My life is good.  I have a few dear friends, and a large number of acquaintances.  I’ve been good, all my life, at staying in touch loosely with people.  The hard drive of my brain is written with bits and pieces from different people from different summers, winters, falls and springs.

I remember details, I remember conversations.  I remember when I impressed people and when they impressed me.

I also learned something, going through an exercise with Infusionsoft–bringing in all the contacts that I have met in my whole life.  It honestly was one of the most significant things to have happened to me recently.   Because I love people (they don’t know it, more on that in a minute) I remember everything.  Because I’ve been a computer geek all my life, I keep track of everyone.  A little bit.  Both in my FB stalkerish ways, and on purpose.

I have yearbooks, I have lists of addresses dating back from my 1997 YAHOO! account.   I have kept the light on for friends and maintained email addresses just in case I get a forward from someone I haven’t heard of in years.

But the truth?  It’s a big deal.  Not shocking to those who know me.

I am a fighter.  Wired that way.  How can I prod, how can I press.  The chess player in me figures people out, sizes them up.  I don’t have that issue where I think of the perfect insult…ten minutes late.  It just rolls out of my mouth, because I arm myself beforehand with what to say.

I want to win, and beat people, and force my will.  Every victory is a Pyrrhic victory.  This wears people out.  Someone does something, makes a some mistake, and I get after it with vigor and venom.

This takes its toll.  I might be right in the moment, but I don’t honor people when I lash out.  I fill a leaky bucket when I cause fights.  I make even my close friends wary of me.  Nervous around me because they’ve seen me follow though on getting after people.  Dressing them down, and worse. I’m not as easily angered as I used to be.  I have mellowed.  I save my energy for fewer, more intense battles.  I don’t bluff, I’m willing, honestly, to do what it takes to get you to acquiesce to me.

That makes for a tough & empty life.  It also means that I’m stuck being a warrior and not a general.  By fighting every time, I wear myself out.

But still.   How can you trust anyone that doesn’t play by the same set of rules, and has already pondered what to do to bring you down?   How can you trust someone that brings a storm-cloud of drama?

By ‘not taking any shit from anyone,’ I am tilting at windmills, spending energy all the time on what people are insecure about, and not doing what it takes to be right, healthy.

It’s a distraction.  I hinted at it in my book.  I knew it intellectually for years, but going through all of my contacts was a painful experience.  There are people I don’t want to hear from because they are jerks.  There are people that don’t want to hear from me because I’ve been sociopathically unconcerned with collateral damage my whole life.  I want to get my way, and I’m willing to bleed for it.

Again, it’s a distraction.  Wining and fighting and spending my energy on nothingbattles is a trick of the devil.   Energy should be spent moving forward.  When people disappoint me (They will) honor ‘em anyway.  Have understanding, have compassion.  Be kind first.  That will build trust.

Even as I write this, the lesson isn’t totally learned.  My ego is injecting thoughts into my head like this: “people will read this and take advantage of you.”   or “well, you can still fight, just do it less often.”

Nah.  It’s time to have a different ethos.  I don’t need to fight, not on stuff that doesn’t matter.

I can bring peace or drama.  Which is better?

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/franglais/

I don’t hide the fact that I’ve been knocked around by the IRS.  It’s pretty obvious that those morons have dug into me.  The dynamic blows: when I call, I view them as callow, shallow and parasitic opportunists that are too cowardly to make a buck so they hurt, enslave, and steal from others, anything to justify their existence.  They view me as a tax cheat, unwilling to wait my turn to reap the benefits of work, and stealing money from welfare babies.

The truth is probably a little of both or something.

But, the real challenge of running around this way, the real bummer of everything I’m trying to do is that–since this became acute at the end of 2006, it’s been damn near impossible to retain money.   They’ve levied multiple accounts while I was, in good faith, negotiating with them.  The decisions I make have to be based on a shorter than normal horizon because they can suffocate me by taking what I do earn.

It’s gotten better since I shored up my accounting and since I got everything (more or less) correctly filed.   I’ve learned that I can take a pounding and keep a marriage (more or less) together.  I learned that I can be a good dad and not snap at my kids despite some fierce stress.

But, it’s frustrating as hell working as hard as I have learned to and not build wealth.  I’m $85,000 in debt, today, and that’s half the amount it was.  I’m chunking out money every single month and it’s exhausting to run to beat the devil.  On my board sits the 5 major debts that I have (student loan, IRS, car, student loans for H & other).

Not having a reserve means you are on a rat race system, accumulating time debt and not able to do what you want to do.   Still, since we cut expenses by downsizing, we’ve got the wiggle room to move, because we don’t have any weeks that cost more than $800 bucks.  We can beat this thing back $300 at a time, and we are.   The interest each month is less.

If I didn’t have bizarre confidence in my skills, I would have caved a long time ago.  I know that I will beat this thing, and build something.  $35 dollars at a time, $200 dollars a week.  All it takes.

Oh, yeah.

You should all go to http://guerrilla.me/thesisblogs and tell me what to do to make that video better.  And, buy a couple blogs.

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chasingfun/

How do you create consistency in your life?

Showing up, fully engaged is a big part of work.  Being a machine, like Seth Godin, like NameTag Scott is the way to have wild success, wild wealth, and more of what you want.  The quality of your ideas is less important–by far–and less novel–by far than the execution.

Ideas are everywhere.  Execution is 90% of it or more.  “Idea guys” are worthless.  Utterly entitled useless pieces of crap.  The idea isn’t the novel thing, and the older and presumably wiser I get the more  I know it.  It’s easy to have a dazzling idea, a new and novel thing that you could make some day.

It’s hard to get up every day, look people in the eye and serve them with all of your heart, mind, mind, soul & strength.  It’s hard to show the patience and confidence you need.  It’s easy to be the smart kid, it’s easy to be the one with the answers.  It’s hard, really hard, to show up every day and have the enduring faith that it takes to work towards your goal, especially when instant results are out the window.

How many exciting, great ideas have you had that would be AWESOME if they were put into practice?

How many NBA players had roughly the same physical gifts as Michael Jordan (Dominique Wilkins, Charles Barkley, Anfernee Hardaway) but didn’t hit the same heights?  MJ’s mental gifts were far more novel than his physical gifts.

Right now, I’m trying to learn to develop the consistency needed to get past the ‘next level’ and go to the one beyond that.  It’s not about intellect, acumen or acuity, it’s about just blocking out distractions and doing it.  It’s about getting up and rolling.   Not getting-ready-to-roll.  Preparation has its place, but only in moderation.

Lots of little things help.  Keeping a list helps.  Clearing a schedule helps.  Paying a little bet on a debt every day helps.  Morning pages helps.  I’ve come farther along than I thought possible.  But I need to be hitting it hard.

How do you create consistency?  Are you really doing it?  Are you being honest with yourself?

Ideas are everywhere, and without execution totally worthless.  A mediocre idea executed with passion and fervor will beat the hell out of genius ideas that sit in drawers.