of my friends after the Wolfe saga started, since I can see no reason why I am not just as important/talented/capable/worthy of being loved as someone on the grounds of a few hundred youtube videos. Many would say considerably more so, despite my aversion to fame.

This is the kind of problem that causes civilisations to crumble unnoticed, since nobody accepts their ability to actually do anything, no matter how small.

This is the reasoning behind the Better Person Project. If everybody spent ten minutes a day inputting information from wherever they were, it would be considerably easier for people looking for more worthwhile ways to spend their time to actually find those things. As I have said, until the artwork moves, I am unable to redesign the site, so it is a bit clunky at the moment, but perfectly usable.

It applies just as readily to your daily life. What exactly stops you from taking your ten minute walk, reading for an hour a day in a subject of interest, perhaps doing a few blogged reviews etc? As someone who does not get out because of my caring, I recommend you do so, just in case you are unlucky enough to end up in the same miserable position I am in. Failing that, you can easily change the world if you stop telling yourself you cannot. Such is the nature of the world. If you do nothing, you only have yourselves to blame and all those excuses will look very silly indeed.

motivation

What can you do today?

April 22, 2016 45 Comments

One of the many principles that Wolfe likes to recycle from time to time is the ‘Do it now’ principle. I cannot remember who originally said it, and I do not particularly care, but the ‘Do it now’ principle is helpful when you are talking yourself out of doing whatever you really want to do.

On the days when I like to forget about the unpleasant reality that is my life and future, I pretend that I have a ceteris paribus situation – all things being equal, there is no reason why I cannot just make a decision and roll with it. (presumably excluding Wolfe, unless you can muster sufficient motivation to catch him.)

So, rather than your sitting indulging in Candy Crush Saga or things of that ilk, watching too much TV, or otherwise messing about – the question is – what can you do today? What can you do to get yourself further towards your goals? What are your goals? If you do not know this, perhaps it is time for some stocktaking and review of what you really want.

I recall a conversation a while back where a number of people over thirty sat and complained about their partners with a resigned sigh. I was in my twenties at the time, and said, to be honest, if these people are that imperfect, why not just leave? You complain about my exs, but at least I left them? Several times, in many cases.

Eventually I spotted some daft guy or other and decided that nobody else would do, so I got rid of them, since I was now effectively wasting their time. This does not mean that I have to have said guy, it just means that in the absence of alternatives, I did not mind their company, but when ‘my person’ came along, the relationships became pointless.

Several arguments ensued, whether he was good enough, whether I was good enough etc etc. At the end of the day, does it matter? You feel the way you feel. Until this point in my life, relationships have been relatively controllable, and this one merits my attention to a sufficient degree to occupy all my time. So what? It has no implications for the object of my affection at all. All that matters is the course of action required to hit my own personal mark, since evidently I found one on a bench, so to speak.

Apparently people over thirty are supposed to become scared of change, scared of growing old alone, and fearful of possible financial implications, so instead they choose to waste their time on conversations like this. A generalised feeling of powerlessness and selfishness washes over them, and they resign themselves to a life of tolerable misery. This is ridiculous. There are plenty of single people at any age, and if you feel you have settled for something, there is no reason why you cannot move on.

Likewise, it is often when you most want something, you become frightened that you might actually get it, or scared of making a fool of yourself trying to get it. That’s life. Who dares wins. You definitely won’t get anywhere if you don’t try.

So, although I hate Wolfe’s recycling journal and pretty much everything else Jim Rohn had to say, I suggest you take this one on board. Do it now. What can you do today to get yourself further towards a goal? Any goal. Set one and go for it. Be selfish, even if it is only for fifteen minutes a day.

And just in case David actually stops by and reads this. It’s your nose. Your feet are OK, but mainly your nose. Everything else is appalling.

motivation

Negative Feelings are Helpful

April 11, 2016 No Comments

TwistyHeadedMan is staying in my spare room at the moment, he is extremely helpful when I am lost in my creative funk, which both last year and this became oppressive in June/July. I guess I have a touch of seasonally affective disorder, since I seem to become unpleasantly obsessed with work during the summer, when I really should be out in the gardens.

Last night, I got him to take a look at my post on Wolfe. ‘Grumpy but positive’ I said, is that OK?

‘That’s how you always are.’ he said. I really am turning into my father.

It is often very difficult to find a positive spin to put on an extended period of unadulterated misery, especially when it involved binning two years of hard work, but I have found over the years that it is sometimes wise to be floored by the punches rather than rolling with them. Were I to publish my classical academic work as Ina, I would at least get a few people to read it now, as opposed to sweating blood over an ignored epic under my own equally ridiculous name. World events since 2011 have proved that the academic book is not only necessary, but essential whether the object of my devotional work likes it or not. (see other posts)

I could look on it, rather angrily as four wasted years that could have been easily avoided, but it is no big deal. I am well used to being underestimated. Ten years ago I was involved in a corporate scandal. The company involved simply could not believe that one scruffy woman would have the audacity to call them out. Since then I have lived an extremely quiet life, but I learned a lot.

Back in the days of my feverish research into the raw food movement, I used to become irritated at the insistence on positivity circulated by the more popular speakers. Positivity is all very well if you do not require your brain to be engaged on critical pursuits, but it is as useful as a chocolate teapot when you need to be more strategic or analytic. It is almost used as a weapon – J P Sears has a rather good video on New Age spiritualism which concurs with this view. Please allow me to let you in on an apparent secret – no feelings are truly unnecessary:

Grief is fine, and if you ignore it it comes back and bites you in the ass. It lasts as long as you decide it needs to.
Jealousy is a mammalian construct, any owner of multiple dogs or cats will tell you it is not exclusive to humans and is inbuilt for survival. Whilst it is not much fun experiencing it, and I personally have chosen to reject it as useless, it is not unnatural to protect yourself from pain.
Sadness, often misdiagnosed as depression, is entirely natural. Depression needs to be clarified by definition as irrational sadness, often physical in nature, and can be alleviated first by dietary means, and then by simply giving yourself the time to pinpoint your repressed anger.
Anger is fine. It is much better to allow some flash fury than pretend to maintain your cool and become depressed later.

And so on. My work as Ina depends on the ego, particularly the wounded ego. If I was to pretend that everything was fine, Ina would not exist and no work would get done at all. All feelings are fine, all feelings are productive. Nothing in your life should be wasted.

motivation, Uncategorized

Confrontation, confidence and class

March 26, 2016 No Comments

Today’s burning topic is confrontation. Much of your life is determined by your ability to tolerate confrontation, both in creating and receiving ‘turning points.’ Confrontation sometimes takes the form of a discussion, argument or all out war. Confrontation and the ability to communicate determines whether people live or die. Confrontation is the difference between moving on with your life, and remaining in the same stuck position for years. I am a bit of a fan of confrontation, although I am just as inclined to avoid it as too stressful as pursue it for the purpose of moving on.

Your ability to tolerate confrontation is determined by a variety of things: your level of confidence, your level of communication skills, your level of emotional stability, your ability to tolerate stress in the form of your adrenaline levels. I was once told that burglars are able to take up stealing from houses because of their low adrenaline levels, which I thought was fascinating. I am far to anxious to do any such thing, which has hampered my progress since my twenties due to trauma. Before my mid twenties, I led a team of several people. After this, I was not given much of a chance, and have come to consider myself less capable as a result.

Having said this, the ability to confront is not necessarily a quality that successful people have. Sometimes they are successful because they are incredibly skilled at avoiding it. When put on the spot, however, these people are the first to crumble. I cannot tell you how amusing it is, when you discover that your oh-so-cool friend is not very cool at all when presented with unexpected information or a new situation.

Chefs often have very intense confrontations, which actually makes for a very healthy working environment. Problems are dealt with under pressure rather than festering, as they often do in offices. The upside of this is that problems with the working environment are solved extremely quickly. Many chefs retire into the army, which is simply a more controlled environment of disciplined confrontation.

National confrontations often take the form of war. The UK has made great use of diplomacy to avoid this, whilst making a living out of wars elsewhere. The British machine has worked very well in the past, but recently the system has been allowed to flounder, by people who do not understand history, who do not want to be reminded that the survival of all depends on fairness, and who thrive on a subtly corrupt system of favours and benefits for a select few.

In the future, we will see more legal, rather than political, diplomatic or military confrontations, since the corporations will slug it out using the money they have extracted from populations too stupid to prevent the inevitable. In the meantime, people will earn less than ever before, for jobs that were once considered skilled.

Religious confrontations, tolerances of variations in interpretation, and social control enabled by division and the imposition of changes in doctrine, are often the most directly bloody of the lot. Any study of religious history will tell you that life is extremely cheap when it comes to religion. As I have previously mentioned, religions have often historically formed to improve the performance of armies, as well as providing pastoral services, exchanging information across national boundaries and exerting social influence via regular meetings. There is nothing new under the sun, and the more intelligent reader should pursue a wide knowledge of religious history to understand the forces at work, and their relationship with the ultimate worship of money. There is ultimately no such thing as a benevolent religion, because religions seek to restrict behaviour and impose shared values where there are none.

A wise person seeks to control their own anger, and so improve their ability to tolerate confrontation, because this is the difference between fitness to rule, and a lack of fitness to succeed at a much lower level. The same can be said for countries who seek to impose their values on others via military intervention. All empires wax and wane for this reason.

The same can also be said for religions which preach intolerance and a hatred for others. A mature religion has learned the importance of remaining benign to preserve the sanctity of life. If you are asked to die for your religion, then there is a significant problem.

Beware of people, countries and religions declaring themselves perfect, pure or true, because they have lost their sense of relativity to others, including you. The only result in all of those cases is ultimately death.

creativity, motivation

Creative Funk and Blockages

January 8, 2016 No Comments

Writer’s block means that you are either processing something, have yet to experience something necessary to your development, or simply have too much to worry about. It is not something that you should ever put yourself in the position of fearing. As someone who has many creative strands to my work, I usually deal with it by using one of the others, whether that is making cartoons, games, artwork or helping other people work through their stuff.

Chatting to a friend earlier this evening, we were discussing why he does not seem to want to promote his acclaimed work. It turns out that bad experiences from his past prevent him, on the grounds that he is somehow jinxed. This, coupled with having had successful projects hijacked, has led to a creative block that has been extremely frustrating for me as the viewer, and extremely limiting for him. Despite this, he has managed several small projects, but is suffocated by what I can only describe as a sense of despondence and fear of success.

In this case, it is film-maker’s and graphic novelist’s block, rather than writer’s block. He, in common with another film-maker I have had dealings with, limits himself by not effectively working around the blockage. This is an intermittent, rather than a constant, problem, and in the meantime I take the rather selfish approach of involving him in my stuff (he does all the photography for the store, and is creating the covers for this year’s crop of books.) I feel quite bad about this, however, as his time would be better spent generating more of his own work and starting new strands, in a holistic development. You often find, on your downtime from one area that you work in, that you unexpectedly grow in a new direction.

I have many authors on my friend’s lists, and barely a day goes by that someone does not complain of being blocked, or that they feel guilty that they have not written that day. In comparison, I frequently do not write for months at a time, and feel nothing at all about it. As I have previously mentioned, Agatha Christie said that she knew she was a professional writer because she wrote things she did not like, at times she did not want to write. I have no plans to be in this position. Deadlines are helpful, but you do not become better by hammering out pulp. I am lucky enough to be feeling quite vital at the moment, but should this change, I have a game to construct and some artwork to do.

It often does not look as if you are doing anything at all, when your work is creative, and then you look back on your day and you have written a press release, researched another couple of textures, absorbed some patterns and shapes, tidied your workspace, sorted some materials for another day. If you look on your writer’s block in a similar way, your brain does need time to store information, process it, and proceed to output mode. You can try scribbling tasklists and notes to yourself in the meantime, to try to speed up this process, but it will happen by itself eventually. Mindmapping was a useful technique I used at university, and it certainly helps a lot with business plans and presentations. Plotting the thought bubbles sometimes makes things a lot clearer.

Negative events often cause you to remain in this state of blockage or funk for several years, when you could just break it down into neat chunks. I was very aware throughout this particular creative period, of what was going on, because I had seen it all before. Years ago, I might have bothered to meet Wolfe, on the assumption that there was some magical source of the waterfall of emotion, but even two years of personal misery did not deter me from the creative outcome, thankfully.

Be aware, as a creative person, that the bad things that happen to you are probably even more useful to you than the nice things. Relentless positivity is for insecure, easily threatened people that are unwilling to develop in a realistic way. The bad years, you will find, provide a more stable footing for your growth in the good ones, if you teach yourself to look on it the right way. My friend can now make well regarded film with minimal money, due to the horrific things that have happened to him. If I can just get him past this unwillingness to shout about it – there is no reason why he cannot expand on this if he wants to. It has taken probably the whole fifteen years I have known him for me to understand why he strangles himself with the hostile form of self-doubt that prevents us finishing certain projects. Which brings me to my final point – unfinished projects should not be binned – it is possible that your brain awaits a future event to teach you what you need to know. Growth is not always a smooth process, but it gets a lot smoother when you learn to protect yourself from shock, and that no material is bad material when you are a creative flower.

business, economics, health, motivation

You will spend your money on….

December 28, 2015 323 Comments

This is the time of year when you have just slightly overspent on your family and friends, and socialising in the event that you have employment and suitable friends/colleagues. You will now be considering diet products, as you will seek to lose weight for your forthcoming holidays, which are traditionally planned at this time of year. In the event that you have the time and inclination, you will also be considering a New Year’s resolution, which may also cost you money. After the debauchery season, comes the austerity season.

Your spending is highly regulated by media influence throughout the year. This is much the same whatever your income bracket. It is a skillfully managed machine that has become finely tuned over the last three centuries or so, since the rise of the department store and initial increase in marketing budgets that led us to where we are today.

It is alarming, when you are unused to it or know how the system of manipulation works, how smoothly you are induced to slip into a state where you are easily induced to spend with the herd. Your diet is as relevant to this as any other part of it. Take out the traditional food, socialising, willingness to conform and you quickly realise how often, and how fully you are lied to in the course of the year.

I used to wonder why people would want a holiday every year, because I loved work so much. Now that I am ‘on duty’ 24 hours a day, 7 days a week I actually need a holiday once or twice a year, in line with those who chose to have children or who have been trapped in a particularly tedious job and lifestyle by circumstance. Most things that people in the west want are actually social constructs to make someone else a living.

Once you accept this, and try swimming against the tide somewhat, you will discover just how fast the streaming goes. In my lifetime we have gone from 20 year spending phases of life to 5 or less. It used to be that you had the childhood phase, the disposable income phase, the young family phase, the mature family phase, the post family phase. Now we have more individualistic phases to extract the cash from a wider range of people. Computers and gadgets have caused a proportion of the population to genuinely believe that they need the latest phone/social media/computer/game/movie, and they need it now. To fund this, they need a ready supply of fairly meaningless and unfulfilling work, and during the course of this they need to lie, agree to say nothing about things they don’t agree with, or pretend to like someone who really is not at all admirable. The age of the role model, and the age of integrity have gone in favour of the great Capitalist con.

The irony is that our national economies performed much better when we favoured honesty and were shown examples of heroic rebellion. Saying yes to people we have no respect for, on the grounds that they have a nicer suit or car, is what led to the economic crash. Banks and supersized companies alike, favour the cheating robot over the honest and devoted employee. This is not healthy. The Western economies fully deserve the downfall they will suffer in the next century or so as a result. Sooner or later, command capitalism or simply a well educated, well motivated developing nation who admire progress will eat us all alive, unless we learn how to look back and learn.

As individuals, we need to learn to swim against the tide. Every time a stupid acquaintance remarks on our old car or clothes we should learn to righteously sneer at their frivolity and congratulate ourselves at avoiding the great capitalist con that keeps them in debt. There is no actual joy to be gained from being endlessly available or engaged in pursuits that are simply designed to drain our finances into someone else’s pocket.

It is important to remember that the multiplier effect only goes so far. We in the West dropped the idea of real money some years ago, in favour of virtual money that moves as a number without any currency to back it up.

Be ahead of the game, rather than sorry at the end of it. Any economic growth they report now is directly at the expense of another nation, students or sectors of society that you are told to hate, for a variety of increasingly spurious reasons. Hate the fat, hate the elderly, hate the disabled in relation to the welfare bill or the NHS. Hate the Muslims whilst we destroy their countries for yet more gain. Hate whoever they tell you to hate, but do not be deceived that it has anything to do with anything apart from the money.

motivation

Widely Spread Lies

November 11, 2015 1 Comment

Anyone can be anything they want – no, they cannot. Life is a series of trade-offs, for a variety of reasons associated with their mental capacity, commitments outside work including geography, family and social. People select the best available option, they do not get to choose from a wide variety of options in many cases.

Avoid negative people to get further in life – unless you choose to be alone most of the time, this is not really possible. Negative people can be helpful in unexpected ways. Where would Eeyore be if Winnie the Pooh, piglet and Robin acted like that?

You cannot avoid your family – yes you can. My mother’s children certainly aren’t people I would choose to associate with. They are greedy, irresponsible, dishonest nasty people and I refuse to parent people who are quite a bit older than I am.

Your destiny is your responsibility – this goes with anyone can be anything they want. It is a lie. See previous answer.

Friends are important – no, they are a nice-to-have. They are expensive, time consuming and assume undue influence on your life.

Love conquers all – no it does not.

To give is better than to receive – again not true. As someone who has spent most of her life being told that it is somehow unacceptable to give away my work for a variety of reasons by a variety of unworthy people, I can tell you that giving is often used as a reason for making you feel bad.

It is selfish or negative not to capitulate to a majority in a social situation – nope. I had to again put my foot down today as I was being railroaded. Even working from a chair in your own home involves standing up for yourself, apparently.

Karma – this does not exist. Bad people will probably not ‘get what’s coming to them,’ and as I have hopefully begun to demonstrate, bad people are not necessarily bad if they are simply not doing what you want them to do.

Famous people are special, separate from the rest of the population, more attractive and more pleasant than the rest of the world – no, definitely not. Celebrity ain’t what it used to be, and there does not appear to be a school for gracious stars to tell them how to handle themselves.

Superficially, we seem to be creating a heavily Americanized culture of what I would term obese superficiality, in which we tell each other the same lies every day. Not everyone is going to reach their star, and it is just as well because if they did, it would not be worth reaching. Talent takes work, for most people, and there is a world of difference between someone creating a persona and someone actually having the quality they would like you to believe that they have.

So, what to do when you discover that no part of your life is going to be even slightly pleasant? Change direction. Sometimes the direction will be unclear, sometimes the goal will be blurry, not everything will work out. All you can do is try. I once made the point to a group of students that the emphasis on lending money to small businesses was somewhat spurious, and led to thousands of people a year losing their future prospects to failed ideas. If you reconsider your ideas, generally there is a cheaper way of starting out on almost any project. To demonstrate my point, I started a business with ten pounds, and by the end of four weeks had made eleven hundred.

Flexibility and determination is a lot more important than capital investment. Not believing the bullshit you are fed is more important than blindly believing anything in the hope of gain. Never assume that anything is as it appears, and you will not only become a more critical thinker, but a happier person and then, and only then, we can all get along much better and not sit posting the lies of the powerless rather than actually getting a life.

business, creativity, motivation, politics

The True cost of Celebrity

November 11, 2015 No Comments

The True cost of Celebrity

Piers Morgan, Tony Blair, Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift, Gordon Brown, JK Rowling, Eddie Izzard.

These names alone will ensure that this blog entry will be read by several new readers.

The reason for this is much the same reason that people used to read tabloid newspapers. They want to be shocked by something that doesn’t actually affect them at all.

Yesterday, Nicki Minaj’s many complaints about Anaconda not being given an award, despite her having followed some formula that she had seen in Marie Claire about nudity in pop videos, were very, very significant on Twitter, aided and abetted by Piers Morgan’s counter complaint that she had not realised how terribly important his children were once upon a long, long time ago.

May I remind you that none of the people in the first row of this article wish you well, or intend to promote you or your work in any way. They are just generating publicity to line their own pockets.

It used to be referred to as being a ‘lickspittle‘, back when the general population still had a decent education. You are welcome to look this up. They distract you from the truth, so that you continue with your lives and do not take any action to better or help yourselves. ‘Spokespeople for the establishment,’ who would like to make sure that everything stays the same.

Anaconda was not a particularly bad video, indeed for a song which must have taken Nicki Minaj all of 20 minutes to write, I am sure she put a great deal of work into it. Her public image, only partially derived from that of Lil Kim, is, I am sure, positive for many people who think that buying makeup and clothes will somehow lead to a better life for all youth, not just the outraged black youth that were so keen to avoid reading Piers Morgan’s article yesterday, branding him a racist. He probably is a racist, but that is not what his article was about, and it does not matter what you think, as long as you are sufficiently aroused to notice his name when you see it.

Do not be deceived, Piers Morgan is trying to revive his profile in America, because he would like to be on TV. We in the UK, as with Russell Brand, are delighted to oblige you with as many annoying celebrities as you care to pay. Nicki Minaj is complaining for your attention, Taylor Swift, the current darling of the establishment, already has it.

Meanwhile in the UK, we have the same sort of illusion in politics. Tony Blair is pretending to care about the Labour leader election, because he wants a right-wing acolyte party that closely resembles the Conservatives. He also wants to distract you from his charging 330,000GBP for appearing at an event for world hunger. Tony, as you can see, cares about you, and you should listen to every word he says, as he takes every self-advantageous opportunity that comes his way.

Gordon Brown, a man now so hated in Scotland that he dare not stand in his own constituency, also thinks he will up his after-dinner speech fee by pretending to come out of retirement to save the Labour Party, a Party so hamstrung by the cult of personality that nobody can make a decision until someone else tells them to.

Even well established authors are not immune from this famewhore behaviour. J. K. Rowling, an English author who chose to live in Scotland, invested heavily in trying to sway the Scottish referendum. Since then, she has continuously complained that she is not liked in Scotland. She has had many column inches, varying from how great she is on Twitter, to, em, how great she is on Twitter. She has done very well with her spare million, in terms of column inches, and potential placement on the honours list.Eddie Izzard, a rather faded star these days, also felt that Scotland was a good publicity opportunity, and so he and a few media friends came up to support Jim Murphy, a politician so dreadful that he tried to associate himself with a can of Irn Bru during his campaign. Because Scottish voters are clearly stupid according to Jim. Are we clear on this yet?

THESE PEOPLE DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOU AT ALL.

They do not care about your life, they do not care about politics, they do not care about bettering the world, they do not care what happens after they die. They are not lofty, special beings. They are here to make money and get ahead. They do not care.

Almost all the news is just a distraction to make you think you are keeping in touch with reality. You aren’t. Let me give you an example:

During Gordon Brown’s term, a news programme came on TV. Two stories were of note.

1. Children of women who stay at home do better at school.

2. Chinese people rescuing baby pandas from a flood.

Ah, I said, There aren’t enough jobs for everyone, and Gordon Brown has signed something for the UK to do business with China.

I went out, got into my car, put on Radio 4. The news came on, the first two stories were:

1. Unemployment has increased, and several thousand more jobs are to be lost shortly.

2. Gordon Brown has signed a deal with China.

This is reality. There is no them and us. There is you, and then there is the power hungry fool you voted for, bought a newspaper from, or bought music from. You need to take your wallet and give it a long hard stare.

As I have been telling you, it is all a distraction. The only person who can really change the world is you. Yes, all of you. Each of you. If anyone were to stop and think about an ideal world, this would not be it.

#youmatter

business, economics, motivation

Problems with Motivational Speaking

October 11, 2015 No Comments

So, now that I have given you a rough guide to why Wolfe is not such a bad guy after all, (see previous posts) I would now like to go into the problems of the methodology of American motivational speaking.

Strong elements from the past also render it extremely weak for the following broad reasons:

Plain English – motivational speaking is popular because of the homely tenor of delivery – speakers such as Earl Shoaff were poorly educated guys who took to network marketing to earn some extra buttons in the early part of their life. Jim Rohn himself was basically a sales trainer for Herbalife in the latter part of his career. I cannot imagine the level of worship that he enjoyed being replicated in Europe, for a number of very good cultural reasons. Whilst I have no problem with imaginative and non-patronising explanations for things – I once used doughnuts to explain the main theories in social philosophy, for example, sticking with a formula which worked sixty years ago is extremely limiting. I watched Wolfe in the early part of his career becoming extremely frustrated with the apathy he was confronted with as he tried to grow various early versions of his model. (kudos to Wolfe for leaving this material online for me to gawk at) Since then, he has found other ways around the problem. Suffice to say, the world has changed considerably since the Dale Carnegie/Earl Shoaff golden era of smartly dressed and respectful audiences writing down every word their chosen guru says. Today’s audience is more focused on education and a level of information provision that Shoaff and Rohn simply did not have to worry about. So, the answer here is to develop a more advanced methodology which includes a little tragedy with the optimism and present a more balanced and believable picture than in the past.

The rich are too rich – One of the more interesting features of Rohn, in this case, is that he does not bother to present himself as a particularly nice person, the grin that does not reach his cold dead eyes is particularly marked. His assertion that we should wish to leave the 90/95/97 percent behind simply does not suit modern thinking – economically speaking, people are now well aware that having a tiny percentage of extremely rich people at the expense of everyone else is not a feature of a healthy society. So, rather than a ‘forget the negatives and affirm yourself to wealth’ approach, today’s speakers would be well advised to shoot for an informative way to implore the audience to collectively raise their personal bar of achievement. I had a look at The Secret a few years back, and it was so despicable in its approach that I was unable to continue with it. Reality check – people are starving to death and we all hate banks – social capital is the future, not leaving people behind to die whilst we roll about in our money. Interestingly, economic anthropology shows that we are thinking more consciously about others in the west as our countries are richer – third world experiments show a far more dog-eat-dog mentality. So, unless you plan to market to a developing nation – try to show some sign of ethical values.

Plagiarism – keeping a journal of things to make you richer is a very bad idea unless you plan to reference everything extremely carefully. It is considered to be acceptable in oratory, because obviously it is impossible to reference every line you say in the course of delivering information. It is, however, relatively simple to paraphrase, and equally easy to mention the source of your great ideas. Rohn’s premise of journal keeping, and using anecdotal material to get your point across is just not going to cut it for the future. Instead, it is again quite easy to pepper your material with useful or otherwise stimulating information and heartfelt goodwill to your fellow humans.

The pyramid must die – This is a personal observation – it is time to kill the pyramid – the one percent sit at the top of it. There are other formulations, from the time of the Medici, which I am able to go into, but will save this for a different post or possibly book. If you are employing or being told to employ your affirmations or motivational techniques as part of a sales scheme in which you are on the lower ranks of yet another layered network, just get out of it and find some ideas of your own. You are not onto a winner in the vast majority of cases.

Stop hitching your wagon to other people – I have witnessed life coaches and motivational speakers alike who speak in almost religious terms about their inspiration. I think I have demonstrated from my non-relationship with Wolfe that it is entirely unnecessary to worship your inspiration. It is entirely possible to see people for what they are, admire them for the good bits, and kick them in the ass for the bad. It is called, amusingly, being objective. Objective objectification, in my case, presumably, given my ongoing project. I do this mainly because I want him to get what he wants from his life, but this does not mean that I have any responsibility for his success or failure, that is entirely up to him. My direction is parallel, rather being on the same wagon trail. The point is that there is no answer – you should be shooting for your own path, not dragging your heels on someone else’s. Which brings me on to my final point for this evening –

Original Material – despite the many problems I would love to get my teeth into, (alas I am not a 22 year old beach bunny) Wolfe’s use of whimsy kept me listening to him for several weeks before I realised why it sounded so familiar, and yet so odd. His timing is impeccable, just when you are thinking you have heard enough about premium spirulina, along comes some random wildness that shocks you back into your chair. Whilst this is to be applauded, it is important to self-generate something that is completely your own. You need to wallow happily in your own filth, to a certain extent, to be producing something that you are so comfortable with that you own your topic, whether you are writing, or speaking. Being confident is not about following a model, it is about making use of a model for your own purposes. It is imperative that any keen audience get some sense of acceptance. Bringing a sense of dignity to your audience whilst raising their consciousness may seem like a return to an evangelical approach, but it is perfectly possible to instill pride, and make use of it, in an audience which has been lulled into defeat by an increasingly oppressive meritocratic approach. This does not mean that you start every speech with tales of poverty and anecdotes of failure, as used by Zig Ziglar, but it does mean that you remove the barriers from an increasingly cynical and browbeaten public.

creativity, motivation

A Goal is a Dream with a Deadline

August 11, 2015 46 Comments

One thing since my family disaster in the form of both parents getting dementia has been the death of the personal deadline. I should be concerned about this, since I have traditionally been fond of work deadlines as a method of avoiding the rest of my life.

I am going to fly in the face of any motivator and tell you the truth – deadlines are no good for quality. I have got much further since I abandoned the deadline. I do things when I feel like it, for as long as I feel like it and the rest of my time is pretty much eaten up by 24/7 responsibility for my mother and her property.

The fact that I am trapped in the house by her illness and the lack of support has meant that I have no distractions in the form of looking after or enjoying myself, and so I feel I can afford the luxury of time. Some of the first batch were being thought about for over a year before they were actually completed, and I can honestly say this has made my work better.

The work went into the 3rd dimension only after a personal crisis brought about by an event outlined vaguely in Best Scandal Ever. Finding out that I cannot expect even the smallest amount of respect from a desk jockey agent when trying to help somebody basically caused me to decide that nothing mattered, and the removal of time and the restraint of ambition has meant I have all the time in the world to perfect this one thing that I can confidently say is unique to me.

So much for your standard motivational garbage then. A disaster of rejection has led to me finally doing what I probably should have done in the first place – ignore everyone and do whatever I feel, whenever I feel like doing it.

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