I know blog posts have been a bit sporadic lately… meet the reason why! (And watch me do my best impression of Sebastian the Crab at the same time.)

(RSS readers, if you can’t see it, there is a video here… click through to view…)

Posted under Video, Personal

Look, we know there is nothing new under the sun. We’re not nearly as original as we think we are, sitting in our offices, living rooms, or airport lobbies while firing off wisdom nuggets for our blogs.

How many times have I posted a brilliant blog post, only to then go to catch up on three days worth of RSS blog feeds and find that someone else just posted about the same topic? It happens to all of us… heck, many of us are reading one another’s stuff regularly, so it’s bound to happen… we have each others’ words imprinted on our collective subconscious! Sometimes we do it on purpose in order to build off of an idea.

And you know, I think we’re generally OK with the back and forth of ideas, because we’ve gotten to know one another a bit in this here blogosphere, and as we have, we’ve come to recognize each other’s styles, points of view, and pet topics. We know what is “borrowable” and what makes up the core of another’s message. We’ve seen the cross-traffic (or at least the links), so we know that when someone is building off one of our ideas, we’re going to get a link or at least a mention. And if there’s a miss, that there’ll be a make-good in the future, maybe in the form of a correction, or a plug on Twitter, something. We’re cordial and friendly. We balance cooperative and competitive forces as we support one another while also trying to be more insightful, more helpful, and more expert. It’s a process of that keeps us focused on the greater good, builds the community, enhances our offerings to the outside world, and brings out our best.

Not everyone knows (or cares) about the rules of the game. There are those who are the blogging equivalent of script kiddies, who cut content from others and paste it on their own sites as if it were their own. If there is a reference to a source, it’s buried and incomplete. And while when you can’t find the source of a quote (after spending time searching for it), you acknowledge as much and ask your readers to help locate it, they take that quote and purposefully strip out the source.

I came across one such blogger last night, who shall remain nameless because I don’t want to drive a single visitor to the site. I gave the person a heads up, gave them the link to the original article that they had swiped, and a reason to use it. They were so insulted they just took down the whole darn post.

Which was just fine by me.

The irony is, the person describes himself (herself?) as (1) a Baby Boomer and (2) net savvy.

Uh… when you steal half an article from CareerBuilder and are outed less than 24 hours later by a guy who was quoted in the article who saw his name come back through Technorati, not so much on the savvy, ya know?

I’m all for tearing down generational boundaries, so no comment on the Boomer part of the equation. But if by “savvy” you really mean, “the one eyed man in the land of the blind,” then just say so.

The only price for admittance into the Net world is being honest about who you are.

Posted under Personal, How to Self-Destruct

Do you know how the story ends?

Neither do I.

But who cares?

A satisfying ending is not the same as a happy ending. Consider how many a happy Hollywood ending has ruined an otherwise fantastic movie… and how some of the most satisfying works have gut-wrenching endings that leave you in tears. (Lassie, anyone? Romeo and Juliet, anyone?)

The same is true for people. Not that you need to be a martyr or a tortured soul, but the heroes, legends, and artists who stand the test of time tend to be the ones who focused on the story of their lives more than the happiness of the ending. They stayed focused on the bigger picture, and if they thought of themselves as the stars of the show, they nonetheless remembered that the star was but one role in a massive production.

Washington. MLK. Lincoln. Mother Theresa. These people did not chase dollars, the trappings of success, or “happy endings.” They chased life. They created the lives they wanted to live and they lived them. They stayed in the moment, chasing their passions and letting their stories unfold. They shaped their world, but stayed true to their story while doing so. Washington is a perfect example: he seems to have been a shrewd politician, yet his story was the birth of America, and when presented with the opportunity for unprecedented personal power, he turned it down. Heroes remember why they are here, and never confuse their own “happiness” as the reason for their existence.

Look at the story of your life. How is it unfolding? Is it the kind of story that people would care about?

Does it have a compelling protagonist?

Or are you uncommitted, boring, and afraid to do anything that might steer you, even temporarily, away from that happy ending you so desperately think you want? Are you settling for this because you think you need a safe ending? Have you forgotten that in the most famous movie love story on screen, the guy does not get the girl?!

It’s time to put everything you’ve got into your story. If you don’t like how it’s unfolding, OK… keep going. Work the script over and over and over again, until your very last breath.

Because unless you’re already dead, you’re still somewhere in the middle of your story.

Stop trying to guess what happens next, no one knows how this thing ends.

So do what you can to make things unfold as you’d like, and then take what comes and

enjoy the story.

Posted under Self-Development, Personal

Interesting… a couple of weeks ago, my ChangeThis proposal pulled ahead of what was at the time a 3-dog race, and since then, the lead has steadily increased. Voting ends in a couple of days, and surely much of the uptick in recent activity is related to that. But what’s compelling to me is that I’m getting a disproportionate number of votes now. When things were more even, things tended to stay more even. Once I pulled ahead, my lead began quickly building on itself.

I wish I could take credit for this uptick as having to do with the quality of my proposal vis-a-vis the competition. Alas, I don’t think I can. Don’t get me wrong: I am grateful for each and every of the 170 people who took the time to read the proposal, think about it, and click the “Yes, I do believe I’d like to read the whole thing” button. I take none of them for granted, and I have to believe that the content I am offering is good enough to merit a second look if I’m getting any clicks at all. (I can only hope that those same 170 people will indeed read the “manifesto” itself, and forward it to about a billion more people, every one of whom will be so moved to then purchase a copy of How to Self-Destruct for themselves and 5 more copies for their friends and coworkers. A man can dream, right?)

But I think there’s more going on than the quality of the content, and that’s the human element. Being part of the ChangeThis experiment has given me a glimpse into something we all know: it’s easy to take sides when it looks like the winner has already been determined. I’m glad to be the beneficiary of this phenomenon on ChangeThis. When my book was at #845 on Amazon, I was glad to be the beneficiary of that phenomenon there, too.

Because you want to know something? Life is not only easier when you’re a winner, it’s much more fun, too.

My hat tips to everyone who is out there “running the race.” I’m ahead of a few of you, I’m way behind many of you, but I’m a long way from finished, so you had better keep pressing forward. Hard. I know I’ll be.

Posted under Personal, How to Self-Destruct

CNN reports tonight on a survey done related to people’s opinions about the separation of church and state. A survey. 219 years after the ratification of the Constitution. In the midst of a “War on Terror” that’s being fought against theocracies. And it’s close: we’re still split almost 50/50 on whether the church should have a political voice.

How is it possible that we are bombarded daily with news about how foreign governments in the Middle East and in Asia (think Pakistan) struggle to control legitimized religious factions, yet we are barely holding them at bay in our own country?

Don’t answer that, it’s rhetorical; the answer is that people have a darn good knack at believing—strenuously—whatever happens to be in their personal best interest, regardless of what’s best for “people overall.”

I hear people complain all day about corporate politics, but I gotta tell ya, what I see in business ain’t nuthin’ compared to the political land grab we tolerate in our governing body day in and day out. If you’re having trouble dealing with ambiguity, it’s likely because you’re still a bit too idealistic in your belief that people will do what they “should” do, as opposed to “what’s good for them.”

The human condition simply isn’t magnanimous.

John Adams had it right when he included a line in the Massachusetts constitution about government’s responsibility to educate the people. Because until education—real education, the kind administered by super-qualified, highly-motivated, and appropriately compensated teachers, as opposed to the fakey kind education that is supposedly measured by a series of standardized tests—becomes a priority, we are destined to struggle with issues we have no business debating in the first place; the only answer to our inherently self-interested ways is to be versed in history. History gives us a chance to do what the Whopper does in War Games: play through all the scenarios for ourselves so we can see the true consequences of our actions… when we try to project into the future, our self-interest blinds us and skews our perspective. Only by looking backward do we seem to learn how to expand our perspective.

Want a better life? Read a book.

Want a better world? Read a book about history.

Posted under Personal, Current Trends