Exercise Humor Like a Muscle

Steve Carell put it best in the movie The 40-year-old Virgin, when he said "is it true, that if you don't use it you lose it?". (wiener reference)

I love Steve Carell's work, which brings me to the subject of this post. It's important to have comedic geniuses in your entertainment feed. Your sense of humor is like a muscle. If you don't use it you lose it. But you can get it back, it just takes regular exercise. 

Just like exercise, short and intense is sometimes better. May I introduce, key and peel? They have about 100 gazillion skits on YouTube that are free and hilarious and around 5 minutes each. when life gets too serious, I'll turn to them. 

Check out the "competition in the workplace" skit. This is awesomeness!

 

Who you turn to is up to you, just follow the rules of exercise:

1. Do no harm! The idea is to enhance you wit and your character. Choose some humor that is not actually degrading your character. 
2. Consistency. Engage with humor regularly. You have to spend some time with it for it to become a part of you.

Good humor humor not only makes up for where people lack in a lot of different areas, (think ugly guy/hot girl... But he's funny). it also makes a complete person.View building and developing your humor not as a "extra", but as a necessity.

Start Your Own Business

Call me crazy, but I’ve always been interested in business and entrepreneurship (a word I cannot honestly even spell on my own). I’ve always been interested, but never started anything.

I have been frozen by the same question that many people are frozen by, the same people who have also fantasized about starting their own business. What business should I do? Hopefully, I can shed some light on this question.

It wasn’t until recently that learned that this is actually a false question. I know “what” to do. I just needed to learn “why” to do it. Allow me to explain.

You can pretty much agree that you have some value…correct? This value is inherent in you education, skills, personality, and so forth. I mean, if you have a job today, your skills are at least worth a set dollar amount to your employer. (Possibly undervalued dollar amount?)

What person are you? You could be a person who builds things, fixes things, writes things, encourages relationships that otherwise would not have happened. Even if it is just reading your favorite magazine and talking about the articles with friends. In a world that is lacking that social touch, there is a market for that today. It’s called YouTube and podcasting! Yes, people literally watch other people talk about things ….. I know! It’s crazy. (And there are clever ways to monetize)

The general answer to the question “why” is; you are doing this to change people for the better. Let that resonate as the key component. Seth Godin teaches to “be generous enough to do work that changes people for the better”. Keep in mind:

• Don’t quit your day job until people start paying you.
• Don’t wait until people start paying to start putting in the word.
• Don’t start putting in the work, if it’s not something you enjoy. If you want to make money doing stuff you do NOT really enjoy, just do it for a corporation with a matching 401k program.
   

This advice from Mark Cuban on how to fund your business is really refreshing. He is a billionaire, and he literally believes that the best way to fund your business is by doing your own work (aka free).

 

Mark Cuban’s (billionaire, Shark Tank star)-How to raise money for your business via Chase Jarvis Live.

 

 IN ORDER of precedence;

 

1. Sweat equity (costs you NOTHING, but your hard work)
2. Customer equity (Customers buying your product)
3. Crowd funded equity (raising $ via donation from people who want to see your product developed and available to the world)
4. Venture capital $ and Bank $ (money that you owe back, with strings attached)

 

So, with the “why” question out of the way, what would possibly hold you back?

The Value of Your Library ($14,000 per year/infinite value)

After reading the biography of Elion Musk (billionaire cofounder of EBay, Tesla, and Space X), I made one pretty important conclusion. People who love books should have access to as many books as they can get their hands on. It was said of Musk, that after he finished reading every book in the house, he would turn to the dictionaries and the encyclopedias, and just start reading line by line. I felt bad for the young soon-to-be billionaire. Poor billionaire…If only there were a place with hundreds of free books…

Here is a photo from my library.

I have a person in my family who reads like Elion Musk, and it’s definitely not me. My oldest daughter, Natalia, reads everything she can get her hands on. It’s inspiring to see. My middle daughter, who is now beginning to read, reads like most people. She reads with great interest, but only those things which interest her (and throwing in a few pictures never hurt anybody). If only there were a place…

Enter the Public Library

I am always on the search for small actions or habits that translate into big change. So when I started thinking about our weekly trips to the library, I was encouraged. I found that I could enable my daughters to explore and grow their vocabulary at least and every aspect of their lives at most. I even found that I could play a role in educating young women, which has implications beyond what I could possibly image (peacefully defeat the Taliban, anyone?).

If only…

MOST importantly, I found that I could make all these lasting changes for free. Daddy likely..

In fact, our last haul from the library included 12 (at the store, $17 each avg) picture books, 10-20 easy chapter books (at the store, $7 each avg), and an audio book ($20). All of these books will be devoured by next week. On a side note, I have found that reading the picture books to my children is quite fun, especially ones about cavemen and samurai swords. The lessons are timeless and good.

Given a LOW estimate, my family will consume about $14,000 of educational material, per year, for free.

Some times for the library.

·         Capitalize on strengths, make weaknesses irrelevant. If one child loves to read, let the child go nuts and don’t restrict them. If one doesn’t, let them play with computers or toys. No harm done. Don’t force it.

·         Use the library website to request books from across the entire library system for free. The newest version of Fancy Nancy is $7.99 at Barnes and Noble? It’s free at the library. (Side note; I’ve bought many books at this price, only to watch my daughter devour them faster than a happy meal. Waiting a week or two for the library to get it in is a great investment).

·         Visit the library habitually. Once a week is good. Try to make three weeks out of the month, and you are all set. Book check outs are for three weeks, so that’s plenty of time to forget something and still have time to bring it back next week.

·         Don’t spend a whole lot of time in the actually library. It’s full of wierdos. Get the good haul of books in under an hour, and bring them home to enjoy.

Affirmations are not Coocoo for Cocoa Puffs

Affirmations are generally a good idea. I mean, really, it’s not as taboo as you might think. Robert Collier once said, “The subconscious mind believes whatever it hears, when it is told often and convincingly enough.”

There is always some self-talk going on. We are ALWAYS communicating with ourselves. Would it be stretch to ask ourselves to start saying something beneficial?

I mean, especially in a world that is already slipping us often and convincing messages about ….whatever they want us to believe. Let’s take back our unconscious mind, which could arguably be a great percentage of our capacity as humans (maybe more so than we would like to notice).

 Using an affirmation, as I define it, is telling your self-something (or writing it) 15 times in a convincing and believing spirit, every day for a chosen time period.

Here is an example. For the two weeks leading up the start of the school year, I have said, “the new school year will be rich and rewarding for the whole family”. This primes the brain to respond to the many uncertainties of the school year under the framework that richness and reward is the most likely outcome.

I use an affirmation for daily use, such as “life happens FOR us” (opposing the belief that likes to slip in automatic which is “life happens TO us”.

However, my favorite way to use affirmations is leading up to an event.

-a big move

-start of school year

-a promotion

It is even beneficial for a perceivably negative circumstance, like:

-at the beginning of a long work weekend

-after an argument

-at the receipt of “bad” news

Robert Collier, by the way, is the author of the The Secret of the Ages. It is the original “Secret” book that needs NO edits, updates, or flashy new marketing. It’s just fantastic, inspiring, while at the same time, containing some head-shaking doses of philosophy that are quite quacky.

Want to know more for free?

If you are moved to learn more, read the PDF The Secret of the Ages. Downloadable for free.

http://tigerseyedowsing.com/ds/other/Secret.pdf

 Also, get to your library or Barnes and Noble and read the chapter on affirmations in the book by Scott Adams, How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big.

Are human penises different than animal penises?

I woke up this morning with a unique question. It was question that made me laugh to myself hysterically. It also was very thought provoking and proved to be interesting enough to look into further detail. I posed this question to a veterinarian friend, who seemed uniquely qualified to answer it.

 

“Friend,

 

I need your opinion on something. It is important. How are human dicks different than animal dicks?

 

For example, I heard that dolphins and maybe one other mammal has sex for pleasure, besides humans. Is that true?

 

Thanks,

Josh”

 

Nope.  Sorry to break the news to you, but dicks are dicks.  Every mammal gets one for sex and pleasure.  Some of them look weird (like the sugar glider), but the basic mammalian pattern remains the same :)

“This answer is disappointing and all too cavalier”, I thought to myself. Especially when you take into account the photo that he had sent me a few weeks prior. It’s a photo of a sugar glider dick. Apparently, there was some kind of medical issue and my veterinarian friend had to perform surgery.  This, however, is how a sugar glider dick looks.

 

 

Not quite satisfied with the answer, I took to a real profession. I former member of the 4H in her state, who was awarded as runner for “Ms. Queen of Beef”. She illustrated to me that a pig phallus was significantly different that a human one. See below.

Animal wieners are gross.

Hero Worship

This leads me to the real point of this post. I’m trying to make a point a subject that Tim Ferriss calls “hero worship”. You see, Tim is always on the lookout for how he can become word class at things he enjoys. He defines world class as the top 5%. As a reference, he would put Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps in the top .001%. Top 5% may be something like the strongest person in YOUR gym.

 

The reason you can’t necessary take advice from these extraordinarily high achievers like Michael Phelps, is the same reason a veterinarian may think human penises are similar to animal penises.

From Tim Ferriss

1.The top 1% often succeed despite how they train, not because of it. Superior genetics, or a luxurious full-time schedule make up for a lot.

2.Career specialist can’t externalize what they have internalized. Second nature is hard to teach.

Essentially, if you are too close to the action, it may be more difficult to relate to those who are not. As you take your journey toward the best version of yourself, seek to view things as they are, and practice things that work.

Do not view and practice things according to the “expert”, and in some cases, do the exact opposite.

Sleep in the Nude

Who would've thought this one, but sleeping naked fuels your metabolism.

I was wondering myself if sleeping naked would help a person lose weight. The reasoning I have for thinking this is this. The undergarments that we wear, especially the underwear, it's so very restrictive on what seems likely to be very important organs (perhaps even the penis? needs further study..). So, remove the undergarment. Increase the blood flow. Enhance all functions of the body for eight hours per night.

 

Seems logical to me. Now when I started looking into it, the fact is that sleep in the nude DOES help you fight infection and lose body fat. The reasoning, however, is a little bit different from mine.

 

Experts say that the body likes to be about a half degree lower while you sleep. It helps the brain waves do (whatever they need to do while you're sleeping). When you sleep without clothes on, you effective remove one layer of clothing (b/c you'll probably still use a sheet or blanket), and you facilitate the lowering of your body temperature faster and for longer. 

There is an apparent long list of benefits for sleeping in the nude, I did it last night and I woke up 30 minutes before my alarm clock!

Goals are for Losers Part 2

Everyone needs a good system for their life. If you've ever held a job, in a position that was previously held by another person, you know the feeling. When that person had absolutely no system in place, it was quite the heart ache for you to unfuck the disaster. But when that person who came before you had a solid system, And they were able to teach it to you before they left, the transition was sweet as pie.

A good system makes you feel good… Today! Your system can drive you towards higher levels in every area of your life. It's much easier to wrap your head around succeeding today, in your system (today), rather than having some far-off goal that you're always pretending is more important than how you feel now.

I get it. My favorite people espouse goals as well; Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, Sean Covey, the list is endless of people, who I love l, that guarantee that goals are the best way to go.

Your system is the anti-goal. You can still use goals, but use them exceedingly sparingly. Be prepared for the goal to stop your energy in any and every area of your life, except for the pursuit of that goal. Meanwhile be conscious of the great capacity for your life to improve with setting in play certain practices and procedures, policies and habits, relationships and boundaries that will all coalesce into your "System". They will essentially push you up against the good life.

Your system will be worth 1000 goals and will also give you the freedom to be energetic and productive today.