Jason::Adams

Audiobook: First things first - stephen r. covey

Need to Live: Physical Needs, Clothing, Shelter

Need to Love: Social need to relate to other people. To belong. To be accepted. To love.

Need to Learn: Mental need to grow and to develop, and to use those talents.

Need to Leave a Legacy: Spiritual need, to have a sense of meaning, to add value, to have a sense of purpose of personal harmony and contribution.

 —-

How do you seek to fullfill these needs? These needs are external realities, they are there whether someone chooses to see them or not.

Law of the Farm - Most people go through college, cramming. Doing all of the work in one night, with a minimal amount of effort. I’m definately in that group.  What have I lost because I chose to do this? I feel like I have gained a more active social life, but what was the purpose of me going to college? Was it to increase my social circle? Was it to gain knowledge? Was it to get the paper.  The Law of the Farm is simple.  Could you imagine cramming on a farm? Putting the seed in for your crops, right before your supposed to fertilize them? Tearing up the soil, before your crops are grown? It never works, and never will work.  In the end it will always catch up to you, the hens will come to roost.

Selfawareness - capacity to stand apart from ourselves, examine our own motives, history, habits, etc.

Conscience- connects us with the wisdom of the ages, and the wisdom of the heart. Lets you sense when acting contrary to principle.

Creative Imagination- power to invision a future state, to create something in our mind, to solve problems in new ways synergistically, so that we are not a product of our past, or of our memory. This allows us to see others differently, it allows to write mission statements, it empowers to visualize ourselves living our mission statements even in the most difficult circumstances.

Independent Will - capacity to act, power to transcend our scripts, our paradigms, power to swim upstream if we so choose, to act on based on principle rather than reacting based on emotion, mood, or circumstance. WE ARE NOT A PRODUCT OF OUR PAST, WE ARE A PRODUCT OF OUR THOUGHTS and ACTIONS (our choices, response able, able to respond).

How do I use these endowments? Keep a journal, this helps create self awareness. You observe your own involvement. Enhancess all others as well. What do you write in a personal journal? If you dont like a result your getting in your life, write about it. How do consequences flow? Analyze self defeating proccesses. Write and observe. This will help you make WISE choices. Educate your concscience by learning, listening, and responding to it. You can read/ponder about, learn from previous experiences, learn from others.  Take time to be still and to listen to your deep inner voice. Act in harmony with your inner voice. Independent Will? Learn to make and keep promises. Value your word. It’s like making deposits into your personal integrity account, therefore the opinion we have of ourselves is increased. Make and keep your promises, especially to yourself. Don’t over promise or under deliver. This will help level out the emotional ups and downs of your life. Build your sense of honor. Honor is greater than any mood.
A mans life was totally broken, full of flaking, a life of procrastination and selfishness. He must tap into his unique human endowments. Will you get up in the morning when you say your planning to get up? Will you simply get up in the morning? –How will this help you ask?– YOUR body is the only instrumetn through which you operate in life. If you dont get control of your body, how can you control the expressions that come through your body and your mind. –Dont know if you can?– Do you think you could for a week? –WILL YOU GET UP WHEN YOU DECIDE TO GET UP FOR AN ENTIRE WEEK? — After that week, your life will become more integrated. Little steps, keep commitments with yourself, keep the commitments a secret, and way for the people around you to notice changes about you.  Making and keeping promises to yourself, helps you keep promises to others. If you don’t you will hurt the relationships around you.   Creative Imagination? Use visualization. This is a mental excercise used by world class athletes and performers. Use this to nurture the quality of your own life.  Try to visualize a circumstance that would create a feeling of discomfort or pain. Instead of seeing yourself react as you normally do, see yourself act on the principles you are convinced will create results. Use courage and consideration.

Step 1: Connect with your vision and mission - Organize your coming week. Connect with whats most important as your life as a whole. Context gives meaning. What do you care about? What makes the moments in your life meaningful? What do you want to be and what do you want to do? What kind of person am I? What kind of contributions do I want to make? What are the most important relationships in your life? Most important responsibilities? What feelings do you want to have in your life? (Peace, Happiness, etc.) How would you spend the coming week, if you had 6 mos to live? Where is your true north? See beyond your present reality, to become what you are not yet. Live out of your imagination instead of your memory.

Step 2: Identify your roles - Important roles in family, in community, other areas of life.  They represent responsibilities in life.  Vice president? Parent? Spouse? Personal Development? A clear set of roles is needed. Do these roles work well together for the accomplishment in your mission or vision? Sharpen the Saw role: Foundation for succes in other roles, a metaphor for the energy we invest in increasing our personal capacity in the four fundemental areas, the physical, the social, the mental and the spiritual. We are so busy sawing that is producing results, that we forget to sharpen our saw. To maintain or increase our capacity to produce results in the future. The way you see the problem is the problem. Don’t be dichotomous. Think of many things. Life is one indivisible whole. Friend? Employee?

Step 3: Select Important but not Urgent Life Goals for each Role: What is the most important thing I could do in this role, this week to have the greatest positive impact? Look at the week in the context of a longer term, vision, mission statement.  Without principles goals will never have the ability to produce quality life results. A principle centered goal, is the right thing, for the right reason, in the right way.

Step 3: Create a descicion making framework for the week:  Organize on a weekly basis, not on a daily basis. Keep focus on a more long term goal, rather than just whats in front of us. HEADLIGHTS? The key is to offer integrity in that very moment.

Step 4: Train yourself to ask these questions, review what you did. What goals did I achieve? What decisions did I make? Did I fullfill goals in my role? Did I keep my endowments and principles in mind? Focus on contributing rather than consuming.

Quality of life, absolutely depends on how much you align everything in your life to true north. To where you want to be, your goals and vision in your life. Principle centered life.

Damn straight.

Lynn Shawcroft, beautiful, strong woman.  Just read her entire blog.  She is the widow of famous comedian “Mitch Hedberg”. Learning more about Mitch really makes me think. I thought this entry was really powerful.

I think back to how I was feeling at that time. It’s blurry and gut wrenching, and so easily conjured up. It’s hard to lose a Hedberg. Hard act to follow.
I have a hard time realizing that it’s real sometimes. I think about all the things I would do just to see him again. I’d go blind, swim the Atlantic, stop sucking my thumb, swallow an airplane…… never breathe again. If only these or any actions would work.
This is too fucking hard.

There are good days, where I can think blissful thoughts about my husband. I can cheerily recount moments and jokes. Gaze happily at his photos and really appreciate who he was and what he accomplished. Every day I miss him so much it hurts. Ther are days I realize how immpossible this is going to be. Days that I acknowledge that I was lucky to know him. Actually, there are all kinds of days,

all trying and all exhausting…

…I was so happy that Mitch was sitting across from me I started to cry . I reached over to hug him and then I woke up.

I have so many posts to catch up on, so much has been going on in my life.

Went out with Mystery, Lovedrop, Mehow, and company last night.  Also chilled with them along with Sherriff a previous night.  Loved seeing all of the social masters together, more particularly its really interesting to see how they interact with each other, every statement has an underlying subcommunication shot back at each other.  They constantly have frame wars, and are playing alpha games with each other.  It’s great to see how Mystery can reframe every statement, as though hes controlling what was said, or that he approved what you said.  Anything you say, he may end with a “fair”, or “agreed” , or “fine” and then add something similar to make it almost like he made the original statement.  Mystery is definately pure genius, hanging out with him is more entertaining than watching any movie or television show, because hes pure comedy, and then your learning something at the same time.  Definately an interesting guy.  He told me he tries to “respect” everybody, or atleast come off like he respects everyone, he doesnt really but won’t ever come off like he doesnt.  He has the chill cool guy vibe, and seems to have a “easy to please” or “easily entertained vibe”, he’ll randomly spout out “Isn’t it amazing that we can fly from one side of the earth, to the other, in a day? Isn’t it amazing, think of what people had to do before airplanes.”  It’s hard to really soak in all that is mystery, with only a couple days of hanging out with him, he has so many nuances in his personality that are pure genius.  You can also never tell if hes joking with you or not, and you could never get mad at mystery. Lovedrop said it perfectly when he said that Mystery kinda plays the I’m just a child vibe… a kid could do something bad, but you could never really get mad at him, because hes just a kid, and its interesting to watch them learn…. Anyways went off temporarily here, but just reminding myself to type up the posts handwritten during classes, type up the posts about going out with Mehow, etc. Reminder about going to the afterpartys on 5th and Ash or 4th and A, mediterrainean cafe, hookah bar, POD was there in the back, met some people outside of onbroadway.

Out

Just read a bit about the history of Socrates, and his amazing story.  How much dedication to his own reality did it take to accept his fate instead of renouncing his thoughts.  Socrates always asked questions… he was famous for being the old guy that walked around Athens asking people questions about things they considered common sense.  Socrates was patronized his whole life for asking these questions, and hated when he proved people wrong.  He would constantly change peoples common sense beliefs, whether it be about courage, ethics, success, prosperity, etc.  Then because three people decided they didn’t like him meddling around “with their thoughts” they brought trial against him, one that was intensely unfair and one that proved Socrates existence as a whole right.  The reason socrates is so famous is that he set the principle, he made it okay for Philosopher for ages to come, to ask questions, he showed that the popular opinion was not always right, and led the path for many to change the way we think today.

After he was unjustly accused guilty and sentenced the death penalty, he was asked to renounce his “beliefs” or what he called philosophy. All that he had to do was follow popular opinion and he would be allowed to live.  He chose to drink the cup of hemlock, and die gracefully as his friends and family looked on in tears….  Socrates is the symbol of unpopularity.  He knew and believed in his own thoughts, when everyone around him thought him wrong.  He knew that logic would eventually prevail and after death would be shown to be right.  I hope to have this much conviction in my thoughts, and be able to back up everything I do in life with this much confidence.  I only hope to learn a small amount that Socrates did about popularity, and learning to travel the unpopular path…. I’m off to meet Akeef for some lunch so I’ll stop rambling now. Just some thoughts.