2015 ~ That's my BS!

20 Dec 2015

Yes Virginia, the Force is Wide Awake!!!

Well, the long wait is finally over.

What is arguably the most anticipated movie of all time is in the wild. Record breaking opening weekend figures are not even a question, Jurassic World is definitely going down. But if you haven't been fortunate enough to secure opening weekend tickets, the real question is...
Is it worth the hype??

Spoil it, I will not.

Some early reviews have declared that The Force Awakens is the "best Star Wars film since 1983!", and the "best Star Wars film in thirty years!"
Well, as Han Solo put it...

Yes, this IS the best Star Wars since 1983...yet it must be said, that bar isn't all that high.

Of the four Star Wars movies since 1983's The Empire Strikes Back, the only one of note has been The Return of the Jedi. The three prequels were incredibly disappointing, and i'd bet that a large part of your concern maybe that if this movie was as bad as the last trilogy, it could potentially sour your entire Christmas.

Fear not, true believers. The magic is back!

If J.J. Abrams main job was to steady the ship of this franchise, and point it in the right direction, he has done so, spectacularly. This feels like a Star Wars movie, from the opening crawl to the closing credits, it feels like a reunion with your childhood friends.

The new characters introduced (Finn, Rey, Poe Dameron & Kylo Ren) are entertaining additions to the mythology, but Han Solo owns this movie. If you thought that Harrison Ford had lost it, or that he just seemed to be cashing a check in Indy 4, he is full on brilliant as Han Solo here. This is no glorified cameo, Han Solo's role is pivotal to the story.

The Force Awakens is fast-moving, full of the swashbuckling action, humor and adventure you remember, most of the old gang is back, there are lots of callbacks to Episodes IV-VI, Abrams resists the temptation to CGI the shit out of everything, John Williams fantastic score maintains the feeling of tension, thrills and excitement throughout, and the movie definitely does not suck.

I left the Cinema feeling giddy, euphoric. Hell, I felt like doing the Morris Day dance!!

Managing Your Expectations

Is TFA groundbreaking? Nope.

Is a large portion of the plot arguably re-treading fertile ground from the original films? Maybe.

Are there plot points that make much less sense the more you think about them? Of course. Yet, while watching the film, I never had a "What shite is this?" moment. (Remember that Phantom Menace midi-chlorians stuff? None of that crap here.)

This is not the "Best Film of the Franchise", but frankly, it doesn't need to be. It's a good enough Star Wars movie, that leaves you anxious to see how these characters will develop and questions will be answered in Episodes VIII & IX.

The Force Awakens is a welcome, and greatly appreciated return to form. Pleasing the fans, giving them (new) hope and simultaneously exorcising the memory of the prequels may be Abrams' best Christmas gift.

With strong word of mouth expected, Avatar and Titanic better buckle up, because Star Wars is coming! Their ally is the Force.

And a very powerful ally it is.

What To Do When Life Serves You a Kobayashi Maru? (II)

So what did Dave do next?

If you're confused, read part 1 of this post here. Go on, we'll wait for you.

All up to speed now? Great!

So we saw that Dave suddenly found out that:
his MBA assignments had doubled;
his time was cut in half;
not finishing = extra money he couldn't afford;
and he regularly works 10-12 hours a day, which is basically all the time we really have.

And the choices provided by his College were:
1) Apply for a 5 day extension, and the reasons that would be accepted were: A sudden illness of Dave/someone he had to care for; or a short notice project at work.
Or
2) Dave could just try to finish which assignments he could, and accept failure for the others.

There were no good options. It was a no-win scenario, a "Kobay Maru".

In Star Trek mythology, Captain James T. Kirk was the only cadet in Starfleet history to beat the dreaded Kobayashi Maru scenario.

The original no-win scenario was a training simulation in which cadets encounter a civilian ship in distress. The cadet is presented with two choices: enter the Neutral Zone to save the civilians, thereby violating treaty and potentially provoking war with the Klingons; or avoid war by abandoning the Kobayashi Maru, thus condemning the civilians to death.

In the simulation, choosing to enter the Neutral Zone results in the Klingons attacking and destroying the ship which the cadet is commanding. The Kobayashi Maru was constructed as a no-win scenario. How did Kirk beat it?

Kirk reprogrammed the simulation, so that it was possible to save the civilians and avoid war with the Klingons.

Some consider that cheating, and it is arguable that Kirk didn't get the true point of the simulation.

We prefer to think that young cadet Kirk recognised that he was playing a rigged game, and decided to change the rules of engagement. And that's exactly what Dave did.

His reading of the college regulations showed a common premise behind all the "acceptable" extension reasons that were presented to him: circumstances beyond a student's control that would negatively affect their preparation of their assignments.

He asked himself, "How is my loss of thirty days prep time, due to an administrative decision to suddenly change their published dates, any different?" He thought, why should he beg for five days, from the same body that took his thirty days?
As a full-time professional, wasn't his time just as important?

The options Dave got from the student liaison ignored these issues, and five days really couldn't do much to help him. He didn't see any profit in going to war with the college, but he needed to talk to someone at a higher level, who had the power to make a difference.

Dave presented his case to the College President.
He took a leap of faith. Faith that any reasonable person would understand the injustice of the situation. Faith that God would influence those in authority to do the right thing.

Faced with a no-win scenario, and only two bad options, sometimes we need to challenge those options that we take for granted.

Sometimes, we need to find that third option we hadn't considered before. Sometimes, we need to try to change the rules of the rigged game.

And sometimes...we may just succeed.

How have you dealt with your "no-win" scenarios?
Let us know in the comments section!

What do you do, when life serves you a Kobayashi Maru?

Fans of Star Trek would instantly recognize what the term "Kobayashi Maru" refers to.

For those non-fans, (shame on you) you more than likely may have encountered one at some point in your life. It's basically a "no-win" scenario, one of those situations where everything seems to be against you & obstacles seem to block all your paths.

Some liken it to being between a "rock and a hard place", sometimes in a situation where you're trying to make a positive change in your life. It can also feel personalized, as if some negative forces are trying to keep you down.

You've already faced a Kobay Maru of your own, or you soon will. The question is, how do you handle it?
Let's look at this real-life scenario.

One morning, my pal Dave and I were talking on the phone, when I noticed his patented long, silent pause...this is my cue that Dave has stopped listening to me, and is reading an email he just received. When this pause was interrupted by a "What the f#&k??", I knew that this was a BIG one.

Atypically, this email wasn't work-related, it was from Dave's College. The thing is, that after fifteen years of extended workdays & weekends, Dave had finally decided to do something different, to benefit both himself and his family. He went back to school to complete his MBA.

It was really rough with his work schedule, but now he was in the final stretch. Three assignments to complete by December, three more for January, a final yr project in 2016, and he was done. He could see that proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

Then he got this email telling him that those January assignments, were really due by December. It meant that Dave suddenly had half the time, to complete twice the number of assignments. He only had twenty days left.

Man, Dave was a mess. He was simultaneously confused, worried and pissed off.

With his job, he didn't see any way he could finish all six assignments in twenty days, and the financial implications of failure were not a burden he needed right before Christmas. The January date was published a month and a half before, and Dave had planned his entire work and vacation schedule around it. There had to be some mistake, so he contacted the College. The student liaison, however, did not have good news.

This wasn't a mistake, and while she was very understanding about the pickle Dave was put in, that's just what the situation was. He could apply for a extension, though.

The short term extension would give Dave five extra days, but he would have to provide evidence that he was ill, or either his wife or children were hit with a short term illness, or some new project got dumped on him at work without any notice.

He could also try for a long term extension, if he could show that some circumstances beyond his control had prevented him from finishing on time. And that extension, apparently had to be approved by God himself.

Dave had lost a full month, five days really wasn't going to help him much, even if he could manufacture evidence to get it approved. Long term was a long-shot. The only other choice he could see was sacrificing one or two of the assignments outright, and toiling night and day to try to at least finish the other four. The financial hit would be less that way.

Dave just had no good options available to him.
There seemed to be no way to succeed. He was faced with a "Kobayashi Maru".

In our next post, we'll look at what Dave did next.

P.S: For those who haven't seen The Lord of the Rings, (you poor souls) and didn't get the picture reference above, this clip is for you. :)

How would you tackle Dave's Koby Maru? Leave us your comments below!

Still Thinking That Wealth is in How Much You Make? Think Again.

Many people still think that more money is the solution.

A solution for finding their happiness, (who convinced them that it was lost?) or for ending their financial challenges.

Sadly, as many lotto winners can attest, money is not a cure for all that ails you.

Bill collectors at my door! What can you do for me?

That's the opening line of the classic Gwen Guthrie song, "Ain't nothin' goin' on but the rent". In the chorus she draws the line in the sand and puts her foot firmly down:
"I said no romance without finance!"

In our last post, we discussed the simple solution to our financial problems and asked why we don't implement it so consistently. Gwen's song touches on one reason...

How to Eliminate Your Financial Problems, Forever!

Almost everything that we want to have or do, needs to be paid for, particularly when it involves items or services we did not produce ourselves.

When money runs short, and we start to feel that growing anxiety and fear of losing what we have, then our finances can become one of our greatest sources of stress.

The good news is that doesn't have to be, this post will remind you why.

Deadlines? Commitments? Out of time? Sometimes The Only Way... Is a Sugar Ray!

Most of us want to give our best effort, don't we?

(By us, I mean the people committed to living a constructive life.)
Yet sometimes we find ourselves, despite our best intentions, simply not having enough time to do all the things that we want to do. This is the time, my friends, that a Sugar Ray may be an option worth considering.

Six quick tips for better peace of mind (Cliff notes version!)

Here's a handy infographic and pic for your easy reference.

Leave us your comments below and let us know what you think!

6 Tips for a more relaxed, peaceful mind (II)

Welcome!
In our last post we gave the first three of our "6 Tips for a more relaxed, peaceful mind".
Now, let's look at numbers four to six. Put these into practice in your life, and let us know your results!

We have a lot of information to share on handling stress in our future posts. We hope it works as well for you as it has for us.

Feeling Stressed? Remember these 6 Tips to Ensure a more relaxed, peaceful mind (1)

Life.

It seems so hectic, and unrelenting in it's desire to engage your attention. So many of us are always BUSY. We have so many deadlines, work & family issues, ...its natural that we sometimes get caught up in the drama, and feel stressed out.

Want to keep your balance and maintain your peace? Our next two posts will give you six reminders to help you out.

Keep Calm, and Mind Your Own Business

Two Hours. That was all I had.

This was the result of my calculating how many non-scheduled hours I had on any given weekday, to do everything that I wanted to do.

What about the other twenty-two hours? Well, they consisted of the five activities we all do as part of basic life:

(Eating, sleeping, travelling, running errands & maintaining my personal hygiene) and also my job. Stopping work after ten hours plus the 12 hours for basic activities left me a couple of hours for everything else.

Naturally, this was an extremely unsatisfactory situation.

I needed guidance, some answers. So, like so many of us, I tried drawing water from the well of the self-help gurus. The result was that I developed an intense focus on using time efficiently and then setting personal goals for myself.

The idea was pretty straight forward. Your company makes you set goals every year, for you to help the company reach their objectives. What about your objectives in life?

Shouldn't we have an even more important list of personal goals that we use drive us? In a year, what percentage of time do we spend seeking the interest of an organization vs seeking to advance our own interests? Your answers should provide some insight about what have become your priorities in life.

So I was a bit obsessed with this idea, when I dropped by my big sister's house for her birthday. Naturally, the conversation turned to my quest of personal goal setting.

Big sis started to probe: "Why should I set goals?"

"If I'm Brian Lara, and my goal is to break the world record, and at age 25 I achieve that... is it now ok for me to sit and scratch my ass? What more is there for me to do?", she asked. "What if I'm happy with the way life is, and have the same goals every year, does that count?"

At that point in my life my philosophy was, when in doubt, counter with a cool quote! "No wind will serve a mariner who addresses his voyage to no certain port!" was the best I could come up with.

She feinted, and countered quickly, "What if you just like to sail?" I had to agree, in that case any wind is a good wind.

"I don't have anything against setting goals" she continued, "I don't want to do it just because it's something you should do." Hmm. I realized that she had a valid point there.

We both agreed that if there is a life situation that you want to change, that change would most likely occur in a series of steps. After all, the situation itself developed as a series of steps, not overnight. There is no need to weigh ourselves down with an over aggressive expectation of the changes we want for ourselves.

It doesn't really matter if we want to sail in the Olympic games or if we just like sailing. What matters is what works for us. Is the activity impacting our experience of this life in a positive way.

It's our time, we can never get it back, so shouldn't we aim to devote as much as we can to activities that bring some real value to our existence?

When we are facing the end and looking back on our life, I can pretty much guarantee that this is one thought that most of us will NOT have:

"Man. I wish I had really spent more hours at work."

Sympathy for the devil?

I recently saw the leaked pilot for "Lucifer", an upcoming FOX series.

It's based on a Vertigo comic that was itself a spinoff of Neil Gaiman's critically acclaimed "Sandman" series.

In the "Season of Mists" storyline, Sandman/Morpheus, the king of dreams, resolves to go to hell to confront Lucifer.
He aims to secure the release of his beloved, who has been wrongfully imprisoned there.

To his great surprise, on his arrival, Lucifer basically informs Morpheus that he's had enough of demons and punishing of damned souls and we just won't do it anymore.
He's quit!

[CLICK IMAGE TO EXPAND]

Try to imagine what a mind-bending concept this was for a sixteen year old catholic boy. That one day, the devil could just pack up shop, open the gates of hell and say:

"No more, I'm done, I'm leaving."

It wasn't something that you had ever considered before, and it was totally not where you expected the story would go. The TV series loosely adapts a similar concept.

Watching the pilot just got me thinking about the original Bible story, and i posed the following questions to my friend Andy: "Would you want a woman to stay with you just because of fear or that she doesn't know any better, or would you want her to stick around because she truly loves you?", I asked.

In the first case, won't you worry that one day she's going to wake up and gain the courage to run away?

Similarly, consider the relationship between God and man:

# 1 - God doesn't want to force anyone to hang with him.

# 2 - People need to be tempted by evil, as the darkness gives balance and greater meaning to the light.
(How do you define "good" without experiencing what's not good?)

# 3 - God doesn't want to do the tempting himself so he delegates responsibility to someone more suited to the task.

After all, a good manager makes the best use of the resources that he has. And Lucifer was reportedly the greatest of the angels, he just had a problem with authority.

So, you give him his own Branch to run, where he is still serving the company objectives!
Makes sense to me.

As the saying goes, "It's a dirty Job, but somebody has to do it." Doesn't Lucifer have the right attitude and the right pedigree? He was the head Angel, after all...Now, he gets his own thing, with little interference once he plays by the rules.

"Maybe its a classic "Win-Win" situation?", I wondered.

Here's how Andy responded to me:

"That's interesting...one could say that Lucifer had the right attitude for the job. Maybe sometimes in life, it's not so much that we have the wrong attitude. It may be the wrong one for the job we currently have, and it's just that we haven't yet found the right job for our attitude."

I liked the way Andy put that. It's probably much more productive to take responsibility for finding an occupation that is a better match for our talents than trying to start a revolution like Lucifer did in the bible. Food for thought?

I think that Gaiman's Lucifer would actually agree. In the scene included below, he lamented how many mortals blamed him for their issues:

[CLICK IMAGE TO EXPAND]

There's some truth in that.

We make our own choices. Whether it is a physical location, a life situation or a negative mental mindset, we don't have to stay anywhere forever. At any point in time, we are free to choose to leave.

That's my BS, and i'm sticking to it. :)

What do you think?

Leave us your comments below, and check out this video from the end of the Denzel Washington movie "Fallen".

It may not be his finest work, but the ending credit music is classic!

It's Flowing like a River...

Hey Bud, have you got the time?

The Five Keys to Success

(That your basic pencil can teach you)

Do you sometimes find yourself tired, frustrated, losing focus, and almost buckling under the weight of life's challenges?

Believe it or not, your key to getting back on track may be no further away than reaching for your humble pencil!

We've recently been reflecting on an old story called "The Parable of the pencil" that we thought may enrich your experience, allow us to share it with you.

The way the story ends, the pencil understood and promised to remember, and went into the box with purpose in its heart.

Now, if we take the place of the pencil in the story, it reminds us of five keys to our success, which we've stated as follows:

ONE: Remember that we are uniquely designed to do great things. Yet, to do that we need to let go of our desire to control everything and allow ourselves to be GUIDED.

TWO: Shit happens, to everyone, and sometimes it hurts. Don't delude ourselves that we are uniquely afflicted, recognise that life challenges are the way we grow and develop. Once we pay attention, learn something from the situation, and put it into practice, we will grow stronger.

THREE: We will make mistakes, we are human. We don't need to dwell on them or wallow in negativity. The most important thing is to correct them, and not make the same mistake twice.

FOUR: We are more than just a shell of flesh, remember that. We have to protect our values, our spirit, our moral compass from all of the negativity that can sometimes pervade this world. We have a choice about what seeds we let take root inside us. Pay attention to which dog we're feeding.
.
FIVE: Everything that we do in life leaves a mark, good or bad. Its our choice whether we want our legacy to be one of joy, or negativity.

To be successful, we cannot quit on our purpose, no matter how difficult the situation seems. We need to refer back to number ONE above...and surrender ourselves to the hand that is guiding us.

Join our conversation:
Did this post have a positive impact on you? Leave us a comment below with your perspective.

The big secrets in life

On some level, we would say that everyone is searching for meaning, truth and freedom in life.

What that means may vary, depending on how a person defines those terms, but many people feel that until they find the answers to those questions, they will remain unfulfilled. So, the demand is there, and thus there is a seemingly endless supply of personal development gurus, offering us what we want. Those answers, that have been hidden from us (deliberately?), all these long, painful years.

There is a challenge we have with that idea, though. Maybe the best way to describe it is to relate the following story to you:

We'd like you to think about the implications of that story for a moment...

If we humans, with all our great knowledge and technological advances, have issues in expressing what the fragrance of a rose is, are we going to accurately describe Love, Truth, God and the meaning of Life??

We put it to you that any "guru" offering us the answers to these questions is, maybe, just a little, full of BS. If taken in that context, you can accept what's useful in their philosophy and discard what is not and then you'll have a more refined version of your BS.
In the final analysis, if your BS works for you, if it is serving you in a constructive way as you deal with life, what else really matters?

Anyway, that's our bullshit. We'd love to hear yours, so leave us a comment below!

(FYI: Lao Tzu was a legendary philosopher and poet of ancient China. He is known as the reputed author of the Tao Te Ching and the founder of philosophical Taoism. We can guarantee that you won't regret exploring his teachings.)

Come to the edge!

We should not fear new thoughts, or rationally questioning our current beliefs.
If we find ourselves emotionally defending "our truth", we should remind ourselves that the truth, needs no defense. Give yourself permission to soar, you deserve it.