I.C. Robledo's Blog, page 5

5 Lessons I Learned or Re-Learned this Year

Introduction

As we near the end of the year, sometimes I become more reflective, asking myself if the year went well. Did things go as well as I had hoped? Could I have done something more? Could I have worked smarter or more effectively?

This year, I think we all have been forced to think about what it is that we truly value in this life. For most of us, we have felt some form of hardship. There have been lost lives of loved ones, economic struggles, loneliness, and added stress for many. The troubles are many, but what can we learn from them? That is what matters.

Here is what I learned (or re-learned) this year:

1.     Truly Value Every Day

I am not immune from everyday problems. I can also find myself in arguments over trivial matters, or losing touch with the present moment, or forgetting what is truly important sometimes. The journey is always unfolding, and not a direct path to anywhere. There are bumps along the way, and we need to keep going, keep moving toward improving and becoming something better.

 

Whatever this experience is that we are having, that is the same for all, yet different for all, is worth it. We need to live every day with consciousness, with a will to do something for ourselves and others. Our everyday decisions seem so minor and inconsequential at times, but the impact can be major. Collect all those minor, seemingly inconsequential moments of humanity, and they mean something when they are all put together.

For example, one person’s loneliness makes you feel like you don’t matter. But imagine the collective loneliness of humanity, and you see that we are together in this. The loneliest person in the world, upon realizing that he is part of a larger collective loneliness, may be motivated to help alleviate this suffering in his fellow humans.

 

There is tremendous value in every single day. Every day is a gift, and I aim to see it for what it is. Suffering can seem like a big burden, a curse, but even this is a gift. Suffering is what connects all of humanity. We have all suffered in some way, and so we should all aim to help each other when we can. Rather than running from the suffering, it can be worthwhile to connect with it and reflect on it, and see that it can help us to build some bridges with one another in this life.

 

When I was younger, at times I felt that I was suffering tremendously (e.g., mental, not physical pain), and that I was alone. I wish I would have spoken to someone about this back then. There were many people in my life who would have listened, but I kept it as my own burden. But that suffering has helped me to connect with, and to help people, and so in that sense it has been a blessing.

 

When I help others, I can see clearly that whatever I have suffered was nothing in the grand scheme.

 

Sometimes I think to my youth, or about the young people I have known, and it is so obvious to me that during that time in our life, we do not truly understand all that we have. In your youth, you have all your energy, all the time, all the love, and no true responsibility of your own. Yet, our young people often have no true understanding of all they have been given, of the work and trouble it takes just to support them. They have no idea of what they have, and will not understand until they double in age. Even at my age (35) sometimes I wonder if I will not truly have the perspective to know what I have in this very moment, until I am much older. How will I truly comprehend what I have, until I am on the verge of losing it?

 

But rather than focus too much on that, I just return to the concept that we must value the day, the now, what we have, right now. Aim to see it for what it is, the greatest glory that we could be bestowed with. Even if all seems wrong, you are here. That means something. You have the chance to do something, to turn it all around, to experience one more moment, and the next, and the next.

 

2.     The Right Moment is Now (Usually)

 

Often, I will find myself planning things out for the future. I may think: One day, I want to travel, to read all the books I would like, to tell people what I truly wanted to tell them, to write that novel, and so on. I have had all these thoughts, yet instead of waiting too long, or daydreaming about it too much, I ended up jumping in and doing these things.

 

Through my college years and in graduate school, I always wanted to read books for fun, but I felt that I never had the time. This was a lie – I could have read more. When I finished graduate school, I decided that I finally had the time, and since then I have read about 40-50 books per year. I’m sure I could find the time to read even more, but I have been happy with this. Now, I make an effort to read the right books, rather than focusing too much on the number. I realized at some point that I could always make the excuse that I didn’t have the time to read the books I wanted, but if this was what I truly wanted to do, then I must make time for it now.

 

As another example, my wife always wanted to live in Europe, so rather than wait for the right time, in 2018-2019, she accepted a position working in France. I didn’t know French at all, and my wife had an intermediate level in the language, but had not studied it for many many years. We could have tried waiting for the right time, and it may have never come. Instead, she applied for jobs, she was accepted, and we went. We had fantastic experiences there, and bad ones too, just like with anything else in life. But at least we went. We went even though we could have waited for a better time. But if we did, we may have never gone.

 

I have countless stories like this – where I considered waiting to do something, but instead I decided the time was Now, and I just did it. Often, my future plans were just stories I made up in my mind to feel better about something. Think of any plans you’ve ever made that involved years into the future. Did those usually go the way you expected? Or did new things come up that interfered with those plans, time and again?

 

In my life, I have learned over and over, that often we are just making excuses, and waiting for a later and later time. Of course, we should probably engage in some form of planning and thinking about our life’s decisions. But often, we may just be scared to make a leap. The truth is if we keep waiting for that right time, it may never come.

 

If you can do it Now, do it Now. Whatever it may be that your heart is set on doing.

 

Of course, the world as it is now, for many of us, the time is NOT now. We all have to make our own choices in the end. For some, now is the time to take risks and do everything you ever wanted to do. For others, this is the time to be careful, and stay safe. Perhaps there is a way to stay safe, and still make progress on your dreams.

In essence, what I want to say is that you should not wait until tomorrow to enjoy the day. Find a way to make the best of today, for it may be all we have.

 

(If you do decide to take some risks, please be mindful of the point below.)

 

3.     What if Everyone Did What I was About to Do? What Would Happen?

 

This is a Thought that has run through my head more than ever this year. Often, I see people take actions, and I wonder if they would have done this if they had just taken a moment to consider what the world would be like if everyone behaved that way.

This is a Thought that can be used to help you take better actions that help more people. And also, to help avoid taking hurtful or negative actions that could hurt more people.

 

If you watch or read the news, you will often hear about people in the world who are hurting others. And some of this is malicious, but some of this may happen just because people do not stop and consider: What if everyone did this? An example is littering. When someone on the streets tosses a cigarette butt, or a soda can, or anything else, many of us may fail to see how this matters in the grand scheme. But humans follow the behavior of others quite closely. If a parent does this, then his kids probably will too, perhaps even his neighbors. If everyone did this, the streets would be filled with so much trash as to make our cities look like public waste bins.

 

This thought (What if everyone did what I was about to do?) has helped me to become a more sociable person. Being sociable is not so difficult. If you keep other people in mind, then you will quickly improve in your social skills. Perhaps when you are in a group, you like to take charge and lead the way. That is fine, but what if everyone behaved this way? It would be difficult to have fun, if everyone wanted to lead the way, right? So perhaps, instead of assuming you are the leader and making decisions, you could propose something and see if people agree. You could still lead, just not in a forceful or intimidating way.

 

Some basic questions you can ask in different situations are:

If everyone did this, how happy would we be?

If everyone did this, how much suffering would this cause?

If everyone did this, how much would we accomplish?

If everyone did this, how many lives would be lost?

If everyone did this, would it be helpful, or hurtful?

 

4.     Love is What Matters

The bonds we have are not to be taken for granted. We need to remember to connect with the most important people of our lives. Day by day, these bonds can grow or recede, but they rarely stay static.

When we have love, we are alive, but we aren’t just meant to have it, but also to give it, and spread it, and nurture it.

The greatest pain of our lives is when our love is lost. Either a relationship ending, or of course, a death. This is sending us a clear signal that out of all the things we worked on and strived for in our lives, if we didn’t have love, then we didn’t have much.

That pain is only there to remind us of how much that love truly mattered.

One of the best feelings to have, that can transcend any tactile sensation, is to have love. Love is not just the joy of being cared for, but also the joy of caring about someone . When you are cared for and loved, you naturally have more time and attention to love others.

When you can connect to the common experience of joy, pain, laughter, loss, sorrow, desire, and apprehension, you then can love. So if you are human, even if you have never known love, you already have it in you, as this is something that can never be taken away, the will, need, desire for, and power to love.

Pay attention to the ones you love, and further, pay attention to that feeling of love. When we do this, we see that we could do more. Make the time for that person asking of your love. It could be anyone that shows up in your life today. It may even be everyone.

Perhaps everyone who crosses paths with you today, intentional or not, was just there to ask for your love.

They may all cloak themselves, hiding their true intention, to get your love, making up other reasons that they need to see you, but perhaps, that was the one true reason. How will you respond to them?

I have been making efforts to stop the bounds and limits to my love. When I see someone that needs it, I hope I am there. I hope you see this too, and can expand in your love.

In another post titled The Path to a True and Fruitful Life, I also discuss the importance of love.

5.     Make Your Own Path

In my business, I often think that I should do something, because it is what most other writers or businesspeople are doing. Yet time and again, I find that I am pleased to create my own path. This way, if I make mistakes, they are my own, and I learn from them. Nothing truly bad has ever happened to me. I just write, publish, promote, learn, and grow, and that is all. The rest are the details.

Something I have come to understand through the years is that I don’t like to promote. This often happens for writers, as they usually prefer to write. I am the same. I recognize the need for promotion – I do it, but I aim to spend the least amount of time that I can on this. I wish to do it effectively and quickly, and that is all. I have developed systems over the years to help accomplish this.

I prefer to spend my time on writing, learning, growing, loving, and spreading my messages into multiple languages, so that more people can benefit from what I have to say. There is only so much time and energy to put into a day. Ask yourself if you truly believe in what you are doing. When I promote too much and invest too much time in that, I feel like I have wasted my time because I have not contributed something new and useful to the world.

Are there activities like that in your life? Can you do them less, and still get the positive results you need, while minimizing the time you spend on them?

The point here is this:

Don’t feel that you must follow a certain path. Define yourself as you would like to be. Create your own route that only you will go on, that no one else could imitate.

When I was a young child, people always told me that I looked like my father, and perhaps at that time I thought I was him, or destined to be like him. Other times, people confused my brother and me as twins (we were close in age, and similar in size, but we looked different, actually). So I was often compared to someone else. Then in time I realized that I was my own person, and that I needed to pave my own path.

Life isn’t as fun or meaningful living in another’s shadow – you have to find your own way. Be willing to accept help or guidance, but in the end, the choices you make are your own.

If you would like to learn a bit more about my path, or My Purpose Journey, read here.

Concluding Thoughts

This year, I learned or re-learned the following:

Truly value every day

The right moment is now (usually)

The value of thinking: What if everyone did what I was about to do? What would happen?

Love is what matters

Make your own path

These are some of the most important lessons that have come to me this year. I hope you take the time to reflect on what you learned this year, and what you can improve next year.

How to Stay Positive (10 Tips)

Introduction

A reader wrote me this week to ask me for some advice on staying positive. I used to struggle tremendously with staying positive, but through the years I have developed my own systems that work for me. I would encourage you to try out some of my tips below, but also be willing to experiment to see what works for you.

As a quick note before beginning, we should be aware that negativity does serve a purpose. It allows us to understand when there is a problem, or something that is not working properly. If nothing else, it allows us to see that we should consider making a change in our lives.

Even from negative circumstances, there is something positive for us to take from it.

A conclusion I have come to is that everything is a form of practice. These days, I am actually grateful for much of the negativity that happens around me. I see it as something that allows me to practice a positive mindset.

Ready to begin? Here are 10 Tips on how to stay positive:

1.     Read Books on Positivity and Mindfulness

I especially recommend 7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By, and you can also pick up 365 Quotes to Live Your Life By (free eBook). They can make the biggest impact when read together, or one after the next.

These books include some of the best advice I could give to live your life in a positive way. While some of the advice in these books comes from personal experience, much of it comes from timeless wisdom from around the world. To see further book recommendations, scroll to the bottom of this post.

2.     Surround Yourself with Positive People

Focus on those who have a positive outlook and who are working to improve themselves and their communities. In these times as you may be isolating due to Covid, be sure to call or have a video chat with loved ones who tend to have a positive spirit. Of course, being around people who care about you and support you always makes you feel more positive.

3.     Share Your Concerns

When we are going through a difficult time, some people tend to withdraw, or want to keep their thoughts and worries to themselves. Rather, it is important that we have family or someone close to us that we can confide in and share our troubles with. We should avoid dwelling too much on the negativity, but at the same time it is important to acknowledge when something is troubling us, as this can help us to find a path forward through it. Even if you are sure that there is no solution or constructive way forward through your problems, it can still help to share them with people who you know will support you no matter what.

Personally, I find that when I speak about my troubles out loud, that I tend to realize that there is something I can do to make it better. Then, this makes me feel more positive about the situation.

4.     Snap Out of It

If you get caught in negative thinking loops, don’t try to think your way out of the loop. Thinking sometimes leads us into further negativity, and instead it is better to find something that can snap you out of it. I may do this by watching a standup comedian, playing a video game, going for a walk, being with nature, meditating, or even whistling along to music (you may prefer to sing or dance).

5.     Find Your Purpose

In my life, finding my purpose and meaning have been tremendously important. Without these, I tend to feel directionless and lost, and I would not be a very positive person. An overarching message I’ve seen in many books and places is that when you have purpose, you develop the strong mindset needed to overcome anything. If something matters that much to you, then you will find a way to keep making progress. Essentially, the positive feeling you have toward what you truly care about will always outweigh the negativity or obstacles on your path, when you have meaning and purpose.

6.     The Power of Now

There is great power in knowing how to be truly, truly present. When you are fully absorbed in what is happening Now, there is no room left in your mind for negativity. Negativity involves abstract ideas often times, perhaps worrying about the future or dwelling on the past, but the Now is the concrete reality that you are faced with every moment of your life. You can practice getting into the present by avoiding distractions, practicing meditation and mindfulness, and getting in the flow (see next point). To delve deeper into this topic, I recommend reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.

7.     Get in the Flow

When you are in Flow, you challenge yourself and focus completely on one thing, making your mind operate at its highest possible level. When you do this, there is no room for any negativity in your life. Working on your goal is all you have the time and energy for. To get into this state, I may play a challenging video game that requires all my focus, or I may play a chess game. Otherwise of course, I can work on writing a book or blog post.

To understand how to practice Flow in your life, read Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

8.     Let the Negativity Pass Through You

I don’t recall with certainty where I heard this advice, but I believe it was from one of the Dalai Lama’s books. The advice was that we should not hold onto negativity that others pass to us. Whenever someone directs negative energy toward me, I will visualize it as passing through me. When this happens to most people, they will acknowledge and hold onto it – becoming filled with hate and anger. If we do this, then we take this negative poison and it can ruin our day. Instead, it is better to allow that negative energy to pass through you. You can choose to not allow it to make any impact on your life, if you wish.

Do not hang onto the negativity that others toss your way. Release your grasp on it. Let it go.

I’m sure this can sound impractical and like wishful thinking. But I have practiced this for years, and it works for me. I was given an excellent opportunity to practice this today, as I just read the most scathing review of one of my books ever (0 out of 5 stars!). This reviewer found no value or use from one of my best books. I just let the negativity pass through me, and spent no more time or energy on this after I read it.

9.     Take Meaningful Action

As mentioned before, you should work on snapping out of your negative thinking by getting away from your thoughts. One way to do this is to take meaningful action. A problem I often seen, and that I’ve had myself is that we get overwhelmed with a task and then we get stuck thinking negatively about it. This becomes a vicious cycle, as then we don’t take action and we don’t make progress. Then we may fall further and further behind, getting stuck in a negative thought loop.

Instead, I try to get in the zone of taking meaningful actions. As an example, I don’t like to do the dishes, or laundry, or other household chores, but I’ve learned to appreciate them, because I see them as meaningful actions. Stop seeing your actions as worthless and inconsequential, and perceive the meaning in them. I do the dishes and the laundry to keep my living space clean and orderly, because this makes me feel good. The messier my personal space becomes, the more chaotic my mind tends to become as well.

Even if you have a task that you truly cannot stand, but you have to do it, then the meaning should be to get it out of the way so that you can get to other activities you actually care about. I find that the more active I get, the less negative I tend to be. Of course, one way many people stay active and that helps them to combat negativity is to engage in physical exercise regularly.

10.  If Needed, Seek Professional Help

I am not a clinical psychologist, so my advice can be of limited value for someone who is struggling tremendously. After a certain point where your thoughts or behaviors are preventing you from living your normal life, or from making progress on your goals, you should consult a doctor, psychologist, or therapist. If you would like some professional help in book form, an excellent guide is From Depression to Contentment by Bob Rich, a retired psychotherapist with a lifetime of dealing with his own depression and helping clients work through it as well.

Final Thoughts

I have made great efforts to maintain a positive mindset, and to expect positive things to happen in my life, while of course putting in the work to get there. All I can tell you is that these tips have worked very well for me. Of course, I understand that sometimes things happen outside of our control that can guide us into negativity. For that reason, we must Practice our Positivity regularly. This way when we need it the most, we will know how to use it effectively to overcome the obstacles of our lives.

Recommended Reading

       7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By by I. C. Robledo

       365 Quotes to Live Your Life By by I. C. Robledo

       The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

       Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

       From Depression to Contentment by Bob Rich

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

       How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie

       The Book of Joy by Dalai Lama XIV

       An Open Heart by Dalai Lama XIV

       Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

       The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware

       Tuesday’s with Morrie by Mitch Albom

       Tools of Titans by Timothy Ferriss

Celebrate the Milestones & Little Achievements

Introduction

For the ambitious and hardworking, sometimes we can meet a personal milestone and forget to celebrate it. Perhaps a party is not necessary, but it can be worthwhile to at least acknowledge a significant moment. I am fairly diligent, so my celebrations are usually minor – simply acknowledging the accomplishment to a few close family members and friends is enough for me. Then I get back to work. Well, sometimes I may enjoy sharing a bottle of Champagne.

Moving along, to me, a milestone is simply meeting many little goals that have culminated into something bigger. Or if you prefer, it means accomplishing a grand goal.

My Milestone: 100,000 Words

Today I have met a milestone of my own.

I have written 100,000 words for this blog. The longest book I ever published was about 70,000 words – 7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By, so 100,000 is certainly a milestone. And I only started this site just 3 months ago (on September 9th). In reality, I had written some of these words before beginning the site, but this is still a major accomplishment for me.

Little Achievements

In light of this accomplishment, I would like to point out some other little achievements that came along with this:

My friend Arthur has commented on most of my posts, which I think adds great value – heed his comments carefully, as there is great depth in his soul

I have received several messages through my Contact page – usually they were for opportunities to collaborate

I have received numerous comments from friends and readers telling me that they found the blog helpful. Some of the comments have used these words: deep, philosophical, practical, interesting, wise, inspiring, motivating. One reader mentioned “Kafka flavor” – in regards to my post on The Paradox of the Model Citizen, and another reader said it was “a blessing,” in regards to How to Make a Decision, which I wrote as a response to her question.

My writing and thinking is improving – After writing 100,000 words, and reflecting on thinking, and thinking about thinking, I sense more clarity in my Thoughts. I am able to more efficiently know what I think, why I think it, and provide supporting points for this.

The blog readership has been growing slowly, but steadily. Some readers are beginning to find the site through search engines, so this helps. The more, the merrier!

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who has contributed, shared this site with friends, supported me, or given me some kind words about the site. Also, this site is still fairly new and small, so every reader matters to me.

Thank you for reading - It makes me very happy just to be able to help

Don’t worry, the journey is just beginning.

Future Plans

I am glad for the progress I have made on I. C. Robledo’s Thoughts, but I sense that it is time to change gears. From here on, I plan to post weekly instead of daily. This will continue into 2021.

The reason for this is that I need to open up time in my schedule to:

Wrap up many projects before the end of the year - publishing some book translations, reviewing audiobooks that I am having narrated, setting up some book promotions, fine tuning business plans, and so on

Continue to post high quality content – at this stage, I need to take more time to properly develop my Thoughts, since I hope to explore something new with each post

Pursue new experiences, perform my own life experiments, and learn new information - which will help me to produce more insightful Thoughts

Focus on writing books – I would like to write two new books per year, and at the highest level of quality that I can

Promote I. C. Robledo’s Thoughts – at this point, I would like to expand my readership. I am working hard to explore valuable Thoughts, so it would be nice to get more people tuning in

The bottom line is I plan to post less often, but I believe doing this will actually help me to improve the site, and also help me stay on schedule with writing new books and tackling multiple projects.

Acknowledge and Celebrate Your Milestones

Enough about me. Let’s go back to you.

I would like to encourage you to acknowledge and celebrate your milestones. Don’t allow them to slip by unnoticed. There is no need to brag obnoxiously, of course. But if you accomplish something big in your life, you deserve to be able to stop for a moment, take a breath, and appreciate what you have been able to do.

When we neglect our milestones, we can easily get lost in just doing, and doing, with little reflection as to why this even matters. When you celebrate a milestone, you give yourself a moment to reflect on what this truly means to you.

If you find that your milestone was meaningless – that you only did it for the praise, or it turned out that someone else stole the glory for your hard work, then you can learn that perhaps you need to change something in your life. In such cases, perhaps you need to reconsider your purpose and your life goals.

 

Questions to Explore

What is the most recent milestone you achieved?

Or what milestone are you close to achieving?

Are there some little achievements worth noting?

What does this mean to you?

What Do You Think?

Do you have any thoughts about my new planned change to start posting once per week, instead of five times per week? Please feel free to let me know. As always, you can comment below, or you can use my Contact page.

Also, if you have any general thoughts about the site, this would be a good time to let me know. I always welcome any feedback.

I will aim to continue to improve the site and offer more great Thoughts in the future.

Lessons Learned From Playing Chess (Part 2)

Introduction

I have learned countless life lessons from the game of chess. In yesterday’s post, I shared 5 of them. Today, I would like to continue sharing 5 more of these lessons with you. I hope that you find some of these useful. Perhaps these lessons will help you in chess, in life, or with both.

Recently, it seems chess is back in the minds of many people. I understand that Netflix’s TV show The Queen’s Gambit has helped with this. But the game has been alive and well for quite a long time. There is something about this game that can draw you in, deeper and deeper if you allow it. And I suppose many people will be experiencing that now.

Here are 5 more chess lessons I would like to share with you:

6. Calculate and predict

In chess, when you are learning it seems impossible to predict anything. It just feels like you make a random move, then your opponent makes a random move, and you hope for the best. For a beginner who has played many games already, the goal may become to avoid “hanging” a piece, which means to allow your opponent to take it for free.

The idea of calculating several moves into the future can seem to be too much, at first anyway. In time, however, you get used to having visions where you can predict quite easily what the most likely reactions will be to your moves. If nothing else, you should be able to guess pretty well what the top 2 or 3 most likely reactions will be. Then, as you gain experience, you will start to intuitively know that if you make one move, your opponent will probably react this way, then you will probably react with this move in response, and so forth.

This can be a tremendous skill to develop in our everyday lives. Any time you see someone do something foolish, they probably did not think about what the consequence was going to be. But for everything we do in life, you choose your action, and then either the environment, or another person will then react somehow to your original action. With some thought, or practice in thinking about consequences, we can start to see chains of likely actions and reactions in our mind.

There is great value in learning to think more deeply, and not just settling on thinking about the most likely consequence. Instead, think about the next reaction, and the next reaction to that, and the next one. How deep can you go?

7.   Make a worthy sacrifice

As you grow in experience, one of the most exciting times in chess is to make a sacrifice that ends up being well worth it. Usually you will need to calculate ahead, or at least understand the game well enough to see that you will gain some initiative or advantage by sacrificing a piece. The biggest sacrifice a player may make is to give up the queen. Usually this is not done unless you are sure that you will be able to checkmate the opponent and win the game.

In life too, there are times to make sacrifices, and similar principles apply. We have to ask ourselves if a certain sacrifice we make will ultimately be worth it in the end. For some of us, sacrifice may be too strong of a word. Instead, you can consider times when you have chosen to give something up, in order to gain something later. Life can be more complex because sometimes we may give up our free time in order to accomplish important life goals. The rewards for this may not come until later in the future, in many cases.

In chess, however, you will find out in the course of a game whether your sacrifices were worthy or not. In the game, you must think, plan, and calculate. If you do not do this properly, you may sacrifice something without gaining anything for it in return.

Chess has shown me that in life, we must think carefully about what we are giving up. Is it truly worth it? Are you making sacrifices and hoping for them to pay off? Or are have you properly planned, thought it through, and calculated so that you can be more confident that you will make great gains for anything you have given up?

8. Executive decision-making

In chess, when you reach a certain level (perhaps intermediate), you understand that you should form candidate moves. This means that you look for 2-3 top moves that are worth considering more deeply. When you have these moves, then eventually you must make your executive decision. This is a decision that you must live with whether good or bad, because you cannot take it back.

This idea of seeking candidate moves in real life is something that I have been doing more and more, lately. Some people like to find a path that makes sense, and then they move forward without looking back. However, at least for important life decisions, I think it does make a lot of sense to pick several high-level options to examine more closely. From those candidate options, you can imagine yourself making those decisions and then consider if you would look forward to the probable outcomes that they could lead to.

Actually, even for simple life decisions, sometimes it can be interesting to come up with multiple candidate options. Want to see a movie? Try picking 3 options and then narrow it down to one. Or if you want to go out to have some fun, consider multiple options such as bowling, billiards, and dancing before you select one. This strategy can be especially useful if you are making a group choice, to help make sure that most of you are satisfied.

9. Improvement seeking

“When you see a good move, look for a better one” - Emanuel Lasker (former World Chess Champion)

I will admit that when playing chess, I sometimes became obsessive about looking for a better move. When I was 18-22 years old, I enjoyed using the Chessmaster software, and I would sometimes spend a great deal of time reflecting on which move I would make. I always thought – perhaps there is a better move I haven’t considered yet.

 

Of course, we need to be mindful of time management, as I discussed in yesterday’s post. We don’t always have the liberty to spend all the time we want to look for a better move. Often, it is more important to make a good move, than it is to make the best one.

 

Regardless of how much I tried to find the best moves, I would often analyze my games with Chessmaster, and the program would point out that inevitably I had missed something. For virtually every game, there would be an excellent move that I had not even considered.

 

In real life, I began to pay more attention to my life decisions, big or small. Sometimes even after making a decision, I would continue to reflect on whether there had been a better option available to me. Through deep thinking, I came to realize that quite often, perhaps daily even, there was some better action I could have taken. There was a better move that I had simply missed. Even when I made all good moves, there was still something I had missed.

I could never make all the best moves. Even if I made a great decision, perhaps there was an even better one that I had simply not considered, at least not until after I had already made it.

 

I don’t think it’s worth obsessing too much over every move we make, however it did make an impact on me after I realized that there is probably always a better move I could have made. The awareness that there is always a better move, in chess and especially in life, made a great impact on me. I realized that no matter how desperate or difficult a situation may seem, there is always a better move to make that simply has not occurred to me yet. Knowing this can give you hope in any situation. There is some great move left to find, you just have to search deeper.

 

10. Choose your own style

 

The interesting thing in chess is that there are many different styles that we can play in. Most people have their own distinctive way of playing chess. If I had to reflect on my style, I would say that I like to keep many options open. I like my pieces on squares where they can have the best range of motion. They can defend or attack as needed. I try to create as many possibilities to attack as possible. Often, I pursue gradual advantages and I hope to overwhelm the opponent eventually, as they get themselves into a position where it is very difficult to find a good move.

 

In my opinion, I am fairly balanced. I will evaluate my position, but also the position of my opponent. My goals are important to me, but I will also try to get into the opponent’s mind, to see what their goals are. I will try to figure out what they are thinking, based on their move choice.

 

I suppose my style is a bit psychological. If I can make a move that I think could make them uncomfortable, I will do it. For example, I may force them to make a move that compromises king safety. I may make moves that force them to retreat, when it is clear that they wanted to build up an attack. Whatever I think the opponent wants to do, I will aim to counteract it. Although it isn’t my main goal, if I see a tricky move that may trap them, I will definitely consider playing it.

 

I also value timing very much. Generally, I will not attempt a big attack unless I feel that I have a great position to do so. I often ask if it is the right time or position to implement a specific plan.

 

When it comes to defense, I aim to be impenetrable. I like to have every piece and pawn defended at all times, but I am willing to let go of some pawns if it helps me to build up a strong attack. A common strategy I use is to allow the opponent to take my pawns while I build a stronger and stronger attack.

 

Life is not so different than chess. At the end of the day, we have to choose how active or passive we want to be. How direct or how crafty. Just because someone else’s style works for them, does not mean it will work for you.

 

But I believe the way we play chess is interesting, because it may be a reflection of how we live our lives. When I was younger, I truly did not want to lose. I would prefer a draw to a loss. I would sometimes actually pursue a draw. I would guard against everything my opponent did very carefully, not allowing them to gain advantages. Sometimes I could defend against better players that way, frustrating them. If I played against a higher level opponent, I actively tried to make the experience miserable for them. Rather than really going for the win, I just dragged out the game.

 

Now, I prefer to avoid draws. I like to go for the win if possible. However, if there is no way for me to gain an advantage, I will take the draw. Also, I enjoy novelty in the game. I prefer to look for new ideas and moves that can puzzle my opponent. Since I play blitz (very quick games), moves that surprise my opponent can cause them to have to stop and think. And the more time they take on a move, the more likely they are to lose as the clock timer runs down.

In real life, if someone is competing with you and gaining an advantage, consider giving them a tricky or strange problem to deal with, possibly even causing a diversion. This can buy you some time and help you to get caught up.

 

Chess is interesting because you can choose your style. You can even change it or adapt it if you wish. The same is true in life. Is your style working for you, or is it time to change it? Or do you prefer to be unpredictable, developing a style where your opponent can never figure you out?

Final Thoughts

As a quick review of some of the lessons in today’s post, ask yourself these questions:

Am I calculating or predicting what my actions will lead to? Have I considered the likely reactions, and then the likely reactions to that?

What am I sacrificing or giving up in this life? Will the benefits be greater than the costs?

When I have a tough choice, am I coming up with good “candidate moves” that I could make? Then, do I think them through deeply so that I can make the best executive decision?

When I see a good move or action, am I taking the time to look for better possibilities?

What is my style or approach to life problems that come up. Is it working? Should I experiment with a different style?

Additional Chess Resources for Chess Players

I play chess for free on Chess.com and also via the app called Chess Free on my Android phone.

My favorite Chess YouTube channel is Agadmator’s.

For any intermediate (or beyond) chess players, my favorite opening that I have played for years is The Curry Opening - the main resource for this is Win at Chess by Ronald Curry. As a beginner, I enjoyed The King’s Indian Attack / Defence.

While I do not own it, I am curious about Think Like a Grandmaster by Alexander Kotov - and I’ve heard great things about it.

For a novel that incorporates chess, check out The Flanders Panel by Arturo Perez-Reverte, a book that was gifted to me by friend Arthur.

And you have probably heard of the popular The Queen’s Gambit TV show. If you have Netflix, I recommend watching it.

Lessons Learned From Playing Chess (Part 1)

Introduction

There is a lot to learn from chess. Importantly, much of what you learn in chess can transfer beyond the game itself and into life. If you enjoy the game, I hope you read this post. And even if you do not play, I hope you still read this – you may be encouraged to learn the game, or to teach your kids or grandkids how to play. And of course, you may be able to absorb some of the lessons mentioned here without needing to actually play chess.

I have enjoyed the game of chess for quite a long time. I first learned the rules of the game at around 14 years old. I played occasionally from there, but I didn’t begin to truly learn the game until I was around 18 years old. I got very interested in the game then, and began to play online more often. From around 18-22 years old, I enjoyed using Chessmaster, a computer program to play and get better at chess. I listened to most of Josh Waitzkin’s videos on there – he was excellent at explaining useful thought processes and strategies. I also read some books and did tactics training to improve.

Although I do not have an official rating, I believe my level of play is at around an 1800 FIDE rating. According to Chess.com, I’m roughly in the top 5% of chess players.

By the way, Josh Waitzkin wrote a book called The Art of Learning, which I deeply enjoyed reading. If you are interested in learning how to learn from someone who has mastered multiple fields, then the book is worth checking out.

Let’s proceed with some of the lessons I have learned from playing chess:

1.     Fundamentals

Every sport or game usually has certain fundamentals that you must master and truly understand, in order to ever get good. Chess is the same – some of the fundamentals are that you should aim to control the center, you should not move the same piece twice in the opening, and you should protect your king. Also, you should not bring out your queen (the most powerful piece) too early. There are many rules like this in life as well. They can be broken, but only if you are good at evaluating the risks, and if you truly know what you are doing (both in chess and life).

In life, there are many fundamentals that we must stick to, if we hope to lead our best life. A fundamental thought for me has been to only focus on what I can control. With this fundamental thought, I have been able to let go of the things in life that are completely irrelevant. Even if something is important, if I have no control over it, there is no point in worrying about it. Most of the key fundamentals in life focus on the mind, body, or on our spiritual side.

2.     Discipline

I have no idea as to the amount of hours I have spent on chess. In the past, it was not unusual for me to spend hours on the game every day. These days, I may spend 10 minutes on chess per day, although I don’t play every day. When I do play, it is usually just for fun – I do not put much effort on trying to improve my game. Perhaps I have reached my peak, as to improve my abilities at this point would require rigorous study. Keep in mind that the better you get at something, the more work it requires to improve. When you are a novice, you can improve rapidly in a short period of time.

From around 18-22 years old, I would play through my games slowly and thoughtfully, and if I lost a game, I would study it carefully to see what I did wrong. I listened to many videos by Masters or Grandmasters (e.g., the highest possible chess title). I read books, and I studied different aspects of the game. I enjoyed the journey toward getting better at chess. To me, this was all for fun. Perhaps I am strange in this way, but I recall being willing to spend a great deal of time thinking through a single move. I wanted to make sure that I had not failed to see some spectacular possibilities. I attempted to consider practically every move. My natural way was often to think deliberately and carefully, even in real life. However, in real life people often get fed up – they value quick decision-making. But in the game, and perhaps in real life, I wanted to make the best move, no matter what it cost me in time. Then for the games I lost, I would check on the mistakes I had made. In real life, if I made mistakes I would also think about what I could have done better.

The key learning experience here was the value of discipline. Getting better at chess is a long, long road. In order to improve will require some form of discipline. For those who want to improve rapidly, they may get discouraged. Most players hit a wall, where it gets very difficult to improve beyond a certain point. Again, to push through this requires discipline.

As I was putting great effort into my chess skills, sometimes I would ask my opponents online how long they had been playing. I still remember one grueling game I played against a worthy opponent. It was a closed, difficult position. I felt like I was playing against myself, as he had a similar play style. We both played slow, calculating, not offering up any opportunities to the opponent. Neither of us made obvious mistakes, but neither of us had made any risky, ambitious moves either. There was a lot of tension, but it was difficult to gain an advantage. I ended up narrowly winning, surprising myself. I had only been playing seriously for a couple years at that point. I asked him how long he had played. He said fifteen years. I was starting to realize that there was great value in approaching chess (or anything) with true discipline.

Discipline is about putting in the work every day, or at least on a regular basis so that you can improve.

3.     Challenge yourself

In any game or life situation, sometimes we want to take the easy route. However, it will often be much more valuable to present ourselves with some form of challenge. When I was beginning to take chess more seriously, I got to a point where I felt more comfortable going up against players at the same level over and over (perhaps a 1200 rating). I had gradually improved and I was able to beat these players consistently after a while, but I kept playing them again and again.

In time, I realized that my skills had stagnated. I wasn’t going up against players that presented me with challenges. Rather, these players tended to make big mistakes at some point, and then I would end up being able to win without much effort.

When I realized that I was not improving, I made it a point to always search for players who would challenge me. At minimum, I needed to play against someone who was roughly at my own level. But ideally, I should also occasionally seek out players who were significantly better than me.

You learn much more from people who present you with challenges.

I met a player back then (in my early years of taking chess seriously) who actually made me anxious in the first few moves of the game. He always played in a high pressured, threatening way even from the first few moves. I rose to the challenge and played him again and again - we met weekly. I never beat him, but one time I gained an advantage… and then lost it. His father was a Master, and he was an excellent player himself. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a Master as well by now.

Another time, I was playing against a seasoned player – he was a retired psychology professor. I’m not sure of his rating, but I recall that he always wanted to play on a 5 minute timer, and I had agreed. With this setup, he always beat me. One day, I told him that I needed more time to think. I asked him if we could play on a 10 minute timer. He agreed to give me the 10 minute timer, and he would continue to play with just 5 minutes on his timer. He allowed me an advantage in this way – perhaps he had gotten tired of beating me every time. Something strange happened then. With this new setup, I started beating him in most of our games. I always thought he was better than me, but it turned out he was just a good quick player. With a bit more time, perhaps I was better.

The point is that I had trained myself not to be worried when I played better players. I think the best sportsmanship is to take pride in your games against higher level opponents. Pay close attention to the way they play or when it comes to life, the way that they strategize or choose to take actions. What can you learn from them, even if you are in competition? If you see that they are doing something better than you, absorb it and add it to your repertoire of thoughts, actions, and habits.

4.     Time management

For the past 10 years or so, rather than playing slow games where I think extremely long and deliberately on a single move, I have preferred quick games. In chess, we call these blitz games. Usually these days, I play on a 3 minute timer. This means I have 3 minutes to make all of my moves. If I take any longer, I lose the game. Of course if my opponent takes longer than 3 minutes, then he would lose. With this timer, time management is key.

Taking 30 seconds on a single move is way too much with a 3 minute timer. This means that for most moves, it is worth going with my first gut reaction. If I have to calculate something, I should aim to simplify the problem so that I can solve it quickly. With the 3 minute timer, it’s important to have an intuition for which moves are not worth considering, so I do not need to waste time thinking through them. Also, if I am down to two moves that seem good and similar in strength, I should probably just choose one quickly, rather than taking too much time to try to find the best move.

In real life, we come across similar circumstances where you may need to make a very quick decision. Sometimes, there are great costs if you take too much time to arrive at your solution. For example, perhaps you have twenty tasks that need to get done at your workplace. If you take too much time doing one task, your boss will be mad, and you may fall further and further behind on your duties.

Some people are very quick, intuitive thinkers and so it may appear that they do not need to worry much about time management. However, even for such thinkers they should still consider using their time in the best way. If you arrive at a reasonable solution in 10 seconds, that is great. But what if you could have come to a decision 10 times better, if you had only decided to think it through for a couple minutes?

5.     Evolving Priorities

In chess, there are so many aspects of the game that can be difficult to prioritize. Our thinking must evolve to a higher level, in order to be able to manage the competing goals properly. The key challenge is that the priorities evolve during the game. At the beginning of a game, you want to develop your pieces properly. In the middle, you want to develop a plan. In the end, you want to capitalize on any advantages you worked hard to attain.

An experienced player should see a position and quickly be able to figure out what the priorities are. For a new player, prioritizing may seem like an overwhelming task, but for the seasoned player, they will understand where the threats are, which pieces are properly developed and which are not, whether the kings are safe, and whether there are tactical possibilities (or move combinations that can force an advantage).

Again, at first these types of ideas can seem conflicting and even overwhelming. But in time with experience, we develop a natural feeling for the priorities. When we are learning, a common flaw is to forget about the king’s safety. But for good players, they always keep king safety in mind. If your king is not safe, you are very likely to lose the game. In fact, the final objective of the game is to checkmate the king, meaning that he has nowhere to go.

Chess doesn’t involve static priorities. Sure, king safety is always pretty important. But what if you have secured your king very well, and he is very well defended? Then, shouldn’t you prioritize something else, rather than worrying too much about the king? Yes, you probably should. As you play a game, the priorities can shift.

As I play, I tend to ask myself questions such as:

What is the greatest weakness in my opponent’s position?

What is the greatest weakness in my position?

What move helps take advantage of their weakness, or to protect mine, or both?

What is their plan? And if it is a good plan, can I stop it?

My thoughts are somewhat open and flexible, as the priorities for me will be different, depending on the position on the board.

This may be the case with life too. For anyone’s life situation, the priorities may be different. My priorities as a married 35 year old without children are probably different than someone my age who does have children. And they are probably different than a 65 year old’s, or than a 15 year old’s.

Final Thoughts

Today, I would like you to use the above chess lessons to reflect on your life by asking these questions:

Am I sticking to the fundamentals in my life?

Am I being disciplined about the important goals in my life?

Am I properly challenging myself?

Am I managing my time well?

Am I prioritizing well, depending on my current situation?

In tomorrow’s post, I will cover 5 more lessons I learned from playing chess.

Think Out Loud

“What were you thinking?”

Do you ever get asked that, but in a way that is judgmental and condescending, perhaps?

Well, maybe it would help to go over our thoughts out loud more often. If we shared our thoughts more openly instead of hiding them, then certain flaws in our thinking would become apparent. This is good, because by seeing the flaws we can work to correct them.

Sometimes I wonder – wouldn’t it be easy to go through life with some glaring flaw in one’s thinking? How would you realize this about yourself? If these thoughts just stay trapped in the mind and we do not often share them, then we may have major problems in our thinking and not even realize it.

I believe the people who exhibit higher levels of thinking, or who have a very high expertise level in their field should occasionally help to guide others, by revealing their own thinking process. Then other people could learn to improve their thinking abilities.

A quirk about me is that I have never been that interested in learning particular facts. I am not the person you want to see on Jeopardy – I would probably do embarrassingly bad. Rather, I have always been fascinated by the thought processes that helped people make their discoveries, or solve difficult problems. I tend to think that if I have the right thought processes, then I can figure things out on my own with minimal facts. With the wrong thought processes, I could perhaps have infinite facts at my disposal and have no idea what to do with them. With the wrong way of thinking, I may even come to the wrong conclusions, which could be even worse.

Ultimately, rather than accumulating random facts, I aim to pursue a higher understanding - and I hope to help you get there too.

Something I have learned to do is to reconstruct other people’s thoughts. If you have ever seen a “true crime” show that was dramatized, these are reconstructed scenes. The dialog and interactions may be made up or intuited in some cases.

Similarly, when I see someone solve a problem, I always ask myself what they could have been thinking. I try to reverse-engineer how they got to the solution. Sometimes I feel like I have figured it out – and I have been able to decode their thought processes. But this is not always easy. Usually I look at the actions they took, then I ask what they would have thought that led them to take that action. If I can, I may try to confirm with them what they were thinking at a critical point.

I want to encourage us to see the value in thinking out loud more often. This could be especially valuable if there is a child nearby. People always say that children learn by example. But how can we have example thoughts? The thoughts are in our head, usually. In that case, we should be willing to think out loud – or to verbalize our thinking, occasionally.

You may be thinking, of course we all verbalize our thoughts, it’s called speaking. Yes, this is true. My point is that when solving problems, most of us don’t see the need to think out loud. If you have solved a problem before, you know what to do. You simply take the necessary actions and solve it. However, a problem that you have seen a hundred times may be new to someone else. They may benefit from hearing you think out loud.

Other than just with children, there may be other useful opportunities to practice thinking out loud. If you know someone who wants to learn in your field, and you are the expert and they are the novice, consider thinking out loud through certain problems to help show them how to think through them.

I suppose there are some general thinking rules that can be applied to anything. But I also suppose that to advance in a particular field, we will need to learn how to think through specific types of problems more successfully.

When I was in school, I was usually able to figure out a thought process to arrive to the solutions to problems, but often I would later learn that my way of thinking was very inefficient. I was focusing on the wrong things, perhaps. In some cases if I arrived at the wrong solutions, I may continue to work on the problem, trying to figure out the right way of thinking through trial and error. I believe it would have been more efficient to learn the right way to think from the beginning. Or rather, to have had someone help me identify my wrong thoughts, and then to replace those with the correct ones.

In reality, our thoughts and actions are often intertwined. If you pay close attention, every action tends to reveal a thought-process behind it. If I pick up a red rock from the ground and bring it up to my mouth and try to take a bite, you can probably guess what I was thinking.

You would guess that for some reason I had thought this rock was a fruit. You may dig a bit deeper - how could I have thought this way? Perhaps I was distracted or dealing with a personal trauma that dampened my observational skills. Perhaps I was not wearing my glasses and I have horrible vision. Perhaps I was starving and not thinking clearly. Some of this is guesswork, but you can be pretty sure that I had somehow imagined the rock to be an edible piece of food.

Again:

If you pay close attention, every action tends to reveal a thought-process behind it.

Much of our academic life is focused on learning facts, but perhaps we should also focus more on absorbing higher-level thinking. This could be from experts who have fine-tuned their thinking, and who have proven their ability to think through new problems. Someone who is good at solving only the problems that they are familiar with has not necessarily proved that they are thinking at a higher level.

Higher level thinking would likely involve some of the following:

       Experience – having sufficient knowledge and experience to approach new problems

       Efficiency of thought – not wasting time on knowledge or thought processes that are irrelevant

       Problem definition – knowing how to define the problem precisely

       Questioning ability – knowing the right questions to help further define what is known and unknown

       Reasoning ability – knowing which actions are likely to result in which outcomes

       Creative ability – being able to use new ideas, resources, or systems to solve a problem

       Simulation ability – using the above skills and abilities, a high-level thinker may be able to simulate problems and processes in the mind, to help identify the most likely outcomes

       Awareness of limitations – knowing when your abilities or resources are insufficient to solve a problem

Generally, a higher-level thinker will not need to use trial and error. Ideally, the thinking ability will be at a point where they can effectively solve problems in their mind, and then execute the solutions.

If you wish to go the route of learning higher-level thinking skills, it can be worth the effort to learn some bad thinking as well. For example, what mistakes did Albert Einstein make in his thinking? Wouldn’t it be interesting to learn that? For a physicist, at least, this may be valuable to know.

Something I have learned is that often the novice will focus on things that are not so important. Part of what the novice needs is to gain experience, of course. But when a novice learns the right things to think about and focus on, this can make all the difference in helping to learn and to think more effectively.

Today, I am simply encouraging you to ask yourself if your thinking abilities could benefit from learning how others at a higher-level think through problems. You may consider pursuing a mentor or teacher than can show you not just what to do, but also how to think through new problems. As you learn what to do, and how to do it, remember to bring your focus toward the why, or the thought processes that you can use to help you advance further. In order to learn those thought processes, it helps if you can listen to someone think out loud.

Also, if you believe you could be a higher level thinker, please realize that not everyone has this ability. If you take a moment here and there to reveal your thinking processes to those around you, it could be a great help to them.

Here are some books that reveal the thinking processes of experts, if you are interested:

Think Like a Grandmaster by Alexander Kotov (about Chess)

Every Hand Revealed by Gus Hansen (about Poker)

Think Like a Rocket Scientist by Ozan Varol

Think Like a Programmer by V. Anton Spraul

The Qualities That Make Us Who We Are

Last night as I was falling asleep, I had the Thought:

Who am I, if you strip everything away? Let’s take away the people I know, the experiences I’ve had, the things I’ve learned, even my sensory abilities, my personality, biological makeup, my creative or intellectual or spiritual side. After a certain point, I become nothing. As you remove quality by quality, eventually nothing is left but nothingness itself.

Here, by qualities, I mean anything that makes you who you are.

When you lose all these pieces of who you are, eventually what is left? It will just seem like an artificial, fragmented part of you. After a certain point, you would cease to be you.

As a peculiar example, let’s take one detail about all of us. Our skin tone, which of course is a major part of how we see ourselves and others. It is probably the first, or one of the first things you notice about a new person that you meet.

Consider this:

What if we all woke up tomorrow, and everyone’s skin was transparent?

You could literally see our internal organs, nerves, and maybe bones. I think people would feel more naked than ever, and they would start wearing something to cover all their exposed skin, at least what the clothing did not cover. Or they may cover it with makeup, to give themselves an artificial skin tone. Otherwise, this would be too much of a distraction for most of us to bear. It would be difficult to hold a conversation with someone while you can literally see their brain. Or you may look at someone’s hands and see nerves and even bones, which could be off-putting, of course.

Yet in a sense, nothing has really changed. We would still be the same people we always were. Our organs have always been there, they haven’t moved. But somehow, actually seeing them there would change our perceptions, our behaviors, perhaps even our beliefs.

The book Blindness by José Saramago left an impression on me when I read it many years ago - as this is a thought-provoking novel. The premise is that people spontaneously begin to go blind due to some unexplained circumstance or illness. Obviously, our sight is a pretty major quality that we value in ourselves. It is the main sense that we use to understand the world, at least for those who were born with sight. The book is a pretty good example of how the loss of one quality on a mass scale would change everything.

I have just been left amazed at the thought that if one seemingly trivial detail changes about us, then everything can change. And if one small thing changes, we may feel like we are no longer who we used to be. If my skin suddenly went transparent, or if I suddenly went blind, I think my whole life would change and I would probably change as a person due to new experiences that would arise from this. People would treat me differently, and I would begin to shift my behaviors and expectations about life. Surely some core part of me would remain the same, but I think it’s easy to underestimate just how profoundly a life must change if we lose a major sense or quality such as sight.

So I wonder, are we just the qualities that happen to make us up? And then, if those qualities can arbitrarily change without our desire, what does that mean for us? Does it mean that our identities are sort of arbitrary outputs based on the qualities we have been given (through DNA and our experiences, etc.)

As an example, if you love rock and roll, it may just be because your Dad introduced it to you when you were a kid. If he had introduced jazz to you at that age, you might have fallen in love with that instead. Maybe if he had introduced magic tricks to you then, you would have loved that. It may have just been a point in your life when you idolized your Dad and wanted to do the same things as him. In this light, some of your qualities may be arbitrary.

These sorts of thoughts have made me wonder about the level of influence or power we truly have over our lives. One miniscule quality can change everything. And many of those qualities that we adopt are based on our environment and circumstances. It seems like we don’t have much choice in the qualities that make us up, right?

However, we may have much more power than we think. As an example, if James (fictitious person) works hard to develop himself, and he gains better communication skills, self-confidence, resilience, and stress-reduction techniques, then these simple qualities may work to change his whole life. Rather than waiting for life to influence his qualities, he has taken it upon himself to develop into something better.

In fact, to go back to the idea that one simple quality can change everything, perhaps by working on his communication skills first, he was able to gain self-confidence, and then this helped him gain the energy and motivation to improve himself in numerous other ways. One quality, his communication skills, could have made all the difference. And if he never developed that skill, his whole life path may have gone in a different, much worse path for him.

To sum up, in this post there are just a few key ideas for you to think about:

1.     Who are we really? By removing or adding a seemingly trivial quality in our lives, everything about us can change. Is your identity something that you will actively shape yourself, or is it mostly being done by your environment and surroundings? What part of yourself do you identify with the most? Is this something that you chose, or something that happened to you?

2.     If one simple quality can change everything, you should choose to develop key qualities in yourself that can have a great impact on your life. As an example, this may be self-confidence, communication skills, resilience, creative skills, memory, attention, or mindfulness. You may wish to learn how to train yourself mentally to improve some of these qualities. The skills or qualities that can make the greatest impact may be different for everyone. You should ask yourself which quality would help you accomplish your life’s mission or key goals.  

How to Write a Groundbreaking Novel

Recently, one of my readers asked me how he could create a groundbreaking novel. (No, I have not produced my own groundbreaking novel, but maybe I will someday.)

Anyway, here is my response:

Basically, I think there are no shortcuts. It takes hard work, and ideally you can find a mentor or someone to help guide you. Yet ultimately, you must be willing to find your own voice, or path. You cannot allow your true self to go into hiding. You should not become a miniature version of anyone else, as this will forever put you in their shadows.

 

An exercise I like when it comes to writing is to find books that you admire as truly great works, then rewrite them in your own way. This is just a creative exercise and to help improve your writing abilities. Of course you should never attempt to publish anything that you rewrite.

When we read, it is too passive. If you rewrite, you will truly absorb what the author did, and learn the techniques more deeply. By rewrite, I mean going sentence by sentence through a full novel, and then rewriting them all in your own way, but trying to keep the same idea that the author intended.

In doing this, you may begin to discover your own style and interpretations. You may even realize that you have certain flaws that you need to work on.

Of course, this is just an exercise and it can only take you so far.

To produce something revolutionary will likely mean that you have attained a deep and great understanding of humanity. How could you write something that connects to so many people if you do not truly understand those people? This is done in many ways - through connecting with people in your life more deeply, reading (particularly in your genres of interest), watching films, etc.

Ask yourself who you truly want to connect with. To say all of humanity may be too grand of a scope. It could help to think smaller, at least to begin. Do you want to connect with soldiers? With working moms? With people who want to save the planet? With those who struggle to find meaning in life? With those who suffered great tragedies? With the broken-hearted? Who is it?

Learn about people as deeply as you can if you want to produce artwork that inspires, heals, or provokes them in some way. Leonardo da Vinci is a great example. He was not satisfied with simply creating a drawing or painting that appeared lifelike. He wanted to truly bring it to life, as much as was possible. To do this, he studied anatomy. And to do that, he was willing to do what no one else probably was. He dissected cadavers and drew humans from the inside out, so that he could learn about everything that was beneath the surface. In order to draw and paint more realistically, he felt the need to learn more than his contemporaries - and it paid off with the Mona Lisa and his other famous paintings.

If you would like to learn about human nature through a novel, one of my favorite books is Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (An alternate title is Remembrance of Things Past). It is perhaps the world’s longest novel at 6 volumes – and no, I have not finished it. Otherwise of course, you can study psychology, sociology, and philosophy. You can also work on observing people more closely and experiencing more of life for yourself.

Before you jump headfirst into creating your great work, you may have to acknowledge to yourself if you are not ready yet. It may be best to work on some practice runs, to see what you are capable of. For example, rather than writing your full novel, you may start with some short story ideas. I believe many of the greatest writers produced their best works later in their career, after having gained a lot of experience writing, and also experience in life. There is nothing wrong with building experience so that you can produce your great work later.

Do not be in such a rush to do everything now. You may need to train, build your skills, and learn more deeply before you can produce your greatest work.

Perhaps as the years go by, you may get frustrated if you have not made much progress on producing your great work. Or maybe you have produced something, but no one seemed to take notice. At some point you will have to let go of expectation. You can only create your work the best way that you can - you cannot control the reception you will get. Many great works are not recognized until after the death of an author. You have to decide if it is worth it, given that. If you need praise and acclaim to keep going, you may struggle to find your way.

As the years pass, at some point, you may find value in forgetting all that you know, and doing things in your own way instead, perhaps tapping into your own soul or deeper spirit. You will have learned all the rules and patterns and ways that everyone else did things, and then you can abandon them all, and truly get creative.

To create a dent in the universe, I think the smoothest path there is to do something only you could have done. Rather than compete in a space everyone else is working on, create your own space where only you fit. E.g., create your own genre or genre mix, or dig deeper into a topic or situation that no one else is considering, or find a new angle or perspective that no one else ever examined.

Although I haven't read it, Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves comes to mind. Like it or not, this book seems to have created its own genre space, meaning it has no real competition.

To be groundbreaking, you have to ask what you think is groundbreaking. Do you want to get people to take action on something? To see something in a new way? To experience something more deeply? What is it?

If you want to share new insights that you think no one else has discovered, then you may need to learn more deeply or experience more deeply than anyone else has. You must prepare to sacrifice a lot to get to that point. It may be easier to share insights that have already been shared by others, but to do it in a new way that no one else had ever thought of. Perhaps you will simply reveal a new perspective or way of thinking, this way.

As a final bit of advice, if you find a genre you love and want to work in, read some of the great works in that genre, and then ask yourself what you can add or contribute.

WHEN you produce your groundbreaking work, let me know. I would be happy to check it out!

What Are You Thankful For?

I’m thankful to have had so much love and support from family and friends

I was born into the right family for me, and I truly could not ask for anything more from them. My parents did everything they could to raise me well, and the rest has been up to me from there. I am always thankful for all the opportunities I was granted through them. Growing up, my mother made sure that my brother and I were always well cared for, and my father always encouraged us to push ourselves further.

I think a big part of what I am now grateful for is the belief that my parents always had in us (my brother and I). Of course, more than just belief, my parents actually followed through to help us make that belief into a reality. This is what truly made the difference.

Something memorable to me is that from around 8 years old, it was understood in my home that I would go to college. What that meant to me is that my parents believed in my abilities. Before I had a strong enough inner drive to know what I believed in, my parents believed in me. I wish everyone could have this. Before we can have our own Thoughts as children, we probably adopt our parents’ thoughts. So, it certainly helps if they have good thoughts worth having.

Through my career and sometimes through happenstance, I have connected with so many great people through the years. Some of the people who I have built friendships with in the past years would be: Arthur von Boennighausen (research engineer / real estate developer), Michal Stawicki (author of many self-improvement books), Dave Edelstein (co-author of Question Yourself), and Bob Rich (clinical psychologist). I have met many, many more who I am also happy to hear from, but these are the ones that I tend to stay in communications with on a regular basis. I am thankful for these connections.

Of course, I am thankful for my wife and the extended family I have now thanks to her. My wife and I see and support each other every day, and I’m grateful for this.

 

I’m thankful to have all my needs met, every day

I know there are many people in the world struggling, and I feel fortunate every day that I have not had to worry about having any of my needs met. My whole life has been a privilege, and I aim to give something back to society, to help compensate for all that I have been given. A key way that I am doing that is through this blog.

In efforts to meet my needs, I must simply maintain focus on some of the key fundamentals – such as eating well, meditating, exercising, and aiming to be spiritually centered. At this point, I’m grateful simply to have the time and energy to be able to focus on this.

I’ll be honest and say it is quite easy to forget about all the needs you have every day, when you actually have them every day. It’s easy to take for granted: clean water, healthy food, a dishwasher, the laundry machine, a clean space of your own to live, helpful friends and family, warm clothes, etc. It’s very easy to forget that these needs are not a given. It can take determination, hard work, and often even luck in order to get them. I make an effort to be conscious of this, and be thankful everyday.

I’m thankful for my career

When I began my career, I was very doubtful about my abilities. I wasn’t sure which direction I was going in. I wasn’t sure if I could make a living doing this. Now, I am doing it. I am earning a living with my writing career, and that is all I ever hoped to achieve. I get contacted on a monthly basis with new business opportunities, and it makes me smile. I am already at the point I had hoped to reach. I have found my rhythm.

Now of course, I have new ambitions. I want to grow this blog. I want to produce more audiobooks. I want to have my books translated into more languages (my usual ones are English, Spanish, and Portuguese).

Speaking of translations, I would like to give a special thanks to my mother who translates my books into Spanish. She works hard and does an excellent job. My books in Spanish are widely read, and I have to give her credit for this. I have published many many books, and more often than not, she is working on translating one of them. I’m honored and grateful that she has been happy to help with this.

Even though I have reached the point I wanted to reach, there are always new goals for me to strive for. Luckily I have been enjoying the journey, the work, and seeing where it takes me. I’m thankful for all this.

In the end, I have to remember that my career is mostly about helping my readers. I’m thankful to be able to help so many people, truly.

To you, yes you, the person reading this now, thank you for reading!

This career is just beginning – I look forward to evolving and growing along with you. I hope you stay along for the ride.

 

I am thankful for my teachers

I’m thankful for all the teachers I ever had. Of course, a few stand out above the rest, as I think they went above and beyond what was truly necessary.

Mr. Strombeck in the 5th grade taught me many life lessons that made an impact on my life. He was a very strict teacher and I dreaded the class when I was in there, but many years later I realized that he was doing his best to prepare us for real life. It wasn’t just another class.

Mr. Gerhold in the 9th grade helped me to learn algebra by volunteering to tutor me in the early mornings, even though I was struggling and thought I was going to fail the class. He spent a couple months working with me so that I could understand. With his help, I ended up doing very well in the class. I still remember what he taught me, even though my field does not involve algebra. While I don’t use algebra in my daily life, this class was critical so that I could do well in geometry, trigonometry, and then calculus. If you don’t understand algebra, you can quickly get left behind.

Mrs. Short in the 11th grade was a ruthlessly difficult chemistry teacher. If you wrote out an answer and had it 90% correct, you still got it wrong in her class. Oh, and I shouldn’t forget to mention that she was (in)famous for assigning 2-3 hours of homework per night. Yet when I made it to college chemistry (for majors, meaning they made the class extra difficult), I was glad that my high school class had been so difficult. In college, my fellow classmates were dropping like flies. Week after week, the chairs emptied out as students dropped, transferred to an easier class, failed, etc. I made it to the end with an A, thanks to the fact that Mrs. Short never took it easy on us.

I am thankful for all the medical staff

In these difficult times, we can’t forget to be thankful for the medical staff (e.g., nurses, doctors, paramedics, psychologists, etc.) that are working hard every day to help save lives. I can’t pretend to know what they’ve been going through. I am sure the job can be quite grueling, but they are doing it. Whatever they are paid, it isn’t enough. These are true heroes and we should all be thankful for the job that they do.

Remember that even if you have not needed any medical care this year, someone that you love may have. The important thing is that if you ever do need it, they will be there for you.

I will leave you with a question: What are you thankful for?

The Tides are Changing

The main constant in this life is that things are always changing.

Things are always changing, aren’t they? Whether it’s the seasons, the moods, the expectations, the tides, the goals, and so on….

Maybe we are changing too. If you’ve visited this site in the past, maybe you’re no longer the same person you were back then, even if just a few days or weeks have passed.

When I was a child, I often had a very strange experience. If I hadn’t seen someone in a year or two years, I would feel like I had changed so much, and I felt strange that this person may try to relate and get along with a prior me, rather than the actual me.

Perhaps my inner world was unfolding and developing quite fast, and my physical growth could not match it. Anyone can tell that a child has grown in a year or two, but who can witness or comprehend the mental changes that have happened?

We are always changing, and hopefully for the better. For example, we are always learning new things. You can learn facts from books, or you can gain experience and learn things firsthand. You may learn about the people around you. Due to your experiences, you may even learn about yourself. And those new things that you learn may cause you to change your direction or goals in life.

Beyond just learning, of course, we are always exposed to changes: the weather, the time, the people around us coming and going, our life goals, travels, new jobs, new relationships, etc.

What do you think about change?

When you sense that everything around you is moving in a new direction, do you assume that this is bad? Is that your natural reaction? Or is your reaction that you want to change too, to move along with the tides of change.

To you, is it more important that you follow the changes happening around you in the real world, or that you pay attention to any inner changes happening within you? Are some changes trivial to you, and others more important?

As humans I think we want to exercise great control – over ourselves, each other, even the planet and perhaps the stars and galaxies one day. However, it seems that everything comes and goes. We may just be visitors here to enjoy and experience what we can. That is the nature of change.

On a cosmic scale, who knows whether we will adapt to the changes, or create our own changes in a way that benefits us, or we may ultimately fail in some way, and then things will keep on changing without us.

Life is about change, when you think of it. If things stayed the same, then time would freeze, and nothing would move.

Whether we flow with the changes happily, deal with them and adapt to them, ignore them and go in our own direction, or resist them, we are here because things keep changing, and we will be gone because things keep changing.

Whether change is good or bad, it keeps things moving along. What is old goes away, and something new comes in its place.

Change prevails at the end of the day, with or without our acceptance or desire for it.

Today I simply wonder: Are we the product of change, the cause of change, the beneficiaries of change, or the victims of it, and is this something we will choose for ourselves? What do you choose?