Live Truly

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s ‘Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning’

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.

Zig Ziglar part 2 and Personal Goals

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).

Zig Ziglar Goals

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.

Category Labels and Meta Descriptions

This morning (I got up an hour ago, still jetlagged), I added categories to my Starting Real Estate Blog. I’m still not sure to the best way to break things down, as cognitive science philosophy and linguistics drilled us, “Categories don’t contain items, rather items have properties that describe them.” There are no essences. Sorry Aristotle. It would be nice to get some advice about label though. There’s a General one that contains all the posts. I’m still debating whether to get rid of that one. So far I have three labels: Purpose, Advice, and Education. Because right now most of the advice is about education, the two overlap a lot, just like they do in life. I hope search engines don’t get upset that the category pages overlap a lot. Does anyone have tips on this topic?

Looking at the ads on a course materials post, none of them seemed very relevant, they were on books and courses, but on completely different topics. The description was “my courses and books” and the keywords are “courses books real estate principles practice”. Just to check, I added “Real Estate” to the description (“My Real Estate courses and books”). Bam! Immediately all the ads grew in relevance, all were about Real Estate exams and courses. I know changing the title to include those words will have an even greater effec, but when it comes to content, I’d rather keep things clean.

Update: Simply changing the order of the keywords and description on this post: moving “niche blog”, “meta description”, and “ads” to the front and “category label” to the back changed the ads from office supplies to webpage optimizations on this post. I love how you can see results right away.

Creating My First Niche Blog

Last night I registered the domain and started writing the first few articles as dreamhost (yes that’s my reference link) set everything up. It only took about half an hour before I could see the site and I used their one-click install to set up wordpress. Piece of cake. I went to bed happy knowing that I just made the first steps, and did so with no problems.

This morning I wanted to add some stat measures and change the layout a bit, and to my horror, the host couldn’t be found. Panic.

Did someone attack the site? Did it get banned for some strange reason? I went into the dreamhost panel and everything seemed legit. I checked the server status and again things seem ok. Then I reread the email from the registration and it said:

Hello,

Your registration of … has been processed.
It will probably take 1-3 days for your domain to begin to work as the new dns information propagates across the Internet!

“1-3 days” – Perhaps there’s no need to worry yet. I submitted a report just in case, but I guess I can still take a shower and eat and attend to other business while everything gets set up. There’s nothing else I can do there anyway.

Update: Everything was back up within two hours.

Great Article on Blogging

Found on del.icio.us, an fantastic article on Blogging from ProBlogger: 18 Lessons I’ve Learnt about Blogging. I have a lot to learn from it and will try to use it on the site I’m about to launch. Here’s a breakdown of the rules, although I’d really recommend reading the article‘s in-depth explanations.

1. Be Lucky – “The key I’ve found with luck is to run with it and to make every lucky instance last as long as possible. So when you strike it lucky enjoy it but also ask yourself ‘how can I capitalise on my good fortune?’”
2. Work Hard – “Work alone is definitely NOT everything (I’ve seen many hard working bloggers who have not had success) but it is one element that I think is essential.”
3. Use the Power of Exponential Growth
4. Differentiate Yourself
5. Provide Value
6. Target a Niche (Keep a blog focused and don’t spread yourself too thin (8) content-wise)
7. Diversify (At least try a few things before throwing all your energy toward a single one.)
8. Don’t Spread Self too Thin — Absolutely! It’s better to do one thing really really well than a whole bunch of things at a mediocre level
9. Have a Backup Plan (Don’t depend on blogging alone)
10. Be Light on Your Feet (Opportunities come and go)
11. Relationships are Key — Yes!
12. Establish Boundaries
13. Don’t read your Own Press
14. Beware of Hype
15. Get a Life (Enjoy what you do, but enjoy the rest of life too)
16. Make Mistakes — Very important one! I couldn’t agree more
17. Be Yourself
18. There are No Rules

I feel many of these rules apply not only to blogs but to all business, and all of life in general. These rules could apply to relationships very easily as well. Target a niche? Yes, find something that special someone really likes.

If you just look at the rules, perhaps they can be simplified to:

• take advantage of opportunities
• get focused
• help others
• stay true

But these eighteen rules are perfect in the way they’re specific enough to directly apply and yet general enough to apply to all sorts of situations.