Archives for February 2009

Why Do I Keep Forgetting So Much

February 26, 2009 by admin

Last Sunday, while I was sitting in a money class, preparing to be coached on being a coach, I watched as one instructor mentioned to another that it would be helpful to give the coaches a list of preferred counselors to handle issues that we would not be qualified to handle. Lawyers, marriage counselors, psychologists, etc., would probably be needed at some point to handle deeper issues that certain people may have regarding their finances.

Upon requesting this information, the other instructor promptly wrote it down, and my first thought was, “He’s doing that because he needs to remember to respond to a call to action. Hmm…that’s quite mature of him. Why do I feel like I avoid doing this?”

What I thought next was how quickly in life we are to “forget” things that we would rather have others think we’re to incompetent to handle simply because we don’t want to make the committment to handle the problem because it will be too much work, or will stretch us further than we intended to be stretched. So, we don’t write it down.

I have lived like this for a long time. I will forget things intentionally without even knowing it because I’ve gotten so good at it. But, the time has come to acknowledge this as a weakness and take proactive steps to correct the behavior, as now I am not the only one who depends on me. Other people depend on me, and stepping up my level of commitment to something is, I believe, critical to continuing to develop in a positive direction. Whether it be responding to a call to help others, or something as big as getting married, making a commitment is something that I have been very selfish about.

I have trained my brain to forget selectively. My argument may be that ‘I forget things’ but the truth of the matter is, if I put my mind to it, I can remember anything I want. Instead, I typically will choose to remember things that I find more interesting, but may not be that beneficial to me.

No matter what I do in my mind, if I don’t write something down when I think about it, I will forget it. When I come up with a great tune on the piano, if I don’t record it now, right there in the moment, it will be lost. If I think of a great lyric, or think of an award winning million dollar idea, and I don’t write it down, it will never come to fruition. Overcoming the fear of success can only be done by forging ahead through the hard committments and actually doing the hard work that it takes to become a success. Imagine how many products or hit songs have passed through my mind that have not paid off because I’ve been too lazy to make them permanent in some way.

For someone like myself who has all of the classic symptoms of what they call Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD or ADHD), I have had to come up with creative ways to keep myself aware that I have something to remember. For instance, when I bring my laptop into someone else’s house so that it is not sitting in my car, I must set my car keys next to it, otherwise I risk leaving without it. I would have normally left the laptop in the car, but I’m tired of taking that risk. I would rather have my laptop left behind than have it stolen from my car. Harvey Mackay, in a column titled Put Your Memory to Work for You, writes the following:

I use what I call the original “Palm Pilot”—when I have urgent things to remember, I write key words on my hands! I also move my watch from my left arm to my right arm, signaling me that I have something important to do. If I’m going to a party or special event, I might request a guest list in advance and study who is going to be there to trigger my memory.

Tampering With the Habit

Since I am as much of a creature of habit as you are, I find myself operating day to day doing the same things over and over again. To be specific, there are habits that I have developed when I get into and out of my car. The order of operations to stopping, putting the car in park, grabbing the keys, the phone, and anything else usually never changes. But when it does…when there’s something that occurs that tampers with the habit, it seems to short circuit key elements. Every time I have had to lift something out of the passenger seat with two hands, I have locked my keys in my car. I have corrected this consciously over time, but a few years ago, this was a real problem for me. If any of the typical habits that I have in my life are interrupted in any way, something unexpected happens, and unexpected things can be extremely annoying because they disrupt the day.

Remembering something for me has been a matter of interest and repetition. Today I was sitting at the Coffee Plantation with Susan Gruenling of SonoranHouse.com and we were attempting to solve an e-mail problem with her iPhone. Through the process, we were given specific settings from the server administrator that we had to repeat over and over again until we got the setup right. After the first 3 times entering the number, I was surprised to see that Susan had committed the numbers to memory. I had too…repetition and association works, but it takes work to make it work.

Tahoe Notes

February 23, 2009 by admin

My mother was an avid journalist…is that the right way to say it? She would journal all of the details of a road trip when I was younger so we would have an accurate record of what happened. I would join in sometimes.

This entry is a blast from my past. On this particular trip we wrote in what was then a $0.39 notebook.

Tahoe Notes

The Way to Get Home (to the condo)

Turn on Fairway
Turn left on Harold
Turn left on Wendy

How to get to Northstar

Turn right on Wendy
Turn right on Harold
Turn right on Fairway
Turn right on North Shore Blvd.
Turn left on North Star Drive.
Get stuck behind many cars.
Turn into North Star

I have always been detail oriented :).

Friday March 12, 1982

Plane leave phx 1:40, stopover in Las Vegas. Arrives Reno 2:55. Nice flight – crowded. $100 / adult, $65 / Jon. Curgie’s car in Parking Lot. Gas $1.19 just before Tahoe turnoff. Arrived Tahoe 4:30, unloaded car and went to Ski Loft to rent skiis. Very Crowded but having 1/2 price sale. Things seem to be cheaper here than Phoenix. Bought food – Raley’s. Dinner at Stanley’s, ribs, fish, liver. Phil says sauteed liver best ever! Ribs good, Jon’s fish excellent. Too much food (doggie bag) $40 or under. Jon played games (Pac Man.)

This is the gist of what my mother would always write on our trips. The pages go on and on, documenting every little detail so there would be a better way next time, I suppose. On one of the pages, I managed to entertain myself by drawing a Pacman board, giving myself the high score and my opponent a pathetic score, and of course, I had all of the fruit on the bottom of the screen :).

I know, boring.

Is There Really Something More…?

February 23, 2009 by admin

We’re obsessed as a nation and as a people with the idea that there’s more to life than what we have and we feel we cannot be satisfied with what we have until we’ve had more; that there’s a dissatisfaction with the concept of destiny, or a path that’s already been written for us, and we fight against it, thinking that we’re missing out on something else. I am as human as you are, and I too feel at times like there is something in life that I am missing out on. However, in my heart of hearts, I know that I am who I am supposed to be, I am doing what I am supposed to be doing, and nothing can change what’s going to happen to me next anymore than I can predict it.

I find great comfort and peace in the idea that my life, from beginning to end, has been written out for me and that I’m along for the ride. Like a roller coaster (which we can choose to ride or not, unlike being born,) we can either kick and scream and live fearfully throughout the entire ride, or we can smile in excitement at every twist and turn, bump and bang, knowing that eventually the ride will settle. The funny thing about a roller coaster is that the track never changes, and if you find that the ride is too terrifying, and you don’t get off, you’ll be going around for another. But regarding life’s events, do I have a choice in the matter? Well, sort of.

The idea that we have a choice in what happens to us doesn’t fit very well into my life. In fact, to say that we have any control over what happens to us, seems incomprehensible to me. I am far more apt to ask the question “why me” after something adverse happens to me that is out of my control. But why would I want to live in that state? Why would I want to hold so tightly to the idea that I’m in control of what happens if it leads to me being angry about what hasn’t happened yet?

The very fact that I imply that some things are out of my control and some things are within my control seems to negate the idea that we have no choice. Let me clarify.

I believe I can choose. I believe that I can choose to act on a calling in my life. I believe that I can choose to respond to something that happens to me. I also believe that when I look at my life as though there’s more available than I am getting out of it, that I’m dissatisfied with what I have, then I am failing to appreciate what I have, and begin to subscribe to the Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda in life.

“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”

-Phillipians 4:12

“Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’ ”

-Hebrews 13:5

I understand that you may not believe what the Bible reads. I do believe it, completely, as off the wall odd as it may seem to some of you, and it is my toolbox to handle any life-task at hand.

If I look at life in the shoulda, coulda, woulda way, I most likely experience overwhelming debt, selfishness, and dissatisfaction. But, when I let go of controlling my destiny, when I let go of the idea that I have control over the uncontrolled, I can use my ability to choose for better things like reacting in a healthy way to what I cannot control, and I believe I become more apt to give, and no matter how much money I have, or make, or how many things I accumulate, if I cannot give to the world something of value greater than money, then I have not lived.

So Is There Really Something More?

Yes, I trust there is, but I can’t tell you where to go to get it because it comes from a place that exists outside of this world, and I’m not attempting to draft you into a new comet-chasing cult. I believe that very thing that we yearn for deep down inside is God. I think we all have a God-shaped hole in our heart that we seek to fill with things that are temporary. Sure, we’re temporary in body, but what about our spirit? What about our Soul? How can one reconcile the concept of nothing after death? There is something so much more in my life that keeps me looking forward instead of looking back, that lifts me up from the ashes and draws me towards Glory. That thing is the peace that transcends all of my own worldly understanding, which I cannot explain, that leads me to do as much of what’s good as my bones can manage before falling again to the inevitable sin that comes from inside of me. There is something more, and I have it now. It’s not something I need to go looking for.

“You broke the bonds, and loosed the chains, carried the cross, of all my shame…

…but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” – U2

In a spiritual sense, I have found everything I am looking for, but my conscious existence, my flesh on this planet still cries out for more. And thus I move forward without the shame of the past.

We Are The Bucket

February 17, 2009 by admin

I often use the metaphor to help me understand intangible truths and to help others understand me. Some people get it, taking in the parallels that I draw, and others miss it completely. Sometimes the metaphors are not well thought out, and other times they are, but every one of them goes through a series of changes and revisions until the truth of the matter at hand is more greatly understood both by the author and the reader.

We Are The Bucket

I liken my life to the characteristics and experiences of a bucket. Perhaps any container would do, but the bucket is what I thought of, so I’ll run with it. Should a bucket ever have the opportunity to speak for itself, I’m sure it would see how much like me it is. Although, I don’t have Home Depot printed on my chest, and I’m not orange, and I’m quite sure I won’t be having a conversation with a bucket any time soon.

Cast in a pre-determined mold, each and every bucket starts off with a clean slate and is considered flawless, yet is not. For on the surface of the bucket are tiny, jagged pits and bumps that are invisible to the naked eye, but nonetheless are there, and as smooth as the surface of the bucket seems, as soft and fresh as the baby’s skin may be to our weathered adult hands and our aging eyes, the flaws remain, and are inherent, and ordained.

Picture a brand new bucket, empty, with a new handle. There’s a vast space inside that bucket designed to hold a lifetime of experiences coupled with the essence of God, pure and holy. At birth, this bucket can be filled from the bottom to the top with pure, clean, refreshing water; water that will be spilled, poured, and that will slowly evaporate over time. How clean that life is when it starts. Yet it doesn’t stay that way.

As our lives progress, we bump into other buckets, sometimes spilling our water into their bucket, leaving a little piece of us behind, inadvertently or sometimes intentionally. Others also spill over into our bucket. The water that we started with becomes entangled with that of others.

Throughout our years, we, the bucket of water, find ourselves and others scooping from time to time little bits of debris into our bucket. Dirt, glass, garbage, cement, you name it, we shovel it in ourselves and others dump it in too. Every time a little bit of the world gets poured into the bucket, there’s a little less room for that clean water. And, when we refill our buckets from time to time, or when someone else pours some of their water into us, the sediment at the bottom is stirred up, clouding the water, making it harder to see the clarity.

It is at these times when it would make sense to filter out some of that debris. It would seem that when the muck that was settled at the very bottom of the bucket is agitated and swirled about, we would be more likely to see it, more likely to capture it and toss it out of the bucket, making more room for more clean water, but sometimes, we make sure our bucket doesn’t get jostled, and we set it aside and wait for the dust and debris to settle again; a perfect picture of our unwillingness to allow cleansing and our delusion that ignoring the junk that has settled into our lives, into our bucket, will simply stay put forever and won’t muddy up the water again.

Sometimes other buckets that are full of gunk and that are stirred up so much that the water looks dark and muddy spill their mess into our bucket, clean water or not. We may identify this right away, or sometimes we might not be paying attention as the crap in someone elses bucket is unloaded into ours.

Other times we don’t fill our buckets at all. We isolate them and let the water slowly evaporate. The more water, the longer we can sustain, and the more debris we have at the bottom, the closer the bottom is to the top, making less room for the water that we need. When this happens, the debris can dry up and if that debris is heavy enough, if that debris is cement, it hardens and is no longer affected by the water. When we have that cement poured into our bucket, and it hardens, and we fill our bucket again, the cement doesn’t leave. It stays there, and we cover it up with muddy water, hiding it from ourselves enough that we may completely forget that it even exists. But, we know it’s there, because cement is heavy, and our bucket becomes heavier and heavier over time, as layer after layer of cement is poured into us. As long as we keep the water moving, pouring in and pouring out, we are able to filter the cement out before it hardens, but once we stop and let that water evaporate, the cement hardens. Some people have a little cement, some people have a lot, and the amount of water that their bucket can hold is determined by how full of cement they are. By this time, it’s safe to say that all of the space above the hardened cement appears to us to be all the bucket will hold. We look at this small space for water as 100% of the space that we have for water, and we forget that the cement has eaten up most of the space, and in fact, the bucket is only half available because it’s clogged with baggage.

Adversity

Until adversity. When we are tilted so quickly by another bucket, or by ourselves, it’s likely that all of whatever water is left spills out and we feel completely exposed. We see the thick layers of concrete, and we find ourselves sideways, with a heavy load, unable to pick ourselves up because of the weight of the cement.

That is when we cry out for help. It seems to take vast adversity in our lives, or what the world would call “rock bottom” to realize that we need help. But if I’ve been knocked over in a room full of other buckets who have been knocked over, who is going to grab that little handle and tilt me upright so I can be filled with more water? Who is going to pour their clean water into me?

Bitterness

That cement is the bitterness that we carry from experiences in the past. I believe that we are only able to be loved as deeply as the pain in our past. In other words, that cement is in the way of our ability to be loved, and until it is chipped away and scooped out, it will continue to block the good water of others and the fresh water from the tap from getting to the bottom of our hearts, or the bottom of our buckets, and we’ll find that when we move around through life with a heavy load of bitter cement, we can easily mow over buckets that don’t have as much cement because of our mass. We’re so heavy, we just don’t stop when we get going, and we can just crash into others with our problems and cause lots of spills. Imagine trying to clean the bottom of the inside of your bucket while it’s half full of cement.

this metaphor is a work in progress. Please follow me on twitter @realscottsdale if you would like to know when this metaphor is updated.

Cash is King: Lower the Rate

February 13, 2009 by admin

(Note: I’ll preface this by letting you know that a credit card is the devil.)

Today, while using a credit card that I usually use, that I’ve had for over 10 years, which has a limit over $20,000, to pay an important bill, I was declined.

What? Declined? How can that be? Here’s how. My credit card company (AT&T Universal Card), in their infinite wisdom, made an executive decision to tighten my credit line to the balance on my account. In a time when Cash for structured settlements
is king, and required to continue moving the parts of the machine that allow me to make an income, the last thing you want to have happen is this, as it completely eliminates your cashflow. When I asked them why, they told me they ran a check on my credit report. Why would they do that? I don’t believe they did it. I think they’re just telling us that and the real story is that they’re scared to death that they’re too exposed. That’s fine and dandy and all, and they have every right to do so, but let’s be reasonable here! No letter, no phone call, no notification at all. Ask forgiveness instead of permission right? Get this…I was paying my AT&T phone bill with my AT&T credit card!

As a 100% commissioned sales person, my income depends on the closing of the next sale. Expenses that have a return on the investment, such as placing sign posts, sending out cards, subscriptions to various marketing services, and oh yeah, my monthly cost to the brokerage, are typically floated on my “business line of credit,” or, the credit card that I choose to use to fund my operations. Whether it be a small monthly fee to DocuSign, or my brokerage fee, the credit card is a critical cashflow tool that makes it much easier to manage my monthly expenses. One payment at the end of the month, easy to track, no problem.

Closing a sale results in me paying off the balance in its entirety at which point I realize my profits and recover my operating cash. Due to the recent (pardon my french) banking bullshit that we the little guy have been forced to feel through the disgusting practices of some extremely greedy people at the top, many of us are no longer able to pay the very bills that we need to pay in order to continue making money. How can a credit card company cut off my purchasing power…the very line of cashflow that I need to generate income? Well, they can and they do. But that’s just one part of the story. The interest rates that credit card companies charge are yet another piece of this idiotic puzzle.

Interest Rates are Criminal

After a long phone call, I was able to get my rate reduced from a criminal 29.99% to 12%. Others have not been so successful. One colleague recently called the credit card company to have her rate reduced and instead, they eliminated 90% of her purchasing power. They dropped her from $20,000 to $2,000, and didn’t even giver her a rate reduction. I was rather shocked to find that I had been increased to a criminal rate. I’m tempted to never pay them back at all, but that would not be the right thing to do.

I’m not sure how I managed to get the rate reduced, other than being good at sweet talking the operator, but I did get it reduced, and thankfully, they also went back 6 months and credited me the difference of 29.99% and 12% because I had overpaid unjustly. Missing a payment by one day will screw you so hard your head will spin, and they usually just apologize at you and say there’s nothing we can do. “You’ll have to contact Experian,” they say. “They’ll be able to show you why we made the decision.” No maam, they will not. They will not be able to show me why your credit card company decided to limit my purchasing power. They will not be able to show me why my rate cannot be reduced to retain my future business. All they can do is show me my credit history. They have no idea how to read your mind anymore than I do. I have no idea what your executives were deciding when they made the call to cut off my cashflow.

$1000.00 at 30%

I’ve written about this before, but there’s no doubt that it needs to be known by all who use a credit card (which I will reiterate takes extreme financial discipline, which most people don’t have.)

A card with a balance of $1000.00 usually requires only a minimum payment of $15.00/month. You can buy that new laptop for only $15.00/month right? Not so fast. Let’s assume you pay $25.00/month instead of the minimum of $15.00. At 29.99% annually, you will be paying somewhere around $4300 for that $1000.00 laptop and it will take you 15 years to pay it off. CRIMINAL! If you fall into this trap once, that’s okay, get yourself out as fast as you can. If you fall into it more than once, you’re an idiot.

The real lesson to learn about finances is that when you owe someone money, you become enslaved to them and the freedom to experience life as you were designed to experience it is virtually eliminated. If you can, at all costs, and all interest rates, avoid credit cards entirely.

Cubed

February 9, 2009 by admin

It’s tight, small, and feels like there are no windows or doors, and the light switch appears to be broken. I flipped it one way and the next, but it offered no resistance and made no sounds. The ceiling above me, the wall to the left of me, and another to the right feel course, as though covered in self-adhering sand paper squares, each spaced apart by a few inches, or centimeters. The floor, moist and slick, seems to prevent any semblance of balance, as though someone had sprayed a fine mist of oil over it’s surface. As I stand, I slip and fall, and I am reminded of why I am in this little room. The thoughts of the darkness and emptiness creep in once again, swirling around my cowering shape in the corner of this confining cube. I am trapped. Unable to see, I have no idea if there is anything else in the room. Hours and hours of searching have led me across every inch of this place and yet even though I’ve discovered a window, it has been covered with a thick rubbery substance, almost as though someone has painted multiple coats of black paint over and over again. It is strong, and I am unable to dig through. I find one small pixel of light shining through the surface, evidence of hope in a universe where hope seems scarce. Grooves on the border of each wall stretch the length of each of the 6 sides only an inch from the corners. I fall asleep.

The room has changed size. It appears to be alive. The walls are closer than they were before. The window is smaller. My upper body has been scraped raw in the night from where I had been leaning. There is no room in this living, breathing room anymore and I want out.

The rest? They’re all locked up in their own little box with their own past experiences and they seem overshadowed by the familiarity that is just on the other side of that little pixel of light. How can something that feels so right one day feel so wrong the next? Waking up day after day in this abrasive cube is just as comforting as it is terrifying.