IF YOU'RE NOT BUSY BEING BORN

"…he who is not busy being born
is busy dying."
            ~Bob Dylan

     I'm in the airport waiting to go to Albuquerque….I see people chasing their imaginary needs and wants like they might chase moths - trying to catch relationships, money, new cars, granite countertops and validation of their excellent parenting but losing themselves in the chase.

     I do this too? Oh yes. Looking for my glasses while I'm wearing them.  Looking for love in all the wrong places.  Not understanding the word "within."  So I draw my sword and seek kingdoms in distant lands.  But the kingdom is already here.  It's the kingdom within.

     So I'm here in Albuquerque working with my clients at Honeywell so that the technology of the mind can match their peerless technology on the factory tour.

    The mind can use the technology of optimism as a proven process to open up creativity and thinking skill.

     Or it can buy into the common (erroneous) wisdom that says optimism is something you're born with.  A sunny disposition!  A happy, glad-handing idiotic beaming, smiling false front of upbeat mannerisms.

     Actually, optimism is a powerful, precise, teachable tool for unlocking the right side of the brain-and all its wonders.

     Dr. Martin Seligman conducted studies of over half a million people for 20 years.  He scientifically validated two important findings in those studies.  1) Optimism is more effective than pessimism and 2) Optimism can be learned.

    Shocking.  It can be learned!  Aren't we stuck with our personalities?  If a person is moody, is she not permanently moody?  As permanent as her blue eyes?  Crying in the rain?  Like always?

     Goodness, no.  When you read Learned Optimism you learn that you can dispute-DISPUTE!-any pessimistic thought that appears, like a rain cloud, across the sky of your mind.

     Dispute it.  Challenge it.  Question it.  Make the case for greater possibility.  Make the case for more options open to you than gloom.

     It's as if you had a higher self that you don't call on much.  Except in a huge crisis.  But if you called on it more and more, it would grow.  It would reveal itself to be the real you.

     That pessimist in you is a very small part of who you really are.  Really. Or, as Dylan sings in his parody of fruitless self-sacrifice:

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

Comments

[Kaylee]

Ashley Posted on I actually thoghut the violet one was your finished product and was trying to find out what went wrong until i clicked the thumbnail and read the whole article!I admire your perseverance:)

[Bimslankjngnmnangis]

Heh, hard to completely drasgiee or agree when I've covered both sides of the debate.I agree it's very useful to check if your crazy ideas work first before you get 10 rooms in and go Oh, hang on a minute, I might have to redo all of this nobody likes reworking more than they have to.However, I have also seen countless projects die because they weren't even slightly playable after weeks of work (being able to walk around in an adventure game or rpg doesn't count as playable' unless you're building a walking simulator). If you still can't play even a bit of the game you've been working on and you're several weeks in, it's going to be hard to stay motivated.Perhaps it's more a question of ensuring your ambition matches your capabilities, then. As I said at the start of the first section, I feel that finding the right balance is the key, so I guess if something is beyond your limitations as a scripter then I'd suggest getting rid of it, changing it or getting help with it.Thanks for bringing up that point![]

[Dan]

That's a slick answer to a cahlelnging question

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