SimpleologyWithBen

Lesson 19 focuses on one important question.

What if you don’t know how to hit your target?

I’ve got another question though.

What if you can’t hit your target? Or does such a concept not even exist?

Let’s say that I’ve chosen to lose 50 pounds as my target. Now, losing 50 pounds is not an easy goal. 5 or 10 pounds is within normal range to lose, but 50? That takes more than some serious willpower, that takes commitment, a strict diet and exercise regiment and a whole lot of desire. No amount of Simpleology will be able to lose 50 pounds for me.

So what happens, 3 months from now when I suddenly realize that I’m not hitting my goal? Do I give up? Have I failed? Or have I just picked a target that is unattainable?

A co-worker who loves to make up her own expressions told me something this morning, which might shed a little light into our situation. She told me (about something completely different) that “if your holding your breathe, you’ll die.” A bit dire, but she makes an interesting point.

If you stand around and wait for things to happen, they never will. You need to go out and make your own breaks. You need to make the world tilt in your direction. And if you don’t, if you stand around holding your breathe for something to change, you’ll find our fairly soon that you’re the only one lying on the floor with an oxygen mask strapped to your mouth.

The only way you will accomplish anything is by trying. If you don’t try, you definitely won’t fail, but you definitely won’t succeed either.

Wow, can you believe that we’ve made it all the way to Lesson 20. Simpleology 101 is almost over and I don’t know about you, but anytime I see an end in sight I get excited.

I love completing projects more than I love starting them. I get filled with a sense of accomplishment and self-worth. I know it’s silly to feel proud of finishing a 20 day course that takes all of about 5 minutes a day, but nonetheless, I feel like I’ve really made great strides towards improving myself.

I’d love to say that I’m a different person after watching this course, but I’m not. I’d love to say that my wife and co-workers are astounded by my changes, but that’s just wishful thinking.

The truth is, though, the world doesn’t really work that way. People don’t change overnight, no matter how great a course they take. We are creatures of habit and change comes as naturally to us as the ability to grow a third eye. Often we have to be pushed, shoved, kicked, smacked and punched hard in the face before we take the opportunity to change and even then, it’s a slow, gradual process that only starts showing its effects months down the road.

In short, what I’m saying is that there is no quick fix for the bad habits we’ve developed throughout the entirety of our lives.

I started taking the Simpleology because I was sincere about my desire to change my life. I wanted to start taking my life more seriously and to be more productive and accomplished. I was hoping Simpleology would cure me of my laziness and negative attitudes. I was sure that a month and a half later, I’d be a different man.

But we all know that this wasn’t meant to be.

Despite all of this, I still feel like I accomplished a lot. I haven’t changed, but I’m on a path towards change and in the long run, I think that’s a better place to be.

Human beings are creatures of progress. We build each day from the last and the moment we stop progressing is the moment we start regressing.

I’m going to continue to reach for the stars, even though I know they are unreachable. This way, I’ll always be striving for something better.

It’s now time to start utilizing your Daily Target Praxis.

The Daily Target Praxis is Simpleology’s way of making sure you keep up with your desire to stay on target long after the course itself is over.

In Lesson 18, Simpleology talks about leeches and power ups. These are both understandable terms that require little explanation but require tons of practice and examples to implement effectively.

Think of leeches as kryptonite. Superman, the most powerful being on Earth, can do anything he want as long as he doesn’t come in contact with the debilitating mineral known as kryptonite. Kryptonite sucks his power, just like leeches can suck yours.

But leeches might not be as obvious as you might think.

Back a couple of years ago I was working at a different job. It was a very informal working environment that was focused on nothing but the bottom line. My boss didn’t care if I came in at 11am and left at 2pm as long as my work was done and done right.

Try as I could, I couldn’t keep up with my co-workers. Everyday I seemed to be the first person in the office and the last person to leave. I was swamped with work, while everyone else seemed to be handling theirs with ease. I couldn’t figure out where my time was going.

I tried cutting down on my socializing time, but that barely produced any results. My time was still being sucked somewhere and I couldn’t figure out where.

I decided to spend one day and record all the activities I did. I wanted to see how much time I spend on little things like emailing, IM’ing, personal phone calls and making coffee. The results shocked me.

I couldn’t believe how much time I was using doing a million two second unnecessary things. Over the course of a day, I spent close to half an hour making coffee and close to an hour checking my emails.

What was even worse was since I was using my time so haphazardly and I was constantly late I was constantly stressed about time. So even though I was wasting my time, I wasn’t enjoying it. I was having my time and my energy leeched all at the same time.

I devised myself a schedule where instead of chatting online anytime I felt like it, I would only do it during 10 minute intervals. I quickly saw that even though I was spending the same amount of time on these distractions, during the time I was working I was much more efficient. I was surprised to see that my work gone done in a more timely manner and it was of higher quality.

Take some time and think about what your leeches are. Simpleology will touch upon this as well, but it can’t ever hurt to be prepared and ahead of the game.

Welcome to Lesson 17, what seems to be the quintessential Lesson towards applying Simpleology to your everyday life. Here, Simpleology walks you through the various Simpleology utilities that will help you implement Simpleology into your day.

I’m not going to go through the utilities again, Simpleology already explained them much better than I could. I just wanted to touch on something that I found really interesting.

Up until now, Simpleology has talked about finding goals, aiming for targets and getting past obstacles. Simpleology has defined obstacles as anything that gets in the way of your goals, something physical, something distracting.

One of the utilities that Simpleology tells us to use in our Daily Praxis is the Dream Catcher.

The Dream Catcher is an interesting utility. It asks us to write our dreams down so they don’t become distractions.

What’s noticeable here is that very subtly, Simpleology is asking us for differentiate between goals and dreams. Goals are to be strived for. They should be fought for and sweated out. They are the focus of our lives and should be in our line of vision throughout all parts of our day.

Dreams on the other hand are wasteful and nothing more than distractions. They are unachievable and need to be placed in a separate container left under your bed until they can be dusted off, flushed out and turned into goals.

Dreams are powerful psychological triggers. They can drive us and push us uphill. Dreams can motivate us in ways that fear just can’t.

Dreams have a very powerful upside to them, but the downside can be just as bad as the upside is good. Dreams can also make us lazy and compliant. They can make us inactive and the very nature of dreams is that they make sit around with our heads in the clouds instead of working towards our goals.

This is why Simpleology created the Dream Catcher utility. With this tool, we can decide what is a goal and what is nothing more than dream.

Sometimes life is nice and fair and pleasant.

Sometimes it’s not though.

More often than not it’s a struggle and a huge pain. We are too often fighting and clawing our way to middle ground, instead of lunging for the top. Have you ever felt like your goals were too far away and your targets to small to really hit?

Simpleology has a built in cure for this ailment.

Along with the My Ultimate Life goal, Simplelology has asked us to identify what our Short, Medium and Long term goals as well.

The reason for this is very simple. When we look at our goals and targets as a solid chunk to strive for, they can often seem too great to even attempt, let alone achieve. But if we can break them down into edible bites, they suddenly see easier to accomplish.

This is why it’s vitally important to plan your Short, Medium and Long Term goals as well as your My Ultimate Life goal. These help you understand what you are shooting for and how to more directly hit them.

Sounds strange, doesn’t it?

Hearing that the best way to move forward is to think backwards? Seems convoluted and ridiculous, right?

I know that if I want to walk down the hall and grab a candy bar, the way I would plan to do it is I would a) get up from my chair b) walk out of my office c) avoid flirting with my secretary (I always need to avoid the obstacles) d) take 50 cents out of my pocket and finally e) place the money into the machine and then press the correct button.

Simple, right? That’s ‘normal’.

But where is the part of this plan that has the highest potential to break down? It could be that I don’t have enough money in my pocket or the correct amount of change (the machine doesn’t take dollar bills. So, if I plan my outing in the forward thinking mode, it would be fairly common that I’d get to the machine and only then realize that I can’t get a candy bar. If I thought backwards, the first thing I would plan for is if I the money to buy the candy bar. Thinking backwards just saved me time and effort, which could both be better spent flirting with the secretary to give me the necessary 50 cents.

See how simple Simpleology makes life?

If you’ve done Lesson 14 then you’ve already written down your My Ultimate Life goals.

Does writing down your goals seem stupid and too much like busy work? If it does, then you’re not alone. I thought the same thing when I watched the lesson. In fact, the first time I watched the lesson I fast forwarded through the 2 minutes of quiet. I thought that the lesson was too childish for me to take seriously.

But then I thought about it for a bit.

I remembered this girl Danna from college. Danna never participated in the study groups we organized. She never partnered up with a classmate or had a study date. Instead, she studied by writing the material over dozens and dozens of time by hand. She insisted that the only way her brain would remember the information for the tests was by writing the information out longhand.

The whole class mocked her for it and told her that her brain functions like the rest of ours and that study groups were proven effective. Time and time again though, Danna got higher marks than the rest of the class.

It turns out that Danna’s brain does function like the rest of ours, only Danna knew something that we didn’t. When the human brain needs to deconceptualize information (turn information from a concept into something tangible) there are two ways that our brains accomplish this. Either our brains’ create a visual picture and tries to remember the visual picture or our brains require a physical action to help it remember.

To give you an example, do you remember where you were when you had an important conversation? That’s your brain using a physical action (where you were standing) to remember.

Danna figured this out without the help of her Psych 101 class. She knew her brain would not only remember information better if she physically wrote it down, but that it would help her deconceptualize it as well. She was able to take complicated math theorems and philosophy concepts and understand them simply by writing them out.

Lesson 13 underscores this same concept. It’s one thing for me to think in my head that I want to be successful though my love of art, but by forcing me to write that down, I see how ludicrous it is. Or how brilliant.

When I was a child I loved playing the piano. I played for years, up until I was 14. When I turned 14 I realized that to be cool, I needed to play the guitar.

My choice was simple, I could either continue playing the piano, which I loved, or I could learn a new instrument with the added goal of being cool. For the 14 year old me, it was a simple decision. Thus began my love of not just playing music, but of learning new instruments. Over the years I’ve switched from piano to guitar to violin to electric bass to upright bass to trumpet to saxophone and I am now learning how to be a scratch DJ. Other than with the piano, I’m completely self taught.

What I do is buy a cheap or used instrument and a book on how to play. I play until the novelty wears off and I move on.

A week ago a new neighbor moved into my apartment building. He is a drummer. We started talking and when I said I could play half a dozen instruments he got excited. He told me to come over with the trumpet and jam with him. I grabbed my keyboard (that was prominently displayed in my living room) and went to his apartment.

He started drumming away and I sat down in front of the keyboard. I played a couple of notes, ran through a couple scales, but within a couple of minutes it was clear that I couldn’t remember how to play anymore.

I was shocked. I knew that I hadn’t played the keyboard in a while, but I was playing complicated classical pieces when I was 12. I assumed that skill would stay with me forever. I was amazed to learn that I had forgotten what used to come so naturally to me.

Practice makes perfect is all well and good, but without constant practice and use, you’ll peak and then decline.

This is the point that Simpleology Lesson 13 is here to teach us. All these valuable and useful pieces of information that we are learning through Simpleology can’t just be read and ignored. They need to be practiced and used. The Simpleology Praxes are setup to keep your skills sharp and your efficiency high. Be sure to set 15 minutes aside every day to do the Praxes.

Fear is a powerful motivator. It gives us the strength to accomplish activities that we normally wouldn’t be able to. The fear of being fired pushes us to work harder just as the fear of being divorced might push us to be a better husband or wife. Complacency, the opposite of fear, allows us the opportunity to be lazy and unmotivated and ultimately, unproductive.

These two polar opposite spectrum ends tell us the range of motivation. When we are properly motivated we are more successful.

Let me say this again, because I feel like that is the basis of the entire Simpleology course. Proper motivation leads to a more dedicated attention to your work.

In Lesson 12, Simpleology explains that motivation, especially the motivation of fear, should be the driving force behind the choices you make. Simpleology simplifies it down to two key choices.

1. Will your decision lead you towards your goal or away from it?
2. Will the choices you make empower you or weaken you?

Think about your own motivation. Think about the fear that regularly drives you to wake up, go to work, accomplish what you need to and live a more or less productive, moral and successful lifestyle. Is that fear a good motivator? Does it drive you to make proper decisions? Does it force you to answer ‘yes’ to both of these questions?

If not, you should reevaluate your motivation.

Power is a funny thing. In Lesson 11, Simpleology talks about the Pathway to Power and how to find the most direct and consistent route towards finding your power. But power isn’t a substantial goal, it isn’t something that can be quantified and stored. Power is an entity that comes through hard work, respect and dedication. Most of the time, people with power don’t even realize they have it.

When I was in junior high my cousin enlisted to join the army. Three months after he joined, my aunt packed us all in the car and we took a drive to visit him on his base. His base was having a visiting day to show us how much the soldiers had progressed in just three months. They put on a little show for us, they ran drills with flags and guns and it was all really quite impressive.

The soldiers all moved together. They marched and saluted as if they were one entity. I remember being astounded by the absolute precise actions that these dozens of people performed simultaneously. Each gun was twirled at the same speed and each rifle cocked at exactly the same moment producing one united sound instead of dozens of individual sounds.

Afterwards I was talking to Jimmy, that’s my cousin, and he sounded less like the kid I knew and more like a man. He sounded more serious and more determined than I’ve ever heard him sound before. I asked him what had happened to him and what was it about him that changed?

He stared at me like I had an arrow through my head. He told me I was crazy and he was the same person he’s always been. He told me that the army hadn’t changed him a bit and that he was still the goofy kid I’ve known for years, but watching him during the drills, I knew he clearly wasn’t the same person who only a year earlier taught me how to throw rocks at cars from behind shrubbery so I wouldn’t get caught. He seemed to be infused with an aura of respect that I never saw in him before.

Years later, I realized that the aura of respect that I saw surrounding Jimmy was power. He had transformed from a neighborhood hoodlum into a soldier demanding respect and he didn’t even know that he was any different. Years later Jimmy and I sat down and talked about that day, we both remembered it well. I remembered it as the first time in my life that I witnessed pure power and he remembered it as the first time he felt respected.

We both used that moment in our lives to understand the power that true, unbridled power possesses and how it can come so quietly. Simpleology teaches us this very same lesson , how power needs to be stroked and maintained and only then will it consistently be there when we need it.