The feedback loops on attitude are incredible.

When you’re in a bad mood, cynical, and hostile, you put people off — and it justifies that attitude, because people will react poorly to you, and top-notch people won’t want to be around you.

When you’re happy, complimentary, jubilant, people want to be around you and even do random nice things for you — I was just in a particularly celebratory mood going to a cafe, greeted and complimented the owner, and she sent some free watermelon over.

It’s funny – the free watermelon would help a lot more during bad days to reinvigorate hope and good feelings, but it doesn’t work like that. When you’re going great internally, that’s when you get random great little (and big) external things.

This was the year that I upgraded a ton of technology.

My best buy was this –

So much better than headphones for listening to audiobooks. I overpaid for it (about $100 for it at the airport, it’s around $60 on Amazon) but still absolutely a good move. Highly recommended, audiobooks are one of those huge edges for getting new knowledge during otherwise deadtime.

A dull ache.

Tense and untense my back and shoulders, trying to do the little I can to break up the lactic acid.

The mental burning buzz is over… fallen into faint relaxed enjoyment.

These are the dividends of iron.

Everyone should lift weights. There’s no more consistent way of transcending the daily, the mundane, the rote, into a higher way of thinking and being.

I remember the best set of squats I ever did, falling to my knees afterwards and wretching, about to throw up.

And then, a smile. The wheezing and wretching subsides, and I’m laughing.

“Good set!” my buddy says.

I half-cough/half-laugh. “Yeah.”

I’m just coming off a frenzied building cycle. I’d been neglecting my health.

I feel so stupid. Iron pays higher dividends than any stocks or bonds, anything else possible… maybe even higher than just human interaction, because you interact better after lifting. The burn from your muscles rushing to repair themselves and the rush of blood and arenalin and testosterone to your brain… it leaves a calm and strong presence. Good people smile at you; bad people become scared of you. Sales calls become trivial; who cares about a telephone rejection when you could kill a bear with your bare hands?

And you’re more likely to tell someone you love them, to appreciate them, because why be self-conscious when you’re so primally strong?

Women should lift, too. I didn’t know many women that lifted in my life, they were all afraid of being bulky. But that’s not right, women don’t get bulky like men, it’s impossible. Women should lift weights, the few women I know that lifted were better off for it. The more intense forms of yoga strengthen with bodyweight anyways, but this can be gotten straightforwardly with a little weight training.

Iron. If I’m not lifting, I need to start lifting again. Why do I ever let it stop? Not enough time? I don’t have enough time not to do it… what a big quality of life push. It increases results across the board in all other areas of life.

If you haven’t lifted before, try it.

If you’ve been neglecting it, start again. Today.

If you’re on a good program now, well, no need to say anything to you. You already get it.

A light blue dusk, turning green trees slowly into darkened silhouettes.

Red walls, yellow lights in the cafe… front wall of glass, China outside. The large bay doors showing that light blue dusk.

Working on a brushed-metal thin laptop, encased in a smooth clear plastic protective case. My fingers click-clicking satisyingly on the keys.

1990′s rap music plays in the white headphones, transmitted from the computer… the music is streaming from Youtube, accessed through a VPN connection to bypass the Great Firewall.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’d like to welcome to you
All the way from the slums of Shaolin
Special uninvited guests
Came in through the back door
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s them!

The trumpets are the best part of the music.

And as I listen, I listen at a point in space and time. That trumpet sound plays for just a moment, and then it’s gone… and there’s then another trumpet blast, and then that’s gone…

And isn’t that just the way?

I woke up at 4:30PM after sleeping at 7:30AM. It’s hard to measure the days when sometimes you’re staying awake for 30+ hours working and playing, and other times you’re crashing out the whole day. So, was it “two days ago” that I crashed out the whole day? And “three days ago” that I was en fuego the whole day, up on stimulants and doing unreal amounts of work until morning.

And eh, it’s interesting, three days ago on has already receded, waned from view and memory, taken its place the past. Three days ago is dead, just like the trumpet blast from two seconds ago is dead.

Now what Clan you know wit lines this ill?
Bust shots at Big Ben like we got time to kill
Niggas can’t gel or I’m just too high to tell
Put on my gasoline boots and walk through hell

Gasoline boots and walk through hell. I loved that line, it became something like a mantra. Winston Churchill said, “When going through hell, keep going.” But I liked taking a step further. When you see hell on the horizon, get your gasoline boots on first. It’s not so much challenges and strife that upset us, rather it’s the ones that catch us by surprise. You can bleed in tranquility if you choose to bleed, it’s when you don’t understand why you’re bleeding that the pain hits you.

For, what is pain but electrical signals interacting with your synapses and hormones and whatever? And, isn’t it right that after some time passes, the pain is committed to the past, gone forever like yesterday’s sunrise or sunset?

Oh, but it feels so real in the moment.

And like pain, creativity can wax and wane, some mix of chemicals and electricity coursing differently. Biochemistry up, biochemistry down. Soundwaves from music can stimulate thought patterns, prompt and provoke a certain way of thinking, alter your brain chemistry…

And then it’s gone! Anguish or embarassment fades into the past as a trumpet blast plays, divine inspiration strikes. Bloodsugar rises or falls, along with circadian rhythms and ultradian rhythms and dopamine and heartrate and adenosine and adrenalin and cortisol…

…this is learnable to some extent. With practice and patience, you can get an impression of what different substances and environmental interactions do your biochemistry and moods.

I mentally run through mine — sugar levels, Piracetam, coffee. When did I last sleep, how much am I working? Where’s my creativity at? What kind of music is going to prompt a shift? Trumpet blasts and enjoyable nostalgia mixed with good coffee…

And when up fades to down, then what? Is it better to go with it, to go down a while and recharge? Or to fight your way through, to force your creativity up and perform? And if you go down, then how to get back? To relax back into it, with calm expectancy? Or to charge into action?

There is some disagreement on this. No formula has been synthesized that guarantees good creative work and expression.

Wit 9 generals, 9 ninjas in your video
9 milli blow, semi auto wit no serial
Man metaphysical, I speak for criminals
Who don’t pay they bills on time and fuck wit digital
Never seen, smoke a bag of evergreen
My sword got a jones, more heads for the severing
Johnny in the dungeon, takin all bets, throw ya ones in
Scared money don’t make money, throw ya guns in

There’s a certain absurdity to creativity… a mashing-up of thoughts that don’t quite belong together, that staying in a perfectly logical and ordered way of thinking can’t quite generate. And yet, most of these mashed-up thoughts lead to chaos, nothing of value whatsoever… it’s like a mix of volatile chemical elements in a disorganized lab, and then striking a match and tossing it over your shoulder.

The end result? Much of the time, not an explosion but a dull fizzle. You mix some concoction, strike the match, and then!

And then!

And then!

…nothing.

Oh, and then somewhat more often you get some minor catastrophe, the set of ideas and whirring and wheeling gears in a smoking explosive mess.

Oh, and then, occasionally, rarely, you make a huge breakthrough.

Which is nice.

Dead serious, take flicks and don’t smile
Tryna get money, y’all cats is wild
I pose for the clothes, make a song like wild
I’m a chip off the board game, got sword game
Live life to the fullest, still want more fame
Darts on layaway, beats on standby
Outfits pressed up, ready for airtime

A woman in a yellow silk dress, cut right her to her knee, and elaborate yellow sandal-shoe-heels. She sways back and forth as she walks, but her right leg drags slightly across the ground in not-quite a glide. Perhaps an injury, time passing? Obviously a beauty in youth, her years pass, things change, they aren’t quite right. As a trumpet blasts in the headphones, a bloom in spring, and then a blue dusk, and a faint black outline of a tree against a black night sky.

But the power stays on, the electricity, the yellow lighting gleaming across the glass walls. Nature is impermanent, but more permanent than humanity, certainly more permanent than music.

Because the notes might stay in the same a composition, but you listen to music at one time in one place at one moment in your thinking, your creativity, your own lab full of chemicals and electricity and lighting. And that musical composition gets you at that moment just once, and you’ve got it just once, and then it’s dusk, fleeting slightly away, and then it’s gone.

And then, another thought and moment committed to the past; already gone — but what did you do with it? You’ve only got right now. Are you spending it well?

Well, then.

From “Ambition reported to reduce lifespan and happiness” -

Judge explained that ambitious people who were successful in school and at work lived longer; however, ambitious people who did not find success in these areas lived shorter lives. “So, if one is to be ambitious, one had better insure that they translate it into success. Otherwise, they may experience the negative effects without any of the positive.”

Hmm…

However, despite their successes, he noted that they were not successful in terms of what might be considered the most important variables: happiness and longevity of life. He explained that even though ambitious people ought to have the happiest lives in the world because they attain so much, they were only slightly happier than the “slackers” and lived for about the same length of time. However, those that did not attain successful careers were less happy and significantly more likely to die before less ambitious people.

…

The study did note that ambition strongly correlated with educational and occupational success. Judge noted, “We think that ambitious people set very high standards for themselves and when they achieve success, they raise those standards further. If this is true, ironically, the very thing that makes people successful is also what tends to negate the ability of those things to make them happy. If an ambitious person keeps raising his or her goals after every success, then it’s a bit like Sisyphus in Greek mythology: He rolls the boulder up the hill, only to have it roll down the hill so as to push it back up again.”

The most interesting line for me is this one — “Judge explained that ambitious people who were successful in school and at work lived longer; however, ambitious people who did not find success in these areas lived shorter lives.”

Ambition is a real bitch of a thing. If you succeed, you get slightly more happy and live longer. But if you gear up on it, and don’t succeed, then you get absolutely crushed.

A great girl I’ve known for years, she had three jobs when I met her, plus being an athlete and hyper-active in all areas of life.

We had a joke between us — “Life is hard, let’s go to the bar.”

When one of us would be complaining about… how hard it is to sell, or more costs, or how great work can get rejected, or how ungrateful people are, or all the taxes we’d have to pay after doing a ton of work, or… whatever…

…then we’d joke, “Life is hard, let’s go to the bar.”

Life’s different for ambitious people. You’re taking a hell of a gamble. You can’t even credibly say it’s a smart play, to play the ambitious game. But if you’re in, well then. Burn more midnight oil, invent more, enterprise more, recruit more, sell more, do more…

…and even your own damn brain won’t appreciate you enough!

Well, life is hard. Shall we go to the bar?

What’s an entrepreneur?

An entrepreneur is someone who dreams faint, weak dreams… takes that spark, that combination of lines of thought… and uses his minds and hand to try to shepherd that into reality.

But if only it were that simple…

These ideas start as such hazy dreams, and the young entrepreneur starts with resources so limited. He starts so ignorant, so overmatched, so naive, so “behind schedule,” so… so out-gunned and facing the impossible…

The only thing that keeps him going is he’s too stupid and naive to realize how much is in front of him, the complete depths of his ignorance, just how irrationally exuberant he is…

If he’s charismatic, he gets some encouragement, but it’s rarely the right kind. It’s all… well, it’s hard to blame other people. Artists and writers and inventors, and fellow entrepreneurs, kind of sort of get the young entrepreneur trying to build something. The process of trying to turn something that doesn’t exist into… something that does…

That’s before getting into the discouragement. There will be lots of that. And once you beat the discouragement, you’ve got a Pyrrhic victory on your hands. Because it never stops, you just stop seeking it out and instead fashion your world from different-minded people, but then it becomes quite hard to get a perspective. You need the critical feedback to learn and get stronger and get better, but the vast majority of it is delivered with 90% skpeticism/cynicism and 10% gold. If you can swallow the cynic’s cyanide — and survive — you can mine out the gold at the same time.

A few people are pure encouraging skilled, of course. They’re saints. Do everything you can for them.

But the process is only really truly possible because the young entrepreneur doesn’t realize just how much battering he’ll take, just how high the mountain actually is, just how tricky it is to traverse the the next chasm, just how hard the gale winds can blow, and how much colder it feels when the winds are blowing hard. And then some necessary gear breaks, ropes snap, and it starts raining on the same day –

–and do you let go?

Most do, most likely.

A few don’t, and keep climbing, even through the nights, the winds, the cold, the breaking. The worst, perhaps, is seeing reality clearly, fully and truly realizing the depths of your ignorance and faulty judgment, how overoptimistic your assumptions were.

That weight, that weight of reality, can so easily crush the nascent sparks of ideas, those dreams and blind faith that are the foundation of all those new things which come from dreamspace and into our hands.

That anvil, the anvil of realizing your ignorance and hubris… you’re actually close once you’ve got that weight crushing you. Now, for the first time, you truly see what gear and skills you’re missing. And it looks and feels brutal, and do you keep going?

Most don’t. The weight of reality, the light shined on their broken assumptions, it’s too much for them.

But if you persist, and persist, and persist, and persist, and bleed from persisting, and then — from nothing — from nothing, from nothing — something. And it’s worth it.

….has to be one of the most counter-productive impulses for the ambitious and enterprising person.

Too many otherwise brilliant people would rather fail in the way they understand and believe in, rather than go into they don’t understand and be forced to change.

And sure, we all know this as it applies to other people. But here’s a big win for you –

What do you have on your plate right now that’s important, that you’re not expertly skilled in?

Who do you know that’s got more skill than you, that would help if you asked them?

Now, go call them.

If you don’t know anyone who knows better, ask around and see if you can connect with a friend-of-a-friend.

Better to admit ignorance, and then fix that ignorance, and then win — than the reverse.

If scope is growing faster than completion is happening, and no plan is being made for that, eventually the amount to-be-done will be unmanageable.

A few ways to do deal with it –

*Say no to some things.
*Build structure to handle higher capacity.
*Set defined completion/launch/celebrate periods, and hold them religiously.

So, there’s this thing called reactance. If you’re like most people, you’ve probably never heard of it, and yet it has huge implications for your life.

Reactance is a psychological phenomenon — in response to loss of a freedom, loss of choice, or a perceived loss of freedom/choice, people are quite likely to feel psychological reactance.

Psychological reactance makes you want to push back against the new restrictions, to fight and combat them, to reassert yourself and control over your world.

This can be in the form of direct resistance or pushback against the loss of freedom, and increased desire for the prohibited action.

But it does a lot of other things, too. Reactance causes people to like and enjoy whatever their threatened freedom is more than they liked it in the past, often permanently. Reactance causes people to want to reestablish freedom/control through similar types of behavior — like increased eating of junkfood in response to being prohibited from drinking alcohol.

Reactance also generates hostility, making people dislike the person or institution perceived as causing the loss of freedom.

What’s that mean for your life?

So. If one of your freedoms or abilities is threatened, you’ll (1) start to like and want to do it more, (2) immediately wish to push back and reassert that freedom or ability, (3) feel motivated and compelled to do similar types of behavior, (4) dislike whoever/whatever you perceived imposed the restriction on you…

…therefore, your preferences and behavior are incredibly likely to be altered. And since we live in a world with opportunity cost, succumbing to psychological reactance can cause you to make worse, irrational decisions towards doing stuff that doesn’t please or serve you!

Damn.

Oh, and it gets worse.

If you’re trying to help and guide people (perhaps as a manager, boss, or mentor), then you’ve got to be damn careful you don’t trigger psychological reactance. Maybe someone you care about is doing something boneheaded and self-destructive, but they’re going to feel aggression/dislike for you, and increased desire for it if you try to curtail it.

And it gets worse!

If you’re working against a vampiric influence on someone, like a friend who falls in love with a prostitute, any attempt to sever such vampiric influences is likely to generate that same aggression, and increased feelings of desire (that might even become permanent).

(Call it a Romeo and Juliet thing.)

Does it get better?

Well, maybe.

An interesting phenomenon of psychological reactance is that most people seem to be unaware of it. There’s tons of empirical evidence for the effect, but the majority of people don’t realize it has a huge effect on their preferences.

…rather, they just want to do things, unaware of why.

But! But! Good news!

Awareness of psychological reactance can lead to diminished effect on you.

So…

*You can stop falling for “just one more model” at car dealerships. (Loss of ability to buy == reactance. But really, there’s another version of similar make and model somewhere.)

*Going-out-of-business sales don’t have to compel you. (Some jurisdictions actually regulate against having furniture stores announcing a going out of business sale if they’re not really — furniture stores actually command higher prices at higher volume during these faux sales… don’t buy into it.)

*Be very careful of telling someone not to do something. “Hey, you do whatever you want, I’m pointing out some consequences because I care about you, but it’s your own call.” (Careful with that too. Nothing’s perfect here.)

*If you catch yourself chasing something forbidden or restricted, ask, “Is there anything unsexy but better for my life I’m neglecting?” (This doesn’t work great, but helps.)

*If you find yourself facing restriction in one area of your life, voluntary or not, be vigilant that you might want to act out in similar ways without realizing where the motivation comes from.

*Likewise, if you’re facing restriction in one area of your life, you might pick a healthy designated outlet that’s somewhat similar. Try getting a stack of great philosophical comic books if you’re quitting internet distraction addiction as a transition point. (Check out Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns or the entire brilliant Lone Wolf and Cub series.)

Reactance.

Reactance is a motivational reaction to offers, persons, rules, or regulations that threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms. Reactance occurs when a person feels that someone or something is taking away his or her choices or limiting the range of alternatives.

— “Reactance (psychology), Wikipedia”

Reactance.

It’s a damnable thing, a real thing, a useful thing to know of, and yet far too few people know of it.

Reactance theory assumes there are “free behaviors” individuals perceive and can take part in at any given moment. For a behavior to be free, the individual must have the relevant physical and psychological abilities to partake in it, and must know they can engage in it at the moment, or in the near future.

“Behavior” includes any imaginable act. More specifically, behaviors may be explained as “what one does (or doesn’t do)”, “how one does something”, or “when one does something”. It is not always clear, to an observer, or the individuals themselves, if they hold a particular freedom to engage in a given behavior. When a person has such a free behavior they are likely to experience reactance whenever that behavior is restricted, eliminated, or threatened with elimination.

And…

In the phenomenology of reactance there is no assumption that a person will be aware of reactance. When a person becomes aware of reactance, they will feel a higher level of self-direction in relationship to their own behavior. In other words, they will feel that if they are able to do what they want, then they do not have to do what they do not want. In this case when the freedom is in question, that person alone is the director of their own behavior.

When considering the direct re-establishment of freedom, the greater the magnitude of reactance, the more the individual will try to re-establish the freedom that has been lost or threatened. When a freedom is threatened by a social pressure then reactance will lead a person to resist that pressure. Also, when there are restraints against a direct re-establishment of freedom, there can be attempts at re-establishment by implication whenever possible.

Freedom can and may be reestablished by a social implication. When an individual has lost a free behavior because of a social threat, then the participation in a like free behavior by another person similar to himself will allow him to re-establish his own freedom.

In summary the definition of psychological reactance is a motivational state that is aimed at re-establishment of a threatened or eliminated freedom. A short explanation of the concept is that the level of reactance has a direct relationship between the importance of a freedom which is eliminated or threatened, and a proportion of free behaviors eliminated or threatened.