Life’s Passions and Monkey Business

May 6th, 2010

Intro
I’d like to tell a story that I think I first read in one of John C. Maxwell leadership books. It’s about 5 different monkeys, their names have been changed to protect the innocent. You will know who you are after your done reading this post.

Story
There was a large cage that had five monkeys in it. Well you know how much monkeys like bananas right? Someone tied a banana onto a piece of twine and hung it high in the center of the ceiling. It was hung so high that none of the monkeys could jump up and get it. The monkeys stood staring up at the bananas. The door to the cage was opened and a set of stairs were placed underneath the bananas so that it would allow a monkey to walk up and jump and get a banana.

After a while a monkey goes and starts climbing the stairs. When he reaches the second stair, all of the monkeys are sprayed with cold water. The monkeys retreat and stare once again. Another monkey decides he will try which resulted in all the monkeys getting sprayed. A strange thing occurs. When the next monkey tries to get a banana, the other four monkeys prevent him from trying by attacking him.

New Consequential Strangers

September 7th, 2009

A Few Years Ago
Many years ago, maybe more, a few years after I was in college anyways, I ran into an old friend I hadn’t seen in about 5 years. I had met him when I was in high school, knew who he was but never got to know personally till my summer before college started. I remember that it was right around the time I had read the book called Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz.

Cybernetics
This 1960’s classic had at the time, a large impact on my life and even before college started I was earning some pretty good money, well more than I’ve ever had up to that time. It gave me perspective and at the time I was able to easily convey and teach some of the principals in the book. This individual didn’t know I had learned most of this from a book but I did talk about the concepts in it and after five years after I spent time with him, he told me how what I talked about had changed his life. He said he changed his life around, got focused, got rid of some of the demons that held him back, things were going good, and now had a chance to thank me. There was one problem…. Ah… what did I tell him five years ago? Even as I write I’m not sure. But I’m sure it was along the lines of that there are always going to be things that no matter how much influence you might have you have, you really have no control over.

Letting Go
Now this certainly sounds defeating, but what he then told me is that once he knew he had no control he learned to let it go. He learned to control his stress. He didn’t get mad at things. He made a conscience decision to ENJOY life, and at the time he was happy, optimistic about his future, and looked forward to tackling anything that got in his way. I eventually fell into back into the trap of the 40-40 plan (40 hours a week for 40 years), and commenced to go to college. I was re-conditioned to what we are taught where getting a good education, then job, would make us happy. I later found I would like to learn the lesson back from him but I haven’t seen him in 30 years. I suspect he took what he had learned from me and took action. If I only would have…

Today
Fast forward to today, now even though he was just one person I knew those many years ago, we had made differences in each others lives. His experience with me at the time, to me, was inconsequential. He was just another person I met, spent a little time with, and we then went our own ways. I really have no idea whatever became of him, nor me to him. Back in those days we where limited by the number of people we could meet. Of course this is much more in a larger city than a rural city but you were limited by the physical ability to personally meet. Enter the age of the internet. We are going to have the possibility of not only meeting people from our own local locations but globally as well. You have the ability to meet new people who you can influence with your knowledge and experience and likewise with theirs.

Questions
So the only questions are how many new people are you going to meet online? How many are you going to influence? How many are going to influence you? Are you going to share something life changing with them? Who’s the next consequential meeting going to be with? What is the message you want to share?

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About Chris

July 22nd, 2009

Thank you for taking the time to read about me. For that I am grateful. For those that already know me and those that don’t, I have had several ventures into the online world. I was first online 8 years ago with a political blog and about 2 years ago with a traffic and internet marketing blog. The political blog was a huge success and was really fun; for a while. It actually evolved my political views and now I feel there is no politician that can save us, nor should it be their role. The traffic and marketing blog started becoming to much like a job. I am a 25 year IT professional and a lot of what I was writing about was that. There are rewarding moments but I’ve decided to change where I spend my passion. I didn’t want to write about the profession.

While I’ve always been an advocate of personal development, over the last 3-4 months I’ve immersed myself with personal development, psychology, networking, and success. This has given me introspection into what makes me tick and I realized what I really enjoy when all is said, is people. It was people who I met and interacted with while writing on the other blogs that interested me. I am interested in what they do, what they like, what their challenges are, what drives them, and what their dreams and aspirations are.

I’ve also fairly recently become a 50 year old and have become more health conscious. I’ve always liked to participate in sports and exercise. At age of 40 I became a black-belt in Tae-Kwon-Do. But over the years due to life’s circumstances and health, have not trained in over 8 years. My weight steadily stole 4-5 pounds each year. I found it hard to control my weight. At the end of last spring I had enough. Now I’ve never been able to lose weight strictly because of diet. It also had to involve exercise. But I have health challenges with creaky knees and joints. Pain is the operative word here. So how was I going to exercise. This led me to studying about nutrition and the health-care industry in general. What I found is that in most cases the industry really is only a band-aid to cover symptoms. This eventually led me to the Health and Wellness company I currently spend my efforts and time with. I learned the science behind nutrition and started taking supplements. I now have lots of energy, no longer suffer with joint problems, have lost close to 60 pounds, and most importantly, get to spend time with and learn about people. People just like you and me.

While I still have an interest in traffic generation and the technical things dealing with software and the internet, I am no longer going to focus on it. I am now going to write about things I think that people will relate to. I’m going to write about personal and business development, life, work, living, diet and exercise, a myriad of how-tos, speckled with humor. It is my hope that I will be able to entertain and educate and pass on what I’ve learned over the last few years and through my experiences. I ask that if you enjoy what you read here to share it with others. Follow me while I transition from my left brain thinking to the right.