By George Alexandrov on Thursday, September 28, 2006

A friend of mine forwarded to me an email with this year's message of the Dalai Lama. Well, it turned out this chain email was not exactly coming from the Dalai Lama (especially saying #19), as discredited on Snopes.com (article: "Hello, Dalai"). However, the message still conveys a message of wisdom. These are a few short, thought-provoking sayings of the type that you hear every now and then. But let me tell you that no matter how many times we hear them, it is a good thing. People have to hear something at least six times within a period of time before they remember it and start thinking about it. Such pieces of wisdom make us stop for a second, think, and then go on with our lives, hopefully a bit more skillfully than before. 

It is not the sayings that are the essence, it is the result of our thought process that is the product of wisdom. The sayings are just the catalyst. We can think of these sayings as a cosmetic mind scrub that washes the dead and unyielding pieces of mindset away to give space for new and healthy thinking to develop.

Take what you can from below and good luck on the path to your wisdom and success:

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three R’s:
1. Respect for self,
2. Respect for others and
3. Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great relationship.
7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon. (???)

Find more of what the Dalai Lama has actually said on this web site: http://www.tibet.com/DL/ 

By George Alexandrov on Tuesday, September 26, 2006

When we are convinced about something or believe something very much we will do things in accordance to this belief. Many times we do not realize some of the things that we believe as over time we have started taking them for granted. I would like to raise your attention to think about all the things that you believe in and see how your actions reflect that. ALL your actions are based on some sort of belief. Be careful what you choose to believe in. Great accomplishments have been achieved because of belief. And great horrors have been caused because of belief. And because of reasoning. Reasoning is used to support belief. You may not know that. Think about it. Ask yourself quesitons eve if you can't seem to find the answers. Sometimes it is more important to ask questions than know the answers. Where does your knowledge of things come from? What are the sources of your beliefs? Why do you want to believe in what you believe and not something else? What would you believe in if you were the sky?

By George Alexandrov on Wednesday, September 13, 2006

This morning while I was making some tea and waiting for the water to heat up in the microwave, I contemplated for a bit on why I was getting so frustrated every day. There are so many things piling up and waiting to be done. Of course everyone knows these: prioritize, organize, and plan. Yeah, easier said than done.

I was having brunch at Victory's Banner in Roscoe Village last week with a friend of mine. In our conversation she mentioned a few times the word "structure" in reference to life. She was telling me about how non-structured her life was, especially after partying a lot on the weekends, but she said "Thanks god that I have to go to work because it gives me structure." That term “structure” stuck in my head. Even if she doesn’t enjoy her job 100%, it balances her life and brings her back to a pace that makes her feel she is back on track. It is something that she is expecting that she has to do Monday-Friday, 9-5. It is this never failing expectation. She gets what she expects and this gives her structure.

 

Every day there are numerous things that come up, some urgent, some non-important and it is so easy to get astray and not think whether it is actually a productive thing that we are doing at the moment. And some of the things, like my friend’s partying too much sometimes can get us outside of reality completely. And these are so many things. Like make your tea, check a few blogs, chat on skype, oh, it's lunch time, let’s fix something for lunch now. And at the end of the day we've done so many things but we've done nothing. That makes me feel sad, stupid and pessimistic that I am not capable of doing anything right.

 

But as soon as I get something done and completed that I have actually planned on doing for that day I feel so much better. And so much more motivated, and all of a sudden the engine of live seems to work smoothly again. Every one of us must have something that we do, that is scheduled, structured that we expect to do and we do it. It could be going to the gym every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. Such rituals are keeping us sane from the destructive daily distractions that we give way to.

 

What I realized is that we need to come up with some ritual(s) that we like and commit to doing, no matter how simple they are. It could be just a walk as Steve Chandler recommends in one of his "100 ways to motivate yourself" - make yourself a ritual, and when things seem to get out of control just do your ritual.

 

For my friend it is work that gives her structure, and it could be a number of other things for all of us. For example, being committed to go to the gym is part of my structure. Sometimes we need more than one structured activity to balance our daily life. We just have to realize what makes our structure and how to come up with more choices of activities to add to this structure if needed. For example, going every other day in the morning to the local coffee house and read the morning news on your laptop. You know what would work best for you.

 

Rituals! Cool! I have to go back now to my normal work day of distractions [sigh].

By George Alexandrov on Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Photo from www.edmunds.com

I couldn't help mention about this excentric Bugatti on my blog. I will not reiterate what has been said about it, but will summarize the facts:

0-60mph in 2.5 secs
1001 hp
253mph max speed
16cyl
4 turbo chargers

If you have enough gas you can drive from Canada to Mexico in 5 hours. However, at 250mph you will empty the gas tank in 12 minutes. Very nice toy but probably only a few hedge fund managers will be able to get it. Mother nature will be happy to know that there won't be many of these gaz guzzling babies driving around becuase one costs a mere 1.4 million and only 300 of them will be manufactured by the Volkswagen owned Bugatti. Yes, it is the people's car manufacturer, who made the decision to engineer and made this not very "people" car.

See specs on edmunds.com and read the review in New York Times.

By George Alexandrov on Saturday, August 19, 2006

She is watching one of the best documentaries. It is incredible and the truths that it revelas in facts are astonishing. She feels a growing ball of inspiration in her, which gains mass with each second of outrage she feels. She know she must do something about it. The movie ends and she rushes to the phone to talk with friends and perpetuate the message of the movie. At this moment her body and mind are willing to give everything they are capable of to crush the injustice she just learned about.

She wakes up the next day. It's Monday again. "Wow, what a great movie," she thinks! Her mind is still quite disturbed by it.

Work.

Another phone call with a friend about the movie. "If I only had the time, I would..."

More working days and weekends.

In a month she still remembers the movie and how great it was, but the electric moment of passion is no more than a dry distant echo.

What does it take for us to be consistent with our own passions?

By George Alexandrov on Friday, August 18, 2006

I hadn’t experienced timelessness for a very long time. The most time I remember being in this state was during childhood and my teenage years. And it happens less and less with time.

 

So what is timelessness? It is that state of contentment where you feel just balanced, just right with whatever you are doing at the moment and it feels as if time has stopped, as if you are outside of it. For me this happened yesterday. I had a very nice dinner with a wonderful friend of mine and then, I started walking home. I had a great time, it was a perfect Chicago night, and nothing mattered. I was walking through the streets of beautiful Lincoln Park and everything seemed perfect. I did not rush anywhere, I wasn’t feeling nervous that I had thins to do. I just was.

 

This was the state of freedom from all the everyday constrictions that we put on ourselves. It was the same state when we were little and playing with the other kids just immersing ourselves into the game and not caring about time, problems or the grownups. It was the same state when were teenagers doing some cool or crazy (I will not specify, but you pick examples from your experience) and we didn’t care.

 

Have we forgotten how to be children? Have learned too well the skill of stress that keeps us away from experiencing timelessness?

By George Alexandrov on Thursday, August 10, 2006

 

I have felt many times like the Headless Fly so I felt the urge to write about this as an effort to stop being it.

 

When we don’t have a plan we are like a headless fly. This is true both for small things like tasks for the day and big things like starting your own company, or organizing an event. Flies without heads fly back and forth until they hit the wall and react by flying to another direction until they hit another wall. To put it in human terms we can run around like crazy, which creates the delusion of being super busy. And at the end of the day we have done nothing, nada, zero, zilch! Have you felt like that at the end of the day? And yes, sometimes your head may hurt from that mindless reactive bouncing around.

 

The negative key word here is reactive. If we don’t have a plan (however small it is) we react to whatever comes as it becomes our plan for the minute or the hour. This is not productive and at best we will be surviving by doing management by crisis. We may still advance dealing with matters this way, but reactivity is slow paced and takes a lot more energy than being proactive. Proactive in this case is willingly writing your plan (for the day, the event, the company).

 

We must put the effort of putting a plan together first. Every single day. We can just sit down at the beginning of the day or the night before for 2 minutes (2 minutes and no more!) and scribble a few items on a postit. These must be items that we consider important and we must be physically capable of doing all of them day. Don’t plan more than you are capable of doing. Two minutes and the plan is done!

 

You don’t have to use postits; they just happen to be what works for me at this point. You can use your favorite trusted system, which can be outlook or something else. Just write it down and have it out of your mind. This will make you feel much less stressed as you won’t have to constantly remember this and that and a thousand other things. If the system you use is trusted you will notice your plan during the day and you will magically stop worrying that you may forget something. You will also loose the guilty feeling created by the bunch of things constantly screaming at once from your sub-consciousness “get us done!!!!” They will be tamed down on the postit.

 

Having a few things written down subconsciously makes them your priorities for the day. No matter how reactive your nature is, it is likely that you will better manage to resist not doing the other “urgent” things that pop up during the day. The only exception may be if an alligator attacks you at the office or in your living room. Then you will have to definitely make fighting it your immediate priority ;-).

 

Have the plan? Now let’s get these things done. If you put more things that you are capable of doing then you may not be able to finish them all. So, again, make sure you get only the ones you are physically able to do for that day. Then set your mind in the morning that you want to do these things. If you don’t want to do them, well, maybe they are not as important as you thought or you are very good at making excuses. Aren’t we all? Remember YOU put these items in your plan, which means that YOU want to do them for YOURSELF. That’s what’s called being your own boss.

 

This same mini system can work for the larger time span, such as if you are starting your own company. Sit down and do that plan and don’t rely on your brain to remember everything. Maybe you should use a system better than a postit unless you want to have your house interior in Pale Peach, which I heard was not fashionable this year. But it all boils down to putting the effort of planning and doing. We just have to write the plan and then do it – hour by hour or day by day. Let’s put that head on our shoulders.

 

I am starting to finally understand what my mom has been saying forever: “Foolish people try to remember everything; smart people write things down.”

 

Nothing else will save us form being the Headless Fly unless we are wizards, have enough money to hire a personal manager, or have the luck of bouncing off the wall at just the correct angle every time to keep us going forward. But even if we are that lucky, there is still the possibility that the next bounce will be off of Life’s fly swatter and not the wall.

 

(Just got my Technorati Profile)

By George Alexandrov on Tuesday, August 08, 2006

You never expect when and you can never guess what is going to make your day. It was totally cool when a couple of hours ago, just at the end of the day, I saw a friend of mine with whom I have not been keeping in touch very regularly due to his work schedule. I was sitting next to the window at the Caribou on Broadway when a familiar face passed by, stopped, stepped a few steps back looking at me from outside with a big smile on his face.

I will not disclose his name as I didn't get permission form him to write about this, so I picked the letter M to refer to him. It was wonderful to see him again after a month, and chat about this and that and catch up. The first thing he told me was to explain why he couldn't take his smile off his face at all. I learned that he had found the most awesome person he had ever met. He had never felt such connectedness and reciprocation with anyone before, and with time it was only getting better.

It is hardly sufficient to describe M as happy - he was blissful. His smile could be seen form miles away, and he was radiant with joy. He was dancing with Life. It is so wonderful to meet happy people, especially when you know them as you feel closer to their happyness. Oh my god, if everyone could be only a fraction as happy and content as he was, the world would be paradise.

It doesn't happen so often when someone else's hapiness or success can make one's day. But this evening, M's happiness totally made my day!

I will be happy to hear you comments on what has made your day recently.

By George Alexandrov on Thursday, August 03, 2006

Thought and Action are the two inseparable essentials of one's development.

The following refers to me as much as it refers to anyone in the world, including you!

I have been thinking recently about many ideas, both business and social, etc. Dreaming too. I lot of it. And what do I see in retrospect? Little has changed in my situation for the past 7 years. At 20 I had the same goals as I do now - having a stable business, being more or less financially independent... maybe by the time I reached 25. But I find myself at 27 in the mental position of 20 and not quite the future I dreamed of. Are you feeling like that, no matter what your goals are?

After doing some thinking and analyzing myself I came up to the simple conclusion that what it takes is not only thinking but action too. Duh!!! Everyone knows this. But it takes living and thinking for a few years to fully realize and obtain the full meaning of this simple truth. Its like knowing about it and knowing it.

Someone once said "People are defined by their actions." I would alter this that people are constantly redefined by their actions. If you only sit and think, and do nothing you may develop the greatest ideas in this world. But if you do nothing after that, it's like you never existed and may have spared your time doing something else but thinking.

Anyway, I have been doing a lot of thinking. And dreaming. And the image of me being successful does make me feel nice. Thinking and dreaming are essential as they help us formulate our goals and figure out exactly what we want from life. However that only brings us half way through. In order to complete what we want to achieve we have to get our hands dirty. Action. Do it. Instead, a lot of us tend to continue thinking and over-thinking. By actually doing things that bring us toward our goals we start making your thoughts real and material. We have been given the gift of transforming our material world by action guided by thought.

No one can get us where we want but us, so it is important to stop the self-delusion that our dreams one day will magically become real. I am so tired of hearing people say if I had so much money I would .... or One day if I win the lottery I would .... or I want this and that. What are you doing about it? This will not happen, unless you do the specific actions to make the ideas in your head real. 

Do not over-think scenarios that may never happen in a 1000 years to discourage yourself. This is equal to looking for an excuse not to do action. It is an excuse brought by our enemy laziness. It sounds blunt but we are all lazy more or less. Laziness is the worst disease in this world and we all have it. Swallow that ego and acknowledge it - to yourself, not to anyone else. To one extreme people can die because of laziness, but more commonly they never become who they have the potential to be because of it. Laziness is cured by action, and only action. Nike has said it very simple - Just do it. And I would add now.

We all think that magic is a concept from the fairy tales. I disagree. We have been granted the power to transform the energy of thought into material energy and end results by action. You are a magician and the strength of your power of action may even surprise you. Why not start doing your magic now?

P.S. In relation to achieving goals I should comment a little bit in the future about achieving end results vs. way of life.

By George Alexandrov on Tuesday, August 01, 2006

What is cruel? Well, last night was one of the hottest nights in Chicago. So I had to sleep at 90 degrees (Fahrenheit) inside after the air conditioner broke down. Was that cruel? Yes, by any means! But there is always crueler. And it is realizing one night, no matter how high the temperature is, that all your best friends are in different time zones.

Toronto, Sofia, London, New York, and Phoenix - every one just went all over the place. I can’t even call you after a glass of wine one night, even after the weather cools down in Chicago - you are either deep asleep or busy after work!!!! Damn it! I suppose I could get the airplane ticket and visit you but whose credit card should I use; even better - whose green card should I use? Yeah that's life at this point. Only at this point, I should reaffirm. Of course there is the comfort and it is the one of having my sweet-che every day. However, friends are friends and there is no substitute.

I miss you wonderful people more than anything I have ever missed in my life so far. You are fabulous, gorgeous, loving, caring, daring, cool and fun! I love you! And please,  don't forget that I am ... how do they say this... COMING SOON ....