I often write about wanting things, becoming something, attaining some kind of goal, always wanting more, or wanting less, never satisfied with what actually Is…
Category: Inspiration
bookmark_borderHow To Diversify Your Life
I snagged this infographic from James Altucher’s Twitter. His writings have been resonating with me lately.
Hopefully this will remind me everyday to do something about it, if I really want to break free from my one source of income.
Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate having a job doing what I do best; it’s been a stable and abundant life. It’s actually one of the best jobs I’ve ever had. But something keeps tugging at me, something keeps telling me I am meant for more. And when I am online, I am often drawn to writers & authors who talk about this kind of stuff.
And I can’t explain why.
I typed some of the Infographic for your reading enjoyment. I will come back and type out the rest.
How to Diversify Your Life by James Altucher
The only way to survive, to get off the floor, to build, to have ideas, to create businesses, to have flourishing relationships, is with diversification. And with the greatest invention since the wheel, the internet, it’s easier to do it now than ever before.
01 – Diversify Ideas
People ask me, “When I’m writing my 10 ideas for the day to build my idea muscle, should they all be business ideas, or around one sector?” No! Write ideas about anything you can. Then mate them. Make your brain supple and creative in every area.
02 – Creative Output
Everyone wants to create their “masterpiece”. But you can’t. All you can do is create. Then the world will decide what is a masterpiece. Thomas Edison has 1,093 patents but we remember him today for just one. The point: be prolific.
03 – Diversify The People You Meet
I’m shy. I like to stay home and not answer the phone. But I make myself schedule meetings with 3 or 4 new people each week. I go into the city and schedule them all back-to-back. I always want to be proactive about learning things from new people.
04 – Diversify Your Home
The American Dream dictates you have to own a house. As if your identity is tied up in the wood box you live in. But the world is an enormous and amazing place. Why not live in Airbnb’s and diversify your identity across exotic places around the globe?
05 – Diversify Your Platform
You can’t just blog. You can’t just be on Facebook or Twitter. You can’t just self-publish on Amazon. You have to be everywhere. Don’t wait for the mainstream media to pick you. Go to where the people are and make it happen.
06 – Diversify Your Thoughts
I spent too much of my life worrying about money and women. Meanwhile, there’s 100 billion other fun things to think about each day. Diversification of thoughts is the only way to slow life down, to let the thoughts simmer instead of boil.
07 – Diversify What You Read
Get 4 books: one about your career, one about your top interest or hobby (unrelated to your career), one thriller, and one book about spirituality or history. Read a little from each every day. Just 20 total pages a day equals 36 books a year.
08 – Diversify Your Health
List all of the unhealthy things you do. You don’t need to cut everything at once, but start one at a time. It’s painful to be 90 years old and know if you had done just a few things differently it wouldn’t hurt so much every time you went to the bathroom.
09 – Diversify The Way You Meet People
Adults think once you graduate college you have to go to bars to meet people. Not true. Put yourself in environments where you’re going to meet the kind of people you want to be around. Go to meetings, take classes, join groups, travel.
10 – Start More Than One Business
Start many businesses. Or jobs. Or careers. Start them at the same time. Eventually one will standout and flourish. This will be the one that will make you fabulously wealthy while having fun. But the only way to find it is to try many things.
bookmark_borderRandom Thoughts | Seven of Cups
Our thoughts / opinions about how we live life tend to change quickly, and a lot more often these days it seems.
For example, last year I swore I wanted to buy a house. I really wanted to do it, I was reading up on a bunch of stuff related to buying a house – the homebuying process, mortgages, costs, etc. I even had some money saved along with some other monies that came my way so somehow, it felt like I was in the perfect position to become an actual homeowner. My mom always used to insist that being a homeowner was the best thing you could do for yourself. Especially since my credit is excellent.
bookmark_borderWhat is Self-Love?
Loving yourself has been on the rise as of late and I really think it’s here to stay. Maybe perhaps it’s WHAT I’ve been choosing to see/experience more and more of and so now I see it everywhere; at least in my digital/real world. It’s a beautiful thing to witness people loving themselves, but what does it mean exactly?
bookmark_borderToday I Will Write Something
Not should, not try to…just do.
This article by James Altucher inspired me right now: The Penultimate Rules On Being More Creative
Granted I didn’t read all of it (I skimmed it actually), but I will definitely revisit in a bit.
For now, let me just write this.
bookmark_borderIf Your Hobby Became Your Job…
If what you are really passionate about became your job, would you still love it?
Would you still feel the creative fire, or would it be replaced with feelings of obligation? Feeling stagnant and uninspired will also likely soon to follow.
bookmark_borderWhat Does the Term ‘Occult’ Mean to You?
The term ‘occult’ seems to have a bad rep (depending on how you perceive it I suppose) – do a quick Google image search and you’ll see mostly dark, visual interpretations of the word. Different people interpret it in so many ways and that’s fine, everybody’s entitled to their own creative vision. In movies however, the occult has often been mostly portrayed as something weird, dark and scary. Synonymous with black magic, it’s become a permanent image in people’s subconscious that it’s an evil thing that can call in demons, vampires, witches, ghosts and otherworldy beings that can harm you.
bookmark_borderInfographic: 10 Reasons to Blog (even if no one reads it)
I love this simple and well-designed infographic. I never get tired of seeing it – it’s just a really good reminder for me to keep at it with this blog, even if no one reads it. It’s good practice to blog or write – it exercises your brain, fleshes out ideas, makes you a better blogger/writer. I know my writing skills aren’t up there, but I’m doing my best.
It would be easier for me to fill up this blog with random images that I liked (like i used to in past versions), but now I’d rather stretch my mind by writing.
For helpful insights into marketing, social media, blogging and more – check out Mark Schaefer at: www.businessgrow.com
bookmark_borderFear of Promoting Yourself with Video?
Fear is a strong word and not the word I prefer to use, but merely wanted the title of this post to jump out at you.
I’m sure you are aware of this already – people are posting more videos these days, whether it’s on Snapchat, Periscope, Vine, or YouTube. Do a Google search and you’ll see that YouTube is in the top 5 of the world’s most visited websites.
I feel like I’m one of the very last people on planet Earth to get on board. Why?
I’m not exactly new to video marketing; I’ve posted some videos on behalf of the company I work for. But no real, live people were involved; and I only used my voice, once. It was awkward, at least for me. The videos were mostly made in After Effects with existing photos and audio. I’m still learning how to edit in Premiere.
I’m terrified of the thought of people looking at my face, let alone watching me talk. I know I’m not the only one, right? Plus when you come from a graffiti subculture where your painting skills were more important than your face (NOBODY ever showed their face)…you kinda see why this is a challenge for me, right?
It’s not like I’m hiding or am deliberately antisocial in everyday life…video is just very new territory for me when it comes to myself.
Although for me personally, I’d rather go with the artsy type of video like this one. It just seems like people are starving for content though – like how to videos, tutorials, life hacks, etc. If you are a business owner or just promoting yourself it’s just not enough anymore to have a website or blog, or to just post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Video is pretty much already part of the internet landscape. A lot of people don’t even want to read anymore, for fuck’s sake; they’d rather watch a video. I like to do both.
Anyway, so I’m trying to figure out how to leverage using video for my stuff. I guess the main obstacles are:
1) come up with a video that will be of use to others and
2) get over myself and the fear of my face being shown in video :/
The video above was made in After Effects – just playing around with the CC Mercury and Particles plugin. Then I made the movie into a GIF in Photoshop. If you pull the file down, you’ll see that it’s a 10.7 MB file with 353 frames, lol. Your GIFs shouldn’t be that big but I did it anyway. Maybe I’ll make a tutorial soon once I have the steps down…
If you happen to be reading this and have posted videos on YouTube, how do you get over being nervous when it comes to creating videos that feature yourself?
Not sure what to post or vlog about? I searched for 10 Simple Vlog Ideas for You to Try Out
bookmark_borderThe Masonic Influence
I just realized that I have a lot of original content that I created for myself to use for social media stuff and really just for the sake of creating and experimenting; for example this one was my old Facebook cover photo from 2013. I always like things to match to the point where I become obsessive over it, like my cover photo and my avatar. What can I say, it’s one of the few things I CAN control.
I used an old drawing that I scanned (the woman with a rose and a skull); I then played around with colors and gradients in Photoshop. For some reason I was drawn to using bright colors, triangular shapes and checkerboards at the time – not really knowing the significance of each. I then created a black square shape, duplicated it and layed it out, grouped them together, flattened them and used the Perspective tool to create the floor. The white part is just one big shape.
I hope to type up a decent tutorial soon on how I create my graphics, so my blog posts can be more useful and have some kind of value to you, the reader.
Here is a good reference of the meaning of the checkerboard in Freemasonry