The Secret

In addition to reading A New Earth, I also recently read The Secret. I’m still on the fence regarding whether or not it really works. I read the many criticisms and reviews of the book. I haven’t tried the methods out yet to see if they really work. But I plan on conducting an experiment to test the validity of the author’s claims. I’m going to start small, like the author suggests. Or maybe I should start big, to sufficiently test the claims of the book. For the last 19 years, I have wanted a motorcycle. On several occasions, I was extremely close to getting one but something always went wrong. I think that would be a sufficient test. It’s never been a better time to own one. I will start concentrating on a Honda Nighthawk. It has 250 cc engine and gets phenomenal gas mileage. And only costs about $3,700 brand new.

The reason I’m not so quick to dismiss the claims made by the book is that I have actually experienced this phenomenon recently. I was blogging about Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits book and it occurred to me that my copy is so worn out from being read so many times that all the pages have separated and are falling out. I thought about buying a new copy but even after all this time, it’s still expensive. A few days later, I went with L to a library book sale and found a mint condition copy for 50 cents. Coincidence? Good luck? I don’t think so. There’s more to it than that.

Finding Myself

I’m still contemplating A New Earth. I know this book is legit because so far I can find nothing in it that seems too good to be true like so many other books in similar genres. I’m getting better at the awareness part and even the inner peace aspect. What I’m stuck on now is the part about finding my outer purpose. I know my inner purpose is to find inner peace. I’m getting there. The outer purpose presents some problems. Eckhart Tolle would say that one should just be still, exist, and wait for an indication of the outer purpose. I’m becoming impatient. It’s not that I don’t believe, it’s that I feel like life is passing me by while I wait. But here’s the weird thing: at the same time I’m having feelings of patience and calmness that I’ve never had before when thinking about my purpose in life. I remember getting anxiety just thinking about looking for jobs on careerbuilder or monster. Every time I got on there, the only jobs posted were the kind I could only tolerate. Not the kind I could enjoy doing. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t settle for anything less that Taste Tester for a beer company, I just don’t want to settle for some shitty job that I know I’ll hate. I know what it’s like to hate going to work every day. To hate getting up in the morning. To dread each new day. I don’t want to go through that again.

One realization that I made the other day is that the most financially successful people get there by doing what they love – not doing it purely for money. When we set out to get rich, we almost never succeed. I know I haven’t. I’ve tried all kinds of schemes to get wealthy. Many of those schemes started when I read the Rich Dad Poor Dad series. I read the first book and was so impressed that I bought all the others. The books really get you motivated about working for yourself and being independent. The problem, however, is that it’s all they do. Hardly any of the information is useful and unless you need motivation to work for your self, they’re a total waste of time. I bought other books, too. One was called something like How to Buy Real Estate With No Money Down. This was an even bigger waste of time.

I don’t worry quite as much about income anymore because I have the hope that I’ll find my calling soon. Being rich doesn’t matter so much now. What does matter is that I earn an income from doing what I love. Being happy is more important than being rich. The issue now is that I have to figure out how to do that. Or… do I sit back and wait for an opportunity to arise? To properly identify an opportunity, I need to know what I enjoy and , more importantly, what I’m good at.

Still Going

Things are going great. I decided to try the South Beach Diet along with daily exercise in order to get down to my ideal weight. It's not so bad really. I get to eat fried eggs and turkey bacon for breakfast. By combining exercise with diet, I can get in shape fast. I know there is no easy fix, but harder work can move things along at a faster pace.

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Lately, I have also become extremely fascinated with web design. I have done a few web pages in the past using HTML, but never really got past the basics. But recently, I have developed an obsession with web design. I even went to the library and checked out every book they had on HTML, JavaScript, Graphic Design, and XHTML. I have designed at least 45 web pages for fun and I'm considering doing them as a source of additional income.

Massive Progress

It's been a few days since my last post. I've been working so hard on my projects that I've actually found myself ahead of schedule. I read a book last week called "A New Earth". It was great. It had a profound impact on my life. I have experienced more progress toward my goals in the last few days than in the last year and a half. I can attribute it to the awareness that the author discusses. The space between thoughts. It works. It puts everything into perspective and the rest seems to fall in to place. Today was the first day I really noticed it. It was uncanny how well things go when I was truly aware of what was going on.

Thinking about that book, I realized that I have been holding myself back for a long time. My negativity clouded thinking that could’ve been productive. I guess it’s like a computer’s processor; if you allow some programs to constantly run, that can interfere with other programs you are trying to run. If I concentrate on bad things that have happened in the past and replay them over and over in my head, I’m unable to think productively. Not just that, but I never accepted the present moment. I never appreciated the present moment. To just sit back, exist, and be happy is the secret to inner peace.

At first, I had a hard time grasping the concept of the ego being separate from my real identity. I understand now but still have trouble with it. Does that mean that all emotions experienced by the ego are, in a sense, not really real? I wonder if inner peace originates from that detachment. The reason this book is so popular is because it’s so different from other “self help” books. Instead of telling you what you need to do with your life, Tolle simply points out things that exist, but go unnoticed. Primarily, the inner awareness that we all have, but ignore because we spend too much time “thinking”. We, as humans, never accept the present moment. We are too busy thinking about the past or the future. We either dwell on past incidents, or we live in the future. I was probably the best example of this dysfunctional thinking. I was either depressed about how my life had gone in the past, or I was lost in thought about the future. In the future, I’d have money and I could finally be happy. In the future, I’d be fit and then I could be happy. I ignored the wonderful aspects of my present situation. I never thought about “right now”. Nor did I ever allow my thinking to become quiet and still. Tolle says that there is a space between thoughts in which that quiet awareness (your true consciousness) exists. I think Stephen Covey was on to this in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, when he stated that “there is a gap between stimulus and response”.

Small Changes

I had yet another productive day. I have been getting all kinds of things accomplished. I was so far behind on my Visual Basic projects that I thought I’d never catch up, but I am catching up fast. It’s great. I have learned to balance my schedule. This leaves me with a lot more personal time. Right now I thought I’d work on my blog bfore going in to class.

I love this new computer. It has helped me save time and get more done because now I can get work done anywhere I go. My overall mood has been much better lately and I think I can attribute it to a sense of accomplishment. Not that I’ve done anything major, it just feels good to feel like I’m moving forward again. I haven’t felt like that in a very long time.

I am still working on defining a path for my life. The truth is that I thought I’d have it figured out by now. In the past 10 years, I’ve gone through so many phases. Each time I thought I had my life path all figured out. I could’ve been somewhere by now. That is one of the key factors that caused my depression to get so bad last year. I think that the problem was that I have always been surrounded by negative people (my family). Every time I thought I had a good idea, it was shot down. After so many times, I started to expect things never to work out. Now I am realizing that I can do whatever I want. Just because people tell me I will fail doesn’t mean that I will. And even if I do, at least I’m trying to accomplish something.

What I’ve come up with so far is a list of what I want out of life. It’s not a lot. First of all I want my own home. I am sick of living in apartments. I want to live far away from neighbors. Not right next to them. I also want a new car. A small, cheap, gas efficient vehicle to drive so I won’t have to pay so much for gas anymore.

Most of all, I want to do something for a living that I love. There are people out there that love what they do. They are excited to get up in the morning and go to work. Some of them own their own businesses, some work from home, and some have regular jobs that are dream jobs to them.

I live in an area where dream jobs are scarce if there even are any. Most jobs in Indiana are manufacturing jobs. People go to work, do the same repetitive thing over and over and over, and go home. That’s not for me. Here’s the problem, if I move away to find a wonderful job, I leave my kids behind. If I stay, there’s no work. So the only option is self employment. I have the resources, but I’m having trouble figuring out exactly what it is I want to do. I will continue exploring and maybe I’ll come up with something soon.

The Plan

I've been getting so much done recently. My time management has been wonderful. I can attribute much of this improvement to my new computer and the rest to my Franklin Covey Planner. I discovered that if I work on bits and pieces of whatever it is that needs doing, it all adds up fast and I get so much more accomplished than I once did. Right now, I am waiting outside my grandma's apartment for my wife. I picked up a wifi connection and decided to blog for a few while I wait.

I have been so busy with college projects, that I've not had a chance to explore home business information lately. I don't feel as hopeless as I once did. I am excited about the future because I know good things are on their way. I don't mind all the college projects because I am gaining new skills every time I work on them. My favorite projects are HTML and Java.

I've accomplished so much today that I'm already excited for tomorrow so I can see if I can get more done.

Saints Row 2 and GTA IV

Not much at all to blog about today. I've been working on projects all weekend. I just checked the THQ website and we're looking at Aug 26 as a release date for Saints Row 2. I was hoping it would be a little bit sooner, but GTA IV comes out in about 3 weeks so that's good. I can't wait for that one either.

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I decided to purchase both games for the Xbox 360. I don't feel like buying a PS3 just yet. I don't have room for it right now. Plus I've read that they're both pretty much the same as far as graphics quality goes.

Another Day II

I got my new laptop computer yesterday. It's very nice. I only buy Dell because they never seem to have any problems whatsoever. This one is the smallest laptop I've owned so far. Yesterday I started the tedious task of installing my programs. The MS Office installation went well, but Visual Studio had some problems. I was informed that I needed additional updates to make it compatible with Vista. After finding the updates and getting them installed, I was good to go. By the way, this font color is hexadecimal #CC00CC. My daughter told me to use it.

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In other news, I have decided to write a book about working from home. I will conduct multiple interviews with those who have successfully started their own home businesses and pinpoint the strategies that work as well as those that don't. I know that many people are unhappy and feel trapped working for unscrupulous employers. I know how it feels to long for the independence of being self employed. I have read over 30 books that claim to provide all the knowledge required for working from home, but none really do. Most of them are just the same old ideas. I want my book to actually accomplish something. I want to help others free themselves from the oppression of their employers.