A person, you for instance, goes through life knowing there are certain things that are essential for happiness. One of those things is freedom.

When I was sixteen I was sent to my uncle John’s home in Virginia to see if some sense could be talked into my head. I’d been binge drinking with friends since age thirteen and I was having a great time in my teens. My uncle was a pretty serious stiff and was working in the Pentagon. Mom thought he could straighten me out I guess.

Well my uncle sat me down in their dining room and we had the talk.

My uncle went on to explain something about the realities of life. Mom doesn’t want me drinking. It’s fun to drink. It’s not good to drive a car and drink (which I wasn’t). Life is what you make it… and he only talked for about 5-minutes.

Basically the only thing I remember was feeling tense. I didn’t know what he could say that could destroy my world, but I was just waiting for it. Then he said something that I didn’t think I heard correctly.

“It’s up to you man. You’re the one running your life, not us. Nobody is looking out for you like you’ve gotta look out for you. You can decide – do you want to drink yourself into being an alcoholic and dicking up your entire life? Or, choose something else. If you want to have fun all your life – that’s completely up to you. You’ve got to make yourself happy, nobody else is going to do that for you.”

He left it at that.

That wasn’t an exact quote – but that’s how I remember it. During that minute, my head spun and the result was – that minute changed the rest of my life because I realized – I’m the man. At sixteen, at eighteen, at forty-three. I’m the man. I make the decisions for whatever this body is doing. I take everything into account, and I make all decisions. I can listen to others if I want to – for their input, but in the end – I can make any decision I want. I can even go completely against what makes sense to everyone else and do what I want.

That was the moment I really found freedom in my life. There was my uncle, ultra-respected guy because he had his life together. He had an awesome wife and two great kids that were my childhood idols, if it were said that I had any. He was working at the Pentagon and we all assumed he had a million or so dollars saved as he was ruthlessly frugal. There was this guy, bigger than life telling me that I’m the man. The buck stops right here. It goes no further. Mom doesn’t own me. Teachers don’t own me. Relatives and friends don’t own me.

My uncle John gave me Reality101 in about 5-minutes. He basically gave me my freedom that day and made me who I am.

“Free at last, free at last…”

Rev. and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during his “I have a dream” speech. Video here.

What or Who owns you?

It’s a strange question and most of you will say, “Nobody owns me. I’m my own person. I make my own decisions. I haven’t been owned since I was a child.”

I’d disagree.

I’ve known people all my life that aren’t making decisions based on what’s good for them. Mom, dad, kids, every other person close to them are affecting decisions they make about their life. Their future is determined by others. Where they’re going and what they’ve done has been entirely determined by others and what they want, need, beg for, whine, and cry for.

People own people. People let themselves be owned. It’s comfortable to some – more comfortable than making their own decisions. Decisions come hard to some people.

If you’re not making every decision for YOU though, you’re owned.

It’s not just people you know that can own you. My younger brother and sister are amazing people. They’re brilliant in every way. Unselfish. Giving. Caring. Kind. Considerate. Creatively brilliant. Conversationally gifted. I couldn’t have dreamed up two better siblings to spend life with. I consider myself the luckiest person in the world to have the family I have.

You know what? Though they’ve got all these things going for them, and a cumulative IQ of over 320 they’ve allowed themselves to become owned by  people they never met. They’re owned by talk-radio fear mongers that make a career of scaring people about events in the world and locally that nobody understands the complete picture about. These scaremongers frighten millions of people in the USA daily because fear is one of the hardest emotions to kick straight in the face and make go away. Fear is ubiquitous and fear is viral. Fear is addictive to many of us.

These talk show idiots don’t make a positive difference in anyone’s lives. Many listeners are trapped in ‘caring’ about what they’re saying. You know what? It’s very possible that you don’t listen to even one talk radio show or see even one television show – even the news, and go about your life exactly how you want to… owning all of it for yourself. Fear need not play a major role in your life.

Is your mind owned by someone in the media? I’ll bet it is – to some degree, I’ll bet it is. I’ll bet almost every single one of you reading this listens to some quack spouting off opinion about something that doesn’t make a damn bit of difference in the world – and only makes a difference in your mind and the minds the idiot reaches through the media. That is such a horrible tragedy in my mind.

If you listen to one of these clowns an hour a day. That’s one hour a day that you push your kids away and shush your spouse so you can listen to some jackass in the media whose job isn’t to present you with facts – or to incite you to do anything about the problems of the world – just to get you to fear so much that you can’t stand the thought of not listening to the idiocy again and again – hopelessly, fearfully addicted to it.

If it’s not talk radio then maybe TV owns you. Maybe it’s a newpaper columnist. Maybe it’s the advertising industry.

Maybe it’s strangers you see everytime you go out in public. You might be afraid to act as you truly are – gay, a cross-dresser, a liberal, a conservative, a fruit-loop, whatever it is. You might be so afraid of the public’s reaction to what you are that you’re owned by it – you’re governed by something outside yourself.

Maybe it’s food. If you can’t go 4 hours without thinking about food – you’re owned by food. Nobody needs to eat something every four hours. Monks in Thailand survive on one meal a day, some on two meals a day and they don’t eat after noon. I’ve seen less fat people in Thailand than I thought existed in the world. Maybe 5-8% of the population has a food problem. Compare that to America. Can you walk down any street in America and not see someone who is over their ideal weight by 100 lbs? Can you see anyone over the age of forty that might be at their ideal or healthy weight?

Maybe you’re owned by alcohol or some other drug. Maybe your life is spent thinking about the next time you can drink beer or whiskey or your next bowl of pot. Do you realize how much one simple drug and feeling can own you?

Maybe you obsess about sex. Guys – you’ve got serious issues if you can’t get sex out of your mind for 20 minutes. Serious issues – can you see that? Sex owns your mind – and the result – orgasm is nothing but a feeling that lasts a few seconds. Should your entire life be ruled by such a silly thing?

Every single person reading this might ask themselves…

What is owning me?

What do I spend an insane amount of time doing or thinking about doing that isn’t helping me live a life that’s awesome?

What has the power to influence me to choose things I don’t want for myself?

Who has that power – and why do I give it to them?

Who can make me happy, but myself?

Who is looking out for my best interests MORE than I am?

Is there anyone that cares about me in this whole world – more than I do?

When I’m 70 years old and thinking about what I’ve done with life – will I cry about how stupid I was to give 25,000 hours of life to some jackass on the radio that played me like a stick marionette for 12 years of listening to 4 hours of talk radio daily?

When I’m 48 and suffering daily, dying daily, because I’m 148 lbs over what I should weigh will I question this present lifestyle?

When my child grows up and clings to anyone they find because I was never close enough to her as a friend, suffering through failed relationship after relationship – will I blame myself then?

If you’re not taking complete control of your life TODAY and each and every day then your entire life is going to hell. The lives of others that are dependent on you – might also suffer.

If you’re spending hundreds, or even more mind-numbing, thousands of hours listening to idiots talk on the radio or TV – when will it finally hit you that you’ve been owned?

When will you finally decide to reclaim your life from food, porn, cigarettes, alcohol, materialism, insincere friends, controlling parents or spouses…

When is the point where you say – WTF have I been doing with my life – and why am I not happy? Why am I not making this self happy? What is it that’s holding me back and owning me every single day of my owned life?

At some point you’re going to reach that state of mind… that state of questioning. For most it happens sometimes after 45-50 or so years.

For you – it could happen t-o-d-a-y. You could choose right now in this minute to stop all the things owning you and sucking the life out of you.

Do it now – do it because you’re the only one on the planet that knows what’s good for you.

Do it now because in thirty years you’ll be doing it anyway… and thirty years is a lot of nonsense to put up with!

STOP THE NONSENSE!

Own your life – from this day forward.

Never look back at the mess it could have become.

. 

As I get into my forties sometimes I find reality confronting me about something. I’m not on top of the world like I thought I might be by 30. I haven’t made it by 40 either. I had this idea since high school that by thirty I’d be wildly successful and on top of the world – the world at my feet so to speak. Maybe you had that idea too? Seems fairly common!

While it’s true I’ve had a hell of an amazing life so far and had plenty of success at things I’ve done – plenty of failure too, I’m not where I thought I’d be back then.

Dont’ misunderstand… I’m quite happy where I am right now. Quite comfortable with how little I have and want. I literally don’t want anything else but what I have now… but still comes this question out of the recesses of my twisting blob of cerebellum.

What can I do for the world?

While Bill Gates created Windows and Microsoft that wasn’t near his greatest feat. I count giving away billions of dollars to humanitarian causes as much more important. Nothing is more disgusting than those with uber-cash keeping for themselves or using it in nefarious ways to make more uber-cash. That’s gotta be wrong. Doesn’t it?

People are decoding the human genome. I read recently about a guy that was no kind of student in high school and college… served in the Vietnam war… and then went back to college in his 30′s or 40′s. He’s now one of the top genetic researchers on the planet.

What happened?

A: He ran with the ball.

Am I going to run with the ball and contribute to a few million people’s lives? BILLIONS of lives? I have that deep drive to do so… but I haven’t really given myself the challenge. It’s been there… hovering around back there – occasionally popping into the conscious. But, I never really LOOKED at the question before.

I want to look at it now for myself. I want to ask myself all the questions that need asked about this. I’m intrigued by it. My curiosity is running willy-nilly (as mom used to say).

There are some ultra-smart people reading this blog. People that have godlike IQ’s, straight A degrees at Harvard, Yale, MIT, and 100 other awesome schools.

There are those of you with drive and ambition that put you in the top 1% on the planet of people with such traits.

Some of you have ten hours a day to do whatever you choose. I fall in this category. I’ve chosen to write, produce videos, books, e-books and help people online with whatever they need done.

Are we all living up to our potential?

Why not ask yourself the BIG question – What can I do for the whole world?

I challenge all of you reading this blog to face this bigger than life question.

Yesterday when I began thinking about this topic in earnest I asked myself another question that seemed natural…

“What was the best idea you ever had?”

What the #*$@!!?

The lights flickered when I asked myself that question. I’m an idea machine. I think you could pit me against a think-tank of 5 people and give us a topic to brainstorm ideas about over one hour and I would come up with more. Not at all joking. For some reason I’m able to look at a question from many angles and come up with ideas about it – possible solutions, outcomes, challenges.

I wrote here before that I’m a big picture kind of person. That is true… and the main reason is that I can think of a huge variety of material related to a question, a project, or a hypothetical. I haven’t always been like this – early on in my teens and early twenties I couldn’t put together a line of thought to save my life. Attention Deficit Disorder ruled my life at that time. From mid-twenties on I’ve been able to churn out ideas by the hundreds whenever I choose.

So – I began going through ideas I could remember. Mostly that included the ones that left an impression on me or that I wrote down in some of my journal entries. The rest have been lost as the neural network couldn’t possibly store them all.

I opened Excel and started on a list of past ideas… Of course just this exercise prompted new ideas so I had to make another column for new ideas…

I got to 87 ideas I’ve remembered from the past and thought – it must be here already. If it was really the best idea I’d have remembered it and put it in the first 87 I thought of. Wouldn’t I?

Not necessarily.

I kept thinking… I got to 130 and stopped again. I looked back at the last 43 I’d written after I almost stopped and realized there were some damn good ideas in that group.

When should I stop?

I decided I’d make it a few day exercise and call it a game on Sunday (tomorrow).

I’ll go back to it after I write this post because I’ve already remembered a couple things I don’t think I’ve added to the list yet.

As I look over the list there are a lot of ideas that wouldn’t make a bit of difference to the whole world. There are ideas for video games. I’ve drawn maps and planned in detail a really fun video game for smart people that I thought at one time would be a blast to do, but never did. I have viral e-card ideas. I have book ideas. Movie ideas. Movie scripts outlined. I’ve had negative ideas about creating sites that today I’d never go forward with. Back then it was anything goes. I’ve mellowed quite a bit. I’ve embraced a real karma type outlook with life recently. Not that I believe in the idea of getting something back, but just DOING the right thing seems to be a great idea that I can’t make myself go against if I wanted to. It’s like a new morality – maybe it started about 7 years ago. In the present it’s really taken hold and it’s a great feeling.

Maybe it was some of the impetus behind the question…

What can I do for the world?

There must be something. I’m fairly intelligent. I have time. If I don’t find the idea among those I’ve already had then surely I can think of one. I must be able to think of something. It should be as big an idea as possible.

You should take yourself through this process too.

Why be average?
Why be great just in your own little world?

I’ve always been happy with what I’ve achieved… not really satisfied, but you know… I’ve only been looking at being the best in my little niche of the world.

There’s a HUGE world out there that is struggling with many problems that perhaps I could contribute some solution or work toward solving. Maybe I have something inside I can share and help a huge group of people. Maybe mankind. I’d never know unless I asked myself the question and got moving toward making it a reality.

Some people KNOW they need to ask themselves that question. You might know someone like that. Some people just fall into it, challenging themselves to be great in their small world which leads to greatness for the entire world.

I think every person reading this blog has it within them to do something that affects the entire world in a positive way.

What is it?

Best of Life!

Vern

Update: Recently Google has announced a contest where they’ll accept entries with ideas that will change the world to help the most people. Awesome huh? Here is my new post about it: How Can I Change the World?

For most of us the ultimate job would be to collect a huge salary for doing something fun. My penultimate idea of the ideal job would be surfing. No, not competing, that’s hard work. I just mean just soul surfing at say, Launiopoko Beach Park in Maui every time the urge hit. A woman would stop by my two-story beachfront hut and hand me a million dollars each month. That would be the ultimate job and no, it doesn’t exist.

But an acceptable, close to perfect job does exist for me and for you though you may need to accept a lower income for a while (or forever). See the “How little do you need?” series if you’re having trouble coming to grips with that concept.

Straight out of college or high school and looking for work most of look for a job working for someone else’s company. It’s safe. Sometimes it’s too safe, the money is good enough and complacency kicks in. A person in this situation might stay in that same job until they retire in 40 years. Others will get bored and try another job probably again working for someone else.

We go after everything we want – the best of everything in so many areas, but not our jobs where we spend eight to ten hours a day doing something we probably don’t want to be doing if we had a choice. We DO have a choice, but we continue on mindlessly accepting it.

WHY is that?

In one word, fear. Fear of the difficult path. Fear of not making enough money. Fear of trying to get the job you’d love and being rejected over and over or facing ‘insurmountable’ difficulty trying.

Everyone knows what their ultimate job is. We’ve all spent time thinking about it. But most of us haven’t taken even one step toward it. Usually our self-talk is that there are so few people doing it in the world or we’d need to take a profound pay cut. Maybe your idea of the ultimate job is skydiving out of planes and filming a team doing aerial stunts. Not many people in the world are making that happen for themselves. But I know one thing, YOU could be one of them.

The world is a big place I’ve been finding out the last 10 years. Even if you exhaust your efforts to find the perfect job in the USA you could go abroad and try there. I think the USA provides opportunities for anyone that is motivated to get their ultimate job. If none exist, you can make the opportunity yourself. A driven person can do anything. Look at this guy who strapped jet engines to his back and flew around in circles at almost 200 mph. Since being in Thailand I’ve met other full time bloggers and two guys that had fishing guide businesses in Alaska. Their ‘job’ was to take tourists fishing in some of the most pristine natural streams and lakes in the world. How strange is that to meet two different guys doing that across the planet in Thailand? There must be more of those opportunities than I ever would have thought.

Over time my idea of the ultimate job changed a lot. Currently my idea of the ultimate job is what I’m doing. You’re reading it. Blogging is my ultimate job and I’m making it work. I’ve written in a journal since grad school and I never stopped writing fiction, e-books and long articles for web sites I’ve had. I decided about a year ago to focus on blogging full time and that would be it. This is my ultimate job but I’ve sacrificed a lot to make it work… for instance, I’m not living in Hawaii where the cost of living is outrageous, I’m living in Thailand where my electric bill was $3 this month and water bill was $4.50. Rent was $100. Food was about $100 this month. Gas? I have a motorbike so, at $5 a gallon gas was just about $40. Will I ever make enough money blogging to move from Thailand back to Hawaii? I don’t know. Does it matter? No, not really. If I can just continue to write articles and survive – that’s what I’m doing. I’m happy as a turtle in mud.

Some Ultimate Jobs:

Blogging about anything you love.
Fishing guide, anywhere.
Hiking guide, Maui, Oahu, Kauai, Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti, Western USA, Alaska, Canada, Swiss Alps, Thailand.
Test driver for new sport super-cars.
Dressing room attendant for Charlie’s Angels movie set.
Travel photographer.
Travel writer.
Actor, Actress. Seriously – this must be the best job in the entire world. Nobody on the planet gets paid more for doing less.
Movie extra that acts only as the recipient of massages.
Professional sports player (any sport).
Astronaut.
Artist of any sort.
Comic strip writer.
Joke writer.

If income was the only area you had to sacrifice to be doing what you really want to be doing, could you make it work?

Best of Life!

Vern

It seems I spend a lot of time figuring out what Life IS to me. Today I thought of it as a simple equation. It could be looked at as nothing more than…

Life = Consciousness + Free Time + Action

A lot of things we do during a typical day, to me, don’t constitute “LIFE”. I don’t think many people would argue that biological living and living LIFE are different things. I don’t think many would argue that someone that spends their life stoned out of their minds, out of consciousness… and reality, is not really living Life. Life is comprised of the three things listed above. If you don’t have one of the pieces, you’re not experiencing “Life”.

Components defined…

Consciousness IS: I’m in control of what my mind is experiencing and I am awake. I can choose to think about anything and to explore it in-depth if I wish. I am not being ‘entertained’ with mind-candy from TV, radio or some other distraction that is pulling my consciousness away from reality.

Consciousness IS NOT:

• Sleep.
• Coma.
• Drunk state.
• Drugged state.
• On television, radio, computer games, mindless internet surfing or driving, reading a fiction book with ‘escape’ as a purpose, or meditating.

Free Time IS: Time that I am working for someone else or for myself. If I am working on a project for myself… if it is fun and I am learning something and it is not just for the purpose of working and making money, then I might call it free time.

Free Time IS NOT:

• Work time.

Action IS: Doing something proactively. Action is doing something I chose to do and that I’m actively doing. I am in control of my mind, meaning, consciousness must be there. I am doing something for myself or for others. I am producing action as a result of some decision that I’m acting on. I’m not laying on my bed watching Teletubbies, rain fall, or the walls turn colors.

Action, as it relates to Life might be:

• Talking to a friend. Writing a letter. Typing a story. Making a “To do” list.
• Looking up something on the internet that you want to know for some reason that will improve your Life.
• Biking, hiking, eating, or driving to go somewhere for some reason (exploring, or specific purpose).
• A hobby where you are creating something or actively engaged in something you want to learn about or become better at.

Action IS NOT:

• Doodling on paper.
• Random internet surfing with no purpose.
• Listening to the radio.

With those definitions of the sub-components in place, lets take a look at some of what Life IS and what Life ISN’T.

Life IS NOT:

• Working for me or for someone else. Working is not Life to me. It’s a necessary distraction from Life in most cases.
• Time spent drunk, incoherent, otherwise escaping consciousness.
• Time spent ‘on’ the drug, television. There is far too much stimulation going on, visual, auditory,
  emotional, logical, my mind is not my own when I’m on television. I’m not conscious. I’m in TV consciousness which is not my own. Similarly I lump listening to music, playing games on the computer, and random internet surfing as not being fully conscious.
• Sleeping. When you’re sleeping, you’re not conscious and not in control of your Life. I don’t count sleeping as free time. I’m not in “action” either.

Life to me IS:

• Running.
• Climbing a mountain.
• Brainstorming ideas.
• Helping someone out.
• Barbeque with family & friends.
• Exploring a new beach, hill, or part of town.
• Doing something I never did before just for the experience.
• Creating something: Photography, videography, web site content, book, podcast, or postcards home.
• Snake hunting.
• Learning about religions.
• Questioning everything that exists under the sun (and beyond).
• Doing something mildly dangerous for the rush.

Those were the things that came to mind…

“What is Life to YOU?”

Best of Life!

If you liked this article you may enjoy this popular post, “What is the POINT of Life?”

I like to write about the big picture because it’s easy for me to focus on it. It’s the natural state of my mind when looking at anything, I’m trying to see the entire picture and all relevant variables that might be having an effect on the big picture.

I was thinking yesterday about the big, big, BIG, big picture. The biggest picture.

I consider the biggest picture to be the apparent reality of all that is going on here in this game of life. There are areas of life we have some control over and there are areas we don’t have any control over. One of my previous posts here, “What is the p-o-i-n-t of life?” looked at what is the best way to play the game of life. What are things worth doing? How should one go about playing the game to bring the most happiness.

In this post I want to explore the nature of reality about the biggest picture, this game of life and what appears to be going on. What are some of the facts about the state of things here in this game? What things are changeable and what things are not? What are the ‘natural’ rules of this game?

It appears that we as human beings have some rules that guide or control this game of life. Some of the rules govern what we can do with our bodies, and others, what we can do with our minds… There is a fantastic number of rules that dictate what we can and can’t do in life that are far beyond our control at all. These rules of the game were in place from day 1. It’s like reading the rules of Monopoly before you played it for the first time, or chess, or checkers. But, while you can choose to ignore some of the rules of a board game, you cannot choose to ignore the rules of reality in this game of life.

Put obviously, there are things about this game of life that we can control and things that are beyond our control. Even some of the things that we can control if we made the effort are beyond our control because we don’t make the effort.

So, beyond our control are things like:

The past.
We can do absolutely nothing about the past. The past is completely beyond the realm of control. Forget about changing the past.
Physical rules and properties.
The earth. We’re here and we’re not able to get off it anytime we choose. Gravity affects us everyday. It affects us more if we eat too much as there is more mass to pull down, causing the body more stress to operate. Gravity affects us all, but some of us more than others.

The physics of the earth and how it physically operates… gravity, motion physics, chemistry, material properties, make up of the atmosphere, temperature ranges, weather, and earth events like hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, and floods. All of these are rules we’re living by every day and they’re affecting us whether we see it happenng consciously or not. Gravity alone has such a major effect on our moods and how much we can do each day.

Social development.
We are born to a male and female that we are dependent on for survival in this game. Whether or not those two people have life figured out to ANY degree whatsoever, is not given any importance in the game because any two persons with working reproductive organs can create another human being. Those parents can be the Dali Lama and a Buddhist nun or Jeffrey Dalmer and Lizzie Borden. You have no choice at all who you are born to, and it appears to be based on nothing but probability itself.

Society born into.
Where in the world we’re born has a major impact on our development, mental and physical. A male and female sherpa in the Himilayan mountains are going to have a child that grows up very differently than would two employees working in Manhattan’s financial district at the New York Stock Exchange as floor traders. Society has it’s own set of rules. Here in Thailand I see kids grow up believing that the Buddha from India was the greatest thing since sliced bread. In America kids grow up believing in Jehovah’s Witness, Mormonism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and other beliefs. Where you’re born and grow up geographically can alter the person you are considerably, and it’s not a choice you make.

Other people.
You don’t exist as a solitary human being. Your needs are selfish, yes, but nearly everything you do is within the context of society. You are not free to do anything you wish in society because things you do affect other people. If you affect other people in a way they perceive as negative and hence, causing ‘pain’ they will try to decrease repeating that experience with you because they are naturally always running the pleasure-pain test to decide what is good for themselves and what is not.

You can influence other people, and a large part of our time is spent doing that each day. Whether you are talking about yourself, them, or any other subject you are constantly self-monitoring what you’re saying to present yourself in the best light and each is trying to influence the other’s opinion, perception, beliefs, and experience.

Body rules.
For Survival, and optimal functioning we need oxygen, water, protein, fat, carbohydrates, roughage, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and 79 other things in our diet for the body we’re occupying to function in an optimal way. We need some kind of exercise, even if it consists of walking to the refrigerator and back to the couch to watch TV, occasionally going out to the store in your car to pick up some more groceries and the latest remote control that can change your TV, VCR, DVD, Digital stereo, Air Conditioner, and car stereo all with one unit.

We need to visit the restroom a couple times each day to rid the body of waste products. We need to take care of injuries. We need to live in rather sanitary conditions and keep ourselves relatively clean. We need to sleep 5-10 hours per day on average. There’s no getting out of that. A real day for most people consists of only 15 or 16 hours, not 24.

Mental rules.
We have certain needs necessary for survival and optimal functioning. Some of these we can ‘get’ if we search them out, others, because of external circumstances – the family you are born into for instance, or the geo-location you are born in may eliminate the possibility for you to ‘get’ them for yourself. Abraham Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs lists a person’s emotional needs that are generally accepted by western psychiatrists as necessary for proper mental development and for functioning at the highest level possible. Some people find these needs easily met in the environment they grow up in, others find it impossible. Again, where you’re born and what family you’re born into affect these greatly.

Memory is a mental faculty that is required for optimal functioning, but how well one person’s mind records memories versus another is largely a matter of genetics and the environment while growing up that either fostered or hindered the development of memory skills. Between family members and twins there are differences in memory ability and so genetic differences and environment both play a part in the quality and quantity of our memories. As does personality itself. If you are particularly interested in some area of life you’ll have more memories stored there and more knowledge accumulated. Your memories in that area may be superb. Your memory for things like directions around town or for people’s names might not be.

Mind functions. Our minds, at the most basic level function in a certain way… Selfishly. We were all formed with the pleasure-pain principle guiding the essence of our beings. This is perhaps rule number one in the functioning of each and every human being on the planet. Doesn’t matter whether you can feel pain and pleasure with your fingers or some other body part. You feel it with your mind. Nearly every perception you have during the course of your life you are running that perception through the pleasure-pain test and then recording it in memory to see if it’s something you want to repeat (or not) in the future. The pleasure-pain principle, says that humans will seek to repeat perceptions that are found to be pleasurable and decrease instances of perceptions that are found to be negative. Traumatic events are given much more weight and the memories will be more clear, but even situations such as adding a strange spice to your food and finding out it made the food taste badly is recorded. The ‘feeling’ you get when you meet a stranger is put through this pleasure-pain test. Writing with a certain brand of pen, using a new type of toilet paper, or sleeping with the lights on… these are all put through the pleasure-pain test and stored in memory.

This pleasure-pain principle is something that was here from the start. We had no say in it, and it seems that nobody escapes it. Animals appear to be operating by it as well as they learn that something that brings them pain shouldn’t be repeated. They remember it and won’t repeat it. Conversely, they find that something that brings them pleasure, sex for instance, is something they want to repeat and every spring here in Thailand one can witness stray dogs all over the country mating in the middle of the roads, stuck together as if with super-glue.

So, that’s a look at the things that are beyond our control in this game of life.

What things can we control? The list of what we can’t control seems so large. Even the things we can control are things that are partially or mostly determined by our genetic composition, personality, the pleasure-pain principle, and our memories. The things that are possible for us to control in this game of life are things that require some effort. Physical and mental effort, when applied, can change quite a bit in a person’s life. BUT, much easier said than done.

Basically, we can control what we can make ourselves do.

When I say ‘make ourselves do’ I mean that for some things it’s not as easy as just thinking it and making a decision to do it. That would be ideal. The game of life isn’t so ideal for us because that isn’t the reality. In reality we may need to get past our memories, our personality, our pleasure-pain principle, and even get past our genetic limits.

Things we can control if we can make ourselves ‘DO’:


The present.
Today. We can control what we do today if we can make ourselves do it. There are millions of choices you can make each day. Sometimes you fail to see them because your mind limits you. If, everyday you reminded yourself that TODAY IS THAT DAY, you would do more. You would see more opportunities. You could make yourself DO more. To some degree we can control the future, but it’s more like ‘influence’ the future than controlling it. The future is the unknown. You can influence the future by working hard toward a goal in the present – today – but it’s never a guarantee of the result in the future. What I do know is that it’s better than nothing, and it’s all that we realistically have. Faith, hope, and the law of attraction are pacifiers for people that want to believe that EVERYTHING is out of their control.

Our daily schedule.
We can choose to do nothing all day if that is our wish. We may die if we don’t even want to get up to eat, but that’s what we could do if we wanted. Everything we do is a choice. Choices we’ve made previously may influence choices we have available today. For instance, if you chose to work at new dot.com for 12-15 hours of each day then you have limited your choices about your daily schedule. You can only decide what to do before and after work (with the exception of sleeping – which is beyond your control).

The job we have.
We can align ourselves with the requirements of the position and get a job doing it unless there is some reason beyond our control… genetics? mental illness? memory?

What we eat, how much we eat, and when we eat.

Who we spend time with
We decide the types of people we surround ourselves with. We could join a gang and surround ourselves with killers, intravenous drug users and other degenerates… or we could go to the library and hang out with the geeks reading the computer and technology magazines.

What we learn about.
We may have natural curiosities which are contrary to what society might agree with (find pleasurable in you). But, if focus our energies on some other area that does not conflict with society we can learn about it and reach a point where we can do something about it – we can influence or control it in some way, big or small.

We can learn about:

• A religion.
• A hobby.
• Some environmental problem.
• Our minds – self analysis.
• Personal development and living life in an optimal way.
• Other people we know.
• People we don’t know in a different culture.

Help others with their problems.

Create something of lasting value.
Some ‘thing’ that provides ongoing value, maybe over your entire lifetime.

• Music or Lyrics
• Digital or emulsion based photographs
• Personal development web site or written articles.
  
• A book or audio-book. A visual book. A digital visual book. A video book.
• Podcast
• Video clip, short movie, feature-length fictional movie, documentary
  
• CD-ROM or DVD
• Powerpoint presentation
• Adobe PDF file
• Drawing, painting, sculpture, collage
• A computer program, widget, script
• Greeting card, cartoon, joke, origami
• New board-game, card game, invention
  

All of the above examples of what we can do are affected by what we want to do.
What we want to do is affected by the pleasure-pain principle. What we want to do is that which brings us pleasure and avoid that which brings us pain.

Our definition of what pleasure is and what pain is then, dictates the entire game of life as much as we have control over it. What I mean is, our definition of what we experience as pleasure and want to repeat and what we experience as negative and want to avoid repeating – is the whole game of life for us. This is what guides us internally and what ultimately leads to a life of happiness or a life of discontentment.

That’s it, “The Big, Big, BIG, Big Picture” is made up of what you can control if you can ‘make yourself’ and what is outside of your control.

Underlying the ‘Big Picture’ is a principle that is at the very heart of every conscious person living on earth… the pleasure-pain principle.

Control what you perceive as pleasure and what you perceive as pain and you are your own master in this game of life because your natural inclination will be to move toward the pleasurable and away from the painful.

There are many personal development gurus that have programs you could follow in order to help you control what you perceive as pain and pleasure. Pick one. Ideally you’d want to find one that helps you identify what experiences are necessary in your life to create what you’d term the “ideal life”. You’d then define in concrete terms what you perceive as pain and pleasure in the major areas of life… emotionally, physically, spiritually, at your job, with your family and friends, working versus relaxing, and the rest of it. Finally, identify the chasm that exists between your present beliefs about what is pleasure and what is pain and the changes that would need to happen if you were to live a life of bliss and happiness.

As an alternative to this you could sell everything you own and move to Asia or some other place. Living in a different culture has the awesome effect of giving one a new perspective on things. A radically different perspective, but that’s what is needed. You’ll naturally question things that were important to you back in your home country. You’ll find new pleasures and new pains. You’ll get a better worldview and understand yourself a lot better. You’ll see the influence that living in your home country all your life had on you and those important to you back at home.

Whichever you choose, know this…

Something RADICAL is indicated if you want to change your life.

Scroll up and see all those things you CANNOT control. That’s gotta be 90% of all factors related to your life happiness. So, if you’re controlling just 10% of these factors you’d better be maxing it out if you want to find bliss and happiness in this lifetime.

Want to know a secret?

The 10% you control & influence can give you a life of bliss and happiness if you just change what you perceive as pleasure and pain.

:)

Best of Life!

Link to a previous post: Seeing the Big Picture, a VERY Useful Lifehack >

If you’re reading this blog – AimforAwesome.com you are likely different from most of society. I’m going to make some guesses about my readers that isn’t based on anything other than knowing that you seem to like the articles I’m churning out for you here.

See if any of these apply to you…

• You’re driven to do something better with your life… or to maintain your current level of greatness.
• You’re probably college educated with a Bachelor’s degree or more. I write at a fairly high level so I know that high school dropouts are not likely visiting this site en masse. I know there are some of you that have not graduated high school – and that’s neither here nor there. Your desire to make your life a little bit more AWESOME by reading this blog is all that matters. Though I don’t have the names, you can google “famous persons without high school diploma” and find some nice results.
• You’re a bit more intelligent than the average person. I’m guessing that the average IQ level of my readers falls between 110-130 mostly.
• You are older than 20 and younger than 65.
• You are mostly men. I write about far more men topics than women topics since I am a man, by all definitions. Ha ha!
• You are a thinker. You are a questioner. But you know what? You haven’t questioned something yet… and that is, whether society and the advertising conglomerates that are feeding you ads in your TV, newspapers, radios, magazines, over your computers and cell phones, PDAs and loudspeakers, billboards, photos, signs, and the rest of it are smarter than you.
• You’ve already accepted that they are smarter than you and on to a good thing. How do I know this? I know you’ve likely fallen for the game that they’re playing with all of society. Those at the top of society, those that are successful monetarily have fallen for the game head and foot.

I know your desires…

I had the same desires for a long time in the USA. I know your desires because I know EVERYONE’s desires that live in the USA. A broad statement yes? Desires don’t differ all that much among individuals in a society. Our American society has been victimized so profoundly… we’ve been psyched out over the years… To our credit it has taken billions of dollars in advertisements to do it, but despite our hard to crack psychology we’ve been cracked and hacked and we’re now complete pawns to the advertising industry and their evil plans for us.

America is funny.

We have all these subgroups in America that want to appear as if they are against the typical people in society… that they are anti-American society… not pawns in the game… I’m talking about subgroups even in high school… in about 8th grade there is a subset of the students that will start smoking. When asked why – it’s “because I can” or “I can do what I want”.

Looking just one step closer to the “why” and we find that they are the ones that REALLY want to be accepted by someone, because they aren’t getting enough of it. Typical ways for students to be accepted is to be part of some group.

There are those that play sports… each sport has students that are well-bonded and get a lot of positive reinforcement from their friends.

There are those that are the “smartest” – the “brains” they were called back in 1984. The brains were the good looking smart people that joined debate team and played stupid trivia and thinking games that allowed them to travel to other schools to compete while the rest of us suffered through Political Systems class with Mr. Lucas.

There are the funny people. The funny people might not even have a whole group of funny people, but the may. A kid could literally stand on his own and not have a group if he’s funny enough. He might not play sports or join any other group, but, by being funny he gets acceptance and a lot of positive feedback from so many different groups that he can stand on his own if he wishes. That’s the exception.

There are the fashionables in high school always a group of girls, sometimes they are cheerleaders, and sometimes just a group whose parents can afford to buy them the latest fashions so they can always appear to be at some higher level than the rest of the students in their grade.

There are the geeks. These are the not good looking people that are interested in technical things and are amazed at things like calculators that do advanced functions. They are amazed and consider it magic until they read enough books and figure out how to build their own calculators. These students, if they begin wearing Matrix trenchcoats band together and sometimes plot to shoot the other students. Bad joke.

Then there are the smokers. Some of those further refine by being the ones that take drugs.

When kids get older and they finish with school they may move into other groups… there are many adult subgroups too. There are the people that are artsy… they love to dress differently but not really differently, they just copy what they think they saw from the 1950′s. They rip their jeans and make safety pin zippers and things. They paint their own clothes and call it unique and anti-fashionable. It’s all a very lame attempt at making themselves a different sort of fashionable among themselves so they can get some positive feedback like the other adults that wear Armani and Donna Karan.

There are guys that get fat, smoke, drink a lot and buy a motorcycle. They are anti-advertising and are quick to tell you how they don’t succumb to the usual advertising ploys… some of them call themselves thinkers or skeptics. Then, they go and buy the loudest motorcycle that exists on the planet, a Harley Davidson, which is also one of the most expensive, some as expensive as new cars now… so other people will look at them and they’ll feel special too. Everyone seems to have this need inside that makes them want to be special. Even if you’re special for a socially negative or societally negative reason, it’s still “special” and it counts for some reason.

There is the Abercrombie and Fitch group that want to appear as if they are not really trying to dress as anything fashionable, but they have the uncanny knack of consistently dressing in a very similar style to each other. They further refine with gross exaggerations of attempting to go against the grain (pulling their jeans half-way down their butt) that really just serve to make them a stronger subgroup with clearly defined needs to be looked at.

There is the pierced group that either wants sympathy or something, I’m not really in-tune with what they’re looking for except acceptance among each other that they all feel the need to hurt themselves to prove that they can take physical pain as well as the mental pain that has been building there for years and maybe decades… They wear leather or some other drastic fabric and they do crazy things to their hair… why? So others look at them and they get SOMEBODY to look at them as nobody was before.

Into which group do you fall? This wasn’t an attempt to cover all the different subgroups in America, but you can probably place yourself into one that you either see here or that you can create and assign yourself into.

You know what every one of these groups has in common?

They are all marionettes (puppets) to the advertising industry that has so shaped American society that we look at everything they do as the definition of what American Society IS. We think we’re living like “Americans” if we act in the way that the advertising conglomerates have been pushing us to live.

That’s really sick to me.

It makes me want to spit…

Billions and perhaps TRILLIONS of dollars have bought the minds of the general public. Yours, mine, your mom’s and your grand mom’s.

While Americans think we are smart because we can “see” instances of advertising that is trying to change our minds and cause us to purchase… it’s too late. There is already a change because the first thing that has already changed is the “NEED” to purchase something else… the NEED to get something better, something different, something newer, something more trendy, something more expensive, something more…

Well, just MORE.

Let me try to clarify with an example…

We think we’re smart because we see that Lexus has used a fancy metallic gold lettering in their ad for the new SUV they have in a 4 page spread in Time magazine. We say to ourselves… ha, they have so much money that they can afford to spend that on their ad… We think we’re smart because we recognize the attempt to persuade us based on some glitzy looking lettering in the ad.

But, the real manipulation of your mind took place much before you saw the ad. The real manipulation by the advertising industry as a whole took place over decades as you grew up and watched what your parents, friends, and co-workers did over the years about buying cars. They bought too much car, and upgraded their cars when they really would have been MUCH better off financially to keep their present car and ignore what everyone else is doing.

The fact that you took even an extra 1 second to look at the fancy Lexus ad means that the car industry has already won your mind. Why would you look for even 1 second longer than necessary to keep thumbing through the pages if you had no desire to upgrade the car you presently had? In your mind is this idea that upgrading your car is always something that is a way to keep you on top of society… in good standing so to speak. It’s like if you were thumbing through the magazine and came across this ultra suave concrete mix powder that was setting the construction industry on FIRE. How many extra seconds would that ad grab your eyeballs for?

For me, none. You too?

You know why? The concrete industry is not something I saw many ads about. They know they are not for EVERYONE. Cars are for everyone. Shoes and clothes are for everyone. Soda, for everyone. Computers, for almost everyone. The car industry has been working you and spending billions of dollars over the years to make you, not just buy their cars on impulse… that happens a lot, but not everyone is fooled that way.

How nearly everyone IS fooled is that they’ve already bought into the idea that getting a new car is a good thing for your standing in society, for your happiness, for your safety, for your well being, and for your peace of mind…

THAT is where they’ve already bought us.

Not just the car industry either. What about the diamond industry? How many American girls will accept marriage without a diamond ring? Not that many. You know why? Even though a girl might accept a ring that isn’t a couple months of the guys paycheck, she knows something…

It should be that expensive if he really loves me and I’m worth it to him.

Yeah, they think this. I was engaged to my son’s mom at one time… I gave her the ring in a very unique way… and you know what? I saw the disappointment in her eyes when she realized it was only about .35 carats and worth $2000 USD. Yep, I KNOW I saw disappointment in her face and in her voice. Positive. It bears revealing that her first husband gave her a ring that was easily 1 carat and very good quality, I’m guessing the ring was around $10K. If it were up to me I’d have given her a gold band… but you know, it’s NOT up to me… it’s up to whatever standard was created in the minds of Americans that are going to get married. The girl thinks her worth is tied up in that ring! Is that the silliest thing you’ve ever heard? If you’re a guy, maybe. If you’re a girl, you understand.

Here’s another example… how many of you bought the video IPODs? This is something I’m totally lost about. It started for me with the MP3 players. Here are my questions…

1. Why do you think you’re going to enjoy watching a 2 hour movie on a screen the size of your palm? Remember when the large screen TV’s were such a fad? Oh wait, they still are. How did we go from that idea to the complete opposite idea that watching a 1.5″ x 2.5″ screen is something cool and something fun to do? I watched some short videos on my friend’s 80GB IPOD and I had to laugh right there as I watched. Even on that screen it’s not perfect graphics. If that screen was RAZOR sharp like the screen on my recent e65 Nokia slider phone I might be able to begin to understand. However, it was horrible to watch. There was obvious artifacting in every scene and all areas of the image on the screen. He paid something like $700 Canadian dollars for the thing and I thought – that’s nuts, he could have bought a NICE computer here in Thailand instead. That computer would have an AWESOME screen and DVD dual level recorder, DUO chip, Intel Centrino, and just a cache of other things that when compared to the cigarette case sized IPOD that played micro video and mp3′s was 19 times more valuable in terms of common sense.

2. Why do you think people bought them?
Answer. Apple has created this subgroup of applets – people that think Apple is the bees’ knees. These applets think that anything Apple does is to be praised and worshipped… and purchased at all costs.

3. How did Apple accomplish this?
Answer. Apple tapped into the geeks that didn’t understand IBM computers and that felt they wanted to go against the grain. The grain being Microsoft’s huge “we do everything that you need the computer for” mentality… and so they swung hard the other way. They supported the only other option at the time… Apple computers which had ‘nice styling’ and colors. Their marketing campaigns were genius, and though they too have spent over a billion dollars in advertising, they have created a group of applet clones that don’t even question with common sense WHAT they’re doing – they just buy up every stupid thing Apple creates because to them, if they own it – they are seen as desireable among other applets. This increases the concept known as “face”. Applets gain face among the other applets if they own more of Apples products.

All kinds of people are subject to becoming non-decision making dolts that buy whatever a company is selling…

Harley Davidson did it above. Alien computers are a hit among gamers for their whacky ads and styles of computer cases. Nike has done this wonderfully, expanding from shoes to all manners of clothes, bags and accessories.

So, the point of this post is that we need to be SMARTER than we are. We think we’re smart, and we’re not. We’ve already fallen for the advertising industry brainwash. They now OWN all of American’s mindset. We accept without question that items that are better, newer, faster, more colorful, have more exotic materials, are lighter, smoother, softer, flashier… are what we NEED.

You don’t NEED what the advertising agencies are pushing. You don’t NEED to have this general concept about Americans and what we NEED. You must decide for yourself what you need. You must be smarter than those geniuses that spent billions of dollars to outsmart you. You MUST be. You CAN’T be the marionette anymore. Don’t let them pull your strings. YOU pull your strings. ONLY you pull your strings. If someone tries to pull your strings, you cut off their hand.

Otherwise they’ll own you and your children…

GET OUT!

Best of Life!

..

Recently I broke down and listened to something about the ‘Law of Attraction’. I am not one to believe in anything that suggests that objective, probability driven reality can be changed by anything like faith or changing your mindset or what you wish to make up in your mind to believe… but, there has been SO MUCH talk about the Law of Attraction that I decided to listen to Steve Pavlina’s Podcast 16 and see what it was all about.

Steve has a nice way of relating life and reality to computer games since he worked as a game programmer before becoming a successful blogger. I too find it easy to compare my life and most of reality here with computer games and programs. For some reason it’s an easy comparison. Let me say right now that if you are interested in the Law of Attraction and you want to hear an AWESOME podcast about it – Steve’s is wonderfully put together and almost convinced even me! I’m a serious skeptic though and my own private logic won out. You might REALLY enjoy it anyway though, download it and check it out…

So as I listened to this podcast eventually it got too bizarre for me when he told me that in order to get what you want you just need to think of that thing, goal, item, amount of money – whatever you choose, and whatever you really want… and it will manifest itself. One must be careful not to channel any negative beliefs toward the goal based on your past and what you’ve had up until that time.

Meaning, if you want to have a certain quantity of expendable cash come into your life… say $25,000 USD… you ask the universe for that. For the next 60-90 days or more you are not to have any thoughts or memories of the past that are negative and that might destroy the goal for you. You must be totally convinced that you WILL get it and that you deserve it. You can’t have any thoughts about nothing like this ever happening in the past… and that you haven’t ever received even $1000 dollars in expendable cash in your whole life for having done nothing but ask. You can’t think that it’s beyond the possible. In fact, you must think it’s entirely possible and expect it.

So next I listened to Erin Pavlina’s podcast about “Placing your order with the universe” (Steve Pavlina’s podcast 17). It was hard to adjust to Erin’s style of speaking after just hearing Steve, and I’ll likely not do it again. Erin talked about how the request you make to the universe must be what you REALLY WANT. If your request isn’t aligned with your actions then you can’t expect to manifest it as reality.

After those two podcasts I sat down to write this post. I’m calling it the “Law of Subtraction”. It’s based more on objective, scientific reality than the law of attraction and for me it just seems to make a lot more sense.

To me, the Law of Attraction fits well with a large amount of people in the USA, and across the world that also believe in some god with all their heart and soul. It’s a huge leap of faith to just trust the “universe” will give you what you desire. It’s a silly belief that I can’t imagine myself ever wasting the time to attempt. Instead of wait 60-90 days for my lotto ticket with the universe to be chosen, I’d rather spend those days working hard on the reality that exists – in order to alter it in my favor… perhaps reaching the goal of having $25,000 USD to spend as I wish. Perhaps not. Reaching the goal would be based on my own action or inaction nothing more and nothing less.

I find it stange that Steve didn’t mention anything about whether or not to continue your life and regular things you’re doing that might help you reach your goal on your own. Not one thing was mentioned his podcast about that. I know he doesn’t believe one should sit and wait for the goal to manifest just based on the belief in the Law of Attraction. He couldn’t think that, could he?

The Law of Attraction is very appealing to people that don’t want to face reality, but for myself it’s not working. Here’s what I came up with instead, and it’s really not going to be a surprise for you if you understand that Want + ACTION = Results toward your goal. You may not REACH your goal, but that’s life. Nobody reaches every goal.

Law of Subtraction

.

The Law of Subtraction states… If you want something from the heart, you must work your ass off to get it. Nothing comes by hope, prayer, faith or a lotto ticket with the universe. In fact, those things give a false sense of security, which, while they are strong – make you feel great. You might feel really good for 2-3 months as you’re waiting for this gift from the cosmos. After what you wanted does not manifest either in the time-frame you wanted it to arrive, or perhaps it just never arrives over the course of your entire life… you’ll then know that it was the Law of Subtraction, not Attraction that was the better of the two laws to follow.

1. Subtract from your life the “Law of Attraction” and anything else that tells you to rely on hope, faith, prayer, or luck to give you what you want in life.

2. Brainstorm as many ways as possible to reach your goal within the timeframe you’ve chosen. Do not eliminate any possibility, everything gets added to the list of possibilities.

3. Edit down the list to a few reasonable ones that you believe will allow you to reach your goal.

4. Create a very detailed plan to go from Point A (today) to Point B (when you reach your goal). Write down things you must do for EACH DAY between now and then. Keep in mind that Tony Robbin’s phrase that is SO important… “Massive, consistent action”. Every day you must apply massive and consistent action toward your goal.

5. Review that plan with as many people as you know that have any experience in what you’re attempting to do. Revise your plan as needed.

6. Declare it a plan and get to work.

7. Subtract negative people from your life. You have no time for them as you can’t change them.

8. Subtract TV, extended radio listening, smoking, pursuit of the opposite sex, and buying the latest things.

9. Subtract any sleeping hours over 7 per day.

10. Subtract any residual neural leftover that is telling you how much easier the Law of Attraction is over the Law of Subtraction.

Best of Life!

This is a mini-series on the topic, “How little do you need?”. This is the 3rd article, about “How little do you NEED? (Your Vehicle).

Having been in Thailand for 3 years I’ve found that I need SO little to be happy. And actually, as I had less and less I realized more and more happiness. I’ll try to explain in this series as I reveal how little I need here in Thailand, but also how you can make changes for yourself wherever you are, the USA? Canada? Europe?

If you missed the first in the series you will find it here,
“How LITTLE do you Need?”

Second was, “How little do you NEED? (Your Home)”

Third is this one!

Fourth is, “How little do you NEED? (Your Possessions – coming next)

This series, “How little do you NEED?” is all about finding out how little you actually NEED to live an awesome life.

The big conflict comes when you are considering what a NEED is for you. Are you a person that considers yourself in a “higher class” of discriminating taste? Are you completely unable to avoid the scam put forth by advertising companies, your friends and others in society that are telling you what type of vehicle you SHOULD drive? If so you are likely driving one of these makes: Mercedes; Porsche; Lexus; Volvo; Infinity; Cadillac… there are so many more, but living here in Thailand for 3 years and seeing so few luxury cars I’ve forgotten most of them!

Having grown up in a family of moderately low-income I was lucky enough to have cars like an AMC Javelin, Volkswagon hatchback… a Volkswagon Bus (before they were fashionable)… a Plymouth Volare stationwagon… and a Buick Skylark… before I finally insisted that we buy a Japanese made car. My mother came back from a Mitsubishi dealership with a car that she liked. Though I liked it much better than any American made car she could have found I made her take it back. I went to the dealer with her and insisted they take it back immediately. They did, despite having done all the paperwork for her to purchase it when she returned.

I steered mom toward a Honda. Why? I had recently taken a ride in my friend’s Honda Accord 2 door 4 speed. I was amazed at the comfort level of the car. There was such attention to detail… to ergonomics. The shifting was ultra smooth and the tiny 4 cyclinder engine was more powerful than our 6 cylinder Buick. I was floored! I knew mom must get a Honda for not only the reasons I’d mentioned but also because common sense dictated that she must.

She had limited income and couldn’t have the car in the repair shop much without going completely broke. The Honda Civic and Accord had both won “Car and Driver”‘s coveted “Car of the Year” award numerous times. I had friends that owned Hondas and they were all very satisfied. Why buy a Buick or a Plymouth? I’m all for supporting Americans, but you know what? I’m even more for acting intelligently than I am for acting patriotically. Patriotism is nice but I’m not going to pay extra for it. I decided in about 1985, while in the United States Air Force even, that I would buy products that were made the best and that I could afford. What that meant was for the next 20 years I owned only Honda, Acura, Toyota, and Lexus vehicles. If Ford started making a vehicle that could compete with any of the cars I bought, I’d have bought it. They didn’t. I didn’t buy their clearly inferior cars.

Couples with children need a car or maybe something bigger, an SUV or a truck. If you don’t have children and are the adventurous type, look into a motorcycle or scooter. There are many on the market now and they’re almost ALL cheaper than a car. They get better gas mileage and they will save you thousands of dollars per year over a car just in gas and regular maintenance expenses.

How much vehicle do you NEED?

I’m going to suggest something…

You only need as much vehicle as will fit you and the members of your family, and a trunk. If you don’t have a trunk then you have a roof rack. What more do you need?

Starting with this basic assumption you can add things on if you need more for special circumstances… for instance, maybe sometimes you have go kayak fishing. I used to have a kayak in Tampa, Florida. And, while I had an apartment on a canal that I could drop the kayak into when I wanted to venture out into Tampa Bay, sometimes I wanted to hit new territory. Did I buy a truck? Heck no, I bought some foam pieces and strapped that 14 foot kayak on the top of my Honda Prelude 2 door and hit the road. Would a truck have been more convenient to haul my kayak around to different rivers and bays? Yeah, sure. But, how many times per month would make it worth it for me to buy a truck and waste gas ALL the time I drove instead of use the gas-efficient Honda Prelude? Hmmm… it just didn’t add up.

What about the times I needed to carry a lot of stuff… maybe when I moved apartments or had to carry something big like a lawn mower or pieces of furniture? Wouldn’t a truck do that much better than a Honda Prelude? Heck yeah! Did I buy a truck for that? Heck no, I rented a small 5×7 foot trailer from U-Haul for $18 per day to pull behind the Honda. Lets see, I need the capacity of a truck about 14 times per year. I can buy a truck which gets 50% of the gas mileage that my Honda gets or I could use the Honda… which makes sense? The car always makes sense. Renting a trailer for $260 per year from U-Haul is so much smarter than buying a truck to waste gas driving the whole year. If I drive 50 miles per day (and I did) it would cost me about $4.50 per day in gas for the Honda. In a year that’s about $1640 in gas. Using a truck that gets 50% of the gas mileage of the Honda it would have cost me twice as much or, $3280.

If I drove a motorcycle gas and expenses might cost me $3.00 per day. About $1080 per year. I could rent a truck for about $30 per day fourteen times per year… that’s $420. $1080 + 420 = $1500 per year. A little better than a car on expenses, but a whole lot more fun. Insurance would kick in and for the first couple years of motorcycle ownership you’d likely have done better in a car… but, we haven’t looked at the cost of the vehicles to buy. The motorcycle you buy might be, and probably would be $10,000 cheaper than a car or truck. Hmm, $10,000 over the course of 3 years of payments of principle and interest…. that’s a LOT of extra cash.

Personally, I favor the motorcycle option because I’ve seen a few million motorcycle riders here over the course of 3 years. I’ve seen it work on a mass scale. I even drove through the city of Bangkok on a motorbike… was stuck in traffic for 6 hours and yet I got through it without a mishap. I drove exceptionally defensively. I had to.

Thailand has 65 million people. Maybe 45 million are adults of age to drive. I will bet that 20 million of them own a motorcycle. Not joking. Even if someone has a car or SUV, a truck, they also likely have a motorcycle to use for short trips. It’s just so efficient and easy to get through traffic on one.

Motorcycles ARE more dangerous than cars or trucks if you’re driving one, don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen some horrific accidents here of course, but I think the accidents that I saw happen ALL could have been avoided by smart (defensive) driving. Thai people tend to go a little nuts on the road sometimes. They think that when they die, it was “karma” or fate. It was their time to go – nothing else to it. As a result sometimes you’ll see someone driving completely insane as they realize all too well that if it’s their time to die they’ll die then. If not, then another time. They’re OK with either result!

If someone drives a motorcycle defensively enough there is no reason that you can go for 40 years driving one without a major accident. I truly believe that. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in the USA or here in Thailand. Each country has their own nuances when it comes to the way people drive on the roads. Once learned, you can drive very defensively and avoid nearly all accidents. I’m sure of it.

Don’t be afraid of motorcycles. Respect them, yes, absolutely. Learn everything you can about driving one safely and maintaining your own motorcycle – or at least being aware when you need even minor adjustments to it to keep it running as brand new throughout its life.

I’d love to see everyone in the world drop 1-4 levels from the vehicles they are presently driving. It’s such a silly thing to own a vehicle over $20,000 USD. Your HOME should cost close to $20,000 not your vehicle. It’s pure silliness to buy a car brand new. Buy a couple years old and save the glitz and glam – and a lot of cash. Still, buy a Honda… an Acura… a Toyota…. Read car and driver and other car magazines and buy ONLY the best cars that exist. Why would someone buy ANYTHING but the best on the market? There’s enough of them. When the Honda Civic was the best rated car in the USA – do you think there was a shortage of them? Nope. You could find 10 in any Honolulu Advertiser classified section on any Sunday of the year. I know, I was always looking for what was available.

Here are some ways to act intelligently about the vehicle you own:

1. Buy one vehicle and drive it until you need to bury it or it catches fire. Really. Don’t fall for the societal expectation of changing your car all the time! Upgrading! You’re killing yourself on the cash with UPGRADING. You’re upgrading your image in society – but you’re suffering silently as the bills roll in, gradually getting larger as you continue your foolishness.

2. Buy ONLY the best car on the market that fits your family. If you have a family of 6, you might need an SUV or a VAN, by all means find the one that’s the best, keep your payment VERY manageable, and buy one a couple years old.

3. Please don’t ever spend more than $15,000 for a car. Please. You’re showing you’re a sucker for the ad industry if you do so. You need to SHOW your smarts… you can show them by refusing to listen to the rest of American society who are also under the influence of the advertising industry. Let the yuppies buy the beamers and the Lexus LX’s… buy something that will last and yet isn’t just to make others smile as you drive by. Did you ever smile at someone driving a beamer? Me neither.

4. Downgrade your vehicle. I’m guessing if you are reading this article and are concerned about living life in an AWESOME way that you are already a victim of the advertising industry. I’d guess you are upper income and you have too much vehicle. Downgrade and take control of your life. Stop giving your cash away to slick advertising companies that have played you like a worked and mindless marionette.

5. Can you think of something that applies to you?

6. Can you think of something else?

.

.

If you missed the first in the series you will find it here,

“How LITTLE do you Need?”
Second was, “How little do you NEED? (Your Home)” (this one)
Third was, “How little do you NEED? (Your Vehicle)”
Fourth was, “How little do you NEED (Your Possessions)”

Article I found that also relates to finding happiness with things other than money,

How to live a life of contentment, from Zenhabits.net >
Best of Life! (small life)

This is a mini-series on the topic, “How little do you need?”

Having been in Thailand for 3 years I’ve found that I need SO little to be happy. And actually, as I had less and less I realized more and more happiness. I’ll try to explain in this series as I reveal how little I need here in Thailand, but also how you can make changes for yourself wherever you are, the USA? Canada? Europe?

If you missed the first in the series you will find it here, “How LITTLE do you Need?”

Your home is probably the single biggest expense you have right now. Or, during any time in your whole life your home is likely to be the most costly ‘thing’ you own. Being such, it is also the main expense you can cut down.

How little house do you need?

I showed you in my last post a short video about where I live in Thailand. I’m living quite small and yet I could live MUCH smaller and be happy. If you looked at my home in the video you saw that I have a porch, a small living area about 3 meters by 4 meters where we eat and sleep. In that small space is where we spend 90% of all our time. The other 10% is spent in the shower area or outside on the porch.

Like you probably aren’t, we’re not home much of the time. On a typical weekday we spend about 11 hours at home and another 13 hours away from home. I figure we sleep 8 hours, eat dinner at home maybe twice per week (it’s cheaper to eat out here) and we get ready to leave the house, showering, dressing and cleaning for about 1.5 hours per day. Sometimes we read a book or newspaper or use the internet from home. Sometimes we watch a VCD (like a DVD) movie on the computer before we sleep. So, we average about 11 hours at home during the weekdays. On the weekends maybe we average about the same since my girlfriend either works or we go somewhere for the day.

What about you? How much time is actually spent at home? Is it similar to ours? I’m guessing that even though we’re living 5,000 to 15,000 miles away from you in a completely different culture than you – we probably have similar hours spent at home. Differing slightly of course, but generally people spend 10-13 hours at home per day.

How much space do you actually use in your house? For us we don’t even use the two bedrooms we have. We don’t use the back porch much at all either. We literally use the small space in the front of the unit for everything except showers and restroom. That is how much space we USE. We have more, but we only need that much. How much space do you have in your home? 1800 square feet? 3000? 6000? What are you doing with all that house? In Florida I had a house that was 1900 sq ft. I then had a townhome that was 1400 sq ft.

When I moved back to Hawaii I moved into what amounted to about 400 square feet of space – a studio. I adjusted to having my bed in the livingroom but you know, I was embarrased a bit when people came over.

I realized it’s just societal expectations “shoulding” on me. Making me think – man, Vern you SHOULD have a bigger place, at LEAST a one-bedroom condo. What do people think as they come in and see your bed? Are people comfortable being there?

Those thoughts went through my mind a lot. Never mind that I had a nice view of the Pacific ocean and western Waikiki. I worried about the inside of the apartment as much as where it was located. In America we think about these things. Why? Society expects us to uphold an image.

This “society” that I’m talking about is largely in your own head. Society means all the people. But, what YOU consider society depends on what image you’re trying to project for yourself. If you think you are high society then you are always striving to present the BEST personal image to others. You are suffering a great deal so you can present yourself in a better light than others. You think of yourself as the top of the society… so you think in your mind that you need to get a home that reflects that. I did.

Now I’m living in less than 200 square feet and very happy. How is that possible?

Number 1, I’m in Thailand where they seem to put little emphasis on the idea that a big house means big society and big worth as an individual. Number 2, I’ve just done it for so long now that it’s second nature. I see anything bigger than where I live as a waste of money and going against common sense.

If I were to move back to Florida or Hawaii at this point I know I could survive happily in a studio apartment. I know it. I’ve dropped the idea of conforming to the silly societal expectations I used to have. Common sense has prevailed. I know I’m smarter than the fool society wants me to play. I know you are too. I know I don’t want to play the stupid games as a pawn of society anymore. I don’t know you, but I don’t want you to either!

There are games to play and games to let others play.

I don’t care that I have friends that are or are not part of ‘high society’. I don’t care that I don’t live in the nicest part of town anymore. I think that’s all silly now. My mind has made serious adjustments about common sense. I see so clearly now that where I live and in what kind of place I live has nothing to do with my worth as a person.

Imagine coming to that realization for yourself in the next couple minutes.

If there are coworkers or potential friends that won’t associate with me because of where I live or the lack of size of my home or the lack of anything about my home – I would laugh first and dismiss them quickly. Who needs others to be critical of where I live? Not me. Who is smarter? The high society wannabes that are spending $200K+ for their condo in plush “North Tampa”? Or me, that lives in a safe condo studio with 300 square feet that I’ll pay off and own in 5 years?

Who is smarter… two brothers that decide they should move in together to save some cash while they are going to college or the brothers that live in separate apartments running up student loans and credit card debt to appear as high society as they attend school?

American society has a sickness. It’s perhaps the most materialistic and money driven society that exists on the planet and it’s getting worse every day. I saw it and I bailed out as soon as I could.

FEW are those that can change their entire lifestyle to ignore the society they live in. Really. If you can do it then you are one of the smartest persons on the entire planet. If you can ignore society and what others are telling you and maybe even more importantly, thinking about you, then you have the power to change the outcome of your entire life for the better. Not only better monetarily, as contradictory as that may sound, but also you can find more happiness… more peace… more time for yourself all while living “small”.

Can you imagine the amount of money you could SAVE and the amount of stress that would go away if you didn’t have to worry about a big mortgage every month for the next 15, 20 or 30 years? Why do we do it to ourselves? You know WHY? It was considered the ‘norm’ for so long that we never questioned it. This is what people did for 50 years before I was born… they indebted themselves and guaranteed major stress in their lives for the next 30 years so they could have the ‘American Dream’. My parents did it. Yours probably did. I was told all through growing up that this was the process to follow to lead to a good and successful life.

You know, I don’t believe it anymore. Why not buy some land and get your friends (and some hired experts) to help you build a home? What happened to that idea? In the 1800′s that’s what people did. They built their OWN home and it didn’t take them 30 years to pay off the materials either. Have you ever watched “Little House on the Prairie”? Did those adults look STRESSED OUT to you? Me neither!

I’m all for bringing back the 1800′s. Why not build your own house and own it much quicker than you would otherwise. Build a small house. Three hundred square feet for each person in the house. How’s that? Seriously, you have make some serious adjustments in your housing situation if you are attempting to resolve your money problems… or, if you’d like to lessen the stress in your life.

I’m living on less than $10 per day. Oh, that’s for 2 people… myself and my girlfriend. How much do you think you could live on in the USA if you tried? I’m guessing you could live on $35 to $50 per day. Sound absurd?

Actually, FORGET about money, just focus on eliminating most of the stress in your life. If you can follow some of the tips from this series you’ll notice PROFOUND changes in your stress levels. You’ll find more happiness everyday… more time… more smiles and more money.

Are you up to it?

Ways to live small:

1. Realize you can live in a one room studio apartment. If you have kids, you ALL can live in a one room studio apartment. You can, you choose not to. Realize that.

2. Realize that you are playing society’s silly game, but you never signed on… nope, you were just recruited into it. By default, we all were. Wherever we grew up – that’s the game we were drafted into. We never made a choice. NOW we can make a choice. We can choose EVERYTHING as adults. Start making choices.

3. Ask yourself how many high society people you bring back to your home each year. Then, ask yourself would a 5 star restaurant dinner be a better atmosphere for your guests or would your home? Keep in mind, your magnificient home needs paid for and maintained for the whole year. Ask yourself, which idea is a better idea? Which would bring less stress?

4. Build a small home on some land outside the city. You don’t need a basement and an upstairs. You don’t NEED it, so you can choose not to have it.

5. Go very basic on the cupboards and furniture inside your house and for the materials used on the outside. Buy materials, furniture that will last but that is not extravagant.

6. Only invite people to your home that don’t CARE about where you live or how you live. These will be people that are more worth knowing anyway.

7. You write it for yourself…

8. You write it for yourself…

9. You write it for yourself…

10. You write it for yourself…

..
If you missed the first in the series you will find it here,

“How LITTLE do you Need?”
Second was, “How little do you NEED? (Your Home)” (this one)
Third was, “How little do you NEED? (Your Vehicle)”
Fourth was, “How little do you NEED (Your Possessions)”

Article I found that also relates to finding happiness with things other than money,

How to live a life of contentment, from Zenhabits.net >

Best of Life! (small life)

Most of us define our lives in terms of the minimum that we need to be “happy”. Happiness then becomes elusive until we have met these minimum goals… and you know what?

When you HAVE the minimums, you’re not happy. You KNOW you’re not happy when you have what you want. That’s the state of the American mind. Once we have it – we want more. The NEXT level. Getting to the basic “I’m happy” level never really keeps us happy because our minds revise the levels so we’re cheated out of feeling any REAL satisfaction from making it when we eventually do.

Either that, or, in typical American fashion – we set our minimum levels for happiness so HIGH that they are completely unattainable and might only happen if we combine our hard work with luck. Well, luck happens sometimes and doesn’t happen other times. Even if luck happens 50-50 that’s a hell of a state to live life in… a 50% chance you’ll find happiness someday.

Why not ask yourself a different question. If you’re a fan of Tony Robbins or some other positive, progressively minded thinker you might have heard him or her say…

“Change the question. Questions empower you to find the right answers and make the right decisions, and later creating the right actions….”

The happiness that you think you crave, that you think exists in the state of things you live in may be found more easily if you change the question.

Instead of asking what the minimums you need are… ask,

“How little do I actually NEED?”

These questions might appear the same to you, but in my mind they’re different. I’m asking how little you can survive on… how little do you actually NEED to live life in a happy state. One in which you aren’t concerned about the basic ‘necessities’ like food, shelter, clothing, and such.

Question how little you really need.

If you know anything about me, I’ve lived in Thailand for the last almost 3 years. In 30 days it will have been 3 years here. Prior to this I’ve lived in the USA and did quite a lot. I met many of my goals, financial and otherwise. I was pretty close to living what some term the “American Dream”. But, I decided upon almost getting there – THIS IS NUTS! I’m done with this crazy lifestyle. TIME is what’s important to me. TIME to create, time to walk around with my head in the clouds. Time to hike for 5 hours if I want to. Time to read a book if I want to. Time to create a web site or write a book or make a funny video. I need TIME.

In America time is NOT easy to come by. Twenty Four hour days feel like 5 hour days. There is no way I could fit everything I wanted into a 24 hour day. I needed to because that’s what “happiness” meant to me then. I needed to make a lot of money. I needed to have a nice place to live. A nice car. A nice kayak. A nice stereo, camera, camcorder, notebook and desktop computers… etc. You know, all of it – the DREAM remember?

But, I wanted TIME to do all the other things that were essential in my mind. Creating things takes time. I needed that time.

I skipped off to Thailand and instantly cleared my schedule. No more time worries. Nobody called me. Nobody sent me mail. I had no appointments. I had 24 hours that I didn’t know what to DO with.

I began to create web sites, write books, and create videos and other digital content. I became a one-man production house. Currently I have over 12 blogs, 3 web sites, 4 e-books, 12000 digital photos of Thailand, 700 digital photos placed with 2 different stock agencies, 127000 words of a bio written, over 300 short movie clips of Thailand, and a host of MP3 podcasts that have yet to find their way online. I’ve gone poisonous snake and scorpion hunting and I’ve been re-focusing on fitness a lot lately. I’ve had 3 years to really slow down, reverse and restart a lifestyle that was completely different from what I knew in the USA.

Here’s a movie clip – I made without editing or really without the thought that I’d put it online here. It was going to maybe be for my mom’s birthday so she could see what I’m living with (or without) here in Thailand. It might be good for you to see too.

Vern lives here, could YOU?

So, picture someone almost living the dream… and then see the reality of what I live like now. This is a video of the place I live… I love it. It’s simple, I have nothing to worry about. I have no air conditioning, fan, stereo, television, hot water, washer, dryer, oven, microwave, or furniture. I have 2 mats that my girlfriend (Thais’ call her my wife since we slept together, and I’m fine with that) and I sleep on. We have no sink for dishes… hmmm what else don’t we have? You can watch the video and compare with your home. Oh – no car. No home phone. I’m sure there’s so much more but I’m having trouble picturing what I had before in the USA.

Living bare bones. It’s not pathetic, it’s how most Thai people live. There are something like 65 million Thai people here in Thailand. Admittedly most Thais’ do have a TV and at least some kind of table or something. I think we’re fine without those things though. We do have this notebook computer that we watch videos on sometimes. In fact, we just rented 3 videos for 50 baht ($1.66) usd at the VDO store. Good for 5 days before we need to bring them back.

So – watch the video and think for a second what it would be like to live in a place like us.

Could you do it?

Sure you could… What is holding you back? Just your mind. Just what your mind thinks you “need”.

Lessen the stress of living in the USA. You don’t NEED. You W-A-N-T.

Lose the want or you’re not ever going to be happy for long! America fuels the want… you’re immersed in a culture that is simmering you in the boiling water of want. That boiling water is American society… it’s boiling because the advertising mega-companies with gazillions of dollars to spend on tweaking your psyche and making you even more competitive, more driven to surpass your neighbor… are learning really well how to keep the temperature up! Society is well-past boiling right now… but, since the pot is under pressure, the temperature can rise higher.

You’re like COOKING LOBSTERS! Jump out of the pot!

You dont’ need to move to Thailand to escape the boiling pot and kill the want. Just start living according to needs, not wants. Make time, it’s there.

If you need to quit your job – quit! If you need to move in with your mom, dad, gramps or sister – see about doing that. Do you really need a $200,000 home? I went from a $200,000 home with Lexus RX300 and the other things I mentioned to this simple place I’m paying $99 USD per month to rent. I’m MUCH happier than I was before. I don’t have a table to sit at – but my back has become strong sitting on the floor. The body compensates for the mind… now the mind is comfy and the body has acclimated. See, no stress.

Asians have this incredible life philosophy – and you’ll see them doing in the USA too. They will move back in with their families (or never leave), so they can all share the expenses of having 1 house. Not every kid needs their own house! It’s one way to free up some time and money, and keep your family close if you can do it too.

There are so many things you can do to change your present situation.

:)

I’ll make this a small series as I have some other areas I want to talk about as far as “How Little do you NEED?”

Best of Life!

Other articles in the “How Little do you NEED?” series…

Your Home >

Your Vehicle >

Your Possessions >

An article I found that also relates to finding happiness with things other than money,

How to live a life of contentment, from Zenhabits.net >

An article from The Simple Dollar about how to save money – 8 Tips from an Ultra Frugal Parent >