Sweet’s BlogRaves, Rants, Ramblings

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown I’ve been a dedicated Blackberry users since the 7000 series came out. Since then I’ve had the 8700 and the 8800. I quickly discovered why they called them “crackberry” as I soon became addicted. I used them so much and got so good at using them I could type with two thumbs and never look at the keyboard.

Last week my 8800 started to act up and in frustration i said to hell with it and went and bought a new 3G iPhone. I had major reservations about this device. Though it is beautiful from a design perspective I felt it lacked some of the features and function I had come to depend on from my Blackberry.

At this point I’ve had the device for right at a week. I have to admit, I love it.

My only complaints are battery life and an inability to copy and paste. But the benefits far outweigh and of the negatives.

A co-worker just told me her sister is training her dog to bare its teeth every time it hears the word Obama. When I asked why her sister doesn’t like Obama she said, “Because he’s a flip-flopper”.

I get a little irritated when people make sweeping generalizations about people or form random opinions. I try my hardest never to do this - if I want to know about something I research it from as many angles as possible before I form an opinion.

In the matter of whether or not Barack Obama is a flip-flopper I think the very best analysis, though certainly not the only one, was done by Hendrik Herzberg of the New Yorker magazine in his article Obama’s flip-flop flap. The gist of the analysis is that in almost every case Obama has refined his position to either clarify it or, here’s a real shocker, because he’s trying to win an election. To hold this against the man is, in my somewhat less than humble opinion, like holding against your doctor that he get’s additional information and refines his diagnosis.

It just really bothers me that people look for excuses to tear people down. It’s as if we as a society are taking joy out of seeing other people suffer. If anyone of reasonable intellect and with a modicum of reasonableness and reason looks at Obama’s statements over the last 18 months he/she cannot conclude the he has radically altered his position on any substantive issue. This is the same erroneous argument the neo-conservatives made about John Kerry in the last election. It was patently false then but the moniker stuck and it added to the reasons he lost the election.

At the end of the day for me it’s about will we be better off with Obama in office or McCain. I’ll take Obama any day of the week and twice on Sunday and I would feel that way even if he was a flip-flopper.

So I’ve been doing a lot of personal work lately trying to make myself a better me. One of the things I’ve been working hard on is removing the majority of the anger from my life. As part of this effort I’ve been reading a lot and listening to speakers talk about shifting thought patterns and thinking positively. I’ve run into similar info from many sources about changing ones thinking and basically there’s five steps to achieving positive thinking. They are:

Step 1: Decide to develop the habit of focusing on what’s right in your world instead of what’s wrong

This is the habit of focusing on what you have not what you don’t have

The way to develop this habit is to go on a mental diet where the challenge is to live 7 days without a single negative thought. This doesn’t mean you can’t or don’t have a negative thought it just means that when you do you don’t speak it – you set it aside, your forget about it or you replace it with a positive thought.

If you have a negative thought or utter a negative statement you catch yourself and say, “That’s not what I meant. What I really meant was …and then immediately focus on something good and positive.

Do not allow yourself to hold a negative thought for 7 straight days – even when it gets tough. When they come – and they will – you have to let go of them immediately.

If you’re 3 days in and slip up you have to start all over again.

Establish the habit of noticing what you do have vs. what you don’t have. Focus on what’s great about a situation vs. what’s not great. Focus on solutions not problems.

I’m going to ask my team at work to step up and commit to this and see what happens. I’m curious if anyone out there has tried this and what their results are.

Step 2: Instead of judging yourself and others decide right now to become curious instead of judgmental.

Remember when you find fault in other people when you start noticing constantly how they’ve wronged you, how this person is not good enough or too egotistical or too proud or they don’t really care about people – as soon as you start judging other people you’ve got to remember that you also start judging your self.

If you’re angry at other people there’s a very good chance you’re angry at yourself as well.

Perceive more and judge less. Instead of finding fault with other people without thinking about what they’ve gone through to get where they are this day, maybe you should get curious about what’s making this person be in the state they’re in.

Free yourself from the disease of making others wrong and you’ll free yourself from the disease of making yourself wrong. You’ll have a lot more energy for creating solutions instead of problems.

Chane the assumptions you usually make to questions that breed curiosity:

I wonder what…
I wonder why…

Step 3: Decide right now to find something to appreciate about any seeming negative person or situation and develop the habit of giving compliments.

If you really want to have more positive feelings in your life you have to keep focusing on what is right and not what is wrong. You have to get curious and most importantly you have to find something to appreciate even – especially – in the tough times. The toughest times in our lives often provide us with the resources we need to change our lives for the better.

Learn to be able to appreciate where you are right now.

Step 4: Decide NOT to be perfect.

If you expect to be perfect you’re going to be miserable because you’re human – you can’t and will never be perfect. You’re going to screw up. You’re going to make poor decisions, say things you shouldn’t say, do things you shouldn’t do and mess things up like you shouldn’t mess up. It’s reality.

When that happens, instead of being negative and beating yourself up – decide what you do want and say, “You know what? I’m not perfect but I am good and what makes me good and what makes me great and what can make me excellent is that as soon as I notice I’m not on track I correct it. I get better.”

Each day’s goal should be to be better than the day before but not perfect. That’s all anyone else can ask of you – to contribute more and to get better than the day before – and that’s all that you can ask of yourself.

If you do screw up and make a mistake – which you will – if you don’t make it out to be a major catastrophe it’s easier to bounce back. If you make every mistake you make a big huge deal eventually you’ll get so tired you won’t want to get back up. This is true of other people as well – if you make every mistake someone makes into a big huge deal eventually they’ll give up because it just isn’t worth it to try anymore because the downside is so severe.

The only way you fail is to quit. If you learn something and you expand from it and you make some new decisions that enhance your life and the people you care about then there is no failure – you have succeeded.

Step 5: Decide to have faith.
Positive thinking is really just the power of belief and faith is just powerful belief. As you believe so it is created. You need to create that feeling of certainty inside yourself. When the going gets tough, as it surely will, you have to have the courage to face your fears and to take action even though it might not work out. If you don’t that’s the only way you fail.

When the going get’s tough remember – this too shall pass.

You’ve made it through all the things you’ve made it through to get where you are and you’re still standing, still contributing, still moving forward. In this way you are already successful.

What are your thoughts about this post or the power of positive thinking in general?

This past Saturday I joined friends at the March of Dimes annual Mudd Volleyball tournament. The event was a blast. I’ve never been so dirty in my life.

There’s a link up and to the right to my FaceBook albums and the first one is the album from Saturday. Enjoy and let me know if you want to play next year.

This is priceless a reporter making an ass of himself about iPhone mania and being called on it:

I saw The Dark Night last week for the first time and I have to say it was an amazing movie. Lots of action, adventure and gadgets as seen here:

But the best part of the movie for me was Heath Ledgers performance. Of all the Jokers I’ve seen he is by far the most intense, darkest and scariest. Most other actors played the Joker with a lot of camp. Heath really brings home the fact the the Joker is flat out insane. Here’s a couple of examples:

Gleb Reys at the Personal Development Blog posted recently about Sharing Knowledge for success. I have often found myself dealing with entrenched views/beliefs about holding knowledge close to the vest in order to preserve position or power.

Gleb’s post talks about why the opposite is actually true and goes into really good detail about how empowering sharing knowledge can be for individuals and organizations.

I always enjoyed the muppets. One of my favorite characters was Beaker. Here is in in all his glory presenting his interpretation of Ode to Joy.

A good friend of mine sent this video to me. I laughed out loud, had a huge smile on my face and cried a little taken as I was with the joy Matt expresses in his dance.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

You can check in on Matt by going to his website at http://wherethehellismatt.com.

On Sunday Patrick May posted an article on The Mercury News titled, We’re connecting - and wasting time - on Twitter. It’s a very insightful article on Twitter in general, its growth in popularity and how some users are utilizing it to get/share information and to conduct business.

The opening line of the article is, “Some have called Twitter “the ‘Seinfeld’ of the Internet - a Web site about nothing.” This is so true. Yet another hugely popular bit of geek technomasturbation with no real business model, no definable usage model but with a following of millions (1.2 million unique visitors in May according to Patrick) of loyal/addicted fans/followers/fanatics. I would love it if my application had this kind of following.

Apparently Twitter are trying out ads on the Japanese version of their site in an attempt to find a revenue model. The problem with any revenue model at Twitter is stated quite eloquently by Jere,iah Owyang of Forrester Research - “to expect everyone to use
this tool is very unlikely; it will be for only a small percentage of
Internet users. And it will absolutely have competition, once the cell
phone industry figures out another way to enhance their text-messaging
systems and charge for it.”

There it is in a nut shell. Few will use it and the ones who do aren’t typically the types to pay a lot of money for a service that really isn’t that much more valuable than SMS. All of that not withstanding Twitter is a phenomenon albeit a time sucking somewhat useless one.

The lesson is: 1) Whatever you’re building try like hell to make it crack-like in its appeal to your target user audience and, 2) make sure the appeal is as broad as possible and that you’ve thought of a business/revenue model that can/will capitalize on the ferocity of your users passion about your thing.