If you follow the pink dos with your eyes, then nothing too exciting.

If you focus on the black + in the middle, you will probably see a green dot that replaces the pink dot that disappears.  This is a negative afterimage effect (neon green being the compliment to pink).  I’ve seen similar illusions before.

Then the really cool effect is if you focus on the black + long enough, all the pink dots will disapear, and you will just see the green dot spinning around the circle.  If you move your eyes, then the pink dots will come back though.

Your eyes will see all this from the same animation.  The animation doesn’t change.  You might ask yourself what else gets distorted in your life when you are focused on one thing?  Do other things tend to disapear?  When is that a good thing?  When is it not?

It is really cool to watch, but it got me wondering, is this an example of Naturalist Intelligence, or Bodily-Kinesthetic. My guess it is a strong combination of both. Naturalist allows him to communicate with the animals so well, while Bodily-Kinesthetic gives him the near acrobatic abilities. Very cool indeed. Watching it I was just struck with how much he must love those horses and how exciting it is that he gets to spend his time working with these horses he loves, and how much better the world is because we are able to marvle at his abilities.

Thanks Lorenzo!

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.

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.

“Practice until you get it right. Then practice until you can’t get it wrong.”

Don’t know who it is by though. I’ll research that. . .

I am also a fan of the differentiation that practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect results, while imperfect practice makes imperfect results. So always improve your practice.

“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.

All the time I would hear people saying that there was unlimited wealth. This seemed to be an incongruency since I know that in the United States the federal reserve controls how much money is in circulation. Of course there is credit and other ways of paying off debt, but when it is all said in done, there is a very large, but finite amount of money available. I couldn’t see how anyone could say there was unlimited (infinite) wealth, since money was finite and limited.

Then it occurred to me. There may be a limited amount of money (cash, funds, credit, gold, notes, real estate, etc.) but that money is only useful to those who posses it when they spend it – exchanging it for a good or service. All the money in the world is of no value if there is no where to spend it. Even if they are getting credit against equity they own, they are exchanging money. In fact, I bet the total wealth available trades hands quite frequently. All the markets (stock, currency, commodities, real estate, etc.) are designed to speculate and make money directly from these exchanges.

That left me with the question, how many times in a fixed amount of time (say my lifetime) can a fixed amount of money trade hands? While this is probably technically a finite amount, for all intents and purposes it is infinite. So if it can change hands an infinite amount of times, is there any reason to think my hands can’t be in the mix? Not only is it practical to think that my hands would be included, but if it changed hands an infinite number of times, it is illogical to think it wouldn’t spend some time in my hands. It would have to, if I let it.

In order for this system to work I would need to be willing to spend the money that came into my possession, so that it could go into someone else’s possession. In fact, I could end up spending the same money multiple times. So if all the money in the world came into my possession only once, and I spent it all how I saw fit so long as I spent it all in that fixed amount of time (my life time, since I can’t take it with me when I go), would I be wealthy? HECK YEAH I WOULD! Monetarily speaking I would be wealthier then Bill Gates!

Of course the missing piece here is value. Money is traded for value. Actually, it is traded for perceived value. So, if I want to have all the money in the world at my disposal to spend then I need to make an offer that is perceived as valuable to someone who as money to spend. They I must provide a way for them to trade their money for my value. Sounds pretty simple to me.

Now this may seem really basic to some, but I guess there is a matter of knowing something in your head, and then really finally getting it in your core. I am pretty excited now!

I have become a huge fan of my iPod naps. They work great. I got a new Bond CD in the mail today that I may start using for my wake-up. Because I have had success with my 15 minute iPod naps, and trouble with my core sleep I am thinking about going total Uberman. I don’t like the frequency of naps (every 4 hours) then, but at least I don’t need to worry about sleeping in from my core. . .
We will see what tomorrow holds. . . .