Self-improvement: Reinventing Yourself

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about re-inventing yourself. Then, today I randomly meet this 38-year-old martial artist/jewelry businessman/pre-med student/father who has been doing it all his life. Reinventing yourself is something that we can all learn to do. Let me give you a short synopsis of his.

Growing up in the states, he never went to high school or even middle school. Instead, he shuffled back and forth between Asia and the states learning martial arts from a Korean monk who was like a second father to him. Later, he joined the army. Then, he got involved in the diamonds business where dirty business is common. Eight times he was followed after leaving the bank with the diamonds. He always carried a gun with him to protect himself from the Korean underworld, Columbian mobsters, etc. that attempted to take the goods from him. Though it was dangerous, it was also lucrative. He managed to earn enough money to buy a nice house in the middle of nowhere in Alaska. That was great but his wife left him and departed with his daughter still in the womb. He followed her to Texas and somehow got custody of the child. Now, he has decided to be a good father and get a college education so he can become a doctor.

Clearly, this guy is very good at continually reinventing himself to have fun and to survive in this world. This is a key life skill which I think many of us never develop, especially for those of us who come from stable families. I can tell you that my personal story so far has been the singular linear path of school. My ignorance of this world is so profound that it's startling.

There's many people, perhaps including yourself, which has followed a similar linear path and have not yet seen how limited your view of the world truly is. You may very well continue the linear path of school to work with a few weeks of vacation every year to retirement without even thinking. Now, I'm not saying that you should go crazy and go rob a bank or overdose yourself with drugs, but I am saying that you should find a way to continually transform what you do since how else can you broaden your view of the world and truly say that you're living life?

To give you an idea, currently, I'm discarding my student entity and reinventing yourself as an entrepreneur but that is just one stage. What's next? I don't know when I'll do all this but I know it will happen in the next few years:

1. Reinvent myself as a world traveler and travel writer/photorapher. I will spend at least a year traveling the world keeping a journal of my days. At the end of my travels, I will hop around different cafes around Europe and compile the book to be published.

2. Reinvent myself as a film director. I really enjoy watching films and I have attempted to write a few screenplays. To film one myself will be awesome. I will spend a year or two interning to learn the basics of film production before going into directing one myself.

3. Reinvent myself as a psychologist or counselor. Many people have told me that I'm very good at helping them see what their issues are. I can go to school, get a degree, and then open my own practice. People can be fascinating and to understand different types of people is quite rewarding. I have decided that I'll do this when I'm old and (hopefully) well-respected.

So ask yourself this:

How will you reinvent yourself in your life?

Business: Generosity in Networking

A network functions because there's recognition of mutual need. The central idea that many people miss in the professional world is the concept of a finite mutual need. In other words, people tend to keep score since they believe the amount of social equity is limited. It's ideas like:

- I won't do something for you now since you can't do anything for me in the foreseeable future.

- I'll do this for you since you've helped me in the past.

- I'll do this for you now so that you can help me in the future when I need it.

What people are missing is the concept of infinite social capital. Instead of thinking like the above and how you can make someone owe you so you can ask them for favors later, you ought to consider your network of exchanges like the Internet, i.e. everyone benefits with more active connections regardless of which direction the flow is going at the moment.

This is similar to how friendships and relationships should work. You should not be thinking of what you can get from the other person but rather what you can give to the other person. Of course, for anything to last, the reciprocal should also be true. The other person will also give to you whether or not you expect a payback.

The ideal is to transform your professional network into a personal network so that the other person can operate on the same level of trust as you. Granted, this doesn't always work but why not try? A consistent lack of generosity is not a display of rugged individualism but rather a display of blatant selfishness. Individualism is merely maintaining your own identity regardless of outside circumstance. It has very little to do with giving or receiving.

Self-improvement: Switching Mental Eyes

Everyone sees the world in different ways. This statement appears very obvious. Let's be more specific. Artists see the world in one way. Engineers a different way. Writers still another way. Entrepreneurs yet another way. I consider myself an amalgmation of those different perspectives. When I observe a scene, I typically see from one of these perspectives. The artist and writer's perspectives come easiest to me but that's probably because I often carry a camera and notepad with me so I have trained myself to see the world like that by default.

Still, I find the world to be quite more of an exciting place when I will my mind to take on another perspective, or the coined phrase "mental eye". The scene is the same but what you see is often completely different. I believe that the ability to adopt different mental eyes may be directly related to creativity.

Though this requires some mental flexibility, if you can do this, you can get so much more from the world. A simple example is just by looking at an old fire hydrant. The photographer side of me sees the paint peeling off in a display of neglect and an odd patchwork of patterns due to it. There is some beauty to that.

I switch to the engineer eye. I see that there is an opening for a fireman to attach a hose to. Instantly, a number of questions assault me as I realize my own ignorance. The engineering mental eye for me is especially good at revealing my own ignorance in how the world works.

I start wondering what the water pressure for these things typically are. Does it vary with the location of the fire hydrant? Say the fire hydrant was 20 feet higher, will it be in a less effective spot due to possible lower water pressure? So is the placement usually in the highest possible spot and closest location to a building? What about the size of the hose? Was it designed just to fit a certain hose radius? It looks like it but of course the hose end can have an adapter that fits the fire hydrant so that probably resolves it. What about its interior? How many valves and pipes are in there and what's the design? When a fireman wants water, he just loosens the cap doesn't he? What's to stop from the water pressure suddenly gushing out and hitting him in the face? That seems a rather stupid design if true. No, there must be a valve that is turned on when the fireman presses a switch on the hose end that will be attached to the opening. I'm imagining something like a gas pump.

I switch to the entrepreneur eye. I see a disused neglected piece of equipment. I'm wondering why it's neglected to such a state. Fire hydrants I believe are maintained by the city government. This here means that the city is lacking some funds to maintain the city's equipment. Perhaps the reason is due to this one's remote location. Yet, the infrastructure supporting this fire hydrant still exists. Is it possible for a private company to renovate these fire hydrants? Of course that's possible but if the city had funds for that it would have done so. How about the reverse? Do they still work Need to investigate lifetime of fire hydrants under state of neglect. If it's over the expected lifetime, a company can remove these since they might pose a public health hazard. What possible health hazards? I'm not sure but it deserves investigation. That's just one business case. Maybe there's others. Considering the out-of-way location of this one and possibly others, they will not be missed here. Is there enough fire hydrants in neglect though to justify a venture here?

That's just one example of a rather mundane object. As you observe in life, there are millions of others. In other words, this world is really cool if you just pay attention and observe.

Self-improvement: Why Do People Seek Trouble and Drama?

Why do people seek drama? A good question and something that's related to the previous entry on Wang Xiaobo's "Extreme Experiences". Wang Xiaobo took his Chinese cultural revolution experience and ancient writings as his lens to see the issue. However, Steven Pressfield, the author of The War of Art, takes another perspective on the individual's need for excitement.

This short book contains small prose passages with a lesson contained in each meant to inspire and guide the artist and writer. One of the central themes is the concept of Resistance and how that prevents us from attaining what we most desire. Steven writes this on the needless drama that some people pursue:

We get ourselves in trouble because it's a cheap way to get attention. Trouble is a faux form of fame. It's easier to get busted in the bedroom with the faculty chairman's wife than it is to finish that dissertation on the metaphysics of motley in the novellas of Joseph Conrad.

...Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance.

Cruelty to others is a form of Resistance, as is the willing endurance of cruelty from others.

The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work. The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble. She harnesses the urge for trouble and transforms it in her work.

Literature: Translations of Wang Xiaobo's Prose "Extreme Experiences"

Yes, here you go. If I do some more, I may go ahead and translate his entire book called the Joy of Living. It's actually never been translated from Chinese into English so it won't be reinventing the wheel. This prose is called "Extreme Experiences" and it's a satirical look at how some people tend to go for experiences that are extreme just to get a kick out of it though if you have any common sense, you realize it's stupid and foolish. The link to the pdf is as such:

http://www.mendedreality.com/docs/translations/wangxiaobo_extreme.pdf