If you think this way I ask you to reconsider.  Why?

Many people don’t feel that they make a difference

First, because many people don’t feel that they make a difference, they don’t feel that what they do matters, and if you look closely you may find people who feel this way surround you.

These people go through the motions at work in order to get a paycheck.  They do the motions to keep their job, to have job and financial security, and their movements are completely disconnected with the valuable service they provide to others.   Not unlike a mouse pushing a lever to get food.

I witnessed this the other day while watching a customer service rep at a mobile phone store treat a customer with disdain.  The customer clearly was a bother to her, and she seemed to have no perspective on the value of her service to the customer and how her doing her job well would allow someone to stay in contact with their friends, family and coworkers as well as access information and become more productive.  The idea that her knowledge and willingness to help could make a difference for her customer, and employer seemed quite foreign to her.

No one has to help you – really

Second, very few people really have to do what they do.  As Joe Clark – played by Morgan Freeman in the movie Lean on Me – said while locked up in the town jail for refusing to follow the rules, “The only thing I have to do is stay black and die!”

We all have our responsibilities, duties, obligations and jobs.  People expect us to be responsible, honor our commitments, fulfill our duties and do our jobs, and we expect others to do the same.  Yet our expectations regarding what other people should be doing are so great that we forget that everyone has a choice and can choose to do other than what we expect.  Everyone serving or interacting with you is ultimately choosing to do so.  No one has to help you; not the fireman, policeman, lawyer, plumber or photographer at the licensing office.  Every act of service is an act of choice, even when it is not realized.

Fact is, many people don’t realize that they have a choice and so give their service or do their work begrudgingly.  Then there are those who do get that doing their job, and doing their job well is a choice, and they give their service willingly.  They’re easy to spot; they remain competent at their jobs despite constant change and always serve with a smile.  Make sure you acknowledge these ones especially.

Two HUGE benefits of acknowledging people for “just” doing their jobs

In short, acknowledging people for “just” doing their jobs has two great benefits:

1. They are reminded, or maybe get to see for the first time that their work does matter, that the results of their actions are helping someone else take care of a problem, save time, energy and money, fulfill on obligations, feel better, feel safe, become more knowledgeable etc.
2. They are reminded that they have a choice in what they do and that we appreciate that they choose to be of service to us: their employer, customer, colleague, supplier etc.

Every time you see a President, or Prime Minister visiting their troops overseas, it is this acknowledgment theme that is being practiced.  Acknowledging people for doing their jobs lets them know that what they do makes a difference in our lives and we appreciate it.

People essentially want to feel like their work is important and appreciated and giving people acknowledgments for doing their jobs is your best bet at having a highly motivated staff that will stay with you for the long run, instead of going somewhere else where the pay is slightly better or where they know they will have the appreciation they did not have with you.

What will you do?

Take on a practice of acknowledging your staff, colleagues or teammates for doing their jobs, for coming to work everyday, for showing up.  They make a difference.  Let them know it, and keep reminding them of it.  Why dontcha?

Despite all those courses and books you’ve consumed on making your life better:

Are you still stuck in the same circumstances of your life?

1. Do you still do work that you have no passion for, or continue doing a job you hate?
2. Have your relationships stopped growing, or even fallen back to where they were before you did those courses?
3. Do you still gossip?
4. Are you no closer to realizing your dreams? (Honestly now.)
5. Are you still passionless and unfulfilled
6. Are you resigned to living an unremarkable life?
7. Do you blame other people and circumstance for your disappointments & failures?

If you can honestly say no to most of these questions congratulations!  The fact is that for many people the promised benefits (implicit or explicit) of many self-help/personal growth courses and products are either not achieved, or have no lasting impact in the lives of the people that consume them.

People remain stuck in the circumstances of their lives even if they say they feel better about those circumstances, often becoming dependent or even subservient to a particular self-help organization or teacher and never leveraging all that they’ve been taught into living a life that is truly their own design.

Their failure to radically improve their lives is often what turns other people off of taking the very same courses the “self-helpers” rave about.

Are these courses and books today’s equivalent of “snake oil?”

No.  Most of the authors and teachers out there are not selling the modern day equivalent of snake oil.  On the contrary, there are many remarkable technologies, philosophies and techniques that are quite effective.  Why they often aren’t effective is because of two mutually re-enforcing forces (1) the drive to over promise or over-sell  i.e. to make exaggerated promises of what can be achieved and how fast results can be obtained, and (2) people’s belief in the quick fix, the miracle that will magically remove all of their problems.   It is the latter point to which this article is directed.

Six reasons why self-help courses don’t make a lasting difference

I can think of six reasons self-help courses fail to make a lasting difference in people’s lives.

1. People don’t like to work – Work is a Four Letter Word

This is perhaps the most fundamental reason: People just don’t do the work required.  It’s very much like going to the gym once, or having one healthy meal and expecting that you’re going to have a great body and good health for the rest of your life.

Whether its because of the legacy of slavery, Hollywood fantasies, corporate America or some other reason, most people don’t want or like to work.  People do not want to be told that anything worth achieving requires dedication and continual effort, even though they know that this is true.

For many people, the whole concept of work is negative and this is perpetuated by their imprisonment, and the imprisonment of their friends and families in jobs or careers that they hate or tolerate.

They are submerged in conversations about work as burden, toil and labor with only limited financial reward and certainly no reward of passion, fulfillment and increased capacities to take care of their concerns and adapt to change.

2. People live the illusion of the Quick Fix, Magic Bullet, and Happily Ever After

America is the land where dreams come true, and not only do dreams come true, they can come true overnight.  In an instant all of your problems can go away; with the winning of the lottery, the starting of your own business, the taking of this course, the reading of this book etc., etc.  Someday your ship will come in, your knight in shining armor will come and take you away from all this, and you’ll ride off and live happily ever after (apparently this works for guys as well … at least in New York and San Francisco).

The phenomenon of the “overnight success” is perceived to be very real.  The marketing phenomenon that is corporate America is based on selling this dream.  The solution to your medical condition whether it be insomnia, depression or obesity is a pill, or a lottery ticket, not in the thoughts, words and actions you choose every day.

3. People do not understand how to learn

Understanding and learning are not the same.  You may sit in a course for a few days to a few weeks, read the assignments and even pass the test at the end, and this has nothing to do with your learning what has been taught; at least not if by learning we mean being able to incorporate the material such that you can produce actual results in your life.   True learning produces knowledge which can be verified by the results said knowledge produces.

4. People do not understand the role of structure or environment in producing results

Human beings for whatever reason do not think of themselves as biological organisms the way the amoeba is or the way a wild animal, say the mountain gorilla is.  Yet we most definitely are biological organisms and just like the animals on the nature channel we are intimately connected with our environment.

Our environment calls forth behavior.

To the extent that this is not understood people will temporarily place themselves in new environments, new structures that produce different thoughts, feelings and results and then return to their old environments that are structured to produce old, familiar and unwanted results.

Not only do they inevitably fail, but worse, they reinforce negative self-beliefs of weakness, stupidity, unworthiness etc. because they cannot see the role their environment plays (their jobs, friends, families, TV shows etc.) in producing their failures.

5. People do not understand the role of community

The “Lone Ranger” is a powerful American tradition. Everyone is so gripped by the cultural conversation of the lone ranger, being an individual, and “I don’t need help” that they don’t get that they need help: we all do.

Every human being needs the help and support of other human beings yet many people continue to resist seeking help and resist it when it’s offered because they’ve been taught to think it means something negative about them e.g. being weak, unintelligent, unworthy etc.

People are taught to go against a basic truth i.e. that human beings are social animals and we need other human beings to survive, or more importantly, to live a great life. Indeed, the quality of those other human beings we include in our communities (directly and indirectly) give us the quality of our lives.

For self-help or personal-growth courses to have a lasting impact, their teachings must live in your communities (see point #4 above). Because the importance of this is not clear, most people make very feeble attempts to build communities to practice and learn the teachings of these courses.

Instead they either completely submerge themselves back in their old communities in which case almost all the value of these courses are lost, or they submerge themselves within the community of their teacher or educational institution where they at least get to keep the teachings alive, but often sub-ordinate their requirements to transform their own lives to the needs of the their teacher or educational organization.   This is where absurd claims of belonging to cults or being “converted” often come from.

6. People do not understand the role of a coach

It’s no coincidence that great players have coaches: Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Michael Phelps, etc.  A coach stands for your commitment and is trained to have you take massive and powerful actions repeatedly to speed you on your journey.   A coach is  the mirror reflecting your stand for your declarations in life and your best bet that you will live in integrity and produce the results you intend.  Not having a coach or mentor is perhaps the most reliable indicator that a person will not make the radical changes to structure and community necessary to transform their lives.

Then why do people keep doing more self-help?

So if despite inherent value in many of these self-help courses, (for the reasons above) they fail to produce lasting results for many people; why then do so many “students” (consumers might be a better term) keep taking more?

1. Because they enjoy doing so.  They are a form of entertainment very much like going to the movies.  And there is nothing wrong with that.
2. People do get results – to varying degrees. They see possibilities they did not see before, they’re able to have conversations that they could not have had before (and had miraculous results with people in their lives), and many take actions they could not have taken otherwise.  Many of the repeat customers in the self-help, personal growth business have had significant to major victories because of taking these courses.  People do get value.  What’s missing is the ability to sustain or repeat those victories; people then fall back into old patterns of behavior that generate familiar and unwanted results.

What Should I do if I want to improve my life? Should I take any of these Self-Help/Personal-Growth courses then?

That’s a gigantic YES!   Overall, people are always better off for consuming the teachings in most of the self-help/personal growth courses and books because they get to see what’s possible in their lives, they get to see and experience new perspectives new ways of being, even if it’s for a short time.  Just remember two things:

1-You need coaching and community to implement and sustain new behavior: Without the structures, communities and coaching necessary to practice what’s available from these courses in your daily lives, you will be unable to live the life of your dreams – unless of course you have small dreams. (smile)

Big achievements, and the ability to cause positive change in your life are the result of daily practice; daily practice that is custom designed and evolved to grow with you.  It’s a given that new practices you design from the courses you take will involve giving up much of your current structures (people, conversations, habits, thoughts etc.) and replacing them with new ones.  You cannot do this on your own.   Look for articles and posts from me about how to do this.

2-Look to the recommendations of people you trust: When choosing courses and coaches, look to the recommendations of people you trust and people who have achieved the results you want.  Not all the courses out there are appropriate for you, and of those some are better than others.

Look to the recommendations of people that you trust to help you choose what’s right for YOU. Look to them also for help in building your own communities to practice to get what you want in life.  Ask them what groups and forums they participate in and to share their practices.  Morevidareviews.com (shameless plug) is a great place to find and share the best courses and coaches that help and support people in getting more out of life.

The World is Not Flat and You Need the Help & Support of other People
No matter what you’re up to in life, you need other people to get things done, to fix things that break, to build, to create, solve problems etc. That’s why Yellow Pages existed and today you use Google.

You even need other people to enjoy your life. That’s why empty clubs and restaurants stay empty and why you go home for Thanksgiving or Chrismas/Hanukkah etc.

This is not so much a bad or good thing as it is simply a part of what it means to be a human being.  We are social beings who are meant to function within social groups.  Our capacity to discover, create, overcome obstacles, and enjoy life increases the more people we have in our communities, and in our personal lives.

If you have difficulty grasping this, just imagine the lone human being in the wilderness and what his or her quality of life would be like – 100% consumed by the effort to just stay alive – and how that quality of life changes as s/he begins to have family and community members with which to share the burden of life. There comes a point when the community’s basic needs of food, water and shelter are taken care of in a sustainable way, and people become free to think and create.

Our lives today are not that much different.

We’re Blind to the Help we Get, and the Help We Give
Ironically, the illusion of the lone, independent person that doesn’t need any help, is possible only because s/he has so much help. Help that has become systemized, institutionalized, and depersonalized but which remains help nonetheless, just we don’t see it as what it is anymore.  Today for most of us there exists so much surplus for our basic needs that we almost treat the abundance of food and shelter around us for granted and forget our dependence on those that produce them.

We’ve become desensitized to the help our work produces for other people and have become sensitive only to the “reward” produced for ourselves, i.e. our salaries, commissions etc. This is unfortunate because while earning monetary rewards for your labor is pleasing, and is indeed a proxy measure for the quality of help and satisfaction your work produces for other people; it (monetary rewards) shields you from the direct emotional and spiritual rewards that come from directly experiencing the impact your work produces on real … live … human beings.

Money is Great and it’s unsatisfying Without the Feeling that YOU Make a Difference in the Lives of Others.

Ask people who have had the opportunity to impact people in poor countries or communities e.g. through the Peace Corps. or Habitat for Humanity. Seeing the impact your work, words, or attention has on another human being can, and often does, move you to tears.

This is why very wealthy and powerful people like Warren Buffet, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Jimmy Carter devote their time and or money to helping humanity. This is why people who have done courses and programs at personal development companies like Landmark Education often become such avid proponents of these courses and programs; because these courses provide the actual experience of – not theoretical like reading this post – of your love and support on other people and their love and support for you.

These experiences changes lives in such profound ways that it is called transformational. People who have had these experiences actually shake off the old paradigm and take on a new one, and this incidentally is why many people regard Landmark graduates as weird or “cultish”, because Landmark graduates speak from a new paradigm “We need each other” and the non Landmark graduates listen from the old paradigm of “I don’t need help/I don’t need anybody/I can do it on my own”.

It’s also a bit amusing that most people who live in the “I don’t need help” paradigm also live in an “I don’t/can’t make a difference.” How funny is that?

There are thousands of seminars, workshops, retreats, conferences etc. and really no way to evaluate what’s good from what’s not.  I was surprised to discover that there was no equivalent to a www.zagat.com or a www.yelp.com where you can read what regular people have to say about a restaurant or some local service (Yelp) that you are considering.  People use these services to even find what others are saying is good.

I am a strong proponent of continuing education and coaching throughout one’s life, as I believe in the 21st century a practice of education is necessary to do more than just survive.  If you wish to avoid unnecessary suffering in your future, including working a meaningless job for people that you disrespect,  you need the help of education in its many forms; and if you wish to play the game of life at extraordinary levels, you require coaching – from good coaches.

Morevida^® Reviews (http://morevidareviews.com/) is designed as a place where you can share the courses, coaches and even products that made a difference in your life.  The stuff that lies outside mainstream education (not talking University education here) that helped you:

• become more productive – new and improved skills,
• gave you a better life perspective, direction & purpose,
• improved your business and career,
• improved your relationship and results with money
• improved your relationships (people around you as well as with the Big Beyond),
• improved your health and well-being.

It’s intended to be a great tool to help with your personal practice of education because (1) it helps you build your communities to practice what you learned in a course (by sharing with your friends the reviews you leave and find on the site), and (2) it helps you find new courses and coaches to continue your growth and develop your capacities to adapt to change.

Please visit the site and leave reviews of any course or coach etc. that you think would be helpful for other people, especially the people you care about, to get more out of life.  It is in beta release, so please be patient and use the “Contact Us” link on the bottom link to let us know of any questions, problems or praise.

Much love and respect.

The exact timing of his leaving us on that day is not clear to me and I wonder if it occurred while I was immersed in the merriment of bidding farewell to a difficult year for many – 2009 – and the welcoming of a year that holds so much promise.  Sad to think that while I was celebrating life, he was losing his. One of those things that makes you wonder.

As far as I understand it, Choco was on a small boat about to, or in the middle of serenading his girlfriend Rita who lives on a houseboat in the small northern dutch town of Groningen where he lived.  He was romantic like that.   This time, on that fateful day, he somehow fell into the freezing water of the canal in which Rita’s boat was moored and unable to swim, my Costa Rican friend drowned.  My heart goes out to his family and his girlfriend Rita.

Choco was a joy to be around.  He was always smiling, always finding ways to deal with whatever challenges life sent his way, and as a professional percussionist, there were many.  Yet I never knew Choco to be any other than a lover of life.   He loved his profession and he was happiest when he was playing his congas.

I can’t remember how I met Choco or exactly when, but it was in the late 1990’s when I lived in Groningen.  Choco taught percussion, particularly bongos and congas, and he became my teacher.  He would always call me by last name with a spanish pronunciation.  “Ga-Les” he would say, “You have talent, but you need to play more.  You need to practice.”   Always with a smile on his face and love in his heart.

I think I respected and even admired Choco for following his heart, and he did that by following his art, his art of playing his congas.   He would always say that unlike a guitar or a piano, the congas were not a complete instrument, meaning that the music of congas was best enjoyed as an ensemble of other instruments.  This  was no diminishment of his instrument, but rather a tribute to its role in making music.

For him, even though his instruments like the bongos and the congas were not necessary for a band to make music, their inclusion took their music to a new level, and percussion itself was the spine around which the body of music was formed.

I saw Choco give a vivid demonstration of this one night when he joined me at the Buckshot – my favorite bar in the Netherlands.  It was an outstanding dutch summer evening.  It felt like 23 degrees Celsius, and was about 10pm with the sun at a steep angle casting everything it touched in a lovely red hue.  There was a live jazz quartet playing as Choco turned up and sat with me on the sidewalk in front of the bar.  The musicians nodded their recognition to the great percussionist and Choco beamed back his wide smile.

Then they began playing their next number which had a distinct latin flavor and Choco was obviously inspired.  He reached into the duffel bag he was carrying, produced his prized bongo drums and walked up to the band.   There was a split second pause between him and the lead guitar player/singer which seemed to be where Choco was either granted permission to play, or made it known that he would be.   Choco sat down and placing his bongos between his legs, began playing.

It was magical.

His hands moved like lightning over the skins of the bongos, and if the band sounded good before, they sounded absolutely magnificent now.   From a lifetime of practice, Choco seemed to know exactly when to sit back and when to explode his bongos so that it all fit together perfectly.   When the song was over the leader of the band bowed to Choco and said his name out loud.  Everyone applauded and Choco could not have been happier.

This was who Choco was: spontaneous, talented, passionate and a lover of people. Choco seemed to instinctively feel the connection with people and everything he did in his practice of music, indeed in the practice of his life revolved around his connection, his contribution to other people.

Farewell my friend.   You died as you lived; bringing joy to the lives of the people around you.  I will always think of you whenever I hear the congas, and I will smile as I do now.

Here’s the story (by way of Kim Davis – Thanks Kim):

“In ancient Greece (469 – 399 BC) Socrates was widely lauded for his wisdom. One day the great philosopher came upon an acquaintance who ran up to him excitedly and said, “Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students?”

“Wait a moment,” Socrates replied. “Before you tell me I’d like you to pass a little test. It’s called the Triple Filter Test.”

“Triple filter?”

“That’s right,” Socrates continued. “Before you talk to me about my student let’s take a moment to filter what you’re going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?”

“No,” the man said, “actually I just heard about it and…”

“All right,” said Socrates. “So you don’t really know if it’s true or not. Now let’s try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?”

“No, on the contrary…”

“So,” Socrates continued, “you want to tell me something bad about him, even though you’re not certain it’s true?” The man shrugged, a little embarrassed. Socrates continued. “You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter – the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me?”

“No, not really”

“Well,” concluded Socrates, “if what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all?”

The man was defeated and ashamed. This is the reason Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem.

It also explains why he never found out that Plato was banging his wife.”

Interesting that the bearer of the “information” thought that it failed the usefulness test.   Hmmmmm.

The story brings up two main points for me.  The first is that because a story is unsubstantiated doesn’t mean it is false – which ironically helps fan the flames of gossip.   The second is that we live among those that either willingly or unconsciously choose to hurt us with their words and deeds.  You deny or ignore this fact at your peril because closing your eyes to the bullet headed your way won’t make you any less dead. Like the owl listening for his next meal, it is wise to keep an ear open for the conversations others have about you.

Monitoring, even managing the conversations have about you is important for your identity as a leader and a provider of goods and services because your ability to lead, or to have your marketplace offers accepted depends greatly on how people listen to you; and how people listen to you depends on the stories they listen and repeat about you.  This means you must develop a selective listening for gossip.

One way to develop this selective listening is to train your networks – the people that you trust – to alert you to the gossip about you and the issues you care about.  I’ll write about how to respond to gossip about you in a future post.

Happy Holidays.

First a working definition of gossip:

Gossip: casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true : he became the subject of much local gossip.• chiefly derogatory a person who likes talking about other people’s private lives.

(source: the dictionary that came with my Mac OS – doesn’t sound particularly impressive does it?  Ah well, I’m confident your Oxford English editions will yield something similar.)

Most people gossip for two simple reasons:

1. They are born into communities that gossip.
2. They have no idea of what they do when they gossip.

Being Born Into Gossiping Communities

We are social animals and we learn social behavior of what is and is not acceptable through the environments, traditions, cultures etc., that we grew up and live in.  Just so happens that many cultures not only tolerate gossip, but actually promote it in the media (witness what’s been going on recently in the media with Tiger Woods).  People that gossip didn’t choose “evil” and are not inherently bad people, they simply imitated the behavior of the people around them.

Being Unaware (or willingly ignorant) of The Consequences

Just like the big guy said on the cross “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34), many people don’t understand the consequence of gossiping. If they did, they wouldn’t do it.

All right, I just saw someone light a cigarette; so maybe they still would gossip, but at least they would feel terribly guilty about it.  ;-)

What Are The Consequences of Gossiping?

So what is so “bad” about gossip?  What is it that people are unaware of or don’t acknowledge about gossiping that allows them to continually participate in it?  Consider these:

1 – Gossiping is Destructive

Gossip damages a person’s social standing.  Think about it: people don’t talk secretly about the good things they see or hear about other people.

“Pssst.  Did you hear the story about John?  Apparently he spends his afternoons and weekends building shelters for the poor.”

Doesn’t happen.

Instead you get the stories that you experience in even the so-called reputable media, and the whispered allegations that go so long unchallenged that they become accepted “truths”.

Gossip spreads unsubstantiated stories about a person that damages how that person is regarded in their community, and how someone is regarded in their community is directly related to how much they are trusted.  Trust is the measure of a person’s value in society which impacts who we are able to associate with, what positions we are allowed to hold, and yes how much money we are able to earn.

2 – Gossiping is Inherently Unjust

Do you really need an explanation?  No one is perfect, and how would you feel if people were discussing the most private details about your life, especially when many of these details are false.   There are legal consequences to gossiping yet it is so prevalent that even the rich and famous resort to charges of slander and libel only in the most extreme cases.  Fighting gossip often serves to fan the flames so it is often a better strategy to ignore it.

3 – Gossiping Perpetuates a Culture of Gossip

We are social animals and gossip can only exist in a social environment.  Your speaking and listening to gossip signals to those that trust you that you approve of gossiping.  This means they will bring gossip to you as well as spread gossip to those that trust them.  This is why many magazines, newspapers, TV and radio shows exist: because YOU listen to and spread gossip.

Remember this, “Whoever gossips to you will gossip about you.” (unknown)

4 – You Rob the World of Your Very Valuable Help

There are only 24 hours in a day and countless problems that need to be solved for your own life, your family, your communities and your world.  Every second you spend gossiping (which includes listening to gossip) robs the world of your capacity to help make the world a better place.

5 – You Damage Yourself

What does gossip say about you? Every time you participate in gossip by either speaking or listening to it you advertise to the world and particularly to those that trust you, that you believe what others tell you on face value and that you not only have no regard for the people you are gossiping about , but you have no regard for the truth .

You signal to the world that you are a destroyer.

If you can’t see this, ask yourself “What is my purpose of sharing this ‘information’ about someone”?  Is it to have people think more of this person (who the ‘information’ is about), or is it so that people will think less of them?”  Then ask yourself “Why do I want to bring this person down?”  This could lead to some real insight into your beliefs about people (maybe certain types of people) and the world.

6 – You’ll Suffer When It’Your Turn

There is an amazing truth to the Golden Rule (Do unto others …./What goes around comes …/As you sow ….), and yet you may find that this is one of the few cases where it does not apply.  People will gossip about you even if you don’t engage in the practice yourself.

“What’s so” about the world is that people gossip, and if they aren’t gossiping about you, it’s only because they haven’t noticed you yet.  (Spell my name right please  In fact the bigger the game you play, the more you are up to something, the more visible you become the more people will gossip about you.

So if you can’t stop being gossiped about, why should you care about gossiping?

Well there are five reasons above this one, and another is that if you don’t gossip you’ll be removed or apart from it (gossip) such that when it’s your turn – and I pray that you are bold and audacious enough to have your turn in the headlines – you won’t be as affected; you either won’t suffer at all, or you’ll suffer less.

For each of the two lists below there is a short explanation of how the words were generated.  As you read them notice what happens as you read first the word then its meaning. There is a recursive process of the word referring to the written meaning and the written meaning referring back to the word that results in the word allowing you to “see” or distinguish something that didn’t exist for you before.

The result is laughter or at least a smile in most cases.

Also kind of fun to make up your own meaning for the last few words in each list and see whether you can create alternative ways of seeing with the same words or whether you get the creator’s intention without first reading the “answer.”

Enjoy.

List 1: Altered Words

Readers were asked to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.  Here are the results:

1.  Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2.  Ignoranus : A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
3.  Intaxication : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4.  Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5.  Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6.  Foreploy : Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7.  Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
8.  Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
9.  Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Osteopornosis : A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon : It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafalon (n.): The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido : All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug (n.) : Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your n  bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.

List 2: Altered Meanings

Readers were asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. And the winners are:

1. Coffee , n. The person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted , adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3. Abdicate , v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade , v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly , adj. Impotent.
6. Negligent , adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
7. Lymph , v. To walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle , n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence , n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash , n. A rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle , n. A humorous question on an exam..
12. Rectitude , n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon , n.. A Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster , n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism , n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent , n. An opening in the front of jockey shorts worn by Jewish men.

When I became aware of those that questioned the very notion of objective reality I dismissed them as weird and not worthy of a rational, logical person as yours truly.

It wasn’t until my early thirties that I was exposed to the notion of reality as created through language vs. reality as merely described through language.

The distinction of language – not just communication – as what makes human beings very special on this planet, has made a world of difference to how I am now able to deal with the world and with other human beings.  It has opened up a new way of “seeing” the world (“objective” reality), people and the stories they live in.

Stories are the mechanism or manifestation of our ability to language and to the extent that we are blind to the stories we live in (like the fish being oblivious to water because of its very obviousness and all pervasiveness), we suffer.

We see in/through language, and having this as your background of understanding – your “common sense” – will greatly expand your ability to cope with change, cause positive change, maintain and grow relationships.

For an example how we see in language, consider the days when you were a child and an adult told you a story.  Through words alone an entire world of scenes, characters, situations and emotions became “real” for you.  Through words you learned of things and people that may or may not now (or ever) exist.

Words are the building blocks of creation.  Perhaps this in why it says in John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

I had heard about the advantages of the Dvorak system for many years – faster typing speeds and less risk of repetitive stress disorders – but couldn’t bring myself to self-inflict the pain of re-learning to touch type.

Learning/Skill is all about building new neural pathways

Then I heard a someone speak about how the Dvorak system was a major step forward in his typing efficiency and it really helped prevent repetitive stress disorder. A few days later I began reading The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle which breaks down the myth of natural talents or being born gifted.

Coyle maintains that the real key to talent is myelin, the substance that facilitates and strengthens neural pathways.  Apparently, the biological basis of improving through practice is that the more you practice say a stroke in tennis, or golf the more myelin is laid down around the nerves responsible for those movements.

This explains why everyone must practice in order to maintain and improve performance.  Essentially we are biological organisms that are governed by a wonderfully complex nervous system: a nervous system that allows us to continually learn new behavior.

So, I decided to re-live this experience of acquiring a new skill – in this case: touch typing with the Dvorak system – and see how I can deepen my own understanding of practice.  (More on this in other posts)

My experience so far

Today is my thirty-first day into the experiment and I am still only about 20 wpm.  Mind you, I think that my average speed on the old QWERTY keyboard was never consistently above 35 wpm.  The most frustrating part of the process is that even after a full month of practice I must still consciously think about each key as I type, otherwise it goes wrong.

At times it goes well and it’s not consistent.  My fingers automatically reach for the old layout and many times they hit keys that are wrong for both layouts.  Many times I am aware of a curious sensation as I type; a sensation that I imagine is coming from the competition between my well established twenty-year old QWERTY neural pathways, and my month long DVORAK neural pathways.  It helps manage my frustration when I think of the history I’m up against.

I notice that just typing is not enough.  One of Doyle’s more interesting observations is that mere experience doing something does not mean that high levels of competence or proficiency are achieved.  In fact, the skill levels or the degree to which people were able to accomplish a task often tended to be lower among the “old-timers” than among the new-comers who were newly acquiring the skill.

I observed this even in my typing skill on the QWERTY keyboard.  Every now and then I would notice that my speed and accuracy would deteorate even though I was typing all the time.  A few days of doing typing drills and there would be a noticeable improvement.

If you take on changing over to the DVORAK system, or indeed if you are trying to improve at anything, take care to structure specific exercise drills into your day; drills designed to improve specific components or elements of your target skill.  In golf, it might be your drive, or putting, in tennis it might be your serve or your back-hand.  In typing it might be hitting the “g” key firmly and accurately every time with your right index finger.

OK, not my most exciting post but alas this is often the source of what makes practice effective: the willingness to organize yourself around what’s required to produce results and minimize your costs, and not what feels good.

Would I recommend the Dvorak typing system?

What’s my experience so far with the DVORAK system and would I recommend it?

It’s too early to say.

One significant drawback to it is that any keyboard shortcuts you use won’t automatically transfer to the new keyboard layout.

For example,` CTRL/CMND-C for the familiar copy short-cut becomes CTRL/CMND-J on the DVORAK keyboard.  This  is not too much of a drawback for me because I’m using a keyboard overlay from KB covers that has the old QWERTY letters in small type on each letter so that I can find these old keys when I need them.

I also have not acquired enough speed with this new keyboard to be able to sing its praises … yet.

I will say that I would not recommend it if you are constantly shifting from one computer to another or you use lots of programs with keyboard shortcuts.

Then there’s the frustration of giving up what typing speed you have and going back to zero.  You can say you’ll wait for when work slows down, or maybe you’ll go on sabbatical and have the time to acquire this new skill.  The likelihood is there will never be a good time to begin.  Once you commit, change your keyboard and don’t look back.

It took another Dvorak converter I came across three months to get competent again without consciously thinking about her fingers on the keys.  I had hoped to become proficient in a month and my experience so far suggests that three months is a realistic target.  Will post my conclusions/recommendations then.