Are there physical things you are too afraid to do?

I have always been an adventurer but I am also a chicken.

I have parachuted out of an airplane because I thought it was my biggest fear. I thought if I conquered it, I would eliminate fear in my life. I was wrong. I did it, but I had some terrifying moments before I left the plane. In those day we did it solo.

I have had some scary times helicopter skiing and even dropping down some steep chutes, but I was able to pucker up and move. Scuba diving never bothered my and I always felt comfortable under water. I drove a race car for a few years and I would at first be intimidated when I went out on old tires that slipped at high speed, but once I got the new tires on I was fine.

Having just read the book “Blind Descent”, I realize that one thing scares me the most; tight spaces where I can’t move. The adventurers in this book descend into deep caves rappelling down water fall cliffs and scuba diving through under ground water tunnels not knowing where they are going.

But the thing they do that scares me the most is crawling through long tight tunnels where you can barely move or breathe; Claustrophobia.

Currently, my real life scare is surfing off big waves. I know by experience that hitting water on a fall from on top is like landing on cement. I am trying to improve my skills so that everything is automatic and the technique makes the drop more successful.

But I learned in trying to conquer physical fear that psychological fears are just as bad. We get stuck in comfort zones and we don’t have to leave the safe space. I would not get in front of a group and sing and luckily I will never have to.

Some things are closer to home. When I started writing I didn’t ever want to talk in first person. I wanted to keep my messages about things and not about me. I wanted to talk about you and not me.

Sales people are often afraid to make the big important calls that could really be life changing. I am sure lawyers, doctors, journalists, and engineers all have career advancing steps they could make but would rather not.

In “Naturally Selected” by Mark Van Vugt, he discusses leadership and why some are leaders and some are followers. He takes us back before we were homo sapiens. Before man started raising meat and vegetables, he lived in small nomadic groups that moved around to find food.

There was a lot of equality and individuals in the groups were known for their skills and generally had the say when it came to finding game or defending against an attack or migrating depending on the specialty for which the group recognized the individual.

The reason we have many irrational fears is that they are passed down through the millennia in our genes and it takes a long time for them to be eliminated. Scientists have wondered why people are afraid of spiders and snakes and not afraid of cars. A car could really kill you.

People in those groups were leaders sometimes and followers at other times. Once man started to live in one place and create surpluses through animal and vegetable husbandry, he had to start defending himself from invaders. Leaders were needed to coordinate activities and especially defense.

A lot of our fears cannot be explained in today’s world because they were developed to fit another world.

One of the fears that hold people back is commitment. Not just commitment to a mate but commitment to their lives. We tend now to be followers most of the time. We have submitted our lives to being busy surviving but also doing a lot of meaningless things.

Seth Godin recently mentioned in a post that we avoid the lizard brain that would like to reach us. We avoid the limbic brain that would like us to feel. We avoid the right brain of the neo cortex that would like some quiet time to create, connect to mother nature, or to connect to universal energies.

We fear boredom. We stay so busy we don’t have time to find out who we are and what we could express if we got our mind, bodies and spirit on the same path. We are afraid of life.

It is amazing how many people don’t have a passion other than chocolate. It is amazing that people have few activities in which they can really lose themselves and track of time as well.

We are afraid to slow down. We are afraid to eliminate distractions. We would be afraid to sit for 30 minutes by ourselves with nothing to do. I figure the average person that lives to be 84 years old has 30,000 days.  How many of the days you have had so far can you remember? How many days in this next month do you plan to make special?

Can you separate yourself from what is going on around you? Do you define your self as a book keeper, father, funny person, or community leader? They are all good but after 30,000 days you’re dead.

You have a lot to offer, you have a lot to express, you have a lot to experience, and you have to face a lot of fears before you can really get on with it. Maybe you would rather crawl into a real tight space where you can barely breathe than declare yourself.

I learned that even physical courage never gave me psychological courage. What I did learn was that discipline gave me focus and confidence that I could do more. I used healthy eating and exercise to get control of my minds efforts to sabotage progress and pushing the envelope. One learns to manage fear, not eliminate it.

I started writing every day to find my voice and get comfortable with the medium. I moved close to nature so I could stay connected. I learned that I like to research which luckily blends in with my writing.

I committed to surfing which is exciting and gives me a chance to pucker frequently. I deal with my fears and try to take them a step at a time. The one thing I don’t want to do is wind up feeling I didn’t ever have a chance to find out who I am and what I can do.

For some reason I am afraid of saber tooth tigers, but luckily I don’t have to deal with that very often. What I do have to deal with is the courage to stick to my commitments regardless of where I wind up. I have to challenge my self to keep getting better at my core competencies.

Just like when we were nomads, people might recognize us for what we can contribute to the community.

**

See Resource Books for personal and career development

Blind Descent by James M. Tabor

Naturally Selected. The Evolutionary Science of Leadership by Mark van Vugt

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Riots in Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt, Greece, and Ireland.

They’re about freedom and economics and dreams.

A report in the NY Times discussed how college freshman admit to having emotional problems and their stress level is the highest ever; girls more than boys. They come to college already stressed from high school. Possible causes are parents under stress, student loans, and concern that with a college degree they will be working for minimum wage, if they can get a job.

There is stress because the capital has been sucked out of the global economy. There is stress because since 1990, consumers in developed countries have financed depreciating goods and over valued assets.

There is stress because the populations of developing countries are getting the manufacturing jobs of the developed countries but they are still living in poverty.

There is stress because governments moved in to save banks in the melt down and now the tax payers have shouldered the burden of a mountain of debt.  The government and the tax payers have to live with the consequences while the businesses and banks that were saved are still looking out for themselves.

On a larger scale, the developed countries have time now to be more productive and generate income and taxes to avoid the austerity measures already levied on Greece and Ireland. Japan has also been given a warning that their national debt is too high to their Gross Domestic Product (ion). (GDP)

This is the battle every country now faces. Government (taxpayer) debt is financed with bonds purchased by domestic and foreign investors. Investors watch the percentage of government debt to the economy’s productivity. When the ratio is too high, the bond buyers want higher interest rates. You know where that spiral goes.

The solution is each countries population has to produce more. In developing countries like the BRICs  (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) this means more hours in the factory. In developed countries like the U.S., we have to create more solutions to existing needs.

We export agriculture, pharmaceuticals, architecture, advertising, and technology, to name a few items. But our economy has been run on 70% consumption of GDP. China is run on 60% production of GDP.  There is the bridge we have to cross.

We have to stop purchasing unnecessary items and create useful items. While the U.S. has been using design to improve things the world doesn’t now want, developing countries have been producing necessities.

We have to get lean. We have to get lean in every sense of the word. We consume too much food that is not healthy. Our medical costs are killing our spendable income. Our health is robbing us of productivity time and energy. We need the stamina of better fitness.

We need to be inspired and operate at our peak performance levels. Our global competitors are driven by a need to survive. That is powerful incentive. We have to get passionate to fight this economic battle.

The Middle East is rioting over freedom. Greece and Ireland rioted over a battle already lost. You can bet there will be more global riots over the austerity caused from debt as populations become frustrated.

The U.S. has more time than any other country to get it right because the world depends on our currency. This gives us time to increase productivity, reduce consumption, save dollars, and export new solutions.

That is each and everyone of our action plans. We can be positive because we can do it. We have to believe in ourselves and our potential. We have to respect our gifts and improve our health and fitness. We have to honor our capabilities and spend more time focusing on our talent and less time wasting energy on non productive activities.

We have to feel our power. Power comes from self discipline. A great path is to control your appetites. Create control over your mind by willing it to consume less, exercise more and connect with community.

The brain produces happiness chemicals when it is engaged in challenging activities which we know we can handle. Flow is the highest level of emotional intelligence. There is a double pop of happiness when you use your talents for a higher good.

We have been becoming more entrepreneurial. Local businesses that serve and support community are increasing and employing more unemployed. Big business that includes serving the less fortunate or educating the untrained are adding a required dimension to their Brand.

It is a global economy in which we live. We are a unit of 300 million people that are rewarded or punished for what we produce. We are individuals but we are an integral part of the whole. A body can only be as strong as the sum of its cells. You can be happy becoming the strongest cell possible.

**

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I am always sad to see pictures of polar bears floating out to sea on an ice berg.

I have become some what immune to how many people are starving in the world.

I believe that humans should have concern for the planet they have wrecked by creating a smaller carbon foot print and buying the right light bulbs. I am not sure that humans or natural causes are creating global warning but I believe it is happening and we are contributing.

But let’s look at a few facts. Global population is supposed to increase by 40% by 2050. That means we are going from 6.3 billion to around 9.5 billion people; a high percentage are moving to the cities. Hundreds of millions now live without energy and are starving.

Energy as Robert Price kindly defines in “Power Hungry” is the ability to do work and power is the rate at which work gets done. Energy sources have power and energy density which is their ability to supply the power we need for the tasks we have to complete.

90% of the global power today is supplied by oil, coal, and gas. Nuclear is growing. We don’t have enough power yet to supply electricity to half the world’s 6.5 billion people. India says 400 million of its people don’t have a light bulb in their homes. India has coal and it says it will use it. Who is going to tell them to stop?

The U.N. says to keep people from starving we need to grow more food than we are currently growing. The main food sources are wheat, corn, soy, and rice. Weather as much as anything interrupts our food production. We need arable land, water, and energy to feed the world. As we have seen recently, people riot when they don’t have food.

Solar, wind, and biofuels are green but don’t deliver much power and require a lot of real estate. For an easy example Robert Price says compare the power you may get out of a bucket of leaves compared to a bucket of gas. The several hundred million people in poverty are cooking with sticks, leaves, and dung. The fumes are killing them and they spend too much time gathering their fuel.

Teslas and Volts are great but they are expensive and don’t go very far. The real problem in scale is that batteries don’t produce much power for their size. Electricity won’t power planes, ships, and big trucks. The issues with solar and wind power is that they are dependent on sources that are not reliable, cannot be stored, and need a lot of real estate.

If we wanted to substitute bio fuel from switch grass or corn to cover 10% of U.S. gasoline needs we would need land comparable to the state of Oklahoma. Then we would be reducing our food production, which we export by that 62,000 square miles.

When this next 3 billion people arrive on earth and move to the cities, they will need more energy and more food. As Lawrence C. Smith points out in “The World in 2050” as nations develop like the BRIC countries Brazil, Russia, India, and China they need energy to increase productivity. You should also include Indonesia, Pakistan, and East Asia.

Energy consumption is directly correlated to economic output. Eric Janzen argues in “The Post Catastrophe Economy” that we need more energy to employ the 400 million globally unemployed and equal amount of people living in starvation. Employment increases consumption which also brings people out of starvation.

Coal produces a million BTU for about $1-$2; Oil and gas for about $6-$12. Countries that have coal are going to continue burning it. Developing and impoverished nations need cheap and available energy to increase productivity. The cheaper the fuel, the more competitive their exports.

Only about 30% of oil is used for gasoline. The balance is refined for other uses. The U.S. is the world’s top refiner and has net exports of 1.9 billion barrels of refined petroleum.

The reality is we will continue to process oil, coal, gas, and nuclear energy while we make ourselves feel better by contributing financing to the alternative sources of energy. The truth seems to be that for the next several decades, there will an increased demand for the fuels that produce power at the cheapest possible rates.

Even if we hit peak oil, peak gas, and peak coal we will continue to use them. Some experts say we have already hit peak oil and peak coal.

The U.S. leads the world in hydro carbon resources which are oil, coal, and gas. The U.S. has about 970 billion barrels of oil equivalent resources in oil, coal, and gas. Russia is second with about 955 billion barrels and China third with about 466 billion barrels. India is further down the list.

The U.S. is second in natural gas resources behind Russia and ahead of China.Global Natural gas “resources” are estimated to approximate 5.4 trillion equivalent barrels of oil and the U.S. is first in those resources with enough to equal about 350 billion barrels of equivalent oil. That’s bigger than Saudi Arabia.  Resources are probable supply, not proven surveyed supply.

The cleanest most productive energy could be supplied by natural gas and nuclear energy. They don’t require much land and they produce a lot of power and they are relatively cheap. Most nations are ramping up nuclear productivity.

The stark reality is that we need plentiful, powerful, cheap energy.  Oil, coal, gas, and nuclear are the way the world is going to continue getting it. Most people won’t accept lower productivity to make the planet green. Surveys show people are not willing to add $100 to their electric bills to go green.

Industry is not going to provide the mechanisms to harness green energy because they know it is not scalable and cannot replace existing fuels. Green energy will be developed, however, because governments are willing to fund it.

Natural gas and nuclear are relatively clean. Oil, gas, and coal are relatively cheap. That is the real direction we are headed. When you listen to the arguments and evaluate the realities, I think you will see that green is necessary but the demands of a growing population are going to defer its real impact for many decades.

**

Power Hungry by Robert Bryce

The World in 2050 by Lawrence C Smith

The PostCatastrophe Economy by Eric Janszen

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These are unusual times and they are going to get more unusual.

29,000 years ago when the first Asians crossed the land bridge to Alaska, man was still clubbing its prey to death and was nomadic. It took a long time before he learned to raise his own meat and grow his own vegetables. He had time.

Today a more immediate transformation for high pay job seekers is needed to fulfill the limited amount of opportunities in growing businesses. More jobs are being fulfilled by technology that can answer the known data and do it quicker than humans.

What is needed now are advanced human skills.

Now to be useful to growing firms, only those who have demonstrated a new level of skills, curiosity, inspiration, and social intelligence are going to flourish in a very competitive market place. An M.B.A. might be too myopic for the new work place.

Most businesses have realized that unless you are a service business catering to local communities, you are probably in a global competition. Everyone wants to export their knowledge, services or products and current technology makes everyone a player.

The American consumer is less a factor now to American business. Even General Motors just reported that their sales in China exceed sales in the U.S.

Jeremy Allaire, chairman and chief executive of Brightcove, an online video platform for Web sites, in an interview with Adam Bryant of the NY Times said he looks for some core competencies and characteristics in his hires.

He wants intelligence. These days, intelligence is not just left brain competencies in math, science, and language. Intelligence is intellectual, creative, global, and street smart all wrapped into a nice package.

The intelligence of today’s worker must contain a curiosity of how things work, why they work, which direction we are going, and how to get things done. The valuable player today must create a value added component to rise above minimum wage. Today’s valuable hire has an expansive view of the world and of their industry and how they can contribute.

They spend the time to develop their creative skills, have discipline, and strong work ethics. Each person is in a sense their own president and must create a full spectrum of talents, insights, and collaborative skills.

The work place for high income is no longer a track meet, it is the Olympics.

Jeremy says “I’m in a unique position in that I have a view across every dimension of the business. And so you have conversations about different parts of the business and you see how quickly they can connect to it, parse it and ask good questions about it. If they ever say, “Yeah, I don’t really know much about that,” that’s a real problem.”

As the world has downsized, the new generation of customer wants brands that show not only quality but a concern for the environment and their community. There is a need for kindness and care.

The same consideration is necessary in the work place. Business wants people who play well with others and understand how to contribute without getting their egos involved.

As Jeremy adds: “Another attribute, which has been really important from a cultural perspective, is that I want people who are nice, who are genuinely good people, who have humility.”

Developing core competencies becomes more important in the competitive market for high paying jobs. Understanding what you do best and expanding your skills in and out of your expertise makes you more valuable for the over whelmed nature of today’s competitive environement.

We read about the battles between Google, Face Book, Microsoft, or Apple, Verizon, AT&T and Dell and know that these are the visible competitions for supremacy and survival. Underneath in the businesses we don’t read about, the struggle is the same.

Individuals need to increase intensity in that they are the cells that power the larger organisms. The personal characteristics of health, fitness, and creativity combined with the willingness to contribute and become a team player are essential to create peak performance. Each person should also have their world view and understand the value of community and contributing to the larger good as they perform even the smallest services.

The peak performer has flow in his daily activities as he focuses on activities and has confidence in his ability to perform the duties required. Happiness has been shown a requisite to top performance and so peak performers have a value system that is centered in appreciation, positive thinking, and optimism.

The post crisis performer now sees the necessity for self reliance, responsibility, and accountability.  The new player is excited about their opportunities and wants to create an important role for their talents and world vision.

The economy will be tougher before it gets a lot better and it will be led by people who have shed past concepts and transformed into the future design of peak performers.

**

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Vision, belief, and faith

It sounds simple and maybe superficial, because anyone can say they have these qualities, but do they put them to practice?

The three can come together in any combination and don’t even have to have a goal. We think that champions have a goal to become number one in some endeavor.

You can create the foundation to where you maximize your capabilities and then choose the direction of focus.

Lets start with Do You Have faith that you have unlimited capabilities that maybe you have not begun to tap?

Let’s test it. How optimum is your health, fitness, mental capacity, faith and connection?

These would entail that you have maximized your healthy eating, exercise regimen, brain development, belief you are here for a purpose, and believe you are connected to all life here and in the universe

This would deliver peak physical energy, stamina, energy and alertness. You would have mental capacity to take on exciting new learning endeavors. You would know that humans can achieve remarkable levels of peak performance. You would feel that you are here to improve yourself and help others.

You would be positive, optimistic, generous, loving, and happy. Does this sound like you?

How could you get into each feeling in an extreme way?

First, you could eat raw. That means only natural food and no cooking. In a few months you would be a shadow of your former self, have lots of physical and mental energy, feel closer to mother nature, and have much better control of your mind.

Secondly, you could exercise regularly with a maximum effort and rest routine that created new levels of achievement and pushed your personal envelope on a regular basis. Not only would you build self esteem, energy, brain support, and stamina, you would tackle the biggest obstacle of all; your mind. You would over come its resistance to pain and physical limitations.

Thirdly, you could develop your mental capacity by first eliminating brain drain activities. You could restrict the amount of time you read emails, texts, watch TV, drink, and engage in meaningless activities to stave off boredom.

Instead you could focus on activities that give your right side creative brain more time to focus on problem alternatives, creative thinking, and subconscious connection to universal energies. How?  Long monotonous  periods of walking, running, meditating, biking, doing hobbies, house work, car washing, gardening, or solo sports.

For maximum mental capacity you have to have your life in order. You have to live within your means, be responsible to your obligations, eliminate procrastination, treat people respectfully and respect all people, develop a compassion for suffering and community, and be a positive influence to everyone.

Would this be a person different than your current self? Would it be a champion?

Would this kind of order, self mastery, energy, and faith give you more power to reach your peak performance?  Would it help you build stronger relationships? Could your new focus take you to your ultimate purpose and happiness?

In this fashion, you could rise to the plateau and then decide where to focus your renaissance vitality. Each day as you build, you recognize your greater potential and your destiny to be a champion.

**

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This should be a new science. The categories are unlimited, but I will only tackle a few.

The first and most dramatic way to change quickly is through eating. Most diets tell you what to eat, but if they stressed what to eliminate, the remaining choices would be easy.

Eliminate sugar, flour, red meat, bad fats, and processed foods. That eliminates soda, desserts, candy, bread, fried food, and foods that come in boxes or packages. That hopefully leaves fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, good fats, and water.

I have a good salad and a good soup with strong cancer fighters. My salad includes kale, parsely, spinach, cabbage, carrots, onions, and celery. I then use a salad dressing of olive oil, apple cider vinegar and seasonings.

Specialists will say that the chemicals in cancer fighting vegetables will blow up cancer cells. That seems to be good guerillas to have on your side and my vegetables are good cancer fighters. You can find your own in “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth” by Jonny Bowden.

I make a good soup with black eyed peas, lentils, green peas, pinto beans, brown rice, potatoes, yams, kale, spinach, parsley, onions, mushrooms, celery, carrots, and a bullion cube. I cook chicken and I throw in the chicken carcass  to give it great flavor and provide some more protein.

For dinner, I might have my salad and soup and have plenty of nourishment. If you want to go to extremes, eliminate cooking. I went raw for four months and lost 20 pounds. Without cooking, your choices become even healthier and you can eat a lot because natural foods have no calories.

The results were I got very lean, had excellent energy because my brain and digestion were never fighting for oxygen, and felt more connected to earth because I was eating only what mother nature provided.

The next great area for elimination is brain drains. I am fortunate that I don’t have to report for a job so I can do what ever with my days. My kids are grown so I have minimum responsibilities. I don’t carry a cell phone and I don’t watch TV.

The only reason for telling you this is that I know what happens when you eliminate everything. I write posts and work on E Books every morning. I read a book a day. When I was busy, I only wanted to read mind candy to escape. But now I have the full capacity to read books with serious material.

Uncluttering the mind is like taking all the programs off your computer, you have much more capacity.

The second part of this is to eliminate worry items. I take care of any responsibilities immediately. I pay my bills right away or know how I will pay them. I have savings left over each month because I live within my meager but sufficient means.

The third part of this is to build in relaxation or refreshment time. I include recreation into each day and luckily because I live at the beach, it is usually surfing. I take walks. I meditate. My nervous system is as relaxed as it can be and my mind is as refreshed as I can create.

I know most people can’t get to do all these things, but compare your life and start eliminating your busy items. The problem with limiting your mental capacity with too many items is that when you do not allow your brain to relax, it won’t take on exciting ventures or new learning. It only wants to escape.

You ever hear people talk about how they are bored? Most people fear being bored. They then fill their days checking emails, text messages, and plugging MP3’s into their ears or watching TV, drinking, smoking and taking drugs. They are anxious, fearful, frustrated, and often angry.

The more they would eliminate, the more mental capacity they would have to learn something new and exciting and then they would have less need to fill their mental capacity with things that were meaningless.

In Infinite Quest, John Edwards, a well know medium and psychic suggests a special meditation everyday. You create a special room where you visit. Before you can go into the room there is a chest outside the door.

You dump all your negative feelings, your past negative experiences, people who have troubled you plus, plus into the chest and close the lid. Then you can pick up the key and go into the room for a session. We carry around a lot of stress in our past disappointments.

So I have started the list for you. Look how much lighter and different you could feel just from these changes.

**

Infinite Quest by John Edwards

150 Healthiest Foods on Earth by Jonny Bowden

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I have surfed as a teenager, but after years of skiing, I am relearning.

I have certainly gone beyond where I was back in my teen years, I had a 9’6” board which was relatively easy to catch waves and was very stable.

Now I have a long board and have started with a shorter board as well.

The difference in the two is major. The shorter board is more difficult to catch waves because it doesn’t have the surface area to catch the power. Therefore I have to wait longer in the wave which means I have to move faster to get up before the wave crashes.

It is also less stable once up so my balance has to be just right. It also prefers bigger waves in order to get the power it needs. Those bigger waves often come with rougher surf meaning I am ducking more waves to get out and crashing is getting a thrashing.

Therefore, when I am finally in position to ride, my adrenaline is up for several reasons. After I have caught several rides I am no longer thinking about anything but me and the board. But for the first waves I have difficulty concentrating on the board and am thinking more about the steepness of the wave or the consequences of crashing.

After I have caught several waves I get into a flow. It is only me and the ocean and the board and the waves are my servants. On the short board until I have caught a few, the waves are the master and I am a humble servant.

When I see only me and my board and don’t pay attention to the waves or the consequences everything works great. How easy is it for you to do that in real life? Athletes describe this as being in the zone.

It is the environment in which you find absolute enjoyment and peak productivity.

In our daily lives not only are there interruptions and too much on our minds to get into flow, we allot them.

I get into flow each morning as I write. I have set the circumstances to create the right environment. It might start by taking care of my responsibilities each day so that nothing in my personal or business life is hanging over my head. I pay the necessary bills or know when I will pay them. There is no fear or dread hanging in my subconscious.

Failing to get into flow with a career or at a job produces less than your potential. When you are concentrating on the rewards of doing a good job instead of the job, you lose concentration. When you have so many things on your mind instead of the task at hand your performance is less than optimum.

My older daughter is a new head hunter moving high income sales people to new positions. She seems to talk about making more money by doing a good job. I have found with sales people that when that is their primary motive, it becomes transparent to everyone involved.

It is difficult to get into flow if you are not doing something you thoroughly enjoy where the activity is the reward. We all need money, but if we are concentrating on the money first and the performance second, the enjoyment and the performance of flow will be elusive.

Often we have too much responsibility and we become multi taskers. People think they are great at it because everything gets done. It’s like people who drive while talking on their cell phones think they are great at it. Tests have shown these drivers have the same reaction to a surprising event as an inebriated person.

Flow is the participation in an activity in which you have competence or have thoroughly practiced, is a challenge, but not beyond your capabilities, and in which you can eliminate distractions while you engage.

Focus has to be 100% to get into flow.

The rewards are worth it.

**

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Ever know going into a challenging period you would need more courage, stamina, and will power.

Always having been an exerciser and usually a runner, I would increase my work outs going into periods I knew would be challenging.

Early man knew that he did not have the strength to push a large boulder. If, however, he had a long piece of wood and shoved one end under the boulder and placed a stone on the ground a few feet back he could increase his power against the boulder.

It’s like arming up going to war. It has been determined by many generals that it is better to have more soldiers than the other army. The Romans used to have more weapons to shoot at opposing forces before they engaged the foot soldiers.

By increasing my work outs, I proved to my mind that I could do more. I would push beyond previous limits as a trial run for what I would have to do at work. I would increase the distance or the intensity or duration of workouts to reach new limits.

It was sort of a lever giving my mind more power to face a challenge.

**

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Your future is dependent on several stacked economic layers of dynamic activity each spinning independently but connected like many records on a spindle. It is also dependent on your skills and your attitude.

In Gordon Brown’s book “Beyond the Crash” he points out the world is out of whack in how money is transferred for production and consumption. The developing countries are receiving a great deal of income dispersed among people often earning only $10 a day. These are not great consumers.

The U.S. and Europe previously responsible for 60% of the world’s consumption and therefore employment are cutting back by the trillions. How long before those receiving money for production become worthwhile consumers? From Gordon’s analysis I see those lines intersecting in maybe 10 plus years.

So the second layer is how do individual countries or the U.S. recover when dealing with reduced global demand? At this point the global demand affects every country’s standard of living.

If we are not producing and selling domestically or exporting, unemployment increases and there is downward pressure on wages. As a nation we are in this together and somewhat helpless individually to affect the forces of global competition.

Big business, however, has recovered and is storing the reserves to ride out the storm. This makes business a shelter in the storm, but their lack of spending increases the duration of the storm.

So how do individuals find their niche with the prospects of continued excess capacity on a global scale?

Big business finds value in employees with traditional corporate skills, technological skills, innovative skills, and collaborative skills. The employee that can incorporate all four into their repertoire have the best chance for continued employment and advancement.

The balance of the populations has to find a niche in which their labor, their management skills, their consulting skills or their entrepreneurial skills can find a piece of the income distribution. The economy needs plenty of third party resources that can supply solutions the big business machine cannot supply internally.

In “Spend Shift”, John Gerzema shows how people are seeing greater prospects in self employment than in looking for jobs. This new generation of entrepreneurs are starting local with neighborhood businesses and creating community.

A new generation of customer is looking for businesses that support the values of quality, kindness, sustainability, and community. There are new opportunities to develop new branding on every product and service. People are considering the combination of service and the process as a company’s total brand.

The third layer an of an individual’s prospects on top of the global and national developments is how they learn to cope with change. In “Spend Shift”,  John Gerzema illustrates how several segments of the population have made a positive change by acknowledging their change in status and developing a new attitude in adjusting their future expectations.

He shows surveys of the Millennial generation’s optimism for creating a better future (than did their parents and current leaders) and their willingness to be the leaders. We can see the glass as half full or half empty.

I see a fourth layer above the coping level and that is the level of happiness we choose to have. In “The Happiness Advantage” by Shawn Achor, he shows that a positive attitude, optimism, and happiness make people more productive. A positive mind set creates activated neurotransmitters, endorphins, and dopamine that create a higher level of performance.

Happiness will depend perhaps on seeing that our situation is our responsibility but maybe not totally our fault. We all need some absolution. The Western world has gotten carried away with a dream that didn’t last. Now we have to focus on creating value with a new perspective.

Happiness will be dependent on the appreciation we can develop for who we are, how we are still blessed, and the unfulfilled potential we still carry. We can still be healthy, fit, and find flow. To the extent we can accept our financial potential and also explore our opportunities for personal development, we can find a happiness that may have eluded us prior to the melt down.

More writers about all disciplines are finding that a positive mind set, optimism, and ability to develop flow in activities and life are the best shock absorbers and the key for individuals to find new meaning in this multi layered conundrum.

Developing flow in activities that excite us and lives that could excite us is the highest level of performance and it does lead to the highest level of satisfaction and happiness. We can rise above the lower levels of global performance and make a contribution that does stand out in a world that needs leadership.

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See my suggested  Resource Books for more information on these topics.

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