to succeed in a venture takes the same thing you need to start a business...a sense of urgency.

no matter how intelligent or able you may be, if you don't have that urgency (or passion) you'd better get it. the world is full of very competent people who honestly intend to do things tomorrow, or as soon as they can get around to it. but they seldom accomplish as much as less talented who are blessed with urgency, that drive to see it through.

when something is urgent you become persistent. ever been in a car trip and have to go to the bathroom? as the urgency increases, your body becomes more persistent in letting you know you'd better take action, and soon.

but how do we get this sense of urgency? sometimes our environment imposes it on us - we'd better find a job soon or we won't be able to pay the rent. sometimes its other people - you have a week to do this or face the consequences. but often as we try to get new, better routines or things in our life there is no one or no thing forcing that urgency upon us. in fact it can be just the opposite, our routines can be so comfortable they hold us in place. a body rest tends to stay at rest.

i wish there was an easy answer. but often it takes some deep contemplation to first figure out what we need to be urgent about and then find the right way to develop it. my friend tim told me that most of the time he feels like he is pushing these giant, heavy projects uphill and then the remainder of the time urgently chasing them down the other side. the chasing downhill part can be pretty exhilarating, but the time spent pushing uphill can be frustrating.

having a worthy, realistic goal and outlining the steps on how to get there helps. then assign dates to those steps...and here is the hard part... figuring out how to make yourself stick to those dates. will you respond better to rewards or punishment for making or not making deadlines? and if there is any way to employ someone else to check in with you to see if you're staying on target, do so, it will help big time.

and why bother at all? because if you don't keep trying to improve yourself, that little voice inside will keep nagging you. or worse, the voice will stop and you life will pass you by.

posted by bluematrix at 10/05/08 21:55 | link | comments (1)

modern physics has shown us that movement and rhythm are essential properties of matter - all matter is in a continual cosmic dance.

eastern mystics have a similarly dynamic view of the universe, and they too use the image of a dance to convey the underlying nature of things.

alexandra neel in 'Tibetan Journey' describes how she met a Lama who referred to himself as a 'master of sound' saying "All things...are aggregations of atoms that dance and by their movements produce sounds. When the rythym of the dance changes, the sound it produces also changes...each atom perpetually sings its song. and the sound, at every moment, creates dense and subtle forms.'

sound is a wave of a certain frequency, which changes as the sound changes. particles are also waves with frequencies that change in proportion to their energies...each particle sings its own song, producing patterns like a rock or person or a star.

the hindu god shiva, one of the oldest and most popular, is usually shown dancing, his/her four arms waving in a timeless rhythm symbolizing the eternal life and death dance of all things.

"nature is inert and cannot dance until shiva wills it; and dancing sends his through inert matter pulsing waves of awakening sound, and lo! matter also dances. This is poetry, but none the less science." - Ananda Coomaraswamy.

dance on.

posted by bluematrix at 09/28/08 22:21 | link | comments (1)

posted by bluematrix at 09/18/08 13:49 | link | comments (2)

whew, what a crazy few days. had my review at work - it went well, but its gonna start getting pretty busy...and my online grad program classes started last week too.

my sister anne came up and we decided to go canoeing anyways friday night - despite the major wetness warnings that were once hurricane ike. we barely got the tent up and the fire started before darkfall - but the weather was grand and almost a full moon to light our site by the river.

got up early sat and decided on the 13 mile river trip - again went against all weather odds and again had perfect weather- low 80's, some clouds, a tailwind half the time, and nobody on the river (the courtois) for the first half. the 2nd half had a fair amount of floaters, mostly families and few party knuckleheads. we got back around dinner time and decided to go against the odds yet again and stay at our camp for a second night. the weather was perfect - until 4 or so. then it was a friggin hurricane. my tent held fine, but we were getting pretty wet and finally decided to tear everything down, yes in the horizontal sheets of rain (we were just off the riverbank). bummin that we took my celica gt rather the beatup pathfinder cause we trashed it inside and out with sand, mud and water. but a good thing we left when we did - my car barely made it out of the nearly impassable camping roads and an hour later there was a flash flood where we had been.

so we got out on the single road towards the small town of steelville which was the highway home - to find a huge tree blocking the entire road. turned around and headed the opposite way further into missouri and 50mph solid sheets of rain. barely made it to the next town 25 miles away where most of the roads were closed due to flooding. finally found one still open and slowly made it back to st louis.

finally got home - where i found my basement had 5 inches of water in it and the main sewer drain not working. it even got to the back wall of my office and soaked a few feet of carpet in here. been fighting that all day after buying yet another portable water pump to get it all out. still have fans going all over trying to dry stuff.

i am tired.

posted by bluematrix at 09/14/08 20:44 | link | comments

well today’s piece is a bit of a departure for this blog. its not a personal development idea. nor is it my creative outpouring or bits of my life. this is more of just noting that i read an article in the latest issue of wired magazine... and that i’m getting this little tingling feeling.

it’s the same little feeling i had when i read an article on cold fusion years ago where free, unlimited power was going to change the entire world in a very short period of time (unfortunately the scientists didn’t quite get it right and it never happened).

it’s the same feeling i had when i was playing around on an early bulletin board with a really slow modem and was thinking this whole online communication thing was going to be huge (the internet exploded onto the world soon after and changed everything).

this time its another energy thing and while not as exciting as cold fusion, looks a lot more likely to make a huge change, fairly quickly. there is this guy that made half a billion dollars doing a dot com start up. and he had a concept that is a feasible way to change the way the world drives and to get us off fossil fuels. there is no new magical technology, just a paradigm shift in thinking. its almost like the emperors news clothes in the ‘why didn’t we think of this before’ kind of way.

Project Better Place CEO Shai Agassi told a U.S. Congressional committee last month that the carmakers, component manufacturers and electrical grid operators who “gain first-mover advantage” in his plan to have the world’s cars run on electricity instead of gasoline may share in “as big a prize as has ever been seen in the history of economic development.”

now electric cars have been around for 100 years. and battery technology hasn’t changed all that much since then (which really sucks). so why is this different? because the time is right. because small island-like countries where electric cars make sense are ready to move forward and are doing so as i write this (like isreal and denmark and even the state of hawaii). because nissan, who’s been getting their ass kicked by toyota and gm in hybrid and hydrogen technologies see this as a chance to leapfrog ahead.

the idea is pretty straightforward. you buy an electric car, but you don’t own the batteries. you pull into a station and in the time it would have taken to fill up with gas, you get fresh batteries. the business model is the cell phone. you can buy a different plans depending on your needs, like monthly, pay-as-you-go, etc. if we finally get batteries that don’t suck, then it even gets cheaper.

there’s a lot more to it, but i’m already long in this post. maybe nothing will come of this thing called Better Place. or maybe in a few years you will say, ‘i remember when i first read about this on tim’s blog’.

wired article

posted by bluematrix at 09/03/08 16:35 | link | comments (1)

posted by bluematrix at 08/22/08 15:01 | link | comments (4)

late again with blog this week...final project due for my class and designed a team building seminar for execs in our IT group that I facilitate tomorrow. anyways. i’ve read lots of time management techniques over the years. some, like getting a time/design daytimer and learning how to use it, made a huge difference in making me more effective at work tasks. others just regurgitated common sense. the tips below fall closer to the latter, but still can be valuable if taken seriously. they come from a interesting blog called the happiness-project.com...


An accumulation of tiny tasks, even if they aren’t particularly irksome in themselves, combine to make me feel overwhelmed and drained. If I can keep little chores from piling up, I feel much more capable of tackling bigger, more difficult tasks.

For that reason, many of my most important daily personal productivity rules are very low-tech and simple – they’re aimed to help me accomplish the most basic tasks of my day.

1. Follow the “one-minute rule.” I don’t postpone any task that can be done in less than one minute. I glance at a letter and toss it; I put the newspapers in the recycling bin; I close the cabinet door. Because the tasks are so quick, it isn’t too hard to make myself follow the rule, but it has big results.

2. Observe the “evening tidy-up.” I take ten minutes before bed to do simple tidying. Tidying up at night made our mornings more serene and pleasant, because I’m not running to and fro like a headless chicken; and it also helps me prepare me for sleep, because putting things in order is calming, and doing something physical makes me aware of being tired.

3. Do a daily errand, or a bi-weekly errand afternoon. I keep a list of things I need to do (get a prescription filled, buy a new toner cartridge, return library books), and each day, I do one of them. Doing one errand is manageable, and although it doesn’t sound like much, it adds up. 



4. Ask yourself, “Why do I need this?” before you keep anything. I have a friend who filed the stubs from her gas bills for years. “Why do you keep those at all?” I asked, when she was complaining about how far behind she was with her personal paperwork. “My father always told me to keep that kind of thing,” she said. That’s not a good enough reason!

5. If there’s something you don’t want to do, prepare all the necessary preliminary steps the night before, and make yourself do it first thing in the morning. For example, I dislike making even the easiest phone calls, so I always steel myself to do those right away.

6. Keep a daily scratch pad. You know those notes you write to yourself—phone numbers, URLs, the “call John Doe” reminders, the quick “don’t forget” notes…all those nagging loose ends that clutter the surface of a desk, and then vanish, get thrown away, or can’t be deciphered when you’re looking for them? Now I keep a scratch pad on my desk, and anytime I have the urge to make a note, I discipline myself to write it there. At the end of the day, I copy anything I need to keep (this is important!), then toss the paper.

7. “Identify the problem.” This sounds so obvious, but it’s astonishingly helpful. For example, I like to work in coffee shops, and for years, and I mean years, I spent a lot of time running out of battery power and chasing around looking for someplace to plug in my laptop. Then I asked myself: “What’s the problem?” Answer: “I need more battery power.” Light dawned. I could buy an extra battery! I did, and it gave me a huge boost in productivity.


ok, so not exactly particle physics or tai chi in a river, but god is in the details, oui?

posted by bluematrix at 08/18/08 22:11 | link | comments (2)

how is your passion level? not just as in passionate love, but passion for life, for feeling things passionately? do you remember when you first realized you had a passion for something? do you remember it fading? and finding a new one? and another? only to have it fade too?

at the end of my emails i tag on a quote that touched me by joseph campbell - ''People say what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. But I think what we're really seeking is an experience of being alive so the life experiences we have will have resonance within our own innermost being, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."

my friend k recently read it and returned with a susan olrean quote - "i suppose i do have one unembarrassed passion. i want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately...there are too many ideas and things and people. too many directions to go. i was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size." - susan orlean

i love the reason she proposes for passion - i had never heard that before. often when i conduct training i mention whittling things down into more manageable chunks so the learner can absorb it better but i never thought to apply it to a subject that i grow more fascinated with as time passes. its always been a relatively easy thing to for me to become passionate about something, yet difficult to sustain - perhaps that is an integral part of its (my?) nature? and on further inspection perhaps my new found interest in the subject is connected to my growing unease as i find my own passion for things waning somewhat as i experience more and more of life. for all my childlike wonder of things, and awe of the myriad of diversity in the world, there is a growing, world weary voice in my head whispering, 'its just a variation of a plot, or a position, or idea, or landscape, that you've seen or experienced already'. for years i've beat the voice down with excitement of travel, the newness of diverse reading materials, the learning of new skills, the sensory rush of adrenline filled pursuits, and in younger days drugs and alcohol than could make even the most mundane fresh again. yet the whispers always return.

k continued "i've heard the whispers, too. and it's true--it gets just a bit harder every day to be surprised, moved, shocked or rendered completely speechless by something. i've found i resort to melancholy the easiest, though."

i like wallowing in melancholy myself. wrapping it around me blanket. feeding it with sad, heartfelt music, that threatens to overwhelm. but it rarely lasts more than evening. with the dawn of each new day, its like my slate is somehow wiped clean, and i am very grateful for this gift. to wake up with a complete negative carryover from the day before would totally suck. sure there are traces of the sadness or joy, but la petite morte each night is a cleansing ritual.

hold on one more day...there is just no way to tell what the universe has in store for you with any certainty.

posted by bluematrix at 08/08/08 06:23 | link | comments (2)

this weekend i finally got out on the water. the cold rainy spring, the massive flooding here in the st louis where the two largest rivers in america converge, the new job - all conspired against me doing one my favorite things all year...getting onto and into a good sized body of water. beautiful day with friend jeffe and his speed boat. there were a hundred boats on the sandbar in the missouri river we ended up at ranging in size from little fishing boats to half million dollar yachts and all kinds of people playing frisbee and volleyball and barbequing.

and i did the coolest thing while we were chillin at the sand bar at the long tree filled island. some of you may remember that i enjoy doing tai chi. i like it much better than yoga in that there is a flow to the movements that really resonates with me, body and mind. there is one move where at the end you bring this little ball of energy you worked on generating between your palms and you push it into your dantien (a chakra or spiritual body point right below your navel) and yea I know its invisible and all, but it always, always, sends out this little wave of warm tingly feelings outward from my stomach area. Weirdest dang thing. not logical at all, but still undeniable from an experiential standpoint too. but i guess if you consider that all matter is energy and we are just batteries made of meat for using and releasing some of that energy, its not so far fetched.

anyways the sandbar from the beach went out a ways into the river which is still pretty high and strong (from the recent floods) with a 7 or 8 mph current. I went out almost chest high and the fast moving water is wanting to push me and it required a fair amount of balance and strength just to stay in one place. and I had the idea to do tai chi. after a few minutes of adapting myself to the new much heavier medium, I totally got into it, and it was not only a good workout but forced my movements to be absolutely aerodynamic. now I so want one of those little forced current lap pools to not only do laps, but also this vigorous new form of tai chi.

yes i live in st. louis, about as far from large bodies of water as you can get, but somehow manage to keep water in my life still. one day i will buy another sailboat and actually take advantage of the charterers license i worked hard to obtain, and sail the caribbean as was my original plan. until then, i play with the cards i've been dealt, and enjoy the game as much as i can. which some days is much easier than others...especially when i'm on a boat on a beautiful day.

posted by bluematrix at 07/30/08 19:54 | link | comments (8)

this might sound strange to you but no one ever ‘fails’ at anything.

everything you do produces a result. if you're learning to playing catch and you drop the ball when its thrown to you, you haven't failed. you simply produced a result. the real question is what you do with that result. you can either say, 'i suck at catching balls' and leave or you can say 'throw it again' and eventually learn to catch. (yes, you can fail to pass a test or a class, but that is simply a label for a measurement and i’m talking a bit broader definition of fail here)

failure is a judgement. it is an opinion. it comes from your fears. the best baseball sluggers in the world ‘fail’ 70% of the time. it’s all perspective. as an individual we are all ultimately failures at life in that we all die eventually... so should we stop trying to live?

we need to learn how to fail. to not let one failure defeat you altogether or keep you from attempting new ventures. how many people can lose a big business deal and say, "that was great. I learned something from it and am better for it." unless you can say it - and really mean it - you probably weren't learning that much from the experience.

it may come as a surprise to hear that truly successful people not only have failed, but also are good at failing. studies have found that we may have been lucky if we were forced to fail. one might even say that a key to success is learning to fail well. i guess i’m lucky then because i sure have been shot down a lot. (and truth be known, i do feel lucky and kind of successful too)

we have to understand that it is the fear of failure that hurts far more than the failure itself. actually, it is the fear of not being sure what will happen. most of us can learn to accept and deal with the worst if we really know what's coming. we may not like it or look forward to it, but we can handle it. not knowing is a different story. it creates anxiety and a very gut level desire to escape the whole problem. each of us is different in the things we fear, and to analyze the reasons we are pressured by the fear of failure we have to find out what kinds of failure bother us..

basically two things happen when we begin to feel pressured. we get anxious or nervous and tighten up, and we begin to rely on our defense and escape mechanisms. some of these mechanisms are: getting a lot of sleep but still feeling tired, coming home at night and getting lost in the TV or newspaper, or a hundred others.

the result of these mechanisms is that we begin to lose sight of the issues or problems by trying to put them out of our minds so they don't worry us so much. As the problems become vague, solutions become more improbable, and, unconsciously, that makes us more anxious.

reducing the pressure requires that we break the mental set that "success is equal to right and therefore equal to good, while failure is equal to wrong and, as such, is bad." We have to learn to accept failure as a normal healthy part of life. We all fail sometimes, and if we can learn to bend rather than break under the pressure of failure, we are much better off.

so go try something new and/or hard and if you fail at it...cool.

posted by bluematrix at 07/24/08 21:03 | link | comments (2)