So I am diving into a book call Psycho-cybernetics by Maltz. This book has many of the similar threads to the likes of Napoleon Hill, Og Mandino, Eckart Tolle, The Secret,that all seem to pull from key tenants of the Bible like "Ask and Ye shall receive, knock and the door will be open" Etc.

All of these books have a key practice of training (or more specifically) 'reprogramming yourself from your past experiences mainly learned from your parents and surroundings. Yes it is what has made us who we are but certainly we are not defined by those past events.

The primary focus is on those 'false' programmings, those long held beliefs and characteristics that have their root in negativity and have embedded themselves into your process of thinking and evaluating lifes' situations as they happen.

These books speak about not dwelling on the past, living from the present moment, and retraining your mental programming. They highlight we should recognize those negative programmings but again we should not give power/focus to those experiences because the subconscious brain is unbiased to what enters and thus will act on those foci and give you more of what you give importance to. If we change our programming to focus on successful outcomes, actions, motions etc. (these successful outcomes can be pulled from anytime in your live) then that is what we will receive back.

So why mention all of this?

I recently turned 40 years old. Yup made it this far. And like everybody has said, including my parents, it came extremely fast. Shoot it feels like just yesterday I was 28 years old, living in Colorado as a single man, and having the time of my life. Fast forward to the present: 40--married almost 10 years, living in Kansas, 3 children below the age of 7, and domesticated as a man can be with the aforementioned characteristics.

Yes I take care of myself, and why I don't have to mention having gained x amount of weight, lost x amount of my hair (though I have hahah), I am enjoying my life (for the most part) albeit in a different context; not worse- just different obviously. So back to turning 40.

I say somewhat because I seem to be having a tough transition going from 39 to 40. Is there really some fricken clock in your head that starts asking the proverbial question "what do you want to be when you grow up? Or Now what are you going to do?" or is the question always there but you pay more attention to it now because of your 'wisdom' or better yet your recognition that the train is closer to the end of the track then it was at the start of the trip? Regardless of what the hell it is it's on my mind and it stinks, is scarey. and yet maybe even liberating if I will allow it to be.

Did I dream I would be where I am at this stage in my life? Shoot I seemed to have forgotten any dreams (other than wanted to be a baseball players or making ton of money doing 'something' cool) I might have had growing up and why it's seems to be impossible to answer that question. Did I dream this current life? One thing that I know is that I created it whether or not it happened to be following a dream. Do not get me wrong, I have had a wonderful and blessed life ,albeit with some serious trials and tribulations along the way, but it's all a part of who and what I am today.

So where I am today, and why this question (the question of what do I want to do now or be moving forward- mainly in my career) is riding on me heavily. I am currently employed at a specialty tax firm. A small firm, in a very niche market, but with little room for career path as I can see or better yet a career path I have little passion to follow. It absolutely does not excite me and its starting to show in my dedication and performance to the task I am chartered with.

But this isn't all that I do. Currently I have 3 other start-up businesses that continue to take my time and focus away from my day job and I enjoy them immensely for that distraction, but also the opportunity, but right now none of them are creating income and in fact 1 (my baby called Speedythumb) is taking cash out of my pocket for development costs with no real clear end in sight to start producing revenue. Right now, and my fear is, that it will become just a costly and distracting boondoggle.

All of these opportunities excite me because of the entrepreneurial aspect, the starting and helping to refine or transform an industry. But yet the question I am more consistently asking of myself is "when will this excitement go away", like my day job, in that I felt similar when I first started with the business as a I do now with these new opportunities.

Why I ask this question is because of the way that I have been programmed from the past, I do believe, and why I have consistently read books to identify those false programmings and eviscerate them. What do I need to eviscerate? That I will always be disappointed, that I will always fall short of my goal, that nothing lasts forever, that a dream is only a dream and not a reality and that you will never end up doing something great or better yet something that you love to do. Period. That I have to work, make money to take care of myself and family, regardless of whether I enjoy the work or not.

I want to know why the hell I think like this. There has been little I have not achieved when I have put my pure focus on it. I have had successes. I have had wins. Have typically ended on top with a good outcome. And why I know better than to feel the way that I am feeling. But more often than not I end of sabotaging my own successes and why I have either not completed things, moved forward on 'dreams', or continue to jump around (job and idea-wise) and try new things and leave the waste behind time and time again. I literally move on from current opportunities because I get this gripping fear that the end is coming and why I must get out of the boat while I still have the chance only to move onto the next boat and create the same situation as before.

What happened to my stick-to-it-iveness? Where are my balls? Why the fear of utter failure? Why the fear of letting my kids, wife, siblings, friends, family all down? Its paralyzing.

Maybe it started when my father, married for 16 (or was it 18) notified my mom that he wanted a divorce? He was in love with someone else! The man that was the epicenter of my life growing up. A man I feared as much as I loved and looked up to.

Why had he decided to leave? Did I let him down? did someone let him down? Did he feel the boat was sinking and needed to get out? Regardless of what it was I do believe it left a crater in my soul that told me from a very young age that yes "nothing is as good as it seems, nothing lasts forever, people will let you down, you will always be disappointed, you will fail" and why you should, at the end of the day, know these truths and thus always keep moving, fight for what you believe in but only to a point, and then get out.

This happening in my life transformed my inner conscious and still affects me to this day. I just know it. I can look back and see all the relationships I have killed, people I have hurt, because it was always about me. I had to protect myself from hurt and the way to do that was through insensitivity, arrogance, no communications on a deep level about things of substance, refusing to let myself be loved or return of love, being an introvert shielded by extrovert actions. Ultimately being untrue to myself for years and years.

So what do I do about? Well first I trust I need to recognize that its all bullshit and always was. It never had anything to do with me. It had to do with his programming...not mine. Still what the hell do I do about it then? If I can recognize it great but how do I get it out of me? If I do so can I then move forward to getting back to understanding what my dreams were for myself way back when I was a young boy with the world so open to me and my dreams? Can I then start a new? Will a lighting bolt hit me and I will know KNOW , beyond a shadow of a doubt, what I am suppose to be doing in my career for the next 40 years, Will I know how to treat my kids and my wife with the respect they deserve, will I be honest and true to myself for once? Will I start doing something in my career I love to do and will I follow through? Will I complete the things I started? Will the fear, that has caused me to run, abate and will I get to Peace?

Well I sure and the hell hope so! I do believe so or at least I have the faith to believe this truth.

I look at my kids sleeping at night and try to put myself back in those innocent shoes. When I look at Quinten I wonder what this little boys dreams are and hope for the life of me that I can help him realize them. To teach him how to never forget them, embrace them, right them down, focus on them and never let them go; opposite of what I have done. I do not want him to be programmed by MY past!.

So to end.....I feel this writing was quite cathartic for me and am pleased to have gone through this exercise. I trust it will be somewhat of an exorcism for me and allow me to embrace this new age of 40 more fully. I know, and will continue to do so, I need to keep retraining this mind of mine, its misperceptions, is falsities, and ultimately its fears; recognize them but do not dwell on them.

Here's to the present moment...smiling.

D
Neural Nuisance.

Sears: And you wonder why their "Grand" label stinks.

Time to upgrade and go high efficiency in the laundry. You bet I will keep a close eye on whether or not the new laundry units cut some cost and eradicate our clothes of dirt having paid over $2500 bucks for the new LG units.

Perfect timing we thought with the Sears Grand store doing out of business in our local neighborhood and thus fire sales to accompany the closing. For all intents and purposes we received a great deal on the 2 Algerienne capable units.

Funny to say but I was greedy to run the first load and anticipated the day of delivery. The units arrived with little fanfare and the installers were professional, efficient, and quick. They tested the units briefly to make sure all connections were ready for industrial loads....or so we thought.

I again beat the wife to the first load, loaded the darks and preceded to head outside for some yard work. No sooner had I started the mower and Tiffany ran out to let me know that the washer was leaking from our upstairs bedroom to the kitchen below!!! The water was coming out of the light fixtures!

Through further investigation it turns out that the exhaust hosed installed with the washer was burnt, the hose was melted in a half dozen places, and water was flying out of the holes at the back of the unit.

You could say the fiasco was well on its way'; stopping the load midstream. moving the unit for investigation, cleaning up the water in the kitchen, and investigating to what extent the water had damaged the house.

Then came the necessary calls, to the salesman, the sears delivery service, customer service, claims.....and the list goes on and on.

Through hours of discussion with sears they thought it best to send the delivery team out the very next day and I specifically told then the issues and requested they send the delivery team with a new hose. They arrived and NO hoses were in hand! They said they were not authorized to work on the units and only came to investigate; so that they could tell the technical team the issue...more wasted time....they concurred as I had relayed a day before that there were YES in fact holes in the hose. Thanks Einstein.

More calls were made and in those calls I insisted on getting the current unit repaired but also replaced. I was not going to have a $1500 unit in my house that may in fact have issues with its electrical system...shoot maybe it burns the house down next.

They agreed to send a technical team out to replace the hose but could/would not get out to the house for 3 more days. PS. Clothes are still sitting in washer with water...mmm the smell. They also arranged for a new washer to be delivered 2 weeks later...not having one local to swap out sooner.

After 24 hours of this fiasco the clothes started to muster a distinct mold smell and why I proceeded to ring all the clothes in the tub and then move them to the dryer.

While drying the clothes that evening I came upstairs after the clothes had been in the dryer for about 30 minutes and upon entering the room there was a haze of dust and extreme warmth coming from the laundry room. Looking at the units (they are red by the way) the tops of the units were coated with what looked like ashes from nuclear fall out (my assumption from seeing movies about the day after etc.) NOW WHAT!!?

Turns out the exhaust hose for the dryer was not installed properly and was pumping right back into our laundry room. Oh the joy.

The best part of all of this, if you recall the water in the kitchen, I have been trying for weeks, now over a month, for the claims department to call me back to have our kitchen ceiling investigated. Time and time again I am hearing the claims agent is on vacation..would call me the very next day, then he is taking a break or something, he will call me that DAY, and as far as I know he or she is again on vacation again and I am next in line!

At this point and time Sear's service would be rated as a zero and the claims agent should quite possibly be let go....shoot that leaves him more time for the vacations he/she seems to be on so they should be happy.

I can honestly say I now understandwhy Sears Grand, and maybe the sears brand, will be one of the past. Their service is non-exsistent and I refuse to spend this kind of money with a company that has little to no follow-through with their consumers.

Stay away from Sears at all costs ...even if there is a GREAT deal because of the inevitable going out of business signs.

Signed- Sears customer service.

Memes Galore...that's why!

Ok so give me a break with this....stab at blogging. Very first and quite possibly my very last.

Currently it is 2:15 am on a Thursday night and I was compelled to create a account and get all of this "neural nuisance" off of my mind! I am sure it will return again and again and why I have embraced this fact and will remind myself daily with my tagged heading.

I am sure this wave of thought started over a year ago with my dive into the "laws of attraction" but I find the need to focus on the here and now.

I found out 4 weeks ago that a Meme is an idea, behavior or style that moves from person to person in a culture. I came to know this term from my introduction to an individual we will call Rich the savant. So at some level I will blame my insomnia on him and the Mocha latte I had at 6:30 this evening. Idiot.

You see Rich, compelled by his own mind, has been at work trying to quite the noise of his mind by listening to what it has been asking him to do. (Hold tight because this is where my mind started warping earlier this evening with this line of thinking)

Rich by my accounts, and many others, is a genius. A genius of the mathematician type- a beautiful minder if you will. His mind noise (I am sure there are others noises besides math but feel this to be the loudest in my interpretation) is about equations- math equations.

These equations, or algorithms, are trying to answer the ultimate question...out of all questions definitely the most widely asked; the question "WHY". Why this? Why that? Why me? Why is it raining? Why did she cheat on me....Hey Rich ask one of your eguations to tell me why I am writing this at 2:30 am. LOL.

Ok this is where the cohesion in my thoughts may break down a bit but stick with me here.

Rich is into neural networks ( A neural network acquires knowledge through learning) Think of your brain as the ultimate Neural network. IT learns through learning - observing, listening etc.

and for the general population let's just say that his bent is in SOCIAL MEDIA of the research kind and how neural networks play a part in this growing phenomonon.

All algorithms, whether in Rich's mind or some other genius', are trying to do one thing and one thing only and that is answer a question..again the question why and they are using US for their purpose.

Well Rich's wants to know why us humans do what we, why are we motivated to have behaviors, why do we communicate the way that they do, why did we buy this, why didn't we buy that and ultimately knowing WHY to an nth degree to understand how influences, at certain times, cause behavior/action.

Before I met Rich the only understanding, or at least I thought, I had of social networks was what I saw on facebook, linkedin etc. You know a place online where people could trade information whether that be for personal reasons or business.

Well as I have peeled back the onion Social Networks (social media) maybe the hottest topic since The Davinci Code, or Anna Nicole Smith......

Social media are primarily Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. Twitter, facebook, linkedin, tweetdeck, and the list goes on and on and on.

With this onslaught of social networks everybody and there mom are trying to harness the power of these networks (mainly business) for the purposes of understanding more about consumer sentiment, opinion, behaviors, via popularity or "BUZZ" with the belief that the more they know of these profiles the better they can be sold too, the better they can optimize their websites and buying experiences and thus optimize the selling of their goods and services.

and Because of where social media technology is today the best companies can hope to gain is an idea on how popular or unpopular they are, how consumers are behaving relative to their brand, and what may be some influences for what they do based on macro profiling. ie. 20 something, Female, Insomniac etc.

Well you've heard of disruptive technology correct? Well the savant, yes he has disrupted my mind, has created such a technology. I direct you back to the question of WHY. What if I told you that the black box Rich ( ENGINE for the Social Media phenomonon) has built can answer the questions WHY? Why is what drives behavior, why brings you true understanding to what will and what will not influence, the answers to WHY are what EVERYONE wants to know because if you know this you can SOLVE anything. A PURPOSE answers WHY. And when you have pupose you have everything. Without it you are a ship without a rutter

Think about it. What would every great science like to know? and what do they all try to answer? the reason for this or that THE WHY. The answer to why is the root, and knowing the root makes all the difference in the world.

As I mentioned earlier. Memes are an idea, style, behavior etc that is transfered from person to person, that makes Human beings a replicator of these- styles, habits ,etc. They replicate through neural networks--the brain learning, listening etc. from the past. Call us MEME Machines.

I think that you will all agree has humans have replicated all things through the years from fashion to music, We replicate those things we like, as well as bad things- behaviors etc..but why?

We have also created machines and technology to help in that replication. Stay with me here.

What is happening, and what Rich has figured out, is that machines are beginning to understand neural networks---like the human brain- he has created (he would say by his will alone but I believe the algorithms had some say in it and used him) a TECHNOLOGICAL neural network engine.

This engine is understanding how the brain works and is learning things about people/consumers that we do all day long and take for granted. Can you say AI? oooooooo

This engine is thus understanding WHY we do what we do. These machines want to know this because that is their purpose; to make our lives more convienient and to continue to use us to replicate them, advance THEM. The more they understand the WHY the better they can use us to replicate and solve those answers to Why. Ok that's spooky-matrix shit.

But again think about it. Back to this engine. If a business owner, that wants and needs to sell a good or service to survive, can truly understand , without doubts, why or why you will not purchase the good or service (without assumption which is what is sold by all social media today- Radian6, Spiral16, Cymfony, etc,/) think about the power of influence that can be had with that answer. Think about how business would & could adjust their approach to selling their good or service.

Again WHY is the key:

Think psychiatry - always trying to find out why this or that then they can solve it!
Cancer- Currently attacking the behavior because they don't know the why thus do not know the how to defeat it. Much like social media. Behavior happens after why!
Humans - why am I here? What is my purpose. having and knowing purpose brings about joy and is what we all strive for.

Just like any great business must have a Mission statement and purpose and reason to WHY? The greater the company mission is impressed upon its employees and the consumers knowledge of the businesses sole purpose the great the company.

Think about men and woman- remember Men are from Mars Woman venus. That really only serves to profile at a macro level and why. What if you truly knew why Men act the way they do and woman the same and they were both in on it? I am not talking sex differences here. I am talking nature and nuture stuff MEME stuff; their upbring, their parents upbringing, what in our past is replicating in our lives today etc etc.

The WHY! its not just because we are male or female.

Ok so what does all this shit mean? it means I believe I can go to sleep now that this is all out of my head. At least I think most of it is.

...I will have more tomorrow on this topic.

Just a glimps: A baseball (eventhough inanimate) has purpose. IT either wants to be hit or not hit (or because of the law or gravity) it will be on the ground. It uses US to replicate the best it can be....being hit out of the park or striking a batter out. We again are the meme machine.

Im a freak. LOL