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After my lesson, I headed over to the audio books section to get my next few hours of learning while driving. I picked up some foreign language cd’s and another business book: Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning. Right now, I know it’s about time to stop jumping from book to book and really focus and follow one, however, the subtitle caught my attention. I’m glad I picked it up.

It’s another Nightingale-Conant Production. For those that don’t know, it seems like almost every book makes the world a better more meaningful place. This book is no exception. From the get-go Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (say that three times fast) made a few remarkable points about happiness. (Not a literal quotation, more an outline of thoughts)

We strive for happiness. It’s above wealth and power, because those are sought after to attain happiness. What are different levels of happiness? How do we attain them? Who is happier?

On a very low level, we need some material things to make us happy. Someone who’s starving, will find happiness in being able to get food. An extremely impoverished family will find happiness in rising to a more stable level of living. However, after a certain bit, materials no longer have a lasting effect. Many people who win the lottery are at first very happy and then they go back down. Many people who become injured or disabled, also show a comeback and bounce back to previous levels of happiness. How does this work?

Again, at the lowest level, we have basic necessities. Having enough to live comfortably. After this level people go for status or love to support them. Marriage and family, status symbols, cars, job titles, specific careers. These are steps toward getting self-esteem. Upon gaining this self-esteem, people may still be unhappy. In order to attain the highest level of happiness people must truly live out their life to its full capacity, meaning making use of their talents and abilities for a purpose greater then the self.

True happiness comes from knowing that one is living at 100% of one’s potential–from doing something that’ll improve other people’s lives and enjoying what you do.

This should be the basis for any business. Any company and every product must aim to raise its customers’ happiness. Some products offer only temporary improvements at high costs, while others offer hopes of happiness with little chance of success. Some try and fail to deliver, those are forgivable, while others lie from the start, those are not good businesses. A good business, that will bring true happiness to its owner is one that will bring happiness to its customers and to its employees. The perfect role is one which is complex enough to make you work hard and keep your interest, and at the same time it should energize you and make you feel like you’re living a fun and meaningful existence.

The purpose of one’s life should be to do something that raises the happiness of others and at the same time lets you enjoy doing it.

Few people have broken it down as well as Mihaly did within the first few minutes of his Good Business. Many have hinted at it, but he hit the spot. Can’t wait to share more.

I updated my other site to WordPress 2.0. It seems nice, I just wish all my plugins and theme mods worked with it. I’m going to have to wait until I finish several projects and until that site is running smoothly before trying anything on this site.

After further thought and further research, I’m still not sure about elevating living abroad to goal status. It’s a definite desire, but I feel I need a few more days and a few more pages of writing before making that commitment and starting to visualize it–I’m already having a hard enough time concentrating.

Last night and this morning I did do some further research and found out that it may actually save money. It turns out that unless someone is making over 70 or 80k, there are abroad tax exemptions. So someone making 40k here, would end up keeping 26k. Whereas someone making 29k in Japan, would end up keeping the same 26k. Not bad! However, there are other factors: like the cost of living and having to learn a new language (it’s good to be learning, but frustrating not being able to speak).

There’s a fantastic post about teaching English in abroad: rec.arts.anime.misc: ot ba wanted to teach English abroad. K9 covers just about everything and really puts things into perspective. He really brings home the point about really analyzing one’s reasons for going to teach abroad, and understanding the commitment and responsibility. He also has a great little chart about the pay, costs, savings, positives, and negatives of working in the four top countries. Thailand is in the top four and I can’t wait to get back, but it seems that in order to make a real impact, it might be more worthwhile to make money elsewhere and then use it to make a greater impact there.

In fact, looking at the net income, one really has to have some very valid reasons to only save 6k that year. It’s one of those experience versus time questions. The culture, the language, the insights, new (good) habits, friends, connections, and experience, but at the cost of one year in career and one year in pay/savings. I’m still not sold either way. Will I make a true difference for my students? Will I really gain such insights? At the same time, why not make this count as a year in career development? Is it worth 15k though? For that I could live in Thailand for a year and pay for a dozen kids to get high school educations there.

The more I think about it, the more I think it’d be better to start building my career and investing now and perhaps taking my trip in two or three years. On the other hand, perhaps this could be the opportunity of a lifetime, since I’m still unclear about my career and still not sure where I’m going. Yes, spinning without a target, but perhaps this could be removing the blindfold.

Perhaps some further reading for this weekend:
Teaching English Overseas: A Job Guide for Americans & Canadians
The Global Citizen: A Guide to Creating an International Life and Career

On my way to work and back, the Zig Ziglar Goals CD really got me thinking.

Some ideas from the cd:

Take an amazing archer and blindfold him and spin him around. What if this archer is so good he still hit’s the bullseye. Impressive. Now, what if there’s no bulleye? How can you hit something that doesn’t exist? (It sounds a lot better on the tape with the background and in depth explanations and Zig Ziglar’s use of language and humor.)

Every person should write a book, not necessarily for publishing, called “How to Make My Life Meaningful”, and live by it.

The people who are always “about to” do something, never get anything done.

Every night, spend ten minutes reviewing your goals and what you’ve done to accomplish them. Before going to bed, write down what you’ve done to get there in your notebook. For the next day, choose the top six most important goals, and focus on those.

I had been keeping a log because of Think and Grow Rich and it helped me get the guts and will-power to I leave my first day job. This was in November. I left for Thailand at the start of December and came back last week. The trip really changed some of my time-limes and goals and this is quite dangerous. Ultimately my goal is to become a good father and a good husband. To accomplish this I need to have enough time and energy to dedicate to my family. To accomplish this I need financial independence, my own businesses/investments, and a true love of what I’m doing. My current goals and decisions were all geared toward this, but now another element came into the picture.

My trip to Thailand changed a few things: 1) I’m no longer as eager to marry within the next few years. 2) I want to travel. 3) I want to make a huge difference for the better in many people’s lives, and I know I have the means to make it happen.

As far as marriage goes, I think marrying later and traveling more may actually make me a better husband. By understanding more about myself, knowing more about the world, I’ll better appreciate my partner and have more to offer. As far as career goes, this may not be the best option. I didn’t make the most of my education and right now is the time to make up for it. If I run away to a distant land, would I be working toward my goal or just enjoying myself and losing more time. On the other hand, if I don’t do it now, I’m not sure I’ll ever will get a similar opportunity. My two weeks of travel taught me more about life than at least a semester at Cal. Perhaps some time abroad may lead to further growth and realizations?

I understand that in looking at goals, one needs to look at one’s goals and work backwards, not look at what one likes and find justifications for it. One should also look at the reasons for one’s goals. If I elevate travel to goal level, I better have a meaningful reason for it. Similarly, although I’m lucky to live in a place where I may have more opportunities than anywhere in the world, maybe it would be worthwhile to truly widen my scope and experience before aiming for a target.

It’s always both scary and fantastic to have your world view shaken. My first shake came from my first job out of school and my awakening with Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I chose to be rich. That’s my goal. I know amazing fathers and husbands that aren’t rich, but I choose to become an amazing husband and father that is rich. My second shake came from my trip to Thailand. I’m on the verge of adding another goal, and this goal may have a huge impact on many of my other choices.

I need to figure these things out before making any commitments and decisions in the next few weeks (and another interview awaits me this morning).

Driving back from San Francisco, I realized I had an audio book I didn’t get to hear in library returns bag: Goals : Setting And Achieving Them On Schedule.

The CD was a very pleasant surprise. First of all, the seminar is filled with hilarious tidbits and combined with his accent, listening is pure pleasure. The content is even better. Stories and powerful statements that get you to change your life. In the tape he gauranteed that if one hears the tape and doesn’t set a goal, that person won’t be able to sleep. He was right, I thought about, said, and wrote down a quite a few. The tape’s motivation and insight is very powerful. He starts off, after introductions, about reasons why people don’t set goals and in so doing motivates people to see their problems from a third person view, meaning they’ll far more easily fix them. The entire tape is like a little speech booster. I could see someone holding a copy of these tapes and just playing them over and over each week. Although, the point of the audiobook is practice not just listening.

It’s been an insane week for goals, goal-setting, and questions, and the Zig Ziglar Goals CD’s are a perfect catalyst to get even more accomplished. It’s the fourth mentor this week to remind me that we must strive toward greater goals to live a truly meaningful existence.

Update: It seems as if there’s a hidden power in goals. As soon as a plan is set, if it’s written down, it’s as if the world moves to both help and test you. Two phone calls came this morning. I can’t be more specific at the moment, but those who set goals know what I’m talking about. As soon as they’re set, opportunities start coming at you. It’s very pleasant, but one needs to stay focused and know which follow the plan and which don’t. One should read the goals and the plan of action at least daily and re-evaluate the goals and the plan at least weekly, to have full confidence in where one is going and that one is on the right path to getting there.

It’s not just the lack of RSS buttons. I’d like a clean usable theme for this blog. Something with breathing space. Does anyone have suggestions? I really like Connections (the current theme), but Landzilla and the Northern Web Coders are also really nice. But I think even simpler might do the trick. Maybe I’ll just use the ProBlogger Clean theme here too. Does anyone have some clean and simple and usability friendly theme suggestions?