Impact over Interest Archives - Page 13 of 13

Jesus on Impact Mindfulness

September 25, 2013 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

Impact mindfulness is pro-faith, in all the forms under which one’s faith might take shape. Mine happens to be the Christian faith.

Impact mindfulness proposes that religious dogmatic beliefs, on the other hand, are “impact blinders.” They cause us to see the world through a dogmatic prism that distorts the facts, or the true and bigger picture of what is. For instance, take the biblical story of the pharisees attempted stoning of the women caught in adultery. According to their dogmatic belief, what they were doing was 100% correct, righteous even. That is until Jesus stooped down and helped them see the bigger picture.

I was reading from the sermon on the mount this morning. In it I believe there are great kernels of truth that support the concepts underpinning impact mindfulness. Remember, impact mindfulness is nothing more than a term that I dreamed up to describe a mindset, or system of believing and acting that is as old as the bible itself. There is nothing new here. But maybe there is a new way of looking, or expressing, these very old ideas.

Impact mindfulness is nothing more than a term that I dreamed up to describe a mindset, or system of believing and acting that is as old as the bible itself.

Prioritizing Impact over Interest

There are many instances within the sermon that support this notion. Jesus tells us not to practice righteousness (giving, prayer, fasting) in order to be seen or heard (self-interest), but in order to accomplish good (impact). He goes on to tell us not be obsessed with wealth, or the things money can buy (economic self-interest), but in doing good (impact).

He sums up these admonitions with the simple law that we now call the golden rule…”do to others what you would have them do to you.” I believe there is no expression that better captures what is at the heart of “prioritizing impact over interest.”

“Do to others what you would have them do to you.” I believe there is no expression that better captures what is at the heart of “prioritizing impact over interest.”

The Big US

There are two areas within the sermon that I believe really speak to this idea of the Big US. One is where Jesus tells us to love all people, even our enemies. He then tells us that the sun rises on the “righteous” and the “unrighteous.” I am not altogether clear if maybe he wasn’t speaking a little tongue in cheek with those terms (hence my quotes). In other words, God does not show favoritism and neither should we.

He also tells us not to judge others. Not to look at specks and disregard planks. He is basically telling us that no one is perfect. All are in need of mercy. He is merciful…why can’t we be as well?

After all, as you have read here before, we’re all in this boat together…and we’ve all done something that merits the plank (walking it, that is)…but then who will be aboard to man (or, save) the ship?

We’ve all done something that merits the plank (walking it, that is)…but then who will be aboard to man (or, save) the ship?

Removing Impact Blinders

I have always looked at the entire sermon on the mount as an exercise in removing blinders. Let’s put it in context. Around the time Jesus delivered the sermon (to Jews), the Jewish faith had largely lapsed into one of rigid dogmatic precepts that deviously disguised evil as good. All of what Jesus said that glorious morning was in direct opposition to that. He breathed life into the letter of the law…letters that had been twisted and contorted for the self-interest of the Jewish religious leaders. In direct contrast to them, Jesus taught that the true “letter of the law” was not discover-able in the dogma, but in righteousness, or doing good, or (as I like to say) positive impacts.

Jesus taught that the true “letter of the law” was not discover-able in the dogma, but in righteousness, or doing good, or (as I like to say) positive impacts.

Many of today’s religious scholars will immediately began to shout in unison that I am advocating a works based religion. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I am not advocating any “religion” at all…only the benefit to humanity of people pursuing the path of positive impact. And I believe what was said by Jesus on impact mindfulness supports that.

Impact mindfulness is wholly consistent with my faith. In fact it provides the inspiration for me to actually put that faith into practice.

That, I believe, is what Jesus called us to do in his wonderful sermon.

Impact Mindfulness and Wealth

September 24, 2013 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

Recently ran across a Tim Ferriss blog post where he is taking advantage of recent changes in investment solicitation laws. Prior to the change (which came into effect this week), only “members of the club” were allowed to be solicited for investments in private, non-registered, companies. Now, you can solicit anyone, but still can only accept investments from so-called “accredited” investors (i.e., rich dudes, or at least rich by world standards). Tim, a renowned “angel” investor, is taking advantage so as to let his richer blog followers in on his latest investments, normally start-up technology ones (for instance, he was an early investor in Facebook).

Private equity is indeed where the action is and where the big money is made (and lost). But it is a rich man’s game and the vast majority of humanity just isn’t allowed to play. The recent trend of “crowdfunding” with sites like Kickstarter proposes to change that to some extent, but so far the laws that only deem the rich “capable” of playing are still in full force. So, this new law really changed nothing for people like us, but only allows private companies to more easily reach out to rich investors.

Now, having tapped out the above rant to start this post, what am I really saying with respect to impact mindfulness and wealth? Am I against success? No, of course not. I certainly do not begrudge anyone’s success. And impact mindfulness does not propose that we all take a vow of poverty. Like I have said before, the concept is purely motivational and supplies the “why” for pursuing…life’s pursuits. It also encourages a de-focusing of attention on the financial end results. I mean, of course we have to “make a living”, but we don’t have to “get rich.”

Of course we have to “make a living”, but we don’t have to “get rich.”

I am familiar with the rules of the private equity game. A game, that along with its close relative, the hedge fund, brought the United States economy to its knees in 2008. The game and its players operate under the radar screen of scrutiny suffered by the public stock markets. Of course, the end game for private equity generally is entry (or exit) from that market. It is a game reserved for the richest of the rich…the so-called 1%. And the motive is to exponentially expand the already tremendous wealth of its players. Admittedly, innovations that improve the lives of us all are sometimes created in the process. But the motive for doing so is wealth, pure and simple.

Which is where my little concept for impact mindfulness would have an issue. When the motive is wealth, “success” tends to become nothing more than rapidly burning fuel for the ever expanding engine of consumption. Impact mindfulness would rather encourage one to consume less, live more, and be an inspiration for others to do the same. I am awed by this newly sprouted community of online entrepreneurs who are doing and encouraging just that.

When the motive is wealth, “success” tends to become nothing more than rapidly burning fuel for the ever expanding engine of consumption.

I believe checking motivation is essential. We have to ask ourselves, honestly, why am I doing this? Is it to achieve wealth, to consume more? If it is, that’s fine. But don’t expect real positive impact to come from that, nor true happiness and fulfillment.

Wouldn’t I like to invest with the amazing Tim Ferriss? Well, my answer is no. Not because I am a poor guy and would never qualify in the first place, but because I know any motivation I could rationalize for doing so would come from the wrong place.

And I don’t want to do that anymore.

How the Revolutionary Misfit will be Different

September 13, 2013 by costaricaguy 2 Comments

I am asking myself this morning what makes Revolutionary Misfit different? What makes this website idea that I envision as a forum for thought, conversation, and inspiration around a concept that I call impact mindfulness unique enough to deserve your attention?

The truth is that there are many good sites out there focused on living impactful lives. I follow many of them, like:

Leo Babauta’s Zen Habits

Scott Dinsmore’s Live Your Legend

Chris Guillebeau’s Art of Nonconformity

AJ Leon’s Pursuit of Everything

Srinivas Rao’s Skool of Life

also Srinivas Rao’s blogcast – BlogcastFM

Thinking hard this morning about what truly sets my idea apart, I believe there is a big difference between Revolutionary Misfit and these sites.

The sites above deal with alternative career and lifestyle choices. That is a very timely topic these days and it has been since the economy collapsed in 2008. What many thought was the functional career path toward realizing the “American Dream”…

primary then secondary school – university – advanced degree or training – job for life – retirement…

suddenly, no longer works. The guru of the alternative career (Seth Godin) predicted the death of the industrial age some time ago and the birth of a new era in which you must “ship your art.”

And that is what those sites are about…discovering, creating and shipping your art.

And this thing called the internet has now developed to the point that traditional career path thinking is indeed outmoded. All of a sudden the opportunity has emerged to do what one loves and make a living at it…online…anywhere.

OK, I get all that. I love those ideas and I am inspired by all of the above sites. In fact, I have been making my living primarily online now for over a decade. That is why I follow them.

But the fact that alternative career choices are suddenly the trend and making an impact has now become more interesting than simply making a buck, doesn’t answer the question of…

WHY?

I admit my idea for Revolutionary Misfit and Impact Mindfulness is more philosophical than practical. I do not envision the site as a practical guide to alternative career or lifestyle design. It centers more on the philosophical why than it does on the practical whats or hows.

Revolutionary Misfit focuses more on the philosophical why than it does on the practical whats or hows.

And that is a pretty important distinction…I think. People need a why…and now more than ever. And the why proposed by Revolutionary Misfit is Impact Mindfulness.

The why proposed by Revolutionary Misfit is Impact Mindfulness.

Lately I have written about what I believe are the three prongs or legs upon which the idea of impact mindfulness stands. They are:

– Prioritizing Impact over Interest

– The Big US

– Removing Impact Blinders

Impact over Interest – This idea penetrates to the heart of what impact mindfulness is about, as well as why it is different. The other sites place the priority on interest. That is, figuring out what you are interested in and creating a life around it. That’s great. However, when we place priority on interest, we tend to live our lives ensconced inside our compact interest bubbles. Anything on the outside escapes our notice. The idea being that there is simply too much noise to allow anything and everything to penetrate the membrane. And the harder we work to keep the noise out, the thicker the membrane becomes. Impact mindfulness suggests breaking the bubble and being open to all universal calls for impact. That is the essence…prioritizing impact, even when doing so is outside our immediate interest.

The Big US – Impact mindfulness proposes that the universe does not recognize fictitious boundary lines (geographical or mental) that only serve to constrain our realms of impact (i.e., the small us). And we shouldn’t either. It is rather a “we’re all in this boat together” mindset.

Removing Impact Blinders – Here is where impact mindfulness can take a predominantly philosophical turn. For it adamantly disregards ideological or dogmatic patterns of thought that constrain our realms of impact. Impact mindfulness strives for a form of free thinking that seeks the absolute goods of truth and love.

From what I have written above I believe it is clear that this site will indeed be different.

What do you think?

Abundant Scarcity

September 4, 2013 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

I love listening to the BlogcastFM podcast hosted by Srinivas Rao. If you haven’t caught it yet, I highly recommend it. The most recent episode with Meg Worden is epic.

I was listening the other day and one of Srini’s guests (a guy by the name of Andy Drish) mentioned something that really resonated with me. He said that his online business never began to really take off until he began to approach it not from a position of scarcity, but one of abundance.

Very interesting. I have written before in this blog about the “scarcity mentality.” In many ways it is at the heart of our capitalistic system. A system that presupposes two sides to every “trade”…a winning side and a losing side. The idea that there is an endless supply of suckers and business ideas to take advantage of them. A zero-sum game where the outcome is enrichment of the few at the expense of the many.

These days abundant scarcity exists throughout the online business world. There is always a sense of desperation behind a scarcity approach. It is a little like the high pressure used car salesman whose next meal is riding on you buying that lemon and him getting his coveted commission. I know all about it. I was a lawyer and later a business broker for years. In the online world it is evident in the tons of spam we all receive that attempt to make us think the world is riding on us taking advantage of their offer.

To be honest, it is damn hard to approach business from the standpoint of abundance. What does that even mean exactly? That you have something with value and you are willing to give it away? And if someone out there is so kind as to be willing to pay you, well then, how nice! But you don’t expect it and you certainly don’t demand it. Is that a feasible way to run a business in this tit for tat world of ours?

Not really. Customers generally aren’t altruistic enough to support that level of an abundant approach. But I believe an abundant approach has more to do with the mindset you bring to the table than it does with whether or not you actually expect to get paid at some point.

I believe an abundant approach has more to do with the mindset you bring to the table than it does with whether or not you actually expect to get paid at some point.

A mindset of abundance means above all that you genuinely care. You give a shit as I have previously posted. You give a shit that whatever it is you’re peddling actually produces the intended life or world enhancement. And for that to be the case, of course you must believe deeply in what you are doing. If it is hustling puffed up penny stocks or 30-day ab routines, then it gets kinda hard to approach things from the standpoint of abundance.

It also requires that you, the seller, focus more on the customer than you do on yourself. And that’s not easy. Especially when you are measuring your success against everyone else’s. If all you are doing is aspiring…if your success is the end and your business is simply a means to get there, then your approach is not an abundant one.

If your success is the end and your business is simply a means to get there, then your approach is not an abundant one.

I used to believe exactly the opposite. That you first had to have abundance before you could deliver it. I even had a life’s mission statement that supported the idea. But abundance does not flow from abundance…neither from scarcity. It flows from the heart. If you really care it shows. People respond. Abundance flows in all directions.

But you have to be patient. An abundant approach is a patient approach. If you are impatient to receive results, then you are in scarcity mode. Believe me, I’ve been there far too long.

The scarcity approach is the easy one. It is the one taught in business school. It is the one that generally prevails on main street. It is the approach that prevailed throughout the industrial age. So, it is no coincidence that it is the one we are most likely to attempt. And it has worked for a long time. Many are rich as a result. Hey, if you are a good enough salesman you really can sell a ton of ice to a shitload of Eskimos…today!

I guess it comes down to what it is you really want…what it is you are actually about. What is the no-bullshit version of yourself, as Srinivas is fond of saying.

If what you are about is material success…then by all means take the scarcity approach. The world will be no better off for it…but you might be. But if making the world a better place is your measure of success…and the size of your bank account is irrelevant…

then the abundant approach just might work for you.

Aspiring to be Inspirational

August 6, 2013 by costaricaguy 2 Comments

I had some crazy wild dreams last night. I can hardly ever fully recount what my dreams are about, but last night they were a bit upsetting. And they have me thinking this morning about my life. What it is that my life is supposed to be about. Pretty sad that at age 52 I am still trying to figure that one out. Anyone else out there in the same boat? I bet there is.

Life is generally supposed to be about aspiration, right? Aspiring to be a doctor, a lawyer, a butcher, baker, or candlestick maker…and a successful one at that. After all, aspiration enables us to do what’s most important in life…live. Or is it?

One of the strongest and most satisfying emotions one can experience is not aspiration, but inspiration. I love to be inspired…to be moved deeply by a great speech, song, work of art, or book. Just a simple deed done out of a sense of sacrificial service to others can be deeply inspirational. I love that feeling. I love the feeling of being inspired. What’s even more, I love the thought of possibly being inspirational myself. I believe it is something truly worth aspiring to. Aspiring to be inspirational…now that gets my juices flowing.

Aspiring to be inspirational…now that gets my juices flowing.

But how? How can a ultra-ordinary and average guy like me be inspirational? Don’t I need talent to do so? Or at least good looks? Don’t I need a perfect career, wealth, intelligence or some ingredient that seems beyond my grasp? I guess the question becomes, can an average bloke like me possibly be inspirational?

I believe the answer lies in something I have ranted about excessively in this blog. I call it impact mindfulness. Now, what do I really mean by that? Well, I have explained that in other posts, but today I want to talk about what I believe is a requisite of what I will refer to from now on as Inspirational IM.

Truly inspirational IM, I believe, first and foremost requires freedom of thought. One cannot practice inspirational IM while limited in one’s capacity to think things through. I did a post a while back, quite a few years back actually, about some preacher in some small town in the southern U.S. who cajoled his congregation into having a Koran burning event. This certainly had an impact, albeit hardly an inspirational one. I would venture to surmise that this preacher had not really thought that action through very well. And he hadn’t thought it through because his mind was so closed that he didn’t even have the slightest capacity to do so. So, he proposed to engage in an act that is the antitheses of inspirational IM. This is an extreme example, but it serves to illustrate the point well.

So do events throughout history, like the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court, the Jim Crow laws of the reconstructed south, or, more recently, the decision that torture of prisoners of “war” was all of a sudden an okay way to obtain intelligence. None of those decisions were thought through very well, in my opinion. And unless one’s mind is freed from the shackles of preconceived notions of truth based on dubious sources, then one cannot hope to adequately think things through nor successfully practice inspirational IM.

unless one’s mind is freed from the shackles of preconceived notions of truth based on dubious sources, then one cannot hope to adequately think things through nor successfully practice inspirational IM.

I don’t want to get political here, but I have to provide one more example. And that is the right-wing political forces in the U.S. that seem to have their collective heads buried in the sand on the whole global warming issue? Why is that? Despite overwhelming science and actual real world evidence to the contrary, they choose to continue with this notion that global warming is some grand political hoax. And the impact is actually threatening the existence of the planet we live on (and of course us along with it). Not at all what I would consider inspirational IM.

Back on point, I will conclude in answering the dilemma posed about my own life at the outset of this post. What do I want my life to be about, at least from this point forward? In short, inspirational IM. That is what I would like to aspire to. Because I believe that when you yourself practice IM, you inspire others to do so and they in turn are inspirational and the multiplier effect of that can be, well, inspirational on a world-changing level.

Now, that’s something for an ordinary joe like me to aspire to.

Friendly or Just Weird?

March 25, 2013 by costaricaguy Leave a Comment

I am a casual observer of human behavior. I like to sit on the front porch and watch the people pass by on the street on their way to work, school, or whatever. I noticed recently that 99.99% of women will cross the street at exactly the same point. I demonstrated this to Lily and she offered an obvious reason. “They do that to avoid the sunlight that is hitting the other side,” she matter of factly informed. But why the exact same point, I inquired? She offered a reason for that too, but I really didn’t pay much attention. Then there is that 1 out of 1000 exception (well, if you do the math correctly, that would be 1 out of 10,000 according to my very non-scientifically gathered statistics). Why does that person NOT cross the street as do the others? And then there are the men. Some cross, some don’t. Go figure.

I noticed another phenomenon during my caffeine enhanced morning observations of human doings. And that is that under a certain threshold of age, let’s say around 30, no one dares to say hello. Above that age there tends to be some form of greeting and the older the person gets, the more endearing becomes said greeting. It will go from the under 30 eyes straight ahead and maybe a bit of a threatening scowl, to a sightly over 30 grunt, to the 40’ish “buenos dias,” and as the age increases to say beyond 60, an actual casual conversation (with the old dude offering a witty one liner delivered in Ross Perot-like fashion). Why is that? Of course, non-adults exhibit a completely different dynamic altogether, with the under 10 crowd behaving more like the over 60’s and the adolescents more like the under 30’s….tends to be an inverse relationship to the adults, with friendliness increasing as age decreases.

Of course the easy explanation is that younger men in particular still have to prove their manliness (and for the opposite sex, their indifference-ness) and being unfriendly is, I guess, more macho. Granted I am doing nothing here to provoke a response, just observing. If I exerted some form of potential influence, the experiment would be totally blown. The younger crowd, tends to view human interaction as more of a competitive threat than an opportunity for engagement. And of course the questions is, why is that? The answer to that may provide solutions to riddles of life that often lead to wars and pestilences.

Being friendly I am afraid is all too often seen and felt as either weakness or weirdness. After all people are not to be trusted. It is a real jungle out there and I got to get mine before that guy get’s his. Because as we all know, there is only a limited amount of stuff to be gotten, not nearly enough for everyone to have, well, enough. Dog eat dog baby. Eye for an eye! And all that utter malarkey. So being friendly just tends to be sloughed off as something reserved for weaklings and weirdos. Like the old guy who just sits on the corner, smiling and waiving at all the passersby.

Being friendly I am afraid is all too often seen and felt as either weakness or weirdness.

But couldn’t the world use a little more weakness (let’s change that to meekness, as that sounds a little less….weak) and friendliness?

After all, Jesus himself said (paraphrasing a bit here), “blessed are the weak and the weird.” Wouldn’t we all be a little better off if we could stop competing long enough to just smile and say hello? Is that really that hard? Seems so, at least for those with most of their brain cells still intact. Maybe we could learn to use those less for money and mayhem and more for simple kindness, meekness and generosity. What do you think?

WHY?

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