Anyone who suggests that you are a victim of others, is trying to victimize you.  Attempting to convince you that the outcome of your life is solely the result of the actions of others is actually an attempt to trick you to give up your power of self-determination and independence so that they may the take it from you and determine the direction of your life instead.

The difference between my warning and those who would make you their victims is that if you do give in to their persuasion, you are responsible for doing so, not the persuader.  I’ve debated similar points to this before, and it continues to be a belief I hold stronger and stronger with time.

Eleanor Roosevelt said “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.” I would expand that to “Nobody one can make you a victim without your consent.”

Next time someone tells you that it is some 3rd party’s fault that you are in the place you are in, and that you should join them in doing something about it, run the other direction.  They are not concerned with acting in your best interests, but are instead concerned with you acting in their best interests.

History is full of examples of individuals rising to power based on the platform of a scapegoat, and convincing the populace that they were not responsible for their plight, but that this scapegoat has caused them this harm.  The most classic example that comes to mind is Hitler and the Jews in Germany, but it doesn’t stop there.  Witch-hunts and mobs are the result of when individuals give up their right to make right choices.

Well, that is enough for now, but I will most likely write on this again.  What do you think?  Have you seen this before?

On one of my assignments I worked with a guy named Dave, and he was magic. Dave had long red hair that was kind of wavy, and a beard and mustache that was also red. He looked kind of like a wizard and he most always wore a hat. Not a wizards hat, but a baseball cap. I actually got a chance to learn some magic from Dave too.

Now if you never took the time to get to know Dave, you would have never expected him to be magic. In fact, most people may never meet him as he spends most of his time on another plane or even in a different dimension them most of humanity. Luckily for me, this otherworldliness didn’t scare me off. In fact, I had been to this realm before — I had worked the graveyard shift.

That’s right, Dave worked the graveyard shift. What did he do on during the middle of the night? Well, he cleaned your floors. Maybe not yours personally, but he cleaned the floors of a number of businesses around town. He had a schedule he rotated through. Typically showing up after everyone had gone home for the day. He had a key, and his own equipment. We would come in, sweep the floors, empty the trash, and then he would work his magic as he polished the floors.

Dave took a lot of pride in his work, and he did his best to teach me how to do a good job too. Unfortunately I never got a chance to run the big equipment, which was when Dave performed his serious magic. When he was done polishing those floors, he would always look at them and smile. He knew he had gotten those floors as clean and shiny as they could. I remember a few times he imparted bits of magical wisdom to me.

He would say things like “They aren’t scheduled to have a deep waxing this week, but I really think this floor needs it now, and since I have the time, I am going to do it anyway.”

Or other times, after he got a floor polished to an amazing shine, and he was showing me how brilliant it was he would say “Most likely no one will notice tomorrow, and after the first few customers come in with dirty shoes you won’t be able to tell, but doesn’t that just look amazing right now?”

So why take so much pride in cleaning floors? Why put that extra effort into polishing them just right, putting down that extra coat of wax, or running the buffer over the floors one more time? Especially when no one will notice, and people will just scuff them up in a matter of minutes as soon as they get the chance? Well, that was because Dave is magic, and he wanted to use his magic to do the absolutely best he could.

He probably could have gotten away with doing less then his best, and no one would have known, well, no one but Dave. I think that is what it really comes down to. Many us may consider cleaning floors to be brainless work that we never really give any thought too, unless we notice that our floors need cleaning. But when I was working with Dave, I realized that it makes no difference what you are doing, it is how you do it. You can bring passion, commitment and depth of skill to anything you do, and you can even bring your magic.

So what is this magic? I still don’t know that I completely understand it honestly. Dawn and I just finished watching Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.  Our whole family really enjoyed it.  In the end Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman) had to finally believe that she has magic in herself to save the store.  I think that is really it.  We all have magic in us, if we are willing to believe and use that magic.

So we all really have two choices:

1. Are we going to believe in and use our magic?
2. When we do, what will we use it for?

While not everyone can be fabulous at everything, I do believe we have a number of opportunities to express our magic.  We can choose from one or more of those opportunities and create magic and wonder, or keep our magic bottled up and never brighten the world.

I am glad there are people like Dave who enjoy cleaning floors, that isn’t something I enjoy, but I don’t discount someone who does.  A lot of people probably wouldn’t enjoy what I do.  I know people who think they might enjoy what someone else does, because it looks easy or glamorous – grass is always greener and all – but often times when they get a chance they find the ease boring and the glamor over powering.  Other times it is the person who is doing it who makes it look easy, or they bring the glamor to what they do.

Sometimes believing in ourselves, and then tapping into that magic can be scary.  That would seem counter intuitive that we be scared to accomplish our potential, but that has been my experience, that I worry I am not ready, or what might happen when I do.  This is why it is often easier for those around us to see our potential and encourage us, and while that helps, I don’t think that is ever enough.  To truly tap into our magic and our potential we must discover it ourselves.

I sincerely hope Dave is still out there working his magic.   I actually saw him years later.  I was out late one night, and riding my bike through a shopping center parking lot that was closed, and I saw him busy cleaning the  floor, making sure it looked marvelous.  When I think about him, I take a moment to look at the floors where I am and wonder if maybe he cleaned them, or maybe it was someone else just as magic as him, who took the time to make sure that floor looked great.

Believe in yourself, take pride in what you do, and what ever it is your are doing, do it well.  Focus on what you are doing and leave everything else to someone else.

The other day Dawn and I were watching The Majestic with Jim Carey. I really enjoyed the movie. It takes place during the McCarthyism Anti-Communism hearings.

Watching how ludicrous the hearings and investigations were depicted it made me shake my head. It reminded me of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 America. I remember my father telling me that the real witches during those trials were the ones making the acquisitions (although not the kind of witches they were hunting for). So I figured the communists, or at least the anti-Americans (subversives, etc.) were the ones orchestrating the McCarthyism trials.

Anyway, I shook my head and thought to myself of George Santayana’s quote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Naturally I was glad that modern America is beyond that sort of stillness.

Then I started wondering if we really were. Maybe this pattern it repeating itself. Salem didn’t invent it (look at the Spanish Inquisition), so it probably won’t end with McCarthyism. So could I think of an example today? The first thing I came up with was the detention center in Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo).

Lets look at the similarities between the three: Salem, McCarthy and Gitmo:

In researching this I discovered I am by far not the first to draw these parallels which is not surprising. I was surprised to find out that considering this now makes me a Liberal Democrat. Hmm . . . interesting.

Here is my results:

You are an Interpersonal Thinker
		Interpersonal thinkers: Like to think about other people, and try to understand them Recognise differences between individuals and appreciate that different people have different perspectives Make an effort to cultivate effective relationships with family, friends and colleagues
Like interpersonal thinkers, Leonardo had lots of friends and contacts, and was a popular figure at the Italian court.		Other Interpersonal thinkers include Winston Churchill, Mother Teresa, William ShakespeareCareers which suit Interpersonal thinkers include Politician, Psychologist, Nurse, Counsellor, Teacher

You can also view all the different thinking styles.

Why?

I would want a high EQ.  That would make it easy to surround myself with people who know more then me (people with a high IQ and low EQ).  My high EQ would allow me to know if they were being honest with me when they gave me advice and answered my questions.  In exchange I would help them connect with others who have specialized knowledge in other areas.

It isn’t WHAT you know, but WHO you know.  I would know all the people who had all the answers, and they would want to share those answers with me.

Thanks to Tricia Ho in Australia for the question via LinkedIn.

Wallace has other books like Science of Being Great and Science of Being Well. I have not read any of those yet.

If you want an interesting philosophical twist on this you might consider some of the works of Buckminster Fuller and Dr. W. Edwards Deming. A simple summary is that they observed that the goal of a honey bee was to collect nectar, but the side effect was cross pollinating plants, which is essentially responsible for all life on Earth – if there is no cross pollination then their is no plants, which form the bottom of the food chain (connecting sun energy to everything else).

Nectar is the benefit for the bee, but cross pollination is the benefit for the whole of life. When the bee peruses their highest and best benefit of collecting nectar, everyone else benefits. This is similar to the theory of capitalism. Fuller and Deming theorized that if the bee instead focused on cross pollination, and let the collecting of nectar be a side-effect, then the benefit for the bee and the whole of life would be greater.

Of course they were interested in applying this theory to business and not bees, so they suggested that perusing a “noble goal” would result in material gain of greater amounts then perusing the material gain directly. You do need to allow the side effect to happen though. So the side effect remains an objective, but it is a side effect none the less. This is similar to game theory.

So, if this theory is true, then by the Mozilla foundation perusing their mission of “improving the Internet experience for people everywhere” and letting the side effect be the accumulation of money then they will end up with more money then if they perused money directly. Since Microsoft is in other businesses besides browsers, we would need to compare Mozilla with Opera or some other company that is dedicated to browsers exclusively. Best I can tell Opera doesn’t make and profits.

Check out this web site I found that does a much better job explaining Fuller and Deming’s theory (even with pictures.)

Overall I think what Mozilla is doing is brilliant. It is like the model King Gillette came up with, but turned around. King Gillette wanted to give his razor holders away at a discount, and then make all his money in the replacement disposable blades. What Mozilla has done is given their browser away free, and then made all their money from the search engines as a side effect of people using the browser. I wouldn’t discount their method too quickly as being unreproducible.

Talk about a catch-all expression. This proverb can refer to leadership, nuclear deals, taking a stand — or not, and judo. But, as you might expect, the notion of “What you do means more than what you say” predates modern American culture. The 16th-century French writer Michel de Montaigne, who is generally credited with inventing the essay, proclaimed, “Saying is one thing and doing is another.” And before him, St. Francis of Assisi, who embodied this principle, is widely credited with saying, “Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.”

The present English version of this proverb might date to 1736, but versions of this wisdom are found in many languages and lands, even ancient Greece. Precisely who first said it may be lost to time, but it’s a little more certain who first published it on on American shores. In his 1692 book Will and Doom, Gersham Bulkeley wrote, “Actions are more significant than words.”

• How do you know you are not upside down and gravity isn’t really pulling you up?
• Have you ever been your imagination?
• Have you ever exceeded your imagination?

Of course part of me wants to give a simple answer, but then I realized that these questions are not looking for an answer, but consideration.  Much like the sound of one hand clapping.

I remember a question I always wondered, which these questions reminded me of, is how do we know that what I see as red everyone else sees as red?  Couldn’t we all see different colors?  What I see as red you see as blue, but we both learned that apples are what we call red, so you call blue red.  Of course if this is true then neither of us see real red or real blue.

So what do you see?

“It’s just a ride and we can change it any time we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money, a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.”

I think that is a great quote, although I am not quite sure who Brian Hicks is.  Does anyone else know?

We choose in every moment of our lives if we are going to act in love or in fear.  Fear is distrust and pushing away people and things.  Love is trust and embracing life.  Love is growth and fear is death.