Top Ten Ways to Start Living a Low Density Lifestyle Now

In yesterday’s article I explained What the Heck a Low Density Lifestyle Is.

When you read the article, you should be able to wrap your mind around the concept pretty quickly, and I think you’ll agree with me that it makes a lot of sense.

Tomorrow I will begin the first series of the year, and it will be on Longevity. As you probably know, once I begin a series, I spend a few weeks looking at the theme of the series at an in-depth level. So in a couple of weeks, you’ll know more about Longevity than you ever thought you did.

But before I begin the series on Longevity, let’s examine the top ten ways you can start living a Low Density Lifestyle right now.

Yes, right now. Not tomorrow. Now. So let’s begin…

1) Open your mind. When you talk to someone, do you have a knee-jerk negative reaction to what they say? Open your mind to the possibilities that are out there, because it could cause you to change your thinking and expand the way you see the world. When you are closed minded, you shut off 99% of the world.

2) Listen to others. Don’t just be the one talking…listen to what others have to say – you will learn a lot that way.

3) Watch your expectations. It’s easy to expect others to do what you think they should do, or what you think is the proper way for them to behave and act. But everyone is different, and you should never impose your beliefs and standards on others. If you think someone is acting improperly, be aware if your perception is clouded by the way you expect them to act.

4. Beware the Curse of Knowledge. Don’t act like an expert, even if you know everything about the subject at hand. This ties in with the first point, to open your mind. The Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” You may know a lot about a subject, and may be the go-to person on the subject, but at the same time, it’s best to be humble about your knowledge, because there is never an end to what can be added onto the subject. For instance, the Nobel-prize winning physicist Richard Feynman once said, “I was born not knowing and have only had a little time to change that here and there.” And if anyone had the right to claim firm knowledge on a subject matter, it was Richard Feynman.

5. Laugh. A lot. We all have a tendency to take ourselves too seriously. When you laugh you start feeling lighter of body, mind and spirit. You can just feel yourself open up.

6. Move. As often as possible. Especially in ways that accentuate flow. Try this: when you’re home, turn some music on that has a good beat to it, and start moving to it. In whatever way feels right. It doesn’t matter if you have two left feet, just visualize you’re channeling your inner Fred Astaire. Or inner Michael Jackson. Or better yet, inner you.

7. Dream. Dream big. Or even dream small. But just dream. John Lennon once said, “The dreamer lives forever.” And Mick Jagger, in Ruby Tuesday, said, “Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind.” We all have great dreaming capabilities, but it gets suppressed. You can dream at night during sleep, or during the day, in what gets misnamed daydreaming. It’s not daydreaming you’re doing when your mind wanders during the day. Instead you’re doing what we all have as an innate quality: seeing ourselves in a greater capacity, seeing ourselves in the life we were meant to live.

8. Think abundantly. It’s easy to think from a scarcity perspective, in which you see a world in which it’s every person for themselves, and you have to get yours before someone takes it from you. But what if you perceived a world in which it was ok to share and be generous and be compassionate with others? Remember the popular best-seller called “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” by Robert Fulghum? That was the gist of the book, that what we all learned in kindergarten – to share, to play, to have fun, to enjoy each others company – are really the true lessons of life.

9. Live and practice a healthy lifestyle. Eat a whole foods oriented diet. Breathe deeply and relax. See a health provider who helps you to cultivate and enhance wellness. Don’t take drugs, or take as bare minimum as possible, and see them as a temporary bridge that you take only until your health is much better. Instead of drugs, take herbs and supplements.

10. Sign up for the free email course on this site. See the sign-up box on the upper right, below the video, or you can put your name in the pop-up box that shows up when you first come on the site. The course will help reinforce everything written about in the above list. And keep coming back to the site to read the articles. There are new articles on this site four days a week – Tuesday through Friday – on different aspects of living a Low Density Lifestyle. The different aspects are covered in a series format, and each series is written about for a few weeks. You’ll be glad you did.

Ok…So What the Heck is a Low Density Lifestyle?

Having started the new year off with poetry – which was the nature of all the articles last week, from the poetry of David Tucker, to Susan Jefts, to the odes to the New Year, and finally, to the poetry of Leonard Cohen, I will be beginning a new series, on Longevity, in just a couple of days.

But first, we interrupt this message to give you an important message from our sponsors…

Ok, it’s not exactly from our sponsors, the message is from me. You see, it’s almost a year now since I started the Low Density Lifestyle website. I’m starting to do radio interviews, and here’s the schedule of them; and my book The Low Density Lifestyle will be coming out in the near future; but…

People still want to know, What the Heck is a Low Density Lifestyle?

The concept is amazingly easy to grasp, but allow me to explain it to you…

Have you ever had a time in your life when everything seemed to be going just right? When everything flows and you feel like you’re clicking on all cylinders? Maybe it was when you were on vacation, or when you did something you felt passionate about. Maybe it was when you were absorbed in nature, listening to music, or perhaps even in the middle of a crowded city street.

Ultimately, where you are when you experience this isn’t so important, because in the end it’s really a state of mind.

This state, which occurs when your body, mind and spirit are in such resonance that you feel like you are in the zone, is called a Low Density Lifestyle.

When you are living this way, you are living in a more relaxed, less stressed, and calm, clear and focused manner on an everyday basis. It can lead you to better health and happiness, along with a more fulfilled, successful and enlightened life.

When you live a Low Density Lifestyle, you have less density, rigidity and tension in your body, mind and spirit—this means there are fewer blockages obstructing the dynamic flow of energy circulating throughout your body. You are more fluid and flexible, and less inflexible, rigid and uncompromising.

Paulo Coelho, the author of The Alchemist, said, “Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains.”

In essence, this is the formula for living a Low Density Lifestyle: if you let go of your densities and rigidities, and overcome your blockages, you will be like a fountain. You then become a circuit of energy, flowing infinitely, much like an unimpeded electrical circuit in which the electricity freely courses throughout.

How do you achieve a Low Density Lifestyle? Like anything in life, it takes a commitment, but the investment you put into it in terms of time and energy pays itself back with tremendous dividends.

You can start just by doing some simple things—eat more vegetables, grains and whole foods, and less animal foods; turn on some music and let go, moving and swaying to the beat as you feel it move through you; stop doing the same routine that you always do, instead doing something different everyday.

For instance, brush your teeth with your right hand if you always brush with your left, or sleep on the other side of the bed, or take a different route to work.

Make room for quiet time everyday, whether via meditation, walking in nature, or sitting quietly in your living room; and say “yes” instead of always saying “no.” See the Jim Carrey movie “Yes Man” to help guide you.

I have put together a 12-step guide to living a Low Density Lifestyle, which explains how to do it.

If this 12-step guide sounds complicated or overwhelming, let me distill it down to its essence: a Low Density Lifestyle is about being fluid and flexible of mind, body and spirit. From that starting point, all the benefits—better health, happiness, self-mastery, more joy and passion, fulfillment, success and inner peace—ensue.

Ultimately, the key to fluidity begins in the mind. How unbending are you in your beliefs? Are you a flexible thinker or someone who can be stubborn and dogmatic? Even if you eat the best vegetarian diet in the world, if you do it out of a rigid and holier-than-thou sense of what’s right, you may be doing more harm than good.

Now I’m not saying not to eat well, because that is an important component; however, a fluid and flexible mindset is what’s most important. It’s really the most important aspect to living a Low Density Lifestyle.

If you don’t live a Low Density Lifestyle, you may find yourself trapped in a High Density Lifestyle, a realm in which the burdens of stress and feeling overwhelmed can lay heavy on you and cause you to feel dense, tense and rigid.

If you feel heavy, and weighed down in your body, mind and spirit because of stress, poor eating, lack of exercise, a rigid belief system, unethical behavior, or a negative world view, then you are caught in the treadmill of a High Density Lifestyle. Billions of people on this planet are now caught in the trap of a High Density Lifestyle, and the increasingly fast-paced lifestyle of the modern world is to blame.

According to a survey by the American Psychological Association, in 2008, more people reported stress-related physical and emotional symptoms than they did in 2007, and nearly half of adults said their stress has increased in the past year.

A High-Density Lifestyle causes people to become physically ill, as well as mentally, emotionally and spiritually dense and rigid. This is evidenced by many of the common ills plaguing people today—weight gain, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, depression, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and numerous other chronic and degenerative health problems.

So which would you rather live? A Low Density Lifestyle or a High Density Lifestyle? I think the choice is obvious. I invite you to be a part of a Low Density Lifestyle world.

And if more people lived a Low Density Lifestyle, we could then imagine the question, What Would a Low Density Lifestyle World Look Like?

Ziggy Marley Gets Real

The series, What Would a Low Density Lifestyle World Look Like? continues on.

Today, you can listen to  some words of wisdom from reggae musician Ziggy Marley.

Ziggy is the head of the reggae band Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers, and is the son of one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century, Bob Marley.

Bob Marley was a prophet for a Low Density Lifestyle world, with such songs as One Love, Redemption Song, and Get Up, Stand Up.

And Ziggy’s no slouch either, with such songs as True to Myself, Tomorrow People and Love is My Religion.

In the above video, Ziggy talks about creativity, God, the universe, feeling connected, and intuition.

People who live a Low Density Lifestyle allow their creativity to flow, and allow themselves to be inspired by their connection to the spiritual dimension of life, and it is from that connection to the spiritual dimension that their creativity springs forth.

Low Density Lifestyle people also listen to their intuition and listen to their hearts. They feel, they sense, and they know what is right.

And so, listen to Ziggy get real and speak from his heart, and listen, both with your head and your heart. You may just feel inspired.

And below, you can watch three videos of Ziggy Marley.

The first is Ziggy and the Melody Makers doing his song True to Myself.  Next he’s doing the Curtis Mayfield classic People Get Ready.  And the last song is really classic: Ziggy Marley, accompanied by the Irish band The Chieftains, doing his dad’s enduring Redemption Song.

7 Steps to Help You Get On the Path of Doing What You Love

In yesterday’s article, I discussed how if you want to do what you love, you may have to create your own work. In essence, to do what you love you may have to become an entrepreneur.

But to go off on your own is a scary thing for many people. Even if you’re not happy working at a job, there’s a certain comfort level and feeling of security it gives you.

But if you’re not happy working for someone else, you can have all the comfort and security in the world, and you will never feel appeased. You will always have an uneasy feeling gnawing at you.

And the reality is, if you’re working at a job, working for someone else, you may never feel like you’re doing what you love, because it just may not be the fullest and truest expression of who you are.

I talked in an earlier article about Carpe Diem, of Seizing the Day. That is what it takes to let go of the comfort zone and to venture into the unknown.

But it’s not really an unknown, because it’s fully known: it’s who you really are. It’s living your dream and your passion, and being true to yourself.

And to get past the fear, it just takes a certain mindset.

Here are 7 things you can do right now to get past the fear and attain the mindset of being willing to do what you love:

1. Reclaim your mind.

This might seem a little strange, right? Who would think that they don’t own their own mind? The truth is that most of us live with partially free minds. We act on our intentions as long as our comfort zone is not violated. We rebel when the risk is minimal.

In order to reclaim ownership of your mind (and stop renting it out) you have to demand of yourself nothing short of a completely free, unadulterated mind. Underline this in your mind: “I won’t let anyone else have control or dictate the contents of my mind. Only I have that power.”

2. Put yourself on auto-response.

The ability of the leader to take action, despite not having a clear course, is a highly coveted skill in the entrepreneurial world. A leader takes action while others wait around for the situation to become more favorable. He has the “auto-response” of “I’ll figure it out.” When faced with a tough decision, or unclear path, he takes action instead of waiting for orders.

The more you’re able to take action despite having all the facts, the faster you’ll get results. You’ll adjust your course when you make mistakes and ultimately get there much faster than the person waiting around for the perfect plan to materialize.

3. Think holistically.

All of our decisions are interconnected. A choice in our health could create an improvement in our productivity. A shift in our spiritual practice can cultivate a calm state, where your focus increases. A move toward working for yourself will dramatically impact your freedom of time and movement, and greatly improve your happiness. All of our decisions are interconnected and a smart renegade knows this. She or he tries to make high leverage holistic decisions that will have a ripple effect across all aspects of their life.

Think holistically. See how the changes in all areas of your life impact each other, not just in business, but in the areas of health, fitness, finances, mental/emotional and spirituality.

4. Question authority.

Too much skepticism will make you unbalanced, and will honestly probably turn you into a conpiracy-theory nutcase. A healthy amount of skepticism, on the other hand, is essential to working intelligently.

One of the oldest living renegades, Siddhartha Gautama (also known as the Buddha) once said, “Do not believe anything that you’ve been told, unless it agrees with your own common sense.” The same advice applies 2,000 years later. Listen to yourself first, before you listen to the experts. Test before you assume.

5. Focus on interdependency.

We all have certain communities of people or tribes that we naturally connect with and are attracted to. Seek out these people, help them, start conversations with them. These are the people that are most likely to identify with you, therefore the most likely to also support and promote your work.

Find a way to connect with influential leaders or members of your tribe today. Whether it be through sending them a message on twitter, contacting them through their blog or emailing them directly. And if you can, try to get one of these people to mentor you. It can’t hurt to ask and you’ll be surprised at how genuinely helpful some of these people can be.

6. Defrost your passion.

If you’ve been stuck in a cubicle-farm for some time, or have been in a less than ideal work situation, you’ve probably given up hope on some level. Being surrounded with people you’d rather not work with, grey walls, no windows and bad coffee tends to dampen your spirits. This dispirited condition may have progressed so far that you have trouble remembering what it’s like to be excited about your life.

That’s got to change. It’s time to reconnect with what you’re truly passionate about and wake up to the possibility that you can start making your own rules. Life doesn’t have to be a struggle of paying your dues with the occasional bit of fun. Realize that you don’t have to live in the way you think is required.

7. Be ridiculous.

There’s obviously a certain societal value to being practical. But what’s easily overlooked is the value of being highly impractical. You have to be willing to take risks, and keep your head in the clouds to be a successful trailblazer. You have to strike a balance between having roots (practicality) and wings (innovating).

Realize that all major revolutions in the world were first seen as crazy, ridiculous and absurd. If you want to innovate, you’ll have to accept that the majority of the population will view you as a lunatic. You secretly know, though, that your level of lunacy is quite possibly your most valuable skill.

So there you have it – 7 things you can do to help you get past the fear and do what you love. Once you do so, you’ll be happier, healthier and feeling more fulfilled.

Doing What You Love Could Mean Becoming an Entrepreneur

If you are doing what you love, you may have to create your own work.

It’s not always easy to fit into a defined and set job if you are doing what you love, because it often means that you are listening to your own muse and setting out on your own path and finding your own way to express who you truly are.

It can also mean that you prefer the freedom of working for yourself, so that you can set your own boundaries, as opposed to having them  set artificially by a job.

If you decide to go your own way and create your own work, you are following the time-honored path of entrepreneurship.

It is the entrepreneurs who are the innovators, who move forward even when the naysayers say it can’t be done.

They love what they are doing so much that they believe in themselves even when others don’t, and aren’t afraid to fail.

In fact, failure is not part of the vocabulary of an entrepreneur, because as long as they are doing what they love, whatever the outcome, they are succeeding.

They see failure as not pursuing their dream.

The reality is, is that entrepreneurs can change the world – watch the above video and you will be inspired as you realize this is true.

Just by pursuing their dreams, entrepreneurs are changing the world, by also inspiring others to pursue their dreams.

And with their creative imagination and innovative drive, entrepreneurs are changing the world, by creating new ways of doing things, or by making adaptations to current ways of doing things.

Entrepreneurs are also changing the world by shining the light of hope where there once was darkness.

It takes a Low Density Lifestyle mind to be an entrepreneur with a fertile creative imagination.

Which isn’t hard to do. It just starts with doing what you love.

How to Discover Your Dream

I’ve been writing about Doing What You Love for the last few weeks, and in the process have encouraged you to live by the mantra of Carpe Diem/Seize the Day.

This is all well and good, but what happens if you’re not sure what your dream specifically is – in other words, how can you do what you love if you’re not sure what that might be?

Don’t feel guilty if you’re not sure of what it is that feeds your passion, because most of us make life choices based on expectations.

We  go to college and do what is expected of us, and along the way we get married and settle down and have kids, because that’s what everyone else does.

Now, there’s nothing necessarily bad at all about this. It’s just that if you live based on expectations then you may not know what it is that you really want.

Dreams then become buried deep down to the point that you don’t even know that you have them; yet, even with this, the dreams still will come through as a kind of itch, ache or longing.

Life is meant to be full of passion and chasing after desires, not going from life to death without experiencing joy. If you think you might be one of those people who has buried your dreams so that you could live how others expected you to live, you don’t have to continue like that.

Here are seven ways that you can rediscover your dreams and add passion back into your life and start doing what you love.

1. Talk to your preteen self
Before we started worrying too much about growing up and settling down, we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted out of life. A child has fantasy dreams and adults for the most part worry about being grown ups and being responsible. Our preteens selves, however, had a good mix of wonder and practicality. Are you doing what you wanted when you were that age? And if not, can you explain why without using the words “I grew up?”

2. Do something out of your routine
Many of us live using the autopilot. By breaking our routines, we open ourselves up to making conscious choices and to shaking ourselves out of a kind of stupor. Once we’ve broken the bonds of habit, our desires and dreams can start sliding through the cracks in the wall of comfort we’ve built around ourselves.

3. Think about what terrifies you
Think of an action where your response is “I could never do that” then ask yourself why not? Most things we say that about we secretly want to do it but we’re just scared.

4. Ask someone else what they think your dream is
Often our friends and family know what we want more than we are willing to admit to ourselves. In your question do not use the words should or need – that’s asking for their opinion which means they will project their own desires onto you. Ask them instead to start the sentence with “I believe you want to…” and they will have a harder time telling you their own hidden dreams.

5. Pretend you have amnesia
While we are shaped by our past, too often we let it define us and box us into making certain choices. By pretending to have amnesia the only things open to us are the present and the future. Given how you feel in the moment and forgetting everything that has happened in the past, ask yourself what you want for the future.

6. Write “I want to…” thirty times and start filling it in
Asking ourselves what we want usually produces a quick answer, something habitual, but if we go deeper and keep asking the same question over and over we force ourselves to find hidden desires and dreams. If you can complete the sentence “I want to…” thirty times without struggling, up the number to 50, or 75 or 100 – whatever it takes to start pulling out the dreams you’ve hidden in dark corners of your mind.

7. Throw away your plans
While some people live too much in the past, others live too much in the future. They create plans and set them in motion following through on them without thinking. Trouble is people and situations change. Plans need re-evaluating. We need to stop the plan and ask ourselves whether we still really want this dream or whether we are just moving forward with momentum instead of passion.

Pick one of the above actions and do it today. Don’t wait. You deserve to fulfill your dreams. Now.

It’s a surefire way to live a Low Density Lifestyle.

Doing What You Love: The Commencement Speech of Steve Jobs

One of the greatest commencement speeches ever was given by Steve Jobs at Stanford University for the university’s 114th Commencement on June 12, 2005.

Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in his life, Jobs, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life’s setbacks — including death itself.
It is a great speech and a true inspiration to all of us. It will get you to ponder your life and reflect on whether you are truly doing what you love.

Watch the above video and you’ll see what I mean. You can also read the transcript, which follows below:

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Follow Your Bliss: The Story of Paul Potts

Yesterday’s article was about doing what you love and following your bliss, which is a term developed by Joseph Campbell.

What does following your bliss and doing what you love look like? It obviously is different for every person. But ultimately it will be the best thing you do, because it will allow you to be in alignment with your true nature.

Today, I give you the incredible case study of Paul Potts. Paul was a mobile phone salesman in England with a majestic operatic singing voice, yet lacked the confidence to follow his dream of pursuing a career in opera.

He had sung opera on and off for a few years, but had not sung for years when he decided in 2007 to audition for the British televison show, Britain’s Got Talent, a show similar to the American television show, American Idol.  Both shows feature Simon Cowell as one of the judges.

The first of the above videos is Potts’ audition in front of Cowell and the judges, along with the studio audience of 2,000.

Potts came out, and the judges sized him up. Potts was nervous, and the judges assumed by his temperament and makeup that he would not have much to offer.

But once Paul Potts began to sing, hearts melted and tears flowed out of many people in the audience, including one of the judges. In fact, you will have to see if you can keep dry eyes while watching him sing.

The second video above is of Paul Potts being interviewed by a Hong Kong television station on a recent trip that he took through China to promote an album. Paul talks about following your dreams and the importance of doing what you love.

So watch the videos, reflect on the story of Paul Potts, and think about whether you too are doing the thing that you love.

It makes all the world of difference if you are. And it’s not hard to do so.

All you have to do is dream.

Creative Intelligence and Vision – Be a Dreamer, Be a Visionary

Can You Imagine?  Can You Use Your Creative Intelligence and Vision? Can You Dream, Can You Vision?

Today, for the series finale on Creative Intelligence, I present you with a video that I hope will inspire you and move you to continue to use your Creative Intelligence, and to Dream, Vision and Imagine.

In words and pictures, the video will tell the story.

Enjoy!

See you next time……

Creative Intelligence and Vision – One Company That Cultivates It

What happens if a company determines that they want to encourage Creative Intelligence and Visionary Thinking in all their employees? What could possibly result from it?

Imagine This

Before I tell you who the company is and some of the results of the creative intelligence of the employees, I just want to say that imagine if all companies cultivated creative intelligence and vision?

And how about schools? Imagine if creative intelligence and visionary thinking was the guiding force behind the education process? (Hint: creative intelligence is not cultivated in the education process and is usually squashed.)

So if all companies—and schools—truly cultivated creative intelligence and vision, all I can say is: Wow! This would be a world of creative thinking visionaries, people who were willing to dream up big ideas and put them into practice.

It would be a world filled with people living a Low Density Lifestyle.

Ok, so now back to about that specific company. You may have heard of them. Their name: Google.

Google

Google allows all employees to spend 20% of their time on whatever endeavors they fancy. They are totally allowed the free rein to do whatever they want with their work time, and to dream up ideas and then to see if they can come to fruition.

And this is why the folks at Google have created a cutting edge company that is never at a loss for new and fascinating ideas. By letting employees truly use their creative intelligence and by encouraging them to live a Low Density Lifestyle, they are a rich resource of original thinking.

How do I know Google encourages employees to live a Low Density Lifeestyle? Google offers a free dining facility for their employees that serves organic whole foods, offers free massage services to their employees and has places on their campus where employees can go to take a nap.  These things are part of the 12 steps to attaining a Low Density Lifestyle.

And so, whether you are a technophile or technophobe, it’s worth checking out some of the really cool things Google employees have developed, thanks to the corporate climate of encouraging creative intelligence. It may not be your inclination to think up these kinds of things, but I just wanted to show you the possibility of what can be done, if it is cultivated and encouraged, in order to inspire you:

IGOOGLE:  At iGoogle (google.com/ig), you can dress up all that white space with useful miniboxes containing additional info. Hundreds of useful displays are available: a clock, local weather, movie listings, incoming e-mail, news, daily horoscope, to-do list, Twitter updates and whatever-of-the-day (joke, vocabulary word, quotation, Bible verse and so on).

GOOGLE READER: Why spend your time finding and navigating to the Web sites that cover your favorite topics? They can all come to you — all nicely congregated on a single page, called Google Reader (reader.google.com).

You type in a topic, inspect the search results, and click the Subscribe buttons that look interesting. After that, Reader displays the first paragraph from each site or blog; click to read more. Star items to read later, or pass along your favorites to friends.

FLU TRENDS: Google figured out that whenever people get sick, they use Google to search for more information. By collating these searches, Google has created an early-warning system for flu outbreaks in your area, with color-coded graphs. Google says that Flu Trends (google.org/flutrends) has recognized outbreaks two weeks sooner than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has.

GOOGLE MAPS: You probably know this one, but it’s still worth pointing out (maps.google.com). Choose the directions you want: by car, by public transit or on foot. Drag the path line with your mouse around construction sites or down interesting streets. View current traffic conditions. Turn on Street View to see actual photographs of your destination.

GMAIL LABS: Gmail is already the world’s best free Web-based e-mail service, with terrific organization tools and a superb spam blocker. But if you click Settings and then Labs, you find a huge list of on/off switches for cool enhancements.

There’s Text Message in Chat (send text messages to your friends’ cellphones from within Google Chat or Gmail); Offline Mail (work on Gmail when you’re not online); Canned Responses (build a menu of stock answers to your mail); Multiple Inboxes (manages mail by auto-creating multiple mail folders); and Send & Archive (one click sends your reply and removes the original from the list).

TRANSLATOR: Translate any text or Web page to or from 40 languages (translate.google.com). It’s not perfect, but you’ll get the gist of that spam from Russia.

800-GOOG-411: Possibly the best voice-recognition cellphone service in existence. Call the number, say what you’re looking for (“comedy clubs, Chicago” or “Domino’s Pizza, Cleveland”), and Google’s auto-voice reads off the closest eight matches. You can speak the number of the one you want, and he’ll connect your call automatically — no charge. You never know or care what the phone number was; it’s like having a personal secretary.

Or you can say “text message” at any time to have the address and phone number zapped to your cellphone in one second.

GOOGLE SMS: Send a message to GOOGL (46645). In the body of the message, type the sort of information you want: weather report (“weather dallas”), stock quotes (“amzn”), movie showtimes (type “slumdog millionaire 44120”), definitions (“define schadenfreude”), directions (“miami fl to 60609”), unit conversions (“liters in 5 gallons”), currency conversions (“25 usd in euros”), and so on. Five seconds later, Google texts back the details.

GOOGLE SETS: At labs.google.com/sets, type in several items in a series (like “cleveland browns” and “dallas cowboys”); Google fleshes out the list with others like it (all the other football teams). Great when something’s on the tip of your tongue (a kind of fruit, president, car, holiday, currency) but can remember only something like it.

GOOGLE SCHOLAR: You can search all published academic papers at once, at scholar.google.com, for whatever subject you are interested in.

SECRETS OF THE SEARCH BOX: Usually, whatever you type into Google’s Search box is treated as a quest for Web pages. Certain kinds of information, however, get special treatment.

For example, you can type in an equation (like “23*9/3.4+234”); press Enter to see the answer.

Think of Google, too, for conversions. For example, type “83 yards in inches,” “500 euros in dollars,” or “grams in 3.2 pounds”; then press Enter.

The search box can also serve as a dictionary (type “define:ersatz”), package tracker (type your FedEx or U.P.S. tracking number), global Yellow Pages (“phonebook:home depot norwalk ct”), meteorologist (“weather san diego”), flight tracker (“AA 15”), stock ticker (“AAPL” or “MSFT”), and movie-listings (type “movies:10024,” or whatever your ZIP code is).

And there’s more, but that’s all space allows.

That’s one company with mega amounts of Creative Intelligence and Vision.

Come back tomorrow for a final article on Creative Intelligence and Vision. It will be a video that will move and inspire you.

Next Page »