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77.26 Homeless
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77.26 Homeless

668. The computers at the Main Library are incredibly fast.  Mine is running at 250 megs a second download, and about half of that upload.  Better than home.  I hope we get to gigabit speeds in the future.

669. Man it’s cold.  Was down in the low 30s.  The homeless are wearing a half dozen layers.

670. From now on, I will not carry a large notebook on most riding the rails forrays.  I will carry the small notebook to write down article ideas which I can use when logged on at the public library.

671. Need to clean more regularly with ho’oponopono.  Cleo needs my spiritual support.  My writing has been on too many topics and is not focused.  That needs to change with an outline.  The manifesto has to be written in the next 10 days.

672. Age is diminishing my balance, energy, and coordination.  I have to focus and start doing stretching and planks at home.

673. Knowing what you can control and what you can't saves time and frustration.

Can’t have:

Can have:

674. What you think you can control but can’t:

675. Problems with Self-Improvement:

676. Practical Advice for Managing All Life's Impossible Problems.  The only self-help book you'll ever need, from a psychiatrist and his comedy writer daughter who will help you put aside your unrealistic wishes and stop trying to change things you can't change.  Do the best with what you can to control the first steps to managing all of life's impossible problems. Here is the cut-to-the-chase therapy session you've been looking for! Need to stop screwing up? Do you work with an asshole? Think you can rescue an addicted person? Have you realized that your parents are assholes? Feel compelled to clear your name?Want to get a lover to commit? Ready to vent your anger? In this brilliantly sensible book, a Harvard-educated shrink and his comedy-writer daughter reveal that the real f-words in life are feelings and fairness. While most self-help books are about your feelings and fulfilling your wildest dreams, Fk Feelings will show you how to find a new kind of freedom by getting your head out of your ass. 

677. When I go downtown, I need to work as much as possible at the library.  The speed is faster than at home.  Also, even in a room full of people, there are fewer distractions.  No food.  No beverages.  No TV.

678. Aim for:

How:

679. Can’t have:

Aim for:

680. Benefits of Social Bookmarking:

  1. Fast indexing your website in search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and more.
  2. Submitting your website to high pr dofollow social bookmarking sites will create quality backlinks.
  3. Improves your rank in all search engines.
  4. Traffic.

681. Create your accounts on social bookmarking with a strong password and your image and give your website URL.  Do not make any account on the same website.  To add Bookmarking tools to your browser, to share your website link to the other people.

Submit your post URL, and give some description about your post, by this you can promote your post.

682. You can increase your website page authority and domain authority by creating the social profiles and doing activities on these websites.

683. We need to create our own rituals that work within our real life (even if self-imposed) constraints.  For example, the basis of my own online business is text.  I make videos and audio tracks, but my blog posts, articles, and ebooks are central to my objective of creating a full-time income online and returning to the life of a perpetual traveler.

684. The only time I have to myself without interruption is the “night shift”.  Everyone else in the house is in bed, and I can work without interruption until daylight when it’s time for a walk - on the beach if the weather is fair, or to the gym if not.  This is where rituals can come in handy.  Go to bed at 9:00 p.m.  Wake up at 3:33 a.m. Check your blood sugar. Take a shower.  Brush your teeth.  Make a pot of coffee.  Have a protein shake.  Take your vitamins and diabetes meds.

685. I found out when studying for the Bar Exam many years ago that I work better when I set performance goals not based on time.  For example, I forced myself to read so many sections of review materials each day, and to answer so many practice questions.  Depending on how you felt and how focused you were, that could take 2 hours, or even 6 hours.  Time was not a good measure.  For my 77 days, my writing goal is ambitious.  3,000+ words a day.  I have the time, but do I have the discipline.  On good days, this could take 3 hours.  On bad days, it could take 6 or more.

686. Every day we experience a wide range of emotions, both positive and negative.  Rituals help us put the negatives aside and just work.  Anything is possible if you fully commit.  In my case, 77 days is enough to control my diet and reverse diabetes, set up the online business to support my travels anywhere in the world, and to be free of my current spouse and set free to chase potential mail order brides from Southeast Asia to Eastern Europe.  Not that any of this is easy.  Simple.  Not easy.

687. Rituals can help reprogram your mind by taking thought and negative self-doubt out of the picture.  You just do.  Not think.  The key is repetition.  Some people believe in affirmations.  I think they’re bullshit.  People write out and repeat phrases like “I’m a millionaire” or “I’m wealthy”.  Fake it until you make it.  Do you think you can trick your mind into believing this bullshit?  Do you want to spend your valuable time lying to yourself?

688. I have seen one book on afformations.  Noah St. John.  Afformations are affirmations turned on their head by asking questions.  Instead of saying “I am healthy”, you ask yourself “Why am I so healthy?”  Then your brain goes to work coming up with the answers.  You can see for yourself here by checking out the Afformations Solution.

689. I personally like Ho’oponopono.  I ran into it in some touchy-feely weekend retreat with my soon to be ex-wife.  I like saying the cleansing mantras while I go for a walk.  Combined with deep breathing, walks are now intense.

Raw Beginnings

The more I read and learn, the more I understand that my fits and starts on rebooting my aging IBM (Introvert Boomer Male) ass is a hurdle faced by all who are successful.

I move back to health, wealth, and relationships - the 3 evergreen areas of life.

For 77 days, I will concentrate on these areas, push myself to my physical and mental limits, and live a monk like existence.

I have 3 main “goals” that if completed will make the rest of my life after the 131 day torture a life theme worth living.

  1. Health - control and reverse diabetes
  2. Wealth - create a recurring, full time income online
  3. Relationships - divorce and become free again

Each one of these objectives requires a number of smaller actions.  For example, to reverse diabetes, I might need to:

What I am attempting to have the discipline of a Buddhist monk for 131 days.  Damn.

I love donuts.  Growing up in the South, a hot Krispy Kreme with all the gooey sugar brings comfort food to a whole new level.

And never just one.

I was in high school before Dunkin’ Donuts made it to Newport News, but my cousins in Michigan had turned me onto them during visits up north.  I still preferred Krispy Kremes until I was older when less sugar and much better coffee sent DD soaring.

In recent years, KK has made a huge comeback, especially in places like NYC.  Unfortunately, they are expanding into selling cold boxes in gas stations and convenience stores which will kill the brand.

Now I have diabetes.

So even if KK survives, it has no place in my diet for 131 days.  Maybe forever.

Food is the one area that pisses me off.  Unless you’re in prison, you control what you eat.  You can choose a donut, or an apple.  No one makes you eat junk food (even though advertisers try).

One show on TV that’s a guilty pleasure is My 600 Lb. Life.  Until I developed diabetes, I could never understand how morbidly obese individuals could continue to stuff their faces until they could not move and eventually died.

According to the program, only 5% of the people who are faced with this challenge succeed, even with surgery.

Wow.

Then I looked at my own diabetes and the difficulty I have eating the right foods to control my blood sugar naturally.  I currently take 2 meds, but in 131 days I will be free.  The challenge is to maintain 100% compliance.

My personality is addictive in nature.  I don’t eat 1 donut, I eat 3.

Once I give in to sugar, it’s on to pie and ice cream.  And cookies and crackers.

Reinventing Your Life

Nothing like being profoundly unhappy to drive you to the self-help section of the bookstore.

I call them pump-up books.  Temporary boost.  Maybe a good idea or two.  Forgotten by the end of the week.

I think big.  Action is the problem.

When you have a vision of the life theme you wish to install, and you repeatedly fail to make progress, anger and depression follow.

Enough.

As you work, negative thoughts from all of the dumb ass things you did 30, 40, or even 50 years ago divert your focus.  How can such thoughts about long ago transgressions be a powerful block today?

“Stupid is as stupid does.” - Forrest Gump

Instead of concentrating on the life theme finish line off in the distance, we need to act like Stoics and look for small improvements daily.

Consistent improvement - kaizen - stands out.

kaizen.png

Clever people, those Japanese.  Also think Samurai and Bushido.  In the West, we forget that ancient civilizations around the globe have wrestled with these issues for thousands of years.

Maybe it’s time we learned.

In my own situation, I have mapped out a long time for creating a recurring income online, publishing Kindle books, building lists, and perpetual travel.

My main problem is an addictive personality that will fall into bad habits if I violate my own rules.  I need rituals, not habits.  For the things I need to do every day to advance toward my life theme, I don’t want to think, just do.

I think I personally need to go beyond a life script or vision statement.

I have family obligations I have taken on which eat up time during the week helping take care of my 89 year old mother, taking care of her house, and ferrying her and other family members around town to take care of their obligations.

I resent it.

I’m getting angrier and angrier each day.  Controlling this anger should be easy, but it’s not.

Cloud Only AAI

My mission in life is to master Internet marketing using free and paid tools to create a full-time recurring income to allow me to be a perpetual traveler.

AAI means Anytime, Anywhere Income.

Your business is hosted in the cloud and on your laptop.  Technically, you could use bum marketing like the old days and use the computers at your public library, but why would you?  You want to control your life, not work at the mercy of others.

Nothing like the risk of putting this out there to hold myself accountable.

I normally don’t like to go so far in the future.  New Year’s Resolutions and annual business plans are the greatest source of fiction in the modern world.

To make sure all of my techniques work today, I will begin with a new domain name, new email addresses, a new website, and new social media sites and profiles.

Nothing is being reused, not even the hosting.

The new domain is ibmsandmobs.com - as of right now, the DNS is pointing nowhere.  I will start by using BuilderAll to create this new website instead of Wordpress as with most of my other sites.

Essentially, your job in affiliate marketing is to pre-sell the product.

In sales, pre-selling is defined as the process of creating an environment that helps customers choose a product.

Pre-sales tactics are very effective in product introductions. It lowers your readers’ guard and demonstrates the product’s usefulness without the added pressure of making a purchase decision. Here are two ways you can pre-sell the product:

Demonstrate value: Demonstrate how the product can solve problems by showing off your own results.

Educate: Answer questions and doubts readers might have about the product.

IBM* Mindset

Over the course of our boomer lives, we have slogged through an ocean of beliefs and ideas, many of which have turned out to be false.  These ideas color and influence our lives to this day.

We grew up with rules for everything.  Go to school.  Get good grades.  Graduate from a good university.  Work for a major corporation.  Marry the girl of your dreams.  Have children.  Invest and save for retirement.  

I don’t know about you, but I went sideways on much of that plan.

Upon graduating from a great school, I chose the Peace Corps.  That changed everything.  To this day, I can live on virtually no money when I have to.  You could drop me in any city with nothing more than lunch money and I can survive.

It may not be the way you want to live, but you can do it.

I can remember once PCV whose parents came to visit him in Korea (before their economic boom).  Upon entering his room, his mother burst into tears.

“I worked my whole life so you wouldn’t have to live like this.”

In the late 60s and early 70s, we knew everything.  We rebelled and created the counterculture and did all we could to stay out of Vietnam.  A couple of our classmates did not make it home.  I saw their names later on the wall in Washington, D.C.

Later, I did get married like we were told we should.  Three times, in fact.  Three divorces.  Maybe i should I stayed single.

In America, we are not living in the culture we grew up in.  Not by a long shot.  As a Consular Officer at the U.S. Embassies in Seoul and Manila, I issued tens of thousands of visas to part of the new face of America.

Is there a hospital in America without a Filipina nurse?  

And most cities now have at least one restaurant where you can eat bulgogi (Korean barbeque) and kimchi.  In Peace Corps, we ate it 3 times a day, 7 days a week.

Like America, that Korea is gone.

My IBM life has not been working for me.  It’ time to transcend all of the “should do’s” that others have heaped on us, and which we bought into.  

Most of us have taken numerous jobs to meet the financial needs of others (wives, children, aging parents).  We bought houses with mortgages that kept us living in places we grew tired of until the kids finished school.  We built our own prisons of family responsibilities.

Don’t get me wrong.  I have one daughter who is the most precious female in the world.  She needed a better father, but she turned out great.

Living Lean

Everything I own will fit in a backpack.  I have been working toward this level for years.  I regularly give away clothes and other stuff that I replace as it gets old.  I would not have nearly so much as now except my daughter gets embarrassed at how I look sometimes and buys me clothes and shoes.  Goodwill benefits.

I don’t like owning real estate, homes, or cars.  I don’t like taking care of stuff that I just want to use.  But it’s even more important for normal people to understand that you don’t own anything you can’t carry in your backpack.

If the government (federal, state, local) can tax and seize your property for any number of reasons, you don’t own it.

Why not beat them to it?  As Buddha said, get rid of your attachments, and free yourself a little bit from our overlords.