Sometimes the EASY route IS the BETTER route.

Are you a glutton for punishment? Someone who is really hard on yourself?

Well, although it is super awesome to be a disciplined person, it is also important to know when to
take it down a notch, enjoy yourself and appreciate doing something at the EASY level instead of at the
"extra challenging" level.

Those who are striving to excel, and achieve extreme success, are accustomed to various levels of discomfort. They know that it takes moments of discomfort in order to condition your body, mind, and spirit
to a higher level. Therefore, sometimes unconsciously they come to expect life to always be difficult and strenuous. Then when something EASY and pleasant comes along, they may not really feel "permission" to participate in something "just for fun" that is simple and uncomplicated.

So today, although folks know me as being unusually intense, I just wanna say, that as much as I want you all to learn how to succeed and achieve incredible heights in life......I also really want to hear and see that you can laugh out loud and give yourself a break once in a while. I want to see you have fun and enjoy those moments of ease. Don't feel guilty when something good happens to you.

Enjoy it, treasure it and move on towards your goals.

Peaceful productivity.
Carla


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"Scripting the First 60 Minutes"

It's Tim Ferriss who first mentioned this idea of scripting the first 60 minutes of your day.
The idea is to eliminate any decision making from those first early morning hours, in order to preserve your mental energy for those projects and plans that are more important and inspiring.

The concept of limiting the number of decisions you make in a day was introduced to me by a Christian teacher by the name of Mike Murdock. His extravagant salesmanship of his products as well as his aggressive fundraising has turned some folks off of his teachings, but so many of his "wisdom" teachings have profound and very helpful efficiency in helping ambitious people focus on what is most important.
If you can ignore the hype in his websites and books, you are bound to discover a few great treasures.

Anyway, back to my point. As a woman, I have never heard anyone encourage me to consciously limit the number of decisions I make in a day. No one had ever attached any great mental significance to "making decisions" about regular stuff like......where to get your hair done, what to wear or what to eat.

Therefore, it appears to be picking up steam, to simply eliminate the decision making processes from all of those type of routines. The intent is to save up your mental and emotional steam for those projects that have greater significance to your life goals.

The guy, Rob Rhinehart who invented the liquid meal replacement called "Soylent" is operating under the same intention. If you can add some valuable concentration power to your day by simply eliminating the need to worry about and/or prepare meals, you will have X number of hours in the day to focus on accomplishing your major objectives. I would tend to agree, that in my culture there is WAY too much time and attention spent on deciding what where and when to cook or have someone else prepare your meals. Yes, I believe in enjoying a great meal out with family or associates, in a pleasant restaurant upon occasion. But I'm talking about just your daily food fuel that you simply need to function fully throughout your day.

There's a rather irreverent  blog called Deliberatism.com from which I gleaned the idea of developing the "personal uniform". I must admit that I have not yet applied this concept, although it has enforced my realization that if I can set out the clothes I am going to wear for the next 3-5 days, it just provides a huge mental relief, as it is simply one less thing I have to think about in the morning.


How about where you get your hair done/ cut/ trimmed? As a gal, it's really tempting to be flighty in this area....as I am not sure why, but it seems to be a girly thing to simply hop from one hairstylist to another in search of the perfect do. How about you? Could you see yourself going to the same hairdresser for 6 months straight? Or even a full year? Or would that be simply too much commitment ??? Well, I'm sure you get the idea now.... about reducing the decisions about the "small stuff" as much as possible so that you can save your focus and energy and motivation for the Big Stuff.

Sending you productive peace today.

Carla



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Another Possible Reason for the Recent Low Low Gas Prices

Just thinking aloud once again....no need to overeact...in fact by about now you should be getting used to my random musings.

But ok, this is the first time, I have ever experienced a really radical low descent of publicly available gas prices. Therefore, it has been refreshing, as I mentioned some days ago, that market forces are actually directly affecting the end user prices for us "lowly" consumers. I had almost given up hope that market capitalism could ever actually work in our favor, but then BAM! a beautiful gift of low priced gas for Christmas was just what the doctor ordered.

Ok, so onto my point for today. We all know that the "green tech revolution" is building up steam worldwide. Some countries use so many sustainable and renewable energies that their dependence on fossil fuels has decreased by over 50% in the past 10 years. It is a revolution indeed.

But remember, my friends, that the world is not just run, on fuel, but on funding. Oil and gas money has propped up economies for so many decades that many of the "old rich" can not imagine relying on any other industry to continue to deliver them and their families wealth into their retirement years and beyond.

So, with the incredible monetary pressure of the oil and gas industry at stake, do you think perhaps that these low gas prices have orchestrated so that we won't jump ship on fossil fuels just yet?
Remember, when the price of gas was really high and seemed to climb another ten cents every couple of months, the sound of wind/solar/bio-desiel and other renewable energies started sounding really good, because frankly the pricing strategy of gas was getting to hard to swallow.

Sooooo, perhaps the oil and gas industry has orchestrated this massive "gas" discount sale, in order to convince the court of public opinion that ordinary fossil fuels are still the "only" preferable way to fuel our cars and heat our homes. Let me put it another blunt way......if you knew that fueling your car on regular gas would cost 10 times less than fueling it with bio-desiel, which would you choose?
Let's face it, most of us are still bargain hunters, but we do have good intentions. We want a green revolution, but only if it doesn't hurt our pocket books.

Any thoughts? Any comments? Do tell....



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Your Brain is an Organ ....he said.

So here I am quoting Tim Ferriss  yet again.
But the truth is that I search high and low for information that empowers me and my journey.
I pay a premium in life energy sifting through heap loads of lack luster mediocre non inspiring data, just crying for a mere morsel of wisdom. Therefore I don't care how far I have to run and dig and sift in order to find a fabulous diamond of use-able treasure to pass on to you precious souls, my readers.

Sometimes that treasure comes in just one simple sentence, not a whole book, not a video series, and not a three box set of high priced CD.s

So there I was listening to an older download of one of Tim Ferriss's blog's podcasts, and he
said this simple statement in such a way that I began to have a better understanding of what makes me tick.

He said "Your brain is an organ". and then he described in an answer to someone who had emailed him a question to answer on his podcast in which they asked
 "How do you get yourself out of a stagnant funk/poor low energetic unfocused state of being" ?  (paraphrased by me )

 Tim Ferriss responded by stating that because our brains are also organs, we need to consider that they will also function more energetically when responding to exercise. So his answer to his listener's question was ..."To get myself out of a funk or poor mental state, I simply do a short burst of physical activity, even as short as 10 minutes on a stationary bike or 500 meters on a rowing machine. Even just one short burst of exercise jump starts his brain and he gets his mojo back to allow him to  begin working on one of his stated goals in a better frame of mind.

His point was well taken. We far too often disenfranchise our minds from our body, as if our brains are not even organic. But our brains are certainly quite "human" and earthy and respond to exercise just the same as our leg muscles do. The response is powerful and it is most encouraging to realize that the impact can be felt in as short a time span as only 10 minutes.

Hopefully you get the impact of this revelation as I did. I tried it just today. Just 10 minutes on a stationary bike today and I'm typing up a storm today. Emotions are fleeting. AS Tony Robbins taught us....that YES we CAN change our state. We don't have to stay stuck. We can change our lot in life. We can change how we feel by what we do and by what we think and by what we say to ourselves.

So thank you once again, Dear Tim Ferriss for yet another nugget of good advice. God bless.

Peaceful productivity,
Carla


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Keep Building the Mountain

Let's say you have a goal.....let's illustrate a few examples:

1/You are musically inclined and are going to master one special song and cut a demo CD for it with you and an accompanist.

2/ You have your eye on a certain investment that will cost X amount of dollars. You have done your research and you know the cost of it right to the penny.

3/ You've picked out the best knock-it-outta-the-park kinda outfit that you've always dreamed of wearing and know precisely where to buy it and precisely how much it will take for you to buy it without using debt.

Ok, so maybe you have a goal similar to one of the above.

Tonight I just wanted to talk about these "mountains"....these goals that let's just call them "mountains" for
effect.

You have your eye and heart set upon that top of the mountain. You have done your due dilligence and know exactly and precisely what it is going to take to get you to the top of this mountain.

But then, one day you realize that last week, you were able to cross 5 miles up that mountain path. You gained confidence, and you gained momentum. Then, all of a sudden, you discover that this week you can only take 5 measly steps up that mountain path. Your face is ashen and downcast....you feel like giving up. It's isn't so much fun  when you don't feel that speedy sense of momentum quickening your step.

But hold on just a minute....what has moved? Has the mountain moved? Nope. Has your ability to scale the mountain changed? Nope, you still have the same talents and resources.

Ok, so calm down a bit now. The only thing that has changed is the PACE of your ascent. Breathe in deep..
Stay focused. Life is not static, like a pacemaker. There is not just one constant speed at which we climb.
There may be days and whole months where we make lightening fast progress and we begin to convince ourselves that the whole journey is going to be this quick and easy. But then we wake up another month and reality hits and we know that we were too hasty to make assumptions.

Progress still moves forward, but in different days and weeks and months it may operate at differing speeds. We need to allow ourselves that flexibility to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are NOT giving up on our goals, just because our progress may be slower once in a while.

I think of someone who is determined to get out of consumer debt, or all debt. THere may be days when he/she is able to make thousands of dollars to pay off those debts. But there may also come days or weeks or even months when he/she is only able to make a $5 payment to paying off those debts. That is the time to be sure to not permit discouragement or distraction to have full sway. Slow progress is STILL PROGRESS!

Keep making those calls. Keep taking those tiny or large or slow or quick steps forward towards you writen goal. It  WILL come to pass if you don't give up.

Peace forward productivity.
Carla




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