Adam Kayce

Long time, no write, eh? The Monk has been busy!

In fact, that’s exactly what I want to talk to you about. No, not the “busy” part, the “Monk” part.

You see, I got out of spiritual healing work for a number of reasons, one of the biggies being that I didn’t like the feeling of charging for spiritually specific work (intuitive work, healing work, business work… sure. No problem. But teaching it? Just didn’t feel right.).

But even though I transitioned to full-time web design, I was still running everything out of MonkAtWork.com, and that just kinda bugged me. I would’ve preferred to have a different home for the web work, and leave the spiritual stuff here.

At the same time, as I worked with a number of clients, I began to realize a few things about the way my clients and I were approaching the design process, including what made a big difference in people’s success levels with their new sites (and, of course, what didn’t). I wanted to rectify those pitfalls, make it better/cheaper/faster/easier for folks, and do it in a way that really played to my strengths, and the strengths of WordPress (my platform of choice).

Long story short: I have a new home for my “web design” services, and it’s going to blow your doors off. Enter: Bright Coconut.

What’s the big diff?

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When it comes to making change in your life, your health, or the health of your business, the #1 item on every “Law of Attraction”-based, personal growth-oriented list is always gratitude.

Why? Because, the logic goes, when you are feeling grateful for something, you’re in a state of appreciation and happiness, which begets a greater state of happiness. The more you get accustomed to feeling good about what you have, the more you get to feel good about, and the more good you feel about what you have, and so on… it’s an ever-growing spiral.

But what if gratitude brings you down?

I have to admit, I used to resist gratitude in a huge way. Not because I have anything against showing appreciation, but because whenever I’d do a practice involving gratitude, I ended up feeling small and unhappy, which is the opposite of what it was supposed to do for me.

Not cool, I thought. Not cool.
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Focus is perhaps one of the most crucial qualities to develop when it comes to bringing your best to work. When you’re focused, you can get incredible amounts of work done in short periods of time. Focus makes staying on task easy. And there’s one question in particular you can ask yourself that’s supposed to inspire herculean amounts of focus.

Now, you’ve no doubt seen this question circulating amongst the well-intentioned, self-help best-seller bookshelves’ residents for years. It’s pulled out time and again as the ultimate refiner of focus, the samurai sword of the cut-through-the-fluff-ers’ arsenal, the go-to tool of the productivity heroes’ utility belts. Ready?

If you only had six months to live, what would you do right now?

Ta da! Answer that question, and all your troubles will be solved, right?

Well…
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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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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…)

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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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.

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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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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Out with the old, in with the new.

That’s my motto right now. I reserve the right to change it, if/when it suits me, but that seems to be the flavor of my thinking lately.

Ever have the feeling your business could use an emema? I did/do, and I’ve been laying down on that table for quite some time now.

To help steer me away from expanding on that metaphor, and to give you some context, let me give you some background. This will be especially helpful for those of you who haven’t known me all that long, all that well, or just are curious about the path I’ve come to tread and where this blog is going. I’ll try to be succinct…

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