Is Paradise Really Lost?

Every day we have an opportunity to keep busy and add stress to our lives.  The hustle and bustle of every day living is enough to make you crazy if you don't breathe.  As the old saying goes, take time to stop and smell the roses.  That is the trick, taking the time to actually stop and smell the roses.

In theory we go on vacation to escape everyday life and go to "Paradise".  I use the word "Paradise" because it is an image we can all relate to.  It is that perfect place where we don't have a care in the world, we look our best, eat well and everything just works out right.   There are multi-billion dollar industries designed to make you think they are helping you get to paradise.  

The entire travel industry, and most of the entertainment industry are built on this premise.  

The problem is horror movies and for some people three hour lines at Disneyland become the "anti-Paradise".  I would rather work than see a horror movie, and my step dad would rather work than go to any Disney park.  Golf is a wonderful memory for me.  I learned to play with both of my grandfathers.  The golf course should be paradise to me.  Instead, the first ball hits the water, and paradise is lost.

Starbucks has created a billion dollar business by being your "third place".   The third place isn't home and isn't work, it is a simple escape where you leave the pressure of life behind.  The first time you went in, you probably thought, "What a great place." ordered a beverage and really soaked up the place.  It was a short trip to paradise.  On each of the following visits your trip to paradise got shorter and going to Starbucks became a habit.  Look around the next time you go and see how many people are getting anything from their escape other than a cup full of liquid and a bag full of calories.

In the US, this is our way of life.  We don't take it in, we just take it to go.

This isn't to say that Starbucks doesn't have great beverages and a great business.  Just look at the lines at any airport.  In Dallas there is a place where you can stand and see three Starbucks locations, and I have seen a line at all three at the same time.

I have a good friend who I used to meet at Starbucks on a somewhat regular basis.  We talked about everything under the sun.  As I started losing weight we moved the conversations to Subway and Starbucks lost it's appeal.  I still drink their iced tea on the road because it is great tea, not because I am looking for a little escape.  After all how can I escape at the airport when they don't even have seats at the Starbucks?

We all have some places where the essence of paradise isn't lost.  It might be a commercial place like Disneyland or it might be Yellowstone Park in the wintertime.  For me, the beach is one of them.  I don't ruin it by making a big trip to the beach with tents, and BBQ's and all of that stuff.  While all of that stuff can make for a great family picnic, the stress of getting it all there, hoping everything works and taking it down takes away from the pure essence of paradise.

When I go to the beach, a chair, towel, wetsuit and surfboard are my limit.  I can walk, bike or drive with this stuff depending on the mood I am in.  I know better than to damage my paradise.

Does Your Mind Make Up Stories?

Stimulating “The Mind”

There is a lot of talk in self help and psychology about a “new neuroscience”.  Basically some tests where done that tell us why we make up stories to explain things like the sun and the moon before there was science.

The test is pretty straight forward.  An electrical impulse is sent to the brain and the person reacts, either physically or emotionally.  The emotional responses are simple responses from specific neural pathways being excited.

The interesting part comes in the interview.  When the person is asked why they are smiling, laughing or crying, the left part of the brain goes to work and comes up with a story.  The sensors indicate that the person really didn’t know why.

Much like a child who does things simply to learn and can’t explain why, adults react the same way when pressed for an answer.  They make up a story.

We now that the mind, is there to help us see logic in a world of chaos.  The ocean looks flat so it must be flat for instance. We now know that when you look from space the earth is round.  The difference in the point of view is what gives us a different perspective.

Some people are treating this like a ground breaking change in the understanding of how the mind works.  The most extreme say that everything we do happens first, and we build the explanation later.  I don’t buy this at all, and my experience with several different systems of mind work agree there is much, much more.

Outside Stimulus.

In the case of outside stimulus, much of what I just discussed is true.  The first time people heard a sonic boom. They had no idea what it was and made up stories to close the gap of understanding.  If you go back to Greek Mythology, you can see how a lot of things are “explained” by the mind that we know to be outright false today.

That said, we still don’t know everything about everything and never will.  Every time we have a new experience or discovery, we naturally want to create an explanation.  That is the job of the mind, making order out of chaos.

I don’t know why this is called “new neuroscience” when I think we call can accept the premise simply by looking at the history of science, and how many discoveries lead to a better understanding of earlier discoveries.  

I guess what is new is we have a new understanding of how to make it happen?  

I'll come back to this from time to time, and I think it will make a new chapter in the update to So, Now What?

The Importance Of "The Mind" When It Comes To Success

Earlier this year, I ended up face to face with some deeper challenges both in business and in my personal life.  I hit a road block and it looked like I might be hitting a peak in my business.  Eventually I figured out that the road block was in my mind.  Quite simply, I had become comfortable with where I was.

The bad news is customers could see it, and that isn't good for business.

Once I dug in and found the source of this belief and why I wanted to stay comfortable, I was able to remove it and move on.

Last weekend I took a workshop from another coach whose business is strictly actors.  The key difference was that I wasn't teaching, and my wife paid attention.  You see, I learned a long time agot that teaching her was a mistake.  She doesn't want to learn from me.

That lesson has been a tough one overall in fact.  Trying to teach people who don't want the lesson is a total waste of time, and just irritates people.  Thankfully I have accomplished the first step of the twelve step program for being addicted to trying to help.  If you don't ask, I won't likely offer help unless you are paying me to do it.  Then I feel obligated until you say "Stop".

For the rest of the month, I will be sharing some insights and information that hasn't made it into any of my books yet.  All of the information will be focused on "the mind" and how it can be a key to our success, or the road block that keeps us in our comfort zone.

If you are interested, come back at least once a week, and let me know what you think.

Cool Nerdy or Tech Nerdy

My wife and I are generally of the nerd set.  Not having kids, we have a few more tech toys than most people.  We are tech savvy, but not social software saavy..  My wife is more social software savvy than I am especially when it comes to really social things like emoji.  

Emoji is a cool little app that changes the keyboard on an iPhone so you can send graphics characters instead of lame smiley's like :) or :-) like we used to do in the 90's with email.  As cool as emoji is, the engineer geek in me say that emoji needs memory and processor power, that slows down my iPhone.  I don't want to slow down my iPhone to send pictures.  Because of this I fall into the "lame" tech nerdy category according to my niece.

Obviously the solution is to get a newer faster iPhone that can handle the apps.  That of course is Apple's plan to take over my wallet.

Some people can't see the difference between a Cool Nerdy guy and a Tech Nerdy guy so they expect that I have it all.  My dad was a little older than most of my friends parents, so I was instilled with depression era rules on things like clothes, lights and toys.  Clothes you wear until they wear out, not until they are out of style.  Lights, if you aren't in the room, you turn them off.  Toys, if you might out grow it, you don't get it.  Lucky for me that rule didn't apply to cars.

My wife is a little different than I am in this way.  She is more Cool Nerdy and Fahionista type.  She likes new clothes daily, and works at a retail store part time just for the discount.  She of course has emoji and sends me texts with happy faces instead of :) like I send her.   On things like lights, we compromised.  I converted the house to LED lighting, and added Insteon lighting control.  When I go to bed, I hit all off, and I feel better knowing I am not wasting any energy, she feels better because she can leave on all the lights she wants until bedtime for under $1.00 a day.

Like the lights in the house, if it wastes energy or processing power, I probably don't use it.  That makes me a Tech Nerdy guy. If I were a Cool Nerdy guy I would have the latest of everything.  Are you Tech Nerdy or Cool Nerdy or Neither and don't even have a smart phone?

The (Almost) Healthy Dessert That Only Trader Joe's Can Make

Trader Joe's is a place that always has a surprise hidden somewhere in the store.  I am not talking about Larry the Lobster that kids get to go find, but rather the treats that change on a regular basis.  People who hang out in my neighborhood are probably expecting me to talk about some great wine find, but that isn't the case.

Some time ago while trying to lose weight, I found that my skin looked much better when I gave up carbs.  As I hit my weight goals, I started adding carbs back slowly and my skin broke out again.  It turns out I had a minor reaction to gluten.  I stopped eating gluten and my skin stayed clear.

So this little "desert" started with Trader Joes Gluten Free Ginger Snaps.  The problem is being a pilot, the ginger snaps were good, but I had to make them better.  The next obvious step was ice cream, but instead, I added the dark chocolate.  One square of the 72% dark chocolate between two ginger snaps turned out to be pretty good.

Of course that wasn't enough.  The next step was the Trader Joes 0% fat Greek Frozen Yogurt.  Then I added the Trader Joes Chocolate desert made with Coconut milk.

Finally I put it all together, and came up with this dessert.  It takes a little shopping to get all of this, but it is well worth the effort.  I recommend using a small bowl to keep from making a super-sized dessert.  We use very small dessert bowls to make this.

Ingredients needed (All Trader Joe's branded items)

Roasted Coconut Chips (found with the nuts and trail mix at most locations)
Gluten Free Ginger Snaps
Dried Pineapple
0% Greek yogurt
Chocolate Dessert made with Coconut milk (The strawberry is good too)
72% dark chocolate bar
Real Maple Syrup.

Grab a small bowl, a spoon and get ready.

Sprinkle the Roasted Coconut Chips to cover the bottom of the bowl in a single layer.  Break apart two gluten free ginger snaps (the triple ginger cookies will work good too) and make another layer.  Next add intertwining layers of the Vanilla Yogurt and the Chocolate Coconut Milk Dessert.  Using a spoon to make flat layers works better than using a scoop.

Break one square of the 72% chocolate bar into very small pieces and sprinkle across the top.  Cut one or two pieces of dried pineapple into small pieces and sprinkle on top as well.  Finally drizzle a light string of Maple Syrup to finish it off.

Let me know what you think.

The Real Cost of A Chevy Volt - 1000 Miles Completed

A month ago almost to the day I brought home my Chevy Volt.  I have a bit of an issue because I look at electric cars as an economic issue, and my friend Randy Jackson of sunpoweredevs.com looks at them as a strategy and freedom issue.  I really want us both to be right.  I find it ironic that it took a GM car to get me to drive an electric car when it was Cadillac that killed the electric car in the late 1920's.

Up until the 1920's you had to hand crank your gasoline car to start it.  Then Cadillac invented the electric starter and the gasoline powered car quickly surpassed the electric car in sales.  People go for cheap and easy.  Batteries back then weren't cheap and they weren't easy because of the limited range.

I believe that most consumers are going to go for the solution that provides the most bang for the buck as we say.  Wal-Mart proves it every day.  We want more for less, environment, made in China, it really doesn't matter and the sales of cheap imported products at Wal-Mart and Target prove it.

For me, acquiring the Chevy Volt was strictly economic.  I was looking for a new car and wanted the most bang for my buck period.  On paper, the Chevy Volt looked like a bargain.   After spending $1800 to put a new rear end in my F-150, and spending an average of $489 per month on fuel for it.  The first 1000 miles each month was costing me nearly $300 each month in gas.  The lease on the Volt is $399 per month.  With the tax credits and rebates, the Volt is essentially free, as would be a Nissan Leaf.

Admittedly, the Ford Fusion energi is a far better looking car and the sticker price is about the same as the Volt.  The problem is that the Ford only goes 16 miles on a charge before using gas.  The Volt can travel about 44 the way I drive it. My record is 48.

Since the Fusion Energi has smaller batteries than the Volt, the rebates and tax incentives are lower making the Fusion more expensive until those rebates and incentives expire.  For whatever reason, the Fusion lease programs carried a much lower residual value adding $150 or more to the lease rates with the same amount of money up front.

So I have a Volt.

As of yesterday, I have driven 1000 miles in the Volt.  Doing that I used $30 of electricity at home and $5.00 of electricity from Charging stations along with 5.3 gallons of gas according to the computer.  I also have learned about a big frustration with electric car charging.

The city of Seal Beach for charges $3.37 per kWh to charge your car. A Volt gains about 10 miles for each hour of charge, and according to the City of Seal Beach charger, I used 1 kWh in 20 minutes of charging.  That is $3.37 for 20 minutes of parking and 3.3 miles of range added to the car.  If it isn't obvious, that is crazy expensive.

Here is the rub.  The Volt gets about 10 miles for each hour of charging on a level two charger.  According to the best information I have it charges at a rate of 3 kWh on a 240V level two charger.  The simple math at home is .28 x 3 = .75 for 10 miles.  Gas at $4.00 per Gallon and 40 MPG that I am actually getting is $1.00 for 10 miles.  Easily 25% more cost effective to use electricity at home.   At a ChargePoint station charging .25 per kWh it is even cheaper.

South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa is the clear winner, I found a nice covered charging slot that allowed two hours of FREE charging.  Guess where I spent $1100 on a new Mac Mini?  Thank you South Coast Plaza for getting it.  Free parking and Free charging.  I don't think electric cars should get free electricity everywhere, but how nice is it to add a few solar panels and get customers to spend money in your center by giving away $1.50 in electricity?

To put this in perspective, assuming straight rates and Level two charging at 3 kWh, parking and charging in Seal Beach is $10.11 per hour.  The space right next to the charger is free.  Charging at home on Tier 3 rates is $.84 per hour.  The City of Seal Beach is asking for $9.37 in profit every hour!

The Grove in Los Angeles has some pretty pricey parking too, and charging there as a Blink member is $1.00 per hour.  With validation, I get two hours of charging and parking for $2.00.  In Seal Beach that would be $20.22 while my gasoline powered friends parked right next to me would be parking for free.  Maybe there should be a way to "validate" some electric charging when the people really spend money.

If the city of Seal Beach wants the sales tax from my business, they are not encouraging me to stay long at $10.11 per hour for charging are they?

At $4.00 per gallon and 40 miles per gallon, charging at $1.00 per hour is about the same cost economically speaking since I get about 10 miles of range per hour of charging.  At the normal retail level, electric and gas cost me about the same.  When you include the annual fee for Blink, it is actually more expensive slightly.  At some point electric rates have to go down because states are going to tax electric cars for the fuel tax they aren't paying.

It is all about balance, if electricity costs more, people will stop buying electric cars plain and simple.

This economic problem has created another issue.  Electric cars that plug in and don't actually charge.  I noticed that two of the there electric chargers in Seal Beach were occupied by other cars, and when I read the charger they were not actually charging.  I was the only guy dumb enough to pay $3.37 per kWh I guess.

I would think that cities, attempting to encourage use of clean electric vehicles would charge .20 or .30 per kWh, and $1.00 per hour of charging at most like the Grove and Carl's Jr. locations do.  Why is Seal Beach charging so much to plug in?  Don't they want my business and tax money?

Speaking of Carl's Jr., I stopped in for lunch, plugged in and walked over to the Citadel to get a pair of Jeans.  The Citidel hasn't installed any chargers yet, free or otherwise.  Fortunately, the Carl's Jr. Manager was very nice and just asked that I don't stay for more than 2 hours even though the other two cars in the Blink charger spaces were not electric at all.

So far I have found two Carl's Jr. locations on my way home that have Blink Chargers.

Economically speaking, I won't be plugging in at a City of Seal Beach location until they get reasonable with the rates.  Gasoline is way cheaper and parking isn't that big of a deal on weekdays.  If the City Council wants to say the chargers failed, they are doing the right things to make that happen.

South Coast Plaza on the other hand will keep getting my business as long as there are free electric spaces even if only for two hours at a time.  Talk about getting it.

At the end of the day, after 1000 miles, I haven't filled the tank so I have to trust the computer in the Volt when it says I have used just over 5 gallons of gasoline, $5.00 in paid electric charging and two hours FREE at South Coast Plaza and my electric bill that went up $30.  Round up and call it $60 for 1000 miles v. $289 for 1000 miles in my F-150 and the Volt is clearly the economic winner.  Just in case you think the F-150 isn't a fair comparison, I also have a Mercedes SL that also gets 14 mpg in the real world.  I just don't drive it enough, And the Volt is saving a few miles off of that car too.

And yes, the Volt is fun to drive, has a great stereo, and navigation that is better than the SL or my wife's ML.  My favorite feature is sending an address from my phone to the car so I don't type it in at all.  The voice command part stinks.  Ford is the hands down winner here.

The real monthly cost of driving a Volt 1000 miles is $399 for the lease, and $60 for the gas.   The F-150 or the SL would be $289 for gas alone.  Is the Volt a winner?  Yes.  Is electricity the winner?  Yes, that is as long as you don't charge up in Seal Beach.

The Volt at the Airport - No Chargers!

The Power of Direction aka Getting More Done In Less Time

With the right direction you can get a lot more done in a lot less time.  At least that is what I have been saying and writing about for many years.  So yesterday as I was running off to one of my four "jobs", and a neighbor stopped me.  I could see the question before he asked it.  "Isn't it a little hypocritical that you have four jobs and call yourself a focus coach?"

Without question on the surface it looks a little odd, but I have a couple of secrets that I will share from my current book project, and a little perspective to boot.

My four jobs aren't the only things that I do. I also have written books, edit websites and write articles outside of my blog.  Also, my house is a giant toy store for big boys.  Classic rag top car, surfboard, paddle board, four beach bikes (everyone that visits likes to ride the beach path), skateboards and a radio controlled helicopter.  I like toys, and yes they are for many people a distraction to getting focused.  That is because they use them wrong.

Focused Doesn't Mean No Life.

Being focused simply means that you can see where you are going, you have a "destination" as I like to call it, and you are making progress.  It doesn't mean you are stuck in front of a computer for thirty hours at a time.  Writers block is famously cured by leaving the writing office.  

As a former military competitive marksman, I used to say you could see your target clearly.   When I moved back to the west coast, I realized two problems with that metaphor.  First, any competitive shooter knows that you don't focus on your target.  The front site right in front of you is the focus.  Second, not enough people on the west coast have guns, and if they do, not enough are technically proficient at shooting to understand the metaphor.

The truth is, shooting is still a great metaphor for life.  Looking at the front site is like looking at what you have right in front of you.  The tools you have today, here and now are what you have, nothing more.  Seeing a blurry target is also a great metaphor, because life is a little blurry.  Those who get things done know exactly what they want to do, just like a shooter knows exactly what he is shooting at.  At least that is true for a successful shooter, just ask Dick Cheney about now knowing what you are shooting at.  

So now I use my second life to teach focus.  As a military and airline pilot, we never start the jet without a mission or a destination.  Hopefully in the military you accomplish both.  Starting out, I don't always know what the place I am going to looks like.  Every place I have ever been is new at least once.  Some change making them new again.  I know enough to get there, and have a plan.  I also have a backup plan in case there are obstacles that are too big for my current plan.

The first time a pilot goes to an airport, he has no idea what it looks like, yet thousands of times every day pilots land safely at new airports hundreds or thousands of miles from where they started.

So how does all of this relate to the power of direction and getting more done in less time?

When you have a direction, or a destination, you have a reason, a purpose, an intention or a burning desire to get there.  If you want to get there bad enough you will.  

The problem for most people is distraction.  Those little daily fires that pop up.   My two dogs are sitting here staring at me waiting for a morning walk.  Because of my burning desire to move my business forward and help more people, the dogs have to wait, and I keep typing.

See if this sounds familiar in any way.  

Saturday morning you are going to sit down and re-write your resume so you can get a big promotion or move to another company.  You get up, and the kids want to have breakfast.  You tell yourself, just after breakfast, you'll sit down and fix your resume.

After breakfast, your spouse reminds you that Jonny has baseball and Janie has ballet and you promised Janie you would take her.  Not wanting to let your child down, you take her to ballet.  You can do the Resume when you get back.  After all it is just a couple of pages and the old one isn't that bad is it?

After ballet the other parents are going to have lunch at that new girls store across town, and Janie is screaming to go.  So you do.

At 3 pm you finally walk in the door dog tired of running all over town when you are told, the Jones want to get together for dinner, the sitter arrives at 5 and the dog needs a walk and the dishes need to get done, which would you like?

At 9:30 you get home from dinner, tuck the kids in, sit down and realize it is 10:30.  Tomorrow you'll get to your resume.

Sound Familiar?  Even without kids this has happened to me more than once.  

Building a business isn't any different, you can map out a business and plan it down to the exact color blue on your business cards, and wake up a month later with a great plan and no business, or a business with no income.

The Secrets

My first secret to keeping sane with four jobs is that I don't have children.  Just two dogs.  It isn't by choice, it just is my life.  Any parent will tell you that having kids is a job on it's own.  Many parents are overwhelmed by the kids and make excuses to get out of the house that make things worse not better.  This isn't really a secret, but it is something you need to understand as you set out on your journey if you want to stay sane.

My second secret comes from the ability to harness that internal desire.  It takes a lot of practice, and a litte discipline.  Each of my four jobs only gets one major item for the day.  The reality is, if I focused on just one job*, I would make a lot more money at it.  I have made the decision based on my white board to create dozens of small streams of income rather than one large one.  You have to make that decision based on your own "wants" and "don't wants"

The flying job at the airline often gets none.  The advantage of that job, for the most part is when I am not flying I don't have to think about it.  With over 25 years of flying in the military and the airline, flying is now second nature.  All jets are basically the same after a while.

Even if you have kids and a day job, you can pick one major goal and make a destination out of it.  If your family understands where you are going, why it is important to you and how it helps them, they will understand the next part.  I suggest the white board method for this.  

The next part is setting priorities every day.  Each day at the end of the day I look at the small white board in my office.  Not the big one in the garage that has my "Wants" and "Don't Wants" on it.  Here too are three columns.  The first is the daily task list.  One major item for each of my four main "jobs".  The second is my Open or Follow up list.  Sort of my brainstorm of things that should become something on the daily task list.  These are things I haven't done, and haven't put a deadline on but are important enough not to "dump".  Some will get delegated when I find the right person.

The third column is my notes and big picture items to work on when I have completed my daily tasks or hit a road block and need to let my subconscious do some work.

Here is the big secret that takes a little practice.  When I get stuck on a task in column one like "Write a New Chapter for Book Project", I focus on it for just 5 or 10 minutes.  If I don't see a solution, I tell my subconscious to work on it, and then I either go to the far right column and work on something like "Solar Panels for the roof" or I go grab a toy and play or exercise for 45 minutes.  I find that almost every time I do this,  a solution will just "pop in my head".  Oddly solutions for the other three items on the list show up as well.  

Using this method, I work three to four hours a day on three of my four jobs.  I believe if you use this method, you can easily start a profitable second career or business in just a few hours each week.

*Because the airline job is union and a straight trade of time for money, none of these rules apply.  I can't work any smarter to get paid more and work less than the contract will allow.  As much fun as flying is, I do plan to leave commercial flying and purchase a private aircraft in the next 24 months.  I will be too young to retire just in case you are thinking that is the reason for 24 months.