From a Weird Place...

These blog entries have inspired me to live a more full life and as a result I've been giving my life the greatest attention. In a way I have kick started my imagination back into overdrive. I can barely find the time to eat but I'm still determined to see this blog through to the end...wherever that might be. I've been "standing on my own two feet" so to speak (words of wisdom from this guy) and letting creativity guide my actions everyday. I must say, it's a very interesting ride so far and I don't think I want to get off. Some of my off the wall ideas have proven to be dead end ends but I trust that I may be ahead of my time with some of my more frivolous desires for this world. I think a little patience will go a long way, even though that's not one of my strong points. I get bored easily...sigh. I'm still learning to take things slowly.

Anyway, I've been giving my future an awful lot of deep thought over the past few weeks and the same scenes keep playing over and over in my head. Maybe it's time to let these little guys out into the world to see what they can do. This idea is a little more realistic than my previous Experience Project. I still want to see that succeed because i think people have become way too reliant on the convenience of money for getting what they want or need. My new idea is a charitable project that I hope to see come to life by the Spring of 2012. I strongly believe it could materialize before then, but when you're working with other people you have to accept that not everything will be under your direct control. So, realistically speaking, Spring '12 should be enough time to make this happen. What is it you ask? Hmmm... guess you'll have to stick around to find out. All I'm going to say for now is that it's family oriented and it's ...colorful lol. Thanks for sticking around. See you soon :)

Take the First Step In Your Journey

Here are a few things you can expect to encounter on your path to a happier life.

Are you a Joe Schmoe?
We've been taught all of our lives to think a certain way. We're supposed to be kind and stay close to our biological families. We're supposed to help everyone in our path. We're supposed to be social creatures without regard to our true feelings. We're also supposed to go to school, earn a degree, get a job, get married, raise a family, and live according to our pre-determined religions. Does that sound like the life you really want or would you prefer to live by your own rules and find your true happiness? I don't know, maybe this is your path to true happiness, but if you're anything like me it just won't do.

Are you really ready for this?
Just so you know, this journey is not going to be easy. You're going to have to do some things that you've been conditioned to believe are wrong or bad. You're going to have to let go of some people who have been in your life for a long time. You're going to have to use your creativity and resourcefulness to make things happen that are seemingly out of your control. You're going to have to erase your labels and roles and focus on living in the present with guidance from the future. You think you're ready for this? You have no idea! This way of life if not for those who seek comfort. There will be many times you will feel uncomfortable but that's supposed to happen in order to break free from social conditioning.

So, are you ready to begin? If not, don't force it. Your negativity will ruin the effect. If you're wondering why you're even thinking about trying this, my answer to you is, why not? If you're in an unhappy place wondering if things will ever turn around for you, I say give it a try. I can't promise this will work for you and I can't promise it won't either. It's like trying out different diets until you find the one that works for you. This diet happens to be FREE and at the end you can at least be able to say you gave it your best shot. Don't you think you owe it to yourself to try anything to increase happiness in your life? I do. You are soooooo worth it. We all are. If you are not ready, you can leave. If you are ready, let's keep going.

A note before you begin
These activities are listed in order of importance so if you are following along, make sure you do so in order. Not everyone will be in the same point on their journey at the same time. This is not a race. Take your time and use your best judgement when working on finding your true happiness. In order to track your progress and allow help from others, I suggest you start a journal either online or on paper. However, it will be easier to get help from those around you if you chart your path online. An online journal simply allows you to receive multiple points of view when trying to get advice on certain situations that may arise. Other than that, we're ready to go.

Outline of the journey to a happy life
This list serves as a simple outline of what you can expect while working toward achieving happiness in your life. Each of these steps will be described in much greater detail as time passes and will probably need more than one post to fully explain.

1. Change your attitude
2. Love yourself
3. Imagine your happy ending
4. Select your life values
5. Edit your life
6. Create short term goals

I encourage you to take notes, bookmark this page, or subscribe to this blog because this is going to be your guide if you choose to follow along. You are welcome to come back here for pointers if you get stuck along the way. We also depend on you to share your advice with others who may need help getting untangled. If you know someone who you think might need this, send them a link and let them know you care about their happiness. Stay tuned for each step and be warned... Once this ride starts, it's not going to stop and you might find it difficult to get off :) Good luck on your path and I hope to see you in comments.


Have you subscribed yet? If you've read this far, I assume you're ready to start your own journey. Let me help you. Subscribe so that you can easily come back here for advice if you get stuck. 

Things to Do While You're Naked

We all hope for financial stability, don't we? I mean, when was the last time you heard someone say "gee I'd love to be penniless and homeless". But we all know that the truth is, it could happen to any of us. Everyday, we do everything within our power to fight to keep it from happening. And while it's not the best situation to have to face, I've come up with a few ideas of what you can do should you ever find yourself in this situation, starting with the least horrible scenario.

Home with no furniture/decor - Really? Get over over it. Be grateful for the roof over your head and be patient for what's to come.

No clothing - Go to Goodwill, Salvation Army, or a local thrift store. You'll find some inexpensive and often times irressistible items there. Or, learn to sew and make your clothing from donated clothes. This is called upcycling and it's actually becoming a mini-trend. You can create the look you want by piecing together parts from many different garments.

No personal transportation - Use public transportation. I know where I live it's pretty cheap. Invest in a bike. It doesn't need gas, you'll get exercise, and it's low maintenance. Start walking...need I say more?

No friends - Start talking to people that strike you as interesting. Spark up conversations online. Go on Craigslist and plan meetups in your area based on shared interests. Go to the library and make friendly conversation with people browsing books that you like too.

No job - Do odd jobs around the neighborhood. Wash cars, babysit, organize, or cook for your neighbors. Use your skills (everyone is good at something) and work for yourself. Even if all you know how to do is talk, you could sit with the elderly and keep them company for a few hours a day.

No food - Buy or make a fishing line and catch your food if you live near water. Start a garder or even better a garden coop if you can get some help. Go to local homeless kitchens. Eat at friends and relatives houses until you can get back on track. Also, dare I say it, give foodstamps a try until you're back on your feet.

So there. If you're down on your luck, all hope is not lost. You can always pick yourself up out of the trenches. These are just a few things to get you thinking positively. I find that if you plan for the worst and hope for the best, you get more out of life and you will find yourself ready for anything.

Now it's your turn! What would you add to this list? Try to name one thing you would do if you were stripped of everything you have right now. Share your thoughts below. Be sure to subscribe to comments to follow this discussion.

The Chosen Ones...Life Values

Read the revised version of this post here.

These are the values I've chosen to guide my life outcome. I want to live my life for the experiences rather than for material reasons. I think this life path suits who I really am and who I'd like to become.

1. Personal Growth
2. Integrity
3. Courage
4. Optimism
5. Health
6. Respect
7. Diversity
8. Adaptability
9. Comfort
10. Creativity

As of now, these are my most strongly held values in order of importance to me. None of these words are meant to resonate with any other being besides myself. Using this basic list, I can now know what direction is best for my life. And at this point, I realize that I am still growing and my values may change. However, I feel that this is a firm start on shaping how I will live my life in order to achieve the outcome I desire. Good thing adaptability is one of my values...

I'd love to read your own list of values. What's most important to you in life?

Choosing Your Life Values

Read the revised version of this post here.

So I've been giving great attention to the meaning of my life and where I'd like to end this journey. Before I can do that though, I had to first recognize what's most important to me. This was no easy task. I had to sort through the years of social conditioning and past experiences. I didn't want my list of values to be biased in any way. I wanted it to have meaning directly related to me as an individual, or should I say directly related to my conscious self. To finalize my list of values, I had to do quite a bit of soul searching.

To begin, I created a rough draft based on how I've been choosing to live in the past. I looked for patterns of strong emotion. I looked for patterns of activities that I am naturally drawn to. This long process came up with about 18 words that I felt I already reflected in some way or another.

At this point, I went through each one and took out any that I felt were empty justifications of being human. In other words, I removed words that were not what I valued, but what I thought I should value. Even in my attempt to figure out who I am, I was still trying to please other people. Basically, those were no good so I shortened the list to 11 words.

With those 11 words, I went through each one again. This time I fast forwarded to my much older self. I closed my eyes and envisioned my life the way I wanted it to be in old age. Then, looking at my list of words, I made sure that each one fit in with that vision. If any of the words felt even slightly off-putting, it had to go. There were 4 off-putting words! Guess what? They had to go.

In my last step, I revised what i had come up with. The remaining 7 words were put in order of importance. I think I read that list at least 100 times just to make sure that the words all felt right. They did and I ended up adding 3 more words. Now that I think about it, those last 3 don't seem all that necessary, but they still feel right. I tried leaving them out, but the list felt incomplete. So now I have a list of 10 values that I feel very strongly about and I'm confident that they will carry me through a long and fulfilling lifetime.

Have you created a list of your own values? If so, what method did you use?

The Sabbotage of My Mind

I wrote a post about my values in which I was misled severely. My mind, with all of its emotions and labels, led me to believe that those were in fact the values I want to live by. Appearently, until I train my thoughts to agree with my spirit, this will be a natural reoccurance. However, I recognize my mind's interference and I have made adjustments accordingly.

If you like, you can read my mind's "perfect" values here. They are perfectly misleading. You can read my spirit's values here. Living for the present has once again proved to point me to my true self. I love my life :)

Long Term Goals and Short Term Goals.. There is a Difference

We've all made goals at some point in our lives. Some goals we accomplish, some we are still working on achieving, and some are tossed aside in frustration. This has to be the best definition of the majority of the goals I've tried to complete in the past. That's because I was missing some very important information about goals. I had to discover the big difference between long term and short term goals. The difference is so big that they cannot even be listed together on the Great To-Do List.

Long term goals are more like the overall way we wish to live our lives. These goals serve as a destination that could never be finalized. They are something we can always be working on. For instance, my long term goals fall along the lines of:

personal growth
being optimistic
being honest
living a healthy life
having fun
being creative

Your list may be entirely different from mine. The idea here is to have your long term goals reflect your top ten life values. Steve Pavlina has a posted an extensive list of values that I find incredibly useful for figuring out my own values. Once you've narrowed your list down to ten values, you can them turn them into long term goals.

Your short term goals are going to be the ones that help you live out your long term goals. For instance, I wish to live a creative life. So no matter what short term goals I choose, I should try to add some creativity to everything I do. Therefore, one of my short term goals could be learing to paint on canvas or I could learn to act on Broadway. Those are just two ways in which I could live creatively. Obviously, there are numerous ways to achieve that lifestyle and live out that specific long term goal.

Through the separation of long term and short term goals, I am able to create the life experiences I desire. My short term goals will act as my means to my long term goal ends. I want my short term goals to allow me to look back over my life and show how I've accomplished living out my values. I will allow my short term goals to serve as my life experiences that allow me to live out long term goals everyday.

I'm ready to shape my life into what I want it to be and take full control. To do that, I know I must not only choose my long and short term goals, but I must follow through as well. What are your short term and long term goals? What would you like to see when you look back over the span of your life?

New Year's Resolution Worth Keeping

Every year I say it and by about the 10th day of the year or so, I forget or quit or fail. The problem with making a New Year's resolution is that I've never known where I want to be in life. I barely know who I am but I'm working on it. I think the best New Year's resolution I can create for myself would be to discover who I am and who I want to be.

Walk with me for a minute here. I'm slowly turning my life into a dream world where I can create the life I want just by changing my level of consciousness. By being more aware of myself and my surroundings, I hope that I can create a sort of oneness that allows me to live any life I choose. Sort of like the Matrix movie, I can feed chunks of knowledge to myself and learn as I go. I expect wonderous things from this way of life.

The idea is to live a life of gratitude for what I already have, concentrate on what I want, live out my current life values, and share whatever I can with others. In creating this oneness, I can realize that by sharing with others, I am in essence sharing with myself. I am living a judge-free life and learning to see things from multiple perspectives.

I actually started this journey on December 9, 2010 and it was so overwhelming and life altering. From then, I've begun living a more conscious life, all day everyday. I've found that the more I allow myself to live in the moment, the less stress I'm exposed to. I've also found out that I'm the only one causing the stress in my life and that any stress still lingering is only a flaw for me to dive deeper into. To get rid of it, I have to sort things out for myself and find out why I'm still holding on to it. Let go of the fears so to speak.

Anyway more about those things later. I could go on about my experiences forever and it's only been about a month. I haven't even scratched the surface of what's to come. For now, I'll just say that my life is changing drastically and I'm loving the experience of it all so far. If you'd like to learn more about changing your own life, go to StevePavlina.com and dive in. My favorite topic there is about subjective reality. I think you'll find it quite interesting or you'll just think I'm a loon for believing in such a thing. But either way, I'm glad to be on this path and encourage you to try it yourself. If you have any questions or need help, just ask. What are your New Year's resolutions?