why six weeks.

In the movie Fight Club, Tyler Durden and The Narrator enter a variety store, and then exit the rear of the store, holding the night manager, Raymond, hostage at gunpoint. The dialogue goes something like this:

Tyler: “Raymond, you’re going to die. …[looks at Raymond’s I.D. card]… An expired community college student I.D.! What did you study Raymond?”….
Raymond: “Biology mostly”
T: “Why?”
R: “I don’t know”
T: “What did you want to be, Raymond K. Hessel? [Cocks gun] The question, Raymond, was – what did you want to be?”
R: “Veterinarian! Veterinarian!”…
T: “Animals.”
R: “Yeah animals…stuff”
T: “Yeah stuff, I got that – that means you have to get more schooling.”
R: “Too much school”
T: “Would you rather be dead? You’d rather die, here, on your knees in the back of a convenience store?”
R: “Please…no…”
T: “I’m keeping your licence. I’m going to check in on you. I know where you live. If you’re not on your way to becoming a veterinarian in 6 weeks you will be dead. Now run on home. [Raymond runs away into the darkness] ….Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel’s life – his breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted.”

The Narrator continues: “You had to give it to him. He had a plan and it started to make sense in a Tyler sort of way. No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter, truly slide.”

Although that scene was very intense, it really made me think on a different level.

What would you do if you only had 6 weeks to live?

What would you do if you knew you would lose your job 6 weeks from today?

What could you let truly slide?

Are you doing what you want to be doing? If you are, then keep doing it! I hope that you will still enjoy what I have to share with the world.

If not – what did you want to be, when you started out, and why are you not doing it? What do you want to be, what do you want to do, now? Why are you not on your 6 week plan to getting where you want to be? Why are you, instead, “dying on your knees in the back of a convenience store”?

I asked myself these same questions, some time ago. I had all of the tools I needed to become what I wanted to be, but I was not doing it. Although I did not physically have a “Tyler Durden” holding a gun to my head, effectively all of us do. All of us have one thing in common – limited time – and the time to start is now.

Time is effectively holding a gun to our heads.

Start now. We don’t know when time will come for us.

Now is the first moment of the rest of your life. Use it wisely.

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My writing up until now has been of an inspirational nature. This won’t change, as it is very important to me. I will continue to write inspirational stories as long as I can write them, and as long as there is someone who would read them.

I have some other interesting things in store as well, that you may find useful. Stay tuned…

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PS – in addition to starting now, I believe it is also important to fail early, fail often – to learn quickly. So please bear with me, and if you see something amiss – don’t be shy! I’m here to listen as well as to talk, and I’m far from perfect.

PPS – I know that probably all of the links in my old posts point to my old blog – I will be fixing them…

the privilege of choice.

The ability to choose is not a right, it is a privilege we are given by life, until we either give up that privilege, or life takes it away from us.I have written on a similar theme before, in my post rocks, but I feel the message deserves further consideration, based on recent events in my life. If it sounds repetitive, I don’t care. I want to scream it from the tallest mountain, at the top of my lungs.

I have two personal experiences to share today.

My neighbour committed suicide two days ago. She was 18 years old, and had just broken up with her boyfriend. I wish that she had chosen to speak with someone, to ask for help. So much potential that the world will never see. She is no longer free to choose what she wants to do with her life.

I also learned today that my cousin has cancer throughout her body. She did everything right, worked hard throughout her life, saved her money, and retired four years ago, no doubt expecting to be able to enjoy her life for many years to come. She has undergone treatment, but it has not worked, and she has been given only a short time to live.

Many people are not so lucky to be given the privilege of choice. War, disease, hunger take them early.

Perhaps you are in a bad place, emotionally or otherwise. You could just give up, and that would be a tragedy.

Or you could ask for help. From anyone. No matter how low you think you are, there is someone who has been lower, and has clawed back up from the darkness.

I have been there. Many of us have, perhaps even you. But there is healing.

My wife and I held our prematurely born daughter in our arms for an hour before she passed away, back in 2001. Her twin brother survived, and is alive and well – a miracle. We also survived, and have had three more children since then – triplets.

There is so much more to the story, and I will tell it in time.

If you are still alive, if you can still put one foot in front of the other, you are better off than many. The sun will come up tomorrow.

Perhaps you don’t like your job, you would rather be doing something else. You could just read these words, and go back to complaining.

Or you could decide, right now, to change. Do it, for you might not get another chance. Life might take the privilege away. Someday, it will.

It is never too late, until the end. And we know not when that comes.

Freedom of choice is a privilege. Be thankful that you have it. Do not give it up. If you remember two things in life, remember this:

1. Exercise your freedom to choose your course in life, your actions and words. And if you fall, get back up again. Someone will help you.

2. Make your choices as early as possible – now! – and adjust your course as necessary. It is never too late to change. You may not get a second chance.

Today I chose to take a walk with my children, in the sunshine. If it were my last day on earth, I’d have done the same thing.

To be continued…

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Inspired by Bill Bull’s comment at Zen Habits in a post about focus. I chose to turn a negative into a positive. I am happy to have had the privilege of choice.

subterranean self worth.

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet.” – Tyler Durden, Fight ClubSeptember 16, 2003. Petiu George Ciorau had finished up his night shift at a grocery store and was returning home on the Toronto subway. The part-time 22-year old was walking on the central platform, with his head down, when he saw an elderly woman stumble and fall onto the tracks.

As hundreds of other people looked on, Mr. Ciorau jumped down onto the tracks, lifted up the frail woman, stepped over the third rail – which carried 550 volts DC – and pressed her up against the outer wall.

The train came to a halt a meter and a half from them.

Without a second thought, Mr. Ciorau had risked his life to save another.

Hundreds looked on, but did nothing. Businessmen, executives, entrepreneurs, professionals of all types, the “leaders of tomorrow” – go-getters, action-oriented Type-A individuals. None of them did anything, with their self-preservationist attitudes, their custom-tailored suits, their BlackBerries, their café lattes – the shining stars of Canadian society through and through.

No, it took the actions of a young, part-time grocery store employee. Mr. Ciorau said he didn’t even remember taking off his backpack.

A Toronto firefighter at the scene said he would recommend Mr. Ciorau be hired as a firefighter, and that he deserved the Order of Canada for his amazing act of bravery.

I thought about that story for some time. I asked myself if I would have done the same thing in that situation.

A month later my wife and I were having Thanksgiving dinner with her family, and some family friends. As usual, the post dinner conversation was lively, but one of the guests said something that took me aback.

The speaker, an old family friend and university professor, was dominating the conversation as usual and was telling us that, in his honest opinion, you had to have a Ph.D. or he wouldn’t even consider hiring you for any position in his department, because you weren’t worthy.

I could see the hurt in my brother-in-law’s eyes from across the room. He is a proud man, a family man, the hardest working man I know, and no, he does not have a Ph.D. He drives a truck for a living, and would give you the shirt off his back.

So I spoke up. I openly disagreed with the speaker, and told him this story of bravery. I went on to say that had all of us been in that situation, the only one of us who would have likely done anything was my brother-in-law, the truck driver. Not me. And certainly not a fat old university professor with a Ph.D.

Self worth should not be measured by education, or financial wealth, or social status. It is a very personal thing, and it should be measured by our actions and attitudes towards others.

No one will remember how much money you had, the car you drove, the clothes you wore. They will remember how you treated them in your daily interactions, personal and professional.

Kurt Vonnegut once asked his son, Mark, about life. His son said to him, “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”

It is what you do with what you have been given that makes you stand out.

Mr. Ciorau understood this, and acted accordingly. To my knowledge, he has not received the Order of Canada to this day.

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Inspired by the great dialogue in the comments following“Are You Charging What You’re Worth?” at Men with Pens, and by the actions of Petiu George Ciorau.

butterfly effect.

Butterfly effect: “…the idea that a butterfly’s wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that ultimately cause a tornado to appear (or prevent a tornado from appearing)…had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different.” (from Wikipedia)This post is about choices. Small choices we make – what we eat, what we do, where we live, how we act, what we say, what we write – can have far reaching effects on our lives, and the lives of others.

This post is also about change. It is never too late to change. The path is not set in stone. This I believe to be true.

We all make choices, practically every second of our waking lives. Perhaps many, or even most of them may not seem important. I ask you to take a moment, to pause and think again.

Small choices can and do lead to monumental changes.

A long time ago, I had a simple choice to make. A friend asked me if I wanted to go to a party. I met my wife at that party, and today we have four beautiful children together. Those children would not exist today, had I made a different choice in that split second, and stayed in that night.

My life was forever changed by that simple choice, and for that I am grateful.

No matter how small your choice, how small your action may seem, it can have far reaching effects. It can totally alter your life course.

And this is a beautiful thing. It can start simply with an idea. A positive idea for change. A kind word to someone you know. A helping hand. And it can grow exponentially, into something much bigger than all of us.

More recently, I made another small choice. For some time, I knew I was missing something. I was not doing what I am meant to be doing. I decided that I wanted to start writing again, for pleasure. I started writing in my spare time, and I had some ideas, but I did nothing more with them.

At the beginning of this year, I decided to start participating actively in the blogging world, by commenting. Just a small step. The flap of a wing, so to speak.

Slowly, the wind started to pick up. The leaves in the trees started moving, back and forth. I started the blog you are now reading. People started to encourage me. And that is a great thing.

One small choice has made all the difference. I decided to change, at that moment. My path is forever altered, and for that I am grateful.

Decide, right now, to make a positive choice and take one small action. It will forever change your life path.

Perhaps you agree with what I have said, or not – that is up to you.

I choose to believe that life is what we make of it. And the small things can make all the difference.

rocks.

The other day at work, a colleague stopped me in the hallway to ask why I was so happy.I smiled at her and said, “What do you mean?” She replied that I looked almost euphoric, like nothing could get me down.

I smiled again and said, “Oh, it must be that the sun is shining today!” In actual fact, it was that and more. While reading an awesome post about life change at Self Made Chick, I had discovered a video of Steve Jobs speaking at Stanford in 2005, and it may also be found here. Steve Jobs is a pancreatic cancer survivor.

I had also recently watched a video of Dr. Randy Pausch, who is dying of pancreatic cancer. Both Randy Pausch and Steve Jobs have faced their own mortality, and yet they have chosen to continue living each day to the fullest, for as long as they are able to do so.

They are rocks, standing up in the face of adversity.

inertia. momentum. focus. change.

Inertia: a property of matter by which it remains at rest or in uniform motion unless acted upon by some external force.

Momentum: the product of the mass and velocity of an object (thus, momentum increases with mass and/or velocity).

Focus: directed attention.

Change: I’ll leave the definition of change up to you. Feel free to add your own link in the comments.

Inertia may be thought of as “a tendency to maintain momentum”. An object with greater mass is more difficult to get moving (inertia), and more difficult to stop (momentum). And once moving, as velocity increases, it is also more difficult to stop the object (momentum increases).

I started a new exercise routine a while ago using something called a kettlebell, pictured above.

The workouts involve swinging motions with heavy unbalanced weights (36 pound weights for me, initially). I learned very quickly about inertia and momentum! I really had to direct my attention – to focus on each movement, each change.

Focus and planning are required to master each new motion. At first, I was afraid to try new exercises, to make mistakes, as some of the motions are complicated.

While the complicated motions require forethought and positioning (focus) prior to each lift (inertia), once the weight is moving, it is easy to keep it moving through the range of motion (momentum). The movement cannot be stopped. The change is inevitable.

I no longer fear attempting a new motion. I just pick up the weight, and try it. The absolute worst thing that can happen, is that I drop the weight – and jump out of the way! I simply pick it up again, and move towards my goals, again and again.

Some of the things we might wish to accomplish in life, some of the changes, are quite “heavy” and complicated. They possess a lot of inertia, in a manner of speaking.

Focus and planning are required to get things moving. But, once things are moving, the momentum builds. It cannot be stopped. The change is inevitable.

Mistakes will be made along the way, but should not be feared.

Sometimes, like with the weights, the best thing to do is just start. The worst thing that can happen is that we fail.

Drop the weight, so to speak, and be sure to jump out of the way as it falls.

And then – pick it up again. Lift the weight. Keep moving towards your goals, again and again.

If you need some inspiration, have a look here, or here, or maybe here.