1 0 Archive | January, 2009
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Why Growth Is Better If It Don’t Come Cheap

You gotta embrace the suck.
As I was bouncing around on Twitter the other day, I saw someone ask the question, “What do you do for your mind, body, and spirit?” It’s easy, of course, to answer that question with three answers. “Oh, I’m cleaning up my diet, I exercise a few days a week, and I meditate.” Nothing wrong with an answer like that… it means you’re looking after yourself.

But being the between-the-lines kinda guy that I am, I wanted to answer the question not with three answers, but with one. And so naturally, my answer was “CrossFit.”

Now, I never would have answered that question with any other fitness/exercise/sport that I’ve done (except maybe Nomadics), and I’ve done tons: intercollegiate rowing, yoga (bikram’s, ashtanga, hatha), triathlons, tai chi, full-contact martial arts, bodybuilding, you name it. Why?
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Star Wars in 3 minutes

If you grew up with Star Wars, you might not understand how someone could have grown up without seeing the original trilogy (let’s just not even talk about Hayden Christansen, okay?). I suppose, if I wanted to tie this in with the whole intuition-Jedi-thing, and my love of movies, I could make a case for why this belongs here… ah, forget it. Just watch this, it’s hilarious:

(and thanks to @trib of Acid Labs for the heads up…)

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Adding a "Tweet This" Image Link To Your WordPress Blog

Tweet this!
Recently on Smashing Magazine, there was a fantastic article by Jean-Baptiste Jung of Cats Who Code, called 10 Killer WordPress Hacks. Now, many times when you see a title like that, you probably do the same thing I do: yawn. Because you know as well as I do that out of those 10, only two or three are probably going to be any good.

Au contraire this time, my friends. Jean-Baptiste rocked the house with this one. I was already using one of his tricks, I immediately put three of them into practice while reading the article, and two more are on my to-do list now done. It only took me about ten minutes, tops.

But I’m a code-happy kinda guy.

I realize that what I can do in three minutes might take you thirty, at least, just because you’re doing other things during your day besides coding, and I, on the other hand, do a lot of it.

So, because Twitter and blogging are getting to be so much more widespread these days, I thought I’d break down “Tip #5: Create a ‘Send to Twitter’ Button” for you, in case you’ve got a more complicated installation than just adding a link. If your theme uses images along with your links, as one of my client’s sites does, then just adding the code is going to break your visual layout, and make you look like a hack.

We can’t let that happen now, can we?
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January 18, 2009
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Ignore this post. Get back to work.

Being a bunny isn't always fun.

This post is just another form of procrastination. Ignore it.

No, don’t ignore it. Learn from it.

What do you do in order to not do what you need to be doing?

Not what you should be doing, because we all know what happens when you ‘should’ on yourself… but what you need to be doing. There’s a difference.

What’s the difference?

The difference is that ‘shoulds’ are tasks that are often being dictated by a plan. A plan you’ve agreed to at one point or another, but a plan nonetheless.

The ‘needs’ are that which have to be done, or else you don’t make it. What ‘it’ is will be different for us all; for some, it’s survival, for others it’s success, and others, signficance.

I’m not saying that just because ‘shoulds’ come from a plan, you shouldn’t do them. Or that needs always trump them. I’m not saying that at all.

I’m just saying that it’s good to notice where your motivation is coming from before leaving one task to move on to another, so don’t end up wasting time, your most precious resource.

That said, I won’t take up any more of yours… or mine. Back to it, now!

Image by dirtyfeet.

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Put The Power Of Ritual To Work For You

Chanting monk

Why, in seemingly every tradition, are there ritual practices?

Because rituals work, that’s why. They work through repetition; through continual practice, the attentive mind learns the steps until they are memorized. Once the mind’s focus is no longer needed to complete the ritual, it goes on “auto-pilot”, and the adept can repeat the ritual and focus the mind deeper, awakening the heart/soul/whatever (depends on the ritual, of course). This allows for a much deeper level of presence to be had, transforming the result of the ritual, and the mind of the practitioner.

Or, as my martial arts teacher would say, “First, the mind teaches the body what to do. Then, the body refines the movement, teaching the mind how it wants to move. Finally, body and mind are united as one.” He also said that once you performed an action 10,000 times, you had it mastered.

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Why You Should Kill Your Inner Perfectionist

the deep, dark hole of perfectionism
Okay, so I’ve got 3 planets in Virgo, and a double-grand-trine (and two T-squares) in Air. What does that mean? For those of us (’cause I’m one of ‘em) who don’t have much of a background in astrology, it basically means I’m frogged.

Not really. It means I’m smart. Yay for me. But it also means I’m a perfectionist out the wazoo, so all these great ideas I have? All the amazing connections I see between things? All the creative impulses I have? They ride on the backs of turtles, past huge guardians of Quality Control, on their slow march towards freedom. It’s a wonder you’re even reading this. But who knows, you might not – I might edit this before I publish it.

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