Beginning Your Life Simplification

OK, the Journey Toward Life Simplification

 

Now that the future of America's economic profile has been cast by both the lack of action by Washington to deal with what most people understanding is an out of control amount of spending, and many Americans unwillingness to accept responsibility for their own actions, you must understand that we will have to learn how to live with less, own less, and consume less. The American way of life is sunsetting, and it will not be revived. The next 10  years will see the transfer of wealth from the US towards China and the Middle East. It is not sour-grapes, but a simple fact of economics. You will do yourself an immeasurable favor if you begin to learn Life Simplification or LS.

 

Let's not get into politics since I am apolitical (not caring about which party controls the reins of government), but am more interested in the progress of the individual not the collective. Please do not read anything political into this last statement since remember, the collective is made up of the individuals just as the human body is comprised of many parts all of which have their own function and purpose.

 

So with politics disposed and eliminated from this blog, how does one begin the journey of LS (life simplification)?

 

First and foremost, you will need to find a place where you can think about your life, your place in the world, your desires and needs. The place and time should become a habit -- a consistent time and place where you will become honest and clear about your internal functions, thoughts, and direction. This is NOT a time for meditation since you will be actively thinking, writing, and focusing on these intensely personal concepts. Your mind and spirit must be engaged on these topics during this intimate time.

 

Choose a place where you feel secure, where you have access to your personal things, and most importantly, you feel comfortable. Choose a time that you can set aside everyday consistently in order to produce a habit. Remember, experts have said that for an action to become a habit, it must be repeated for 21-28 days -- so plan to have an agreement with yourself that you will attend this personal activity for this minimum time frame. If you cannot attend this invitation everyday until the action morphs into a habit, do not begin the process until you can make this agreement with yourself.

 

During this time that should be at least 25-30 minutes each day (not such a large commitment in the larger schemes) spend at least the first 5 minutes draining yourself of the stresses in your life by practicing the following exercise:

 

Find a comfortable position (sitting, lying, or other position), and let your mind begin to take a walk down a quiet, deserted tree-lined street. It could be someplace you have experienced before, seen on the television, or just imagined. The most important point is that the image must be completely devoid of others -- only yourself and the surrounding peace.

 

Imagine that you have a backpack on containing all the stress and issues in your life symbolized as stones, and as you walk down the quiet lane, you reach into the back pack and discard each stone along the way. Actually see a name on each stone that describes the stress or issue and feel the relief as you rid yourself of the weight these negative, energy-robbing, happiness-displacing situations represent in your life.

 

At the end of the five minutes, your backpack is empty, the weight is gone, and you are able to walk without the discomfort, rubbing and annoyance of a heavy backpack on your shoulders. Feel the calm, the relief, and joy that comes from realizing that for the next 20-25 minutes, you do not have to carry these weights on your back. You have the power to make this happen if for nothing more than these 25-30 minutes. Life will resume in force, but for this time, you can experience what a stress-free lifestyle would be like. These feelings will help to enforce your desire to make this personal time a habit each day.

 

It may not work the first couple of times you attempt it like most new activities in life, it may take some time to work out the kinks. Stick with it, and I can say from personal experience, you will begin to look forward to this time since it will provide at least a small amount of time from which you can relax from life's intensity. Later on, I will show you an exercise that will allow you to permanently rid yourself of the stresses and issues.

 

Tomorrow, we will take the next step in using our personal time towards the goal of simplifying your life.

 

 

Restarting Our Journey

Restarting Our Journey

While I like being able to return to my blogs posts and read about how I predicted the state of the economy so precisely, I will leave that exercise to you. These predictions were made back in pre-2008 election before the 2008 real estate bubble had popped, and before Barack Hussein Obama (BHO) was elected to his first term. This blog is called "America Cannot Be Fixed." I would lead you to the following blogs posts that show how close to reality my predictions landed.

I hope that many of you began your journey of Life Simplification (LS) that I began to describe several years ago before I was taken away dealing with my own life simplification that I can now report is complete. I will relate to you my own journey on how I accomplished this and you can do it as well.

Let's review the four steps of enacting changes in your life as the pretense to supporting your LS goal:

These steps can be summarized in this acronym: RIPE for

       Realization: that your life will or must change

       Identification: determine your life's complications

       Prioritization: order by importance each complication

       Elimination: remove the impact of each complication in the order chosen

These steps are those I suggested in dealing with your Personal Void (PV): the gap that forms when one begins to simplify their life. The Void is a consequence of removing the noises (things, places, events) that clutter our lives as we pass through our time on this little ball of mostly water. If we don't prepare to handle the Void, we find ourselves increasingly depressed (females), or frustrated (males). Both emotional states can lead to personality alterations and mood swings as most psychiatrists will attest.

Another important factor in beginning the changes in one's life is the DESIRE to do so. I discuss the need for this personal motivational characteristic since as I mentioned my post on this subject, most people want to change, long for change, but lack the DESIRE to change. From my blog, I stated:

Just being dissatisfied with your life is NOT enough to effect change. Most people are dissatisfied with their lives as the renowned American philosopher and naturalist Henry David Thoreau once mused in his essay called Economy:

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation..."

Without the desire to change, life continues as a series of "repeating yesterdays." When you come to the end of your life, will you look back and see a never wavering line of yesterdays, or will you see  that you took some chances and made some changes to alter your then unknown future?

Unmotivated, comfortable people don't change. History is replete with stories of this premise. A country stops growing and progressing when its people become comfortable with their lot in life. Has your life become comfortable, really not too bad, or just not bad enough to require change.

In the end, its the desire to change that will force the issue.

Again, I suggest that you return to my previous posts in this blog to refresh your memory on these topics and issues.

More on the RIPE process coming...

Yes, I have been away from the blog for a while, but my predictions were so on the money, I have had many people asking me for advise and counsel that I have been rather busy lately.

I will be continuing this blog and answering  your comments and questions (only requires a registered user - no anonymous comments) as you place them in the blog.

Take care, and remember, while the country is falling apart, you don't have to.

The Nanouk (The Great Bear)
ibnanouk@gmail.com

RIPE - the 4 steps towards dealing with your Void

Dealing with one's personal Void can be accomplished in 4 simple steps:

1. Realizing that one's lifestyle can not be maintained and the reasons for this realization.
2. Identify the complications now occupying your life
3. Prioritize and order the importance of each complication
4. Eliminate one by one each complication moving towards life simplification

These steps can be summarized in this acronym: RIPE for

       Realization: that your life will or must change

       Identification: determine your life's complications

       Prioritization: order by importance each complication

       Elimination: remove the impact of each complication in the order chosen

Each step will be dealt with in detail in 4 successive blog posting along with exercises on how to accomplish each step in order to prepare yourself for the coming economic downturn.

Realize that once you begin the process of LS (life simplification), you will hopefully embrace the concept that LS brings to one's life. That simplifying your life leads to a more fulfilling life experience and obtaining more life contentment without the need for complications that tend to mask the real happiness that life offers when lived in the moment.

Stay with me as we learn how to apply the RIPE steps to accomplish your life simplification and prepare for reducing your Void's detrimental side effects.

Understanding the Void and its personal impact

Given the most likely scenario predicting the impact of the government's intrusion into the private sector, the most likely increase in unemployment to over 10% average with some areas more and some less, the continued consumer pullback in spending resulting in the normal capitalistic "death spiral" down to the point where prices have reset to support the entrepreneurial blossom occurring at the bottom of the spiral.

 

As the pullback impacts our lives we begin to slow down spending on what is classified as "luxuries or extravagances". This reduce spending removes fillers in our lives such as eating out, going to movies, having unlimited communication services, and other such noises. As the fillers are removed, the Void begins to form, and this is what causes the pain of forbearance accompanying the loss of these preoccupations. It is how we deal with the Void that helps us prepare for the coming recession/depression.

 

There appears to be a big reason that only in the US was the 1930's called the Great Depression. I believe that with the loss of employment, status, position, lodging, and yes, even the ability to put food on one's family table caused the Void in many during this period. For the coming economic downturn which is only getting started and soon to be exacerbated by the ARRA 2009 passed on Friday by the US Congress. the Void will form upon the loss of activities, communication access, electronic gadgetry elimination, and others.

 

You can prepare for this coming environment by beginning to simplify your life before it happens; by learning to reduce the size of the Void before it is forced upon you. Going from numbing levels of activities, scheduling conflicts, incessant digital contact, and 24-7 global events viewing will not be easy unless we begin to prepare for life simplification.

 

LS (life simplification) is the process by which one prepares for a coming catastrophic lifestyle change without having the event horizon form consuming our ability to cope with the change. LS is a process of voluntarily reducing the "life noise" that has accumulated during a period of abundance and/or opulence that can not be sustained. Such a period of "decomplification" is what appears to be approaching on the economic horizon. How you prepare for this lifestyle reformatting will determine your mental ability to cope with its emotional and psychological impacts.

 

The next blog will address the four (4) stages of LS, and how you can prepare for the coming  economic tsunami without feeling loss or reduction in social status.

 

What is our likely future in the USA?

Preparing for the possible future demands an understanding of what is most likely to occur and what if anything can one do to bulwark himself against the coming storm. With the passage and signing of the ARRA 2009 (American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009) into law, America will be contorted into a more centralist-directed form of government, dare say, a more socialist obeying monstrosity? Listening to the liberal-speak on some of the networks, calling this move by the Obama administration "socialist" is just fear-mongering, and those that do so are being partisan.

 

Regardless of what you believe, socialism or capitalism, it matters little in how the coming economic storm is going to impact your current life. Let me suggest the most likely scenario given what has happened since the beginning of September 2008 is that we are going to move into a more restrictive recession, yes, even a depression as unemployment reaches over 10%, the GDP continues to contract, and the private sector pulls back from investment and innovation.

 

This is largely due to the impact that heavy governmental spending has in a free-enterprise system where the government is just one more player in the field. Without being in total control of the economic means of production, the central government competes with private capital for investment and innovation. Since the government can literally overpower any private player in the market due to its ability to use taxpayer and taxing authorities, many private investors are pushed to the sidelines while waiting for the government to make its move or takes its stake.

 

By shoving private capital aside, the government inadvertently deepens the pullback as private capital seeks greener pastures elsewhere (see Japan as an example -- the lost Japanese decade), requiring that government increases its intrusion into the free-market mechanism, deepening the recession and those the cycle continues until an event such as a war or earth-shattering discovery like electricity shocks the economy awake.

 

So know what is going to come forward given our current situation, how does one prepare for the reversals of fortune that are likely to leap from the shadows? How does one prepare for changes unlike anything experienced?

 

I suggest that you begin to prepare for dealing with "your void."

 

What is this void? It is the emptiness that catastrophic changes initially produce as they force us from one form of lifestyle into one less acceptable. How we deal with this emptiness will determine our ability to weather the future changes.

 

Preparing for the coming economic tsunami

Due to my own preoccupation with personal issues, I have been sadly remiss in not keeping this blog current and moving positively. To remedy this condition, a transition to a more current topic may be of assistance.

 

Over the past few weeks, my mind has begun to coalesce around a topic that several discussions with friends and family has been pushing my consciousness into spending time addressing. This activity occurs during times of sleep, inactivity, and relaxation and then bubbles to my awareness once I have time to ponder their existence. It is a wonderful skill that anyone can learn, but it will take time and patience, but more on this latter.

 

These topics that have been formulating in my subconscious have to deal with a similar set of questions I have been asked recently about "how do I deal with this economic environment, how do I prepare for a possible worsening of employment or financial well-being?"

 

Such interrogatives have occupied the mind of most people given the state of decline in the current economic landscape. Every week more lose their employment conditions, many find their obligations are overwhelming their income potentials, energy costs are unpredictable, and future government demands appear to be increasing. All these depressive events increase the fear and uncertainty many are feeling about their futures. These mental wrappings are now forcing many to think about what, if anything, can they do to prepare for what may be a bleak outlook.

 

Let me begin by putting your "survivalist tendencies" to rest. You will not be able to buy, store, and protect enough supplies to keep you and your loved ones during a period of "atypical economic" unrest. First, would you really be able to turn away a friend with a hungry family once they know you have supplies they lack? Second, would you be able to take up arms to protect your cache once strangers know you have supplies to pilfer? Finally, how long can your cache actually last if the economic storm lasts past the first two events?

 

Given your inability to "survive an economic tsunami" what can you do to prepare to at least lessening its impact on your life? I offer the principle which I have called: "Dealing with the Void." I will go into this in my next few blogs, but understanding what is coming prejudices our attention.

 

 

Desire is the only way to effect change

I have been trying to put into words what I go through when I am trying to solve a personal performance roadblock, and it came to me that most roadblocks while personally imposed are also personally removed. So let's go back a bit to understand what is meant by this statement.

 

First the process of human progress comes from the one source, and one source only:

 

DESIRE

 

You will only change your lot in life if you have the desire to do so. Nothing complicated, nothing mystical. If you are comfortable with your lot in life, you will not change; if you don't feel motivated to change, nothing will happen.

 

Just being dissatisfied with your life is NOT enough to effect change. Most people are dissatisfied with their lives as the renowned American philosopher and naturalist Henry David Thoreau once mused in his essay called Economy:

 

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation..."

Without the desire to change, life continues as a series of "repeating yesterdays." When you come to the end of your life, will you look back and see a never wavering line of yesterdays, or will you see  that you took some chances and made some changes to alter your then unknown future?

 

Unmotivated, comfortable people don't change. History is replete with stories of this premise. A country stops growing and progressing when its people become comfortable with their lot in life. Has your life become comfortable, really not too bad, or just not bad enough to require change.

 

In the end, its the desire to change that will force the issue.

 

Revelations come when needed to those receptive

Revelations come when you are:

1. Relaxed
2. Alone (most often)
3. Mentally receptive
4. Needy (in problem solving mode)

 

These characteristics hit me usually when I get up in the early morning and am alone in my office area. This is something you need to consider having: an area that you can inhabit that contributes to your being able to have revelations. Revelations can be missed when personal distractions or "personal noise" keeps the creative insights hidden from your introspection. You must be ready to receive the revelations or they will be missed.

 

If your life is too busy or crowded and you don't like what is going on in your life, then you NEED some QUIET TIME! There is no way around it. The TV persona of the Danny DeVito's character in the comedy film "Other's People Money" running around being active except when sleeping is a misnomer. You have to be quiet to hear your inner revelations, you have to be receptive, you have to be ready for the insights.

 

Find a place, make a time, and do it regularly: every day, or every week. Do it today!

 

The renowned American philosopher and naturalist Henry David Thoreau once stated about finding a quiet place to ponder his lot in life and ability to live what he called life:

 

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation..."

 

 

First Step: the Past doesn't matter, mind does.

Let's begin...

First, nothing that has gone on in your past or what is going on in your present defines your future. Even if you have done something that has resulted in the loss of personal freedom (yes, prison), your future is unwritten, unknown.

This means that your future can be heavily determined by your frame of mind about what is possible and what is not: your own imposed limitations. If you believe that you can't do this or can't do that or can't be this or that, then most likely your brain specifically your subconscious will ensure that you are not proven wrong.

In other words, you become your own worst roadblock by believing that you can't do or be something. This is why what parents tell their children when they are young has such an impact on their future self-image. The FBI BAU (Behavioral Analysis Unit) which a part of the NCAVC (National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime) has empirical evidence that many violent offenders were made so by the words or deeds impacted on them by their parents.

The great thing about humans is that we are not "locked into" any predetermined mind set or behavior. We all can change our thinking and thereby change what our minds focus on minute by minute. Vietnam POWs talk about the only thing they had during years of imprisonment was their ability to think, reason, and remember. Many say it was this ability that prevented their captors from breaking their wills.

The mind is beginning, the source, and the end of all human realization; our daily perspective on life is based on how we think the world is, not what it may be in reality. This is both good and bad since it can provide a positive or negative impact on our lives.

So, the first step is to realize that it our own mental processes that hold the key to our future success or failures.

Welcome to You Can Be Fixed!

Welcome to myh new blog!

In this blog we will discover how you can discover your own true potential, deal with personal limitations, and most importantly, learn how to fix what you feel are you most pressing problems in areas of personal growth, professional aspirations, self-image, and relationships.

Having had the experiences of several lifetimes in my over 50 years; having made and lost several fortunes and made them back again; having dealt with such life changing experiences of personal danger, closeness to death, loved ones with terminal medical diagnoses, crises of faith and ethics, and so many others, I can help you understand how you own imposed limitations are the most limiting of all.

What you think are your limits is what your mind will impose on you.

How you perceive your life is exactly how it will ultimately turn out.

What you see as your "lot in life" is the goal your subconscious will work on to make come true.

Personal limitations are those invisible barriers that we place upon ourselves without the help of anyone or anything else. They are the handcuffs that prevent us from obtaining our true potential. They are what we devise to rob us of our success and future achievements.

The positive note in this is that while personal limitations are self-imposed, they are also self-eliminated. Only we can rid ourselves of their power since it is our own mind that gives them life and substance.

Join me in a journey of self-discovery. Come back often for your dose of "personal espresso!"

Final note: this blog is moderated since blog spam is increasing, and many people have not learned out to deal with their anger and no sense in subjecting my readers to their inappropriate slurs and slangs. Please feel free to comment and I will post most of them without editing, but if language or comments are hate-filled, they will be modified for sake of civility.

Welcome.