I’ve wondered just what causes this massive dichotomy between lovers and haters, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the haters just didn’t have the right start.  They didn’t listen to something user friendly, they didn’t have the proper gateway drug.  They were pushed off the cliff into the deep end of the spectrum and expected to start swimming immediately.
And of course, that would be under the heading of wrong.

I hope that I have found something for you, you opera haters (or at least opera neutrals) that will be under the heading of right.

I’m going to give you that first hit, that first toke, that great little morsel of information, history and music that just might turn you into an opera fan.

It’s a little NPR broadcast called “The Ring And I”, and in it, you’re going to learn about one of the masters of opera, Richard Wagner.
But don’t panic!
We’re going to learn about Wagner and his four opera Ring Cycle in such a way that I hope you will be chomping at the bit to learn more, to listen more to explore more about Wagner’s work.

We’re going to learn about Wagner by talking about Tolkien.
Huh?
That’s right!  We’re going to learn just how a doddering old linguistics professor took some of the story, motifs and symbolism from Wagner’s Ring Cycle and turned it into one of the greatest fantasy classics of all time.
We’re going to learn about The Lord of The Rings and The Ring Cycle.
We’re going to learn about Richard Wagner and J.R.R. Tolkien.
We’re going to learn about music, melody, counter melody, and leit motif.

What I really love about the Radiolab piece is that it shows the many facets of creativity in our lives.
I want you to realize that you don’t have to be a poet, novelist, artist or some other officially branded ‘artist’ to be creative.
I want you to realize that you can be passionate about something that you love, and bring that passion into your every day life.
I want you to realize that you can step outside the box, outside the definition of ‘creativity’ and ‘art’ and make something wonderful.

I hope that you enjoy “The Ring And I”.

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That’s one hell of a snappy card, Mister.

If you were following me on Twitter earlier in the week, you may remember me mentioning Moo Cards.
Someone was kind enough to DM me and ask the obvious “What the HELL is a Moo Card?”

Short version, is that Moo Cards are the most freakin’ beautiful business cards I’ve ever seen.
And it’s not just because mine has my beautiful (yet masculine and rugged) face on it.

They have, as my girlfriend says, theology and geometry*.
They just look and feel good.
Rounded corners, high contrast color, good stiff** card stock, and are highly customizable.

I wanted to turn you on to this for two reasons a) they are beautiful, and b) I could use some more.
If you go and buy some Moo Cards from this link, I don’t get any money but get credits toward getting a discount on a new order of cards.

Daddy needs new cards!

*Yes, that is from A Confederacy of Dunces, our favorite book. The one that actually brought us together on match.com
**And we all know that stiff things are good. Penises, drinks, etc.

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While normally, just grabbing a few prices and putting them on an Excel spreadsheet and making a daft prediction like that wouldn’t get too many people in a lather, it’s what Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s Fearless Leader said when approached with this mathematical question.

“Oh, you noticed that!” and smiled again.

It’s well known that Bezos wants a Kindle in every house, and I dare to say that giving a free Kindle to every Amazon Prime member would go a lot way toward achieving that end.
Google?
Apple?
Are you listening?

Related posts:

1. Giving The eBook Readers What They Want
2. Amazon Time!
3. Autographed Copies Now Available on Amazon

You can live the life you want to live.

You can become the person you want to be.

This is what I’ve figured out so far.

Stop assigning blame. This is the first step. Stop assigning blame and leave the past behind you.

You know whose fault it is that your life isn’t perfect. Your boss. Your teachers. Your ex-lovers. The ones who hurt you, the ones who abused you, the ones who left you bleeding. Or even yourself. You know whose fault it is — you’ve been telling yourself your whole life. Knowing whose fault it is that your life sucks is an excellent way to absolve yourself of any responsibility for taking your life into your own hands.

Forget about it. Let it go. The past isn’t real. “That was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.” If we’re not talking about something that is real and present and in your life right now, then it doesn’t matter. Nothing can be done about it. If nothing can be done about it, then don’t spend your energy dwelling on it — you have other things to do.

I may sound cruel, I may sound simplistic, I may sound like I’m saying you should just “get over it,” by suggesting that you should let go of your past. I’m sorry for that. But life won’t hold still and wait for you to lick your wounds. The race is still being run. Get up and keep moving. You can’t do anything about yesterday.

You can do something about tomorrow. And about the next day. Focus your energies there.

“I don’t have time to write.” “I can’t dance.” “I can’t talk to new people.” “I’m not attractive.”

I hear this all the time. I always hear the people around me sabotaging themselves, drawing lines and borders and boxes around themselves.

To which I say, make the time; dance; just talk to people; be attractive!

Yes, again, it’s simplistic of me to say that. But it’s simplistic of you to so easily say what you cannot do!

We’re excellent pattern-matchers. That’s what the human mind does — it’s a pattern-matching engine. So we look at ourselves, at our history, at our behaviors, and we draw straight lines between the points — we assume that just because we’ve done things a certain way in the past, we’ll always do them that way in the future. If we’ve failed before, we’ll always fail.

Screw that.

Surprise yourself. No — amaze yourself.

You don’t have to keep doing the things you hate. Why go home and beat yourself up for, say, not going over and saying a few words to someone you find really attractive? Can any damage they could do to you by rejecting you possibly be any worse than the damage you’re going to do to yourself for missing the chance?

Find the demon.

Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s the little voice in the back of your head that’s always whispering, “You can’t.” You know the demon. You may think you hate the demon, but you don’t. You love it. You let it own you. You do everything it says. Every time there’s something you want, you consult the demon first, to see if it will say, “You can’t have that.”

What you don’t realize is that your demon doesn’t know anything. It’s an idiot. It’s nothing but a parrot, repeating back to you anything negative that it’s ever heard, anything that makes you hurt, makes you squirm. If a teacher once told you “You’ll never accomplish anything,” it was listening; it hoards words like that and repeats them back to you to watch you jump. It doesn’t know what it’s saying. It doesn’t care.

Exorcise yourself.

You can take me literally or not, as suits you. But do, please, the next time you hear that voice in your head, imagine it, visualize it, as something physical that you can get hold of; tear it out of you, feel its fingers weaken and lose their grip on your spine, and grind it to dust, to nothing, under your boot heel on your way out to dance in the streets.

You can. You think you can’t; but it’s telling you that. You can.

You don’t exist.

You just think you do.

We’re nothing but the stories we tell ourselves. We know in our hearts what kind of people we are, what we’re capable of, because we’ve told ourselves what kind of people we are. You’re a carefully-rehearsed list of weaknesses and strengths you’ve told yourself you have.

(Self-confidence, for example, is a particularly nebulous quality you can easily talk yourself out of having.)

You owe no allegiance to that self-image if it harms you. If you don’t like the story your life has become — tell yourself a better one.

Think about the person you want to be and do what that person would do. Act the way that person would act.

Amazingly enough, once you start acting like that person, people will start treating you like that person.

And you’ll start to believe it. And then it will be true.

Welcome to your new self.

You are a product of your environment.

Most people realize this — usually, in the form of having something else to blame — but they tend to forget one important fact:

Humans are the masters of changing their environment.

What this means is that if your environment affects you, and you can affect your environment, then obviously, you can affect yourself.

• Your environment includes people. Figure out who in your life isn’t good for you, whose presence tears you down more than it builds you up, whose nearness is poison to you — and get rid of them. Get them out of your life. I don’t care if it’s your best friend, your boss, your mother, your lover — if they are harming you, if they are doing nothing but reinforce everything bad you tell yourself about yourself, then your relationship with them needs to radically alter or it needs to end.
• Your environment includes goals. Don’t set yourself pie-in-the-sky impossible goals and then beat yourself up over not achieving them — set yourself goals that will be good for you, not a source of pain. Attainable goals. Set them and meet them. Don’t tell yourself you can’t — that’s the old story, that story you used to tell yourself about what a poor sad victim you were and how you could never change anything about your life. You can meet your goals. This is the new story.Trying to clean your house? Good for you — a clean house can really affect your state of mind for the better. But don’t say “Today I’m going to clean the entire house from top to bottom,” when you don’t have the time and energy to — don’t set yourself up for failure; don’t feed the demon. Just say, “Today I’m going to wash all the dishes and clean off the kitchen counter.” And do it.Don’t tell yourself, “This month I’m going to write that novel.” Tell yourself, “Today I’m going to write five pages.” And do it. Take your dreams and break them down into small pieces and you’ll have them in your hands before you know it.

  And you’ll find, as you start meeting your goals, that you like it. That it feels good, makes you feel confident and capable. You’ll develop a hunger for it.

• Your environment includes yourself — your physical presence. Do what you know you need to do — treat yourself better. Sleep, eat right, exercise. This doesn’t mean you have to stop staying out late at night now and then, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a candy bar, it doesn’t mean you have to stop sitting around watching television — it just means start doing the things that are good for you as well as the things that are bad for you, every so often. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition; you don’t have to devote your life to being a health nut. Just try eating more fruits and vegetables, the occasional vegetarian meal; go for walks in the park on the weekends. You’ll feel better and be more alert if you’re a little healthier, and once you start feeling a little better, you’ll start wanting the things that make you feel better. You’ll see.
• Your environment includes your appearance. If you’re not happy with yourself, if you’re angry with the person in the mirror, it can honestly help to literally change who you see when you look in the mirror. Try a different hairstyle, new glasses, new jewelry, new clothes. It doesn’t have to be expensive — there’s a whole universe full of possible You’s waiting to be found in thrift stores, if need be. If you’re deciding to become the person you want to be, then decide what that person is going to look like. Dress the part. It’s not shallow, it’s not about vanity, it’s about self-transformation — even the most primitive tribes understand the value of costumes and masks for ritual, for change, for becoming someone else.

You are not an object. You are a system. Like with any system, if you change the inputs — change what goes into it — you’ll change what comes out.

Despite everything I’ve just said:

Self-examination can be paralysis.

Don’t “remember to breathe” — just breathe. It’s a Tao thing.

It’s the paradox at the center of all this — remember that, “Am I living up to being the person I want to be?”, is not a question the person you want to be would ask.

If I can leave you with just one thought, it’s this:

Stop wasting your time fretting over not being happy.

Just be happy.

Note from Bill: This post isn’t mine. It was written by Michael Montrose, and the original post is here, and it’s worth bookmarking and reading occasionally. The primary purpose of this post is to make sure my WordPress installation and all the various plug-ins are working correctly. I occasionally come across some pretty neat things or sometimes even come up with them myself, and want to share them with you, and this broadcast system seems to work the best. Thanks for your patience.

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But he’s very good at what he does (getting you all amp’d up and excited) and his techniques are absolutely amazing and will change your life if you give them a good solid try.

One of the main tenants of his system is that questions will change your life..

Your brain is a problem solving mechanism and it will answer every question you ask it.

The trick, as Robbins sees it, is asking the right question.

If, every time you are in a bad relationship, you ask yourself “How do I keep attracting these psychos or jerks?” then your brain will come up with the answer that will help you keep attracting psychos and jerks.

BUT if you ask yourself “What actions can I take so that this will never happen again?” or “What can I learn or take from this experience so that I can find a better person next time?”

See the difference?

Can you see how the questions and the answers will change your life for the better?

Over at the Lifehack blog, they have a great list of about 20-30 questions that, if you ask yourself on a regular basis, come up with compelling answers, will move your life forward in amazing ways.

Coincidentally, I first saw this questions over at the beautiful and delicious Meave’s blog.

There are no accidents.

In the comments, someone suggests that you write each question down on a slip of paper, fold it up and put it in a jar. Every day, pick a question and focus on it and come up with as many answers as possible throughout the day.

Here’s a few of the questions to get you started:

• What do I want to accomplish today?
• What is the most important thing I need to do today? (Do it first!)
• Is this the best use of my time right now?
• What am I trying to accomplish right now?
• What can I cross off my list by deleting or delegating? What is not important?
• What can I do right now to take the next leap instead of the next step?
• Who can I learn from today?
• Who can I thank today?
• What am I grateful for?

The rest of the questions (and even more in the Comments!) are here.

Great stuff!

I hope this helps you on your journey.

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