Archive for August, 2011
Are People Forgetting About the Dream?
Posted by: | CommentsNot only are young people forgetting the dream, half the population is trying to avoid the nightmare.
The bus that balances on the edge of the cliff seems to be tipping down the hill. Whether it is true or not, it is what we read and we seem to believe what is in print. The U.S. debt ceiling debate seems to have been a tipping point that stole the often optimistic scenarios.
But what we are experiencing is also a bell weather for what we expect in the future. An L.A. Times article said:
“Fewer than half of Americans believe that the current generation will have a better life than the last, according to a Gallup poll this spring. It was the most pessimistic showing for that barometer in nearly three decades.” Tiffany Hsu and Shan Li, L.A.Times
My daughter just graduated from four years of college and doesn’t see many opportunities for an English Major. These institutions teach students how to learn, but there are only a few curricula that might be relevant to finding a job in this and the future economy.
What’s worse, students are starting to evaluate the student loan debt and the job prospects after finishing four years of school.
“Anthony Wong, a business major at Palm Beach State College in Florida, said his peers are debating whether to finish school. They complain that an expensive degree saddled with loans no longer guarantees a good salary or even employment.
Those majoring in computer science, engineering, accounting and health occupations, for example, have been much more successful in getting jobs,” he said. “Kids who majored in humanities often end up doing really, really badly in the labor market.” L.A. Times.
Adults with jobs are becoming more concerned about keeping them in spite of how long they have performed for their company. People with real estate, stocks and bonds have already seen their net worth halved once and are concerned whether their buildings will have tenants and whether after fleeing the stock market they can live on 2% interest from bonds and savings accounts.
It appears that in the future safety nets will get trimmed. It seems that unemployment insurance could get trimmed and social security and Medicare will also come under the knife. If you lived in a developing country you would take your meager earnings and still save 30%. What dies is consumption. When consumption, which propels 70% of the U.S. GDP slows, it starts a downward spiral.
Better to look ahead and prepare than look behind and pine for something that may be disappearing. I have worked for firms that say you to get to eat what you kill. We are returning to survival for the fittest. Yet it is not just everyman for himself. There is evidence that community is forming to a greater extent than ever.
The globe has become more social and tightly knit online. Everyone is trying to communicate. Some want freedom and organize rebellions. Some are critiquing their shopping experience with retailers. Others are keeping their friends in the loop every time they take a pee.
Happiness lies in finding value out of every day. I am in a tight knit little group that surfs, enjoys evening beers together, and shares a lot of suppers by people putting out what ever they enjoy making. As everyone watches their budget we really enjoy the experience of living at the beach and having friends that care.
Can Women on the Rise Save the World?
Posted by: | CommentsIn the history of man women have been the ones that served.
Men’s superior strength and instinct to provide and protect allowed him to necessarily be the Alpha in the family. His superior physical capabilities also made it necessary that he go to war to protect his tribe, community, and nation.
Society has changed in the West. A larger percentage of women now complete high school and enroll in college. They have a higher percentage of job retention when firms need to reduce payrolls. They have the attributes business looks for when hiring.
Women have become CEO’s successful politicians and are destined to break the glass ceiling of the Presidency. Women are just as capable of raising children on their own as men. They can now gain employment, become professional athletes, politicians and raise children with or without men.
They have intelligence, sensitivity, intuition, guile, ambition, steely nerves, negotiation skills and can be tougher than men. Whereas they thrive on being the Alpha, men suffer when their skills are no longer required to provide and protect a family. Men have the testosterone and need the status as well.
Maybe men and the world will be better for the feminine touch or maybe it will be just as ruthless. In any case, as we look at our economy, global warming, peace, health, and dysfunctions, men haven’t exactly made the world a nirvana.
Maybe women can’t correct human nature and have contributed to current conditions equally as followers, but their growing leadership with an ability to touch both their masculine and feminine sides might bring an ability for nations to more cooperatively work together at peace, economics, and social reform.
Developed and developing countries are finding their fates intertwined. The developing countries need safety nets to increase consumption. The developed nations need people to become more self reliant. Citizens need to be unshackled and given a voice for even the most subjugated nations have tasted the freedom of Democracy.
The world needs to master food production, energy efficiency, education, and resource allocation. It needs a spirit of cooperation and the laying down of arms. The problems are bigger than any one nation or alliance. The alpha mentality has outlived its usefulness.
The positive forces at work need to triumph over the negative forces. We need the intelligence, drive, and spiritual aspects of human personality to work together to avoid the chasm toward which we seem to be headed.
Is There a Difference Between Commitment and Stoke?
Posted by: | CommentsThe English language often falls short of expressing some emotions. A revelation can be a million words all reduced to an instantaneous flash. How do you explain the almost unexplainable?
I am reading a book wherein the father guiding his son in surfing is trying to explain on their trip in Baja what it feels like to get barreled. The son experiences it and he is left short of the words to express what it means to be surrounded by water that could crush you and yet seems to be caressing you.
Commitment is usually the effort to get better or reach a goal. I am committed to being a better surfer and yet I am so stoked that going in the water does not take much arm twisting. When I started, I would go to the surfer observation point and sit with the rest of the dudes to decide whether the waves were worth entering. Many days they would decide it wasn’t the day.
In my commitment to get better, I decided that I shouldn’t judge. Each morning I have a routine that starts around 6 a.m. with some writing and stretching. By 7 to 8 I am free to take my first look across the street at the waves and take pictures for my three surf reports.
I will often stretch some more and do push ups and then run some stairs for warm up to maintain my cardio. By this time, I am really ready to go into the water.Once in, I find the wave sets are often not what they appear to be from the street. Because the sets change every twenty minutes what was calm may soon go off.
Some days I get the giant storm surf that makes me choose between close outs and the rideables. On the next day I might get the perfect in between waves. I might do a second session just to get wet on a calm day and find really fun small sets.
My commitment is to keep going in and not judge whether it is good or bad. The more I am in, the bigger the stoke. The outcome is continuous improvement.
Economy May Now Be Global Concern for Citizens
Posted by: | CommentsWhen the governments start conferring because they say problem is too big for any one body, you wonder about power to the people.
Ever wonder what happens when you open Pandora’s box?
What may have been started by 12 security guys trying for better profits may now affect 10 billion people. Is that Chaos Theory at work? The governments made their best efforts to save the major institutions and then spent more trying to keep everyone working.
Now the previously engaged entitlement programs, government services, new debt requirements, and reduced tax prospects for double dip recession could send governments over the edge.
Governments were created to serve the people. Now what do the people do to save themselves? Governments have been given spending and taxing authority which the people have increasingly bludgeoned for more regulation, entitlement, and economic stimulation. They are long ships loaded with too many containers that are in very rough seas.
As a surfer, I am often waiting for the 4 foot waves when the rogue 7 footer comes up outside and you can’t escape getting creamed. As we tend to our work and families, the rogue waves are lurking. The fact that governments are out of control is as much our fault as theirs.
How can you insulate? Stay healthier and get healthier. The physical and emotional stress is going to increase. Trim your budget. You should start sizing down because it will be hard to dodge the impact of economic, currency, and government turmoil.
It is frightening to see how easily people take to the streets. We have seen it in Greece and Ireland already in protest of government austerity measures. Now London is burning because of a police action. People are going to find it easier to let out their frustration in destruction.
Like Face Book and Twitter fueled the engines of change in the Mid East, taking to the streets is Face Book squared. It makes me think of how chaotic it could get if something really major occurred. It makes me think that I should be prepared to stay home for maybe a week at a time.
My daughter in London says it is hard to find stores open. This is just a small sample of how even a modern major civilized cosmopolitan Western society city can get shut down.
We need to examine every facet of our business, personal, and security measures to prepare for more turmoil. The governments are spending to delay what could have been corrected a few years ago by letting everything sort itself out. At some point everything still has to be sorted out and it will generally point in the direction of contraction.
The markets are showing us now how contraction works. What the people need to consider is not making it worse on their fellow citizens in order to express their disappointment with their governments.
Inspiration and Flow More Important Now than Ever
Posted by: | CommentsIt would be too easy to give in to the calamities befalling governments around the world and think we are doomed.
What is clear is that the financial melt down of a few years ago continues to ripple or maybe even tear through the structural fabric of our societies. The more desperate politicians become to salvage our solvency, the more things will be on the table for budget cuts than were ever allowable before.
Some of the stories we do not pay attention to are the individuals and companies that are growing and thriving in the face of unemployment and maybe a double dip recession. Unemployment reports say that the unemployed don’t have the skills necessary for the positions that are available.
My personal opinion about college education is that it is important for teaching the youth how to learn but has become rather irrelevant for giving them skills to earn a living in the current market place unless they go to graduate school.
There are three real camps for income in the current situation. First is the minimum wage employee who has to be the front end or back end of an operation. Secondly are the high skilled employees who fulfill the needs of an organization. Thirdly are the niche players and organizations that can find need that must be filled for organizations or individuals to function which they may not be able to perform themselves economically.
In this niche we can include services like repairs, consulting, coaching, website work, affiliate advertising, internet promotion, and construction to name just a few. As economies trend up or down, there are needs that have to be fulfilled and people who can pay for these services.
One way to look at niche services is innovation. How can a product or service that has become obsolete or irrelevant be changed, revised, or improved to become relevant and necessary.
The most important element in our societal fabric is the human spirit. Everyone has the desire to survive and we can still have the will to thrive. We have to still appreciate our capabilities, our right to happiness, and our ability to adapt. We have strengthen our personal fortitude with more focused care into healthy eating and fitness.
This is no time to degenerate. We have to assess our skills and find a passion that would express who we are. We have to focus on contributing. We have to have gratitude that we are here and help others feel the same.
Flow is the result of engaging in an activity in which we have competence and can pursue without distraction or concern for judgment or reward. It is the highest level of peak performance. It is the highest level emotional intelligence and creates the brain chemicals for happiness.
Yes we have to drive through the sleet, wind, and hail to deliver the mail. We have to pull ourselves up by our boot straps and give it our all. Few athletes condemn themselves when they know they left it all on the floor and they were just beat by a better team.
Fear is common place in times of turmoil, but fear can be managed. There is always fear when there is risk, but the desire and commitment to make a difference can overcome all obstacles.
Don’t Let the Lipstick Fool You
Posted by: | CommentsI rarely do book reviews although they are often the source of my ideas.
Reading four books a week, I come across a lot of ideas. I like history and it is full of courageous stories and heroes. I am just finishing a book by and about Lisa Leslie who you probably know as a great female basketball player.
Not all tall people become great basketball players. When a female is 6 foot tall before she is ten, she faces a lot of cruel chiding from her school mates. When she grows up without a father and moves from relative to relative while her mom tries to create a better life, she can feel some alienation.
If you are a female or have a daughter you might experience what it is like to grow up in a male oriented world. It doesn’t get easier in athletics. As my daughter looks for her post graduate first job, the effort to utilize or find a place for your talents in this economy is no easy task.
Lisa had the blessing of having a loving mother. She had the blessing of growing up in the U.S. which affords opportunities not available in developing countries. She had the blessing of having great guidance from those who bought into the vision she initiated.
Everyone can have a dream. To make this dream come true is everyone willing to rise at 5 a.m. and work long days to make it happen? This is where most of the successes have divided the road. Given talent and a vision, the successful people we know have been willing to put in the hours.
It is said that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. From Roger Federer to Peyton Manning to Mozart and countless people we know and don’t know, the successful ones put in the hours. There are very few short cuts to becoming great. Even if there are great advantages from contacts or lucky breaks, at some point the performer has to stand on their own and meet all comers.
You can buy a new book from Amazon starting at $.097 and ship for $3.99. I bought one for my daughter. When ever you think your life is tough, you can find someone who overcame more odds than you.
“Lisa Leslie, Don’t Let the Lipstick Fool You.”
China, Smoking and Listening to Our Inner Voice
Posted by: | CommentsAs much as I always loved to be independent, I also liked to be coached.
When I was in real estate and doing quite well, the company President appreciated my efforts but always called me a Maverick. I was a top officer and wanted to be President and he said if he left the country for two weeks and left me in charge the whole company would be different when he came back.
The U.S. is sort of like that. We like calling our own shots and we don’t take guff from anyone. We fight internally to the dismay and chagrin of outsiders who depend on our stability for their own welfare. We could bear our parents fighting, but hoped it didn’t lead to divorce.
But this type of independence and leadership also carries an arrogance that can be self destructive. The U.S. has been more powerful than any previous country on earth and yet we have sown the seeds of our destruction in providing too much for too many.
It isn’t the entitlements alone that are killing us, we give big tax breaks to the wealthy, underwrite oil profits, subsidize farmers, let bankers and security firms run amuck, and give tax breaks to businesses that provide private health care. We man a giant military and get in everyone’s business to protect our own interests.
The emerging countries who have watched their spoiled out of control bigger brother push beyond the envelope are telling us you have gone too far. It is time for some tough decisions. We also know that after several abuses that have brought the world to its knees we are finally facing our own fiscal mortality.
Maybe this introspection has also started to work in other phases of our lives. The 22 year long program in schools to stop smoking and banning it in public is affecting the decrease of smokers in California from a recent 25% to 12%. Who doesn’t in their heart of hearts know that smoking can not only bring on disease, but it can kill you.
The government and untold number of agencies and health gurus are trying to make Americans face their obesity. This is not just a matter of jumping on a fad diet to lose 10 pounds. It is more serious. With health care costs out of control, it is a matter of people realizing their mortality. You can’t eat just anything and get away with it.
Maybe the pendulum will swing to where we become conscious of larger realities. We can live longer and healthier and be more productive. We can appreciate the gift of amazing bodies and minds and enhance them with proper care. We can focus our priorities on self expression and development and let boosting our esteem through acquisition take a back seat.
We have such an information over load that we are often listening to the wrong voices. We need as individuals and as a nation to go a little more retro and develop a solid foundation based on sounder principals. We have to live within our means and take better care of what we have.
Can We Have a Simple Life w/o Leaving the City?
Posted by: | CommentsThere are a lot of factors in the wind that says we should get our house in order.
Sometimes a simple life could look like downsizing which it might be. But seeking a simpler life could also mean a change of values that leads to freedom and happiness, not just deprivation.
In a great book, “Simple Living”, the husband and wife authors Frank Levering and Wanda Urbanska leave their pressure packed jobs as Hollywood writers in Los Angeles to live on their families farm in Virginia. They are the third generation of an apple and other fruit growing enterprise that was dying as their parents got older.
They found simplicity and they felt deprivation but found several freedoms. They toiled in the fields while maintaining their writing and lived in an antiquated abode and drove a non status car. They physically and then mentally dropped out of the keep up with the Jones big city life mentality.
Finding freedom has a lot to do with the priorities in your focus. Are you trying to own more or be more? I have found in my recent years as I retired out of the real estate industry and moved to the beach, that for the first time in my life I have dropped out of the rat race.
I have simplified my life by simplifying my desires and giving prominence to being more. My passions have come to the forefront and I have eliminated time wasting and distracting activities that rob me of brain capacity. My passions are writing, surfing, fitness, healthy eating, and reading.
I have left out TV, carrying a cell phone, playing Face Book and messaging games, and my addiction to sports on TV. I have saved half my week and put in reading 4 books a week, writing everyday, surfing most days, exercising everyday, losing 25 pounds, and shunting the constant need for new stuff.
Sometimes the way to create more time is to take big time users off our plate. We might be faced with a void and fear of boredom, but the excitement of filling the time with something that expresses us is an opportunity.
We often over work. A quote out of the book makes a great point:
“The British writer and social reformer, John Ruskin once wrote, ‘In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it. ‘”
To support not doing too much of it and having some success at it we need to have balanced lives in which many passions fight for prominence.
Cutting Carbs vs Healthy Eating; the Weight Dilemma
Posted by: | CommentsCarbohydrates certainly get a bad rap. What’s wrong with them?
Most fruits and vegetables including grasses and leaves are all carbohydrates. See any sick animals falling out of trees?
A good friend about 50 who exercises well with upper body and running on the beach says he wants to thin out a little by eating less carbs. Some diets stress low carbs. If you have an active life, carbohydrates are needed for fuel and recovery.
As a surfer, I would not want to eliminate carbohydrates. Because I eat a mostly natural diet, my struggle is getting enough protein. The carbohydrates I eat are fruit, vegetables, and grain cereals.
I have a fruit bowl in the mornings, a salad during the day, and often a vegetable soup in the early evening before dinner. I like spaghetti and often make my sauce with garlic, onions, zucchini, and broccoli sautéed in olive oil before I drop in the tomato sauce. I have chicken, tuna, and take a high grade amino acid supplement.
What I don’t eat is refined sugar, fructose, bread, dairy, and many processed foods from cans or packages. My body will quickly digest everything I eat and not encapsulate my ingredients in fat to protect my organs.
I have energy, exercise, and don’t think about cutting back on my consumption. I am constantly eating. My foods don’t have many calories and so snacking doesn’t add weight. I don’t drink and follow up with pizza or a hamburger. I frequently have my beer or two in the evenings as I gather with friends.
Losing or maintaining weight doesn’t have to be a struggle if you are eating natural.
The Direct Route to Avoiding Health Care
Posted by: | CommentsEat natural.
The body starts leaning out as it eliminates toxins encapsulated in fat. The body captured all the food it didn’t recognize to prevent it from harming the organs.
Natural food requires less work by the organs and the rest allows them to start regenerating. Organs that benefit are your brain, skin, heart, liver, kidneys, and stomach.
Natural food gives the body an alkaline balance which allows the blood to capture more oxygen as it passes through the lungs. The first organ that thanks you is the brain. The brain uses more oxygen and energy than any process in the body other than digestion. If it has to compete with digestion, it slows down.
If you eat food that the body recognizes, the digestive system takes a holiday. The brain starts working over time. If you need your brain, this is a good thing.
If you are athletic or building your program your body needs to recover. Eating foods it can use allows it to feed the muscles and alleviate tears and tiredness.
Learning to eat for the body and not the emotions is a step most people need to conquer. We need to find other outlets for anxiety, sadness, frustration, and anger to name a few other than food intake. You can emotionalize yourself to food and disease death. Cigarettes and alcohol often feed this syndrome.
Find passion and excitement in some activity in which you have competence. Engaging in activities in which you have skills to the exclusion of distractions place you in flow or in the zone. This is a highest level of happiness.
The leaner and healthier and fulfilled you become, the less you will need the doctor.
How to Live Longer with Less Medical Coverage
Posted by: | CommentsIt seems the die is cast. The baby boomers have bankrupted the medical and social security entitlement programs with a huge population that has big medical needs.
In all fairness, Congress robbed the social security coffers to feed other programs and doesn’t want to put the money back. But in any case, medical costs have sky rocketed and it has fallen on government shoulders to take care of the population no longer employed and covered by employer medical insurance.
If you want to be extra cynical you could say the government is run by people who do not need entitlements, but need favorable legislation, contracts, subsidies, and tax breaks.
The government (the officials we elected to represent us) has sewn its own destruction by subsidizing crops used to make harmful cheap foods. If you look to other cultures where people eat less but more healthy, sickness and disease are not as prevalent. The healthiest cultures on earth can work into their 80’s and disease free until over 100.
The big correction has to be made globally where in countries like France and Greece people want to work 37 hour weeks and retire in their early 50’s. Unfortunately, for the newest generation, there will be fewer safety nets and the need for more self regulation.
In the developing countries savings are frequently 30% of meager earnings. They understand what it is like to have no unemployment insurance and no medical coverage. The theories of Malthus and Ricardo predicted that when countries were not prosperous, populations would decline.
The most widely held scientific doctrine for avoiding sickness and disease is for the body to maintain an alkaline balance. It continuously comes back that eating what is natural is the way to maintain health. Man made concoctions such as refined sugar, fructose, added ingredients to refined foods, and unhealthy fats from inexpensive oils are the causes of low immunity, sickness and disease.
People will need to get more religious about exercise and in the future, obese people and smokers are likely to experience greater discrimination in employment and health coverage. If you are raising children, this would be a good time to start on creating lean cuisine.
If you are already into adulthood, it is never too late to start leaning out and providing your body what it needs to build immunity and prevent safe havens for disease. The handwriting on the wall says the government is going to ratchet down as slowly as politically expedient, but the need for major cutting of all programs it sponsors is near.
The government has become the largest employer and the biggest consumer. In an era where we have allowed other nations to supplant our manufacturing supremacy with lower costs, we have a rough road to hoe.
Whereas we have partially gotten into this fix because our food budget is the first cut in balancing our income, we had better make it a priority and cut back on cell phones, SUV’s, TV, and other coping mechanisms we feel we can’t live without.
Is Constant Movement More Important than Exercise?
Posted by: | CommentsSome might say it is better to move several times a day than just the hour in the morning at the gym.
In boosting metabolism for weight control it is better to take three walks a day than take one hour work out in the mornings. Elizabeth Walling in a Natural News article says moving all day is more advantageous for health than doing one work out and sitting the rest of the day.
I am very guilty of that. I love my morning routine of exercising and then surfing. The rest of my day, however, looks like sitting on the beach and reading in the evenings. I should make that effort that I followed when I first moved to the beach of taking those evening sunset walks.
Elizabeth would encourage moving around five minutes of every hour and even standing at your desk for a while. My commercial broker friends used to stand up to talk on the phone to give their voice more liveliness.
See if you can make your day more mobile.
