Ever had one bad thing happen, then a stream of bad things happen in it's wake? Why does this happen?

Often new agey people assume that this is because of "bad energy" or a bad attitude. I ran into a counter-example today.

Someone close to me is having car trouble. She left her car with the mechanic and naturally gave the keys over too. Later she found herself locked out of her house...because she had neglected to remove her house key from the keyring. Oops!

Sometimes the reason bad things come in groups is because the first thing simply throws you off of your regular habits! If you habitually have car troubles, perhaps you have a system to deal with such situations, like an extra key in a lock box outside your door. Otherwise, you are faced with new input and don't always respond intelligently.

So next time you have a bad day, don't blame yourself or your attitude or your energy. And please, please, please, don't hassle others who are having a bad day with assumptions about their attitudes and energies. It just might be something else is the cause.

Via Casey, I found a free online tool that allows you to back up your phone's address book for free called ZYB.

Welcome to the future!

A quote from the most recent episode of Modern Immortal:

"How willing are you on a scale from 1-10 to make a complete radical overhaul of your diet and your lifestyle?" The client said 10, the practitioner said "ok, you can only eat oily fish and vegetables breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the next 3 weeks." The woman did it, and the migraine disappeared, she was able to sleep through the night, and her doctor took her off her insulin.

Wow!! I recently made a big health change with the help of one of the hosts of this show by eliminating soy, dairy, and wheat, while taking some herbs for digestion, and it made a huge difference. I was suffering from chronic stomach pain and digestive issues, as well as increasing fatigue. I no longer have regular stomach pain (very rarely), and my fatigue has lifted (although I'm still cautious about pushing myself too hard!).

Ok, for those of you who like me were out of the loop, apparently "zero energy" is not some far out futuristic utopian concept anymore. According to a friend of mine who is a green builder, zero energy homes, apartments, and office buildings are now the norm in green building circles.

Whoa! Just 4 years ago when I was considering a move into green building, zero energy was something that was still totally experimental and wacky.

Adam also sent me to this site: architecture2030.com. The premise is the the building industry is responsible for 48% of all GHG's, i.e. greenhouse gases and leading to climate cancer.

The 2030 challenge is to make the entire building industry carbon neutral by 2030. Wow! And it's based on conservative data and existing technologies.

Did anyone else see us cross the green building tipping point??

I just noticed that it seems like every single "Big Idea" (all 500 of 'em) on ThinkArete.com has an audio clip of Brian reading the idea. Holy crap! When did he find the time to record all of this?? :)

By the way, it's all free!

What does it mean to be a man? I've recently felt compelled to delve deeper into this question, especially as I approach the age around 30 where the freedom of adolescence changes into the responsibilities of adulthood--committed relationship, parenting, holding down a job, paying bills and debt, etc. while maintaining the passion and enthusiasm of youth, male friendships, and keeping the body from wearing down. It ain't easy!

I've been reading He by Robert Johnson and Fire in the Belly by Sam Keen, both powerful works which have begun to open my eyes to the depth of masculine maturity that it is possible, and the challenges of being an authentic, genuine, caring and compassionate man living and giving at his edge. Also great reading (a summary really, but a wonderful book) is King, Warrior, Magician, Lover.

Why is this so seldom talked about from beyond the perspectives of macho jerk or Sensitive New Age Guy (SNAG)? Beyond the Promise Keepers, or even beyond any particular belief system (BS)?

And even more important than the talk, how do we walk the talk of living fully, authentically, integrating our anger, our sadness, our passion, our vision with our work, our relationships, our friendships, and how we show up in the world?

One way is through participation in a men's group, where other men challenge you to cut the B.S. and support you to feel what's really going on for you.

There are many great models for men's work out there, but I haven't yet participated in any. Why? I'm scared! I've always hated groups of men, mostly because they involved things I thought were stupid, like overdrinking, obsession with which women were hottest, and sports. Plus I was teased and verbally abused by my male friends as a kid, so I've pretty successfully avoided groups of men as an adult.

Instead, I hang out with groups of intellectual men and women, which is wonderful, but missing something. When a group of aware men get together just to support and challenge each other, the effect can be enormously powerful, especially for the women these men love (assuming heterosexual partnerships).

So I've decided to join a men's group locally, led by and including some of the same men that are producing The New Man, a free podcast from Falling Fruit. I'm a lucky dude to be surrounded with such inspiration and instigation for growth.

I also wonder if men's groups have figured out how to integrate our gender-bending contemporary society. Is there a place for both heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual men in men's groups? What about transexual folks who used to be physically women? I know one such person who I always thought was more masculine than I'd ever be (is a mixed martial artist who competes in those no holds barred Ultimate Fighting events!).

David Deida attempts to deal with this in the beginning of The Way of the Superior Man by differentiating masculine from male and feminine from female, but I'm not sure he re-integrates these things later, and he seems to overemphasize the need for "polarity" between sexual partners to keep things from being stale, as if he's addicted to the drama of relationships.

In any case, I'm excited about this work, and looking forward to challenging myself to grow in this new way.

Hat tip to Satya-Seer for this great video:


Anyone who's practiced intensive meditation knows the meaning of this video.

Whoa! Talk about taking a strong action against corruption in government!

from http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSSP32731420070711:

China on Wednesday hailed the swift execution of the nation's former drug safety chief as a warning to corrupt officials while detailing a web of graft that thrived for years without punishment.

Zheng Xiaoyu, former head of the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), dominated television and print news a day after he was executed for taking some 6.5 million yuan ($850,000) in bribes to let medicine companies slip past his regulatory net.

I found this video from fueleconomy.gov of the SAE Super Mileage Competition when I was researching the most fuel efficient vehicles out there. Apparently the winner of this competition got 3,145 miles to the gallon!


Meanwhile, the best MPG car you can buy that runs on standard gasoline still gets a measely 48 MPG.

What's going on here? I'm ready to buy something that calculates MPG in 3 or 4 digits. I want my hypercar!

I found a very interesting blog today called Brazen Careerist, written by author Penelope Trunk.

I stumbled upon a facinating recent post entitled "Bad Career Advice: Do What You Love." Here's an excerpt:

Often, the thing we should do for our career is something we would only do if we were getting a reward. If you tell yourself that your job has to be something you’d do even if you didn’t get paid, you’ll be looking for a long time. Maybe forever. So why set that standard? The reward for doing a job is contributing to something larger than you are, participating in society, and being valued in the form of money.

The pressure we feel to find a perfect career is insane. And, given that people are trying to find it before they are thirty, in order to avoid both a quarterlife crisis and a biological-clock crisis, the pressure is enough to push people over the edge. Which is why one of the highest risk times for depression in life is in one’s early twenties when people realize how totally impossible it is to simply “do what you love.”

Here’s some practical advice: Do not what you love; do what you are. It’s how I chose my career. I bought the book with that title - maybe my favorite career book of all time - and I took the quickie version of the Myers-Briggs test. The book gave me a list of my strengths, and a list of jobs where I would likely succeed based on those strengths.

I find this really interesting, because I've generally subscribed to the belief that we should do what we love for work, to do what we would pay to do if we had the money. But yet work still involves things that are unpleasant at times.

Ms. Trunk's distinction is useful: if we do what we are, i.e. focus on our signature strengths and use them every day for a goal bigger than ourselves, then we are much more likely to have a happy and successful career. The research from Martin Seligman and others studying happiness leads to the same conclusion. People would rather not be at work, yet report greater happiness when they are working then when they are at home "doing what they love."

As a kid, I really liked playing video games. I fantasized about being a game tester for Nintendo Power. A friend of mine in high school ended up programming video games, but I'm glad I didn't go that route. He was and is a programmer. I was and am a philosopher, life coach, and yogin, as well as a bit of a tech geek. I would find my life unfulfilling if I got to play video games all day every day.

My work as a life coach, and my work as a host and producer at Falling Fruit is at times quite difficult! There are days I'd rather play video games, or read, or just be lazy. If I just "do what I love" in those moments, I'll be out of a job, and ultimately unfilled at work.

Trunk's other point is that just having a job can be rewarding for the human contact and the feeling of being part of something greater than yourself. This is a big reason I'm not doing full-time life coaching! Working alone is lonely, and as big as my personal vision is for helping people, I need this feeling of being part of a team, working together for a worthy goal.

On the other hand, lots of what I do at Falling Fruit and coaching is exactly what I'd do if I was independently wealthy. I love good conversation, which I get to participate in as a host of Falling Fruit (and just in the office!). I love creative tech projects, which is fulfilled by being a producer, and giving my ideas to Vince about the website. And I love knowing that what I do daily helps people to become more conscious and more resourceful, which is the feeling I get about our content, and about my personal coaching work.

And I totally resonate with this quote from Trunk's post:

So if you are overwhelmed with the task of “doing what you love” you should recognize that you are totally normal, and maybe you should just forget it. Just do something that caters to your strengths. Do anything.

There were times in my life I agonized about doing anything, because it wasn't exactly what I loved. I still do this on occassion. But I'm happier overall just doing anything, just being productive, and just being part of a team.

I'm so grateful to have the work I have!

Check this out: only compact florescent and LED light bulbs will be allowed for traditional use by 2014, saving consumers $40 billon!

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1243/

A recently passed energy bill phases out the use of incandescents starting in 2012. Maybe this is the true meaning of the Mayan prophecy. haha :)