Being Open To Other Ideas

Do you only read books, online web pages, or newspaper articles that only reinforce your own opinions?  Do you only talk with people who share your opinions and avoid those that challenge your ideas?

A political party is a good example.  If you read an article on a political party that you support, will you stop reading it if the article is negative to your opinion?  If the article is positive to your opinion, will you continue to read it?  On the flip side, if you read about a political party that you don't support and it is negative to that political party, will you continue to read it? If the article is positive, will you stop reading it?

We live in a world where websites like to show us things based on our past search history, which often reinforce our own opinions.

If you have a problem, and you can't decide what to do, (but you kinda know what you want to do), do you keep asking for advice until you hear what you want to hear?  This happens at work all the time where someone will go office to office until the advice they get is what they want to hear.  Eventually they find someone who shares their opinion.

A true story.  An elderly man with a bad knee wanted to have an operation to fix his knee.  His doctor told him that he was too old for the surgery and would most likely die during the surgery.  He went to another doctor who told him the same thing.  Eventually he found a doctor would said he would do the surgery.  As you can guess, he died during the surgery.

We can never grow as individuals if we close our minds to other opinions.  Some people are so proud, their opinion can never change, even if what they believe in lets them down.  (For example sport stars caught using steroids, celebrities having affairs, or politicians who get caught lying).  We tend to approach discussions with the attitude that we are 100% right and as a result we don't listen to the other point of view.  As we go down our path of opinion, we get to a point where we feel there is no point of return.  Don't let your stubbornness blind you.

Everything (like this post) is an opinion.  Nothing is exactly right (except math).

Be Ready To Listen

A famous guru was once asked, "How should I be your disciple?  Should I worship you?  Should I accept every word as truth?"  The guru replied, "Neither one.  Just open your mind to the possibility that what I'm saying could be true" - From the book "The Future Of God: A Practical Approach To Spirituality For Our Times" - Deepak Chopra

You are probably wondering why I am writing a post that has the same title of the blog after many initial posts.  I don't know the answer.

I have found with my children that they are not always willing to listen to advice when I want to give it.  That is one of the reasons I am writing this blog, so they can read it later when they are ready.  They will be given advice throughout their lives, and it will be up to them to decide if it is worth following.  But first, they must listen.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear - Famous Old Quote (Not sure who)

My understanding of the above quote is, until the student is ready to listen, there is no need for the teacher to show up and start teaching.  The teacher is wasting time being there since the message goes straight through the student's ears.  There is a huge difference when the student's attitude is set to listen and learn instead of set to "I have to be here, I don't want to be here".

In today's world, we have many distractions like email, texts, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, news alerts, etc that take us away from where we are in the present moment.  When we jump immediately to the notifications, we basically are telling the person that is talking to us that our electronic world is more important.  It is a strange thing considering that after the person walks away, the notification will still be there.  Jerry Seinfeld, starting about 40 seconds into the following video talks about this.

Sometimes when a child is upset, you will be wasting your time trying to instruct them if they are not ready to listen.  A child (just like an adult) needs time to reflect and calm themselves down before they are bombarded with advice.  When the child is ready to listen, you need to be ready to listen as well.  This post is not just about a parent trying to insert some wisdom into their child, but also the need for the parent to listen as well (and possibly receive some wisdom too).

With your child, you will have to find out when they are most willing to talk to you.  Often when a parent arrives home, they want to grill their children with questions.  This is our way of saying that they must comply with our schedule and answer when we want them to answer.  They may not be in a mood to do that (doing homework, playing, etc) so you have to test different situations to find out what works best.  Picking them up from school or meeting them when they get off the bus seems to be a good time for my children to open up about their day.  They actually compete with each other to tell about their day first.

I once heard the advice that if you have a child that is difficult to put to bed, that is a good time to sit on their bed and ask them about their day.  It gives them a chance to delay bedtime and gives you a good opportunity to sit and listen.

When a child wants to talk to you about something, you need to drop everything and listen (within reason, not when you're bench pressing 200 lbs).  This window of opportunity doesn't always last long.  You need to remember that every child is unique and what works for one child may not work for the other.  Even if the child is talking to you about something like a new video game or an episode of Spongebob that you don't know anything about, listen, this discussion is important to them and will make them feel comfortable to talk to you about other things in the future.

One of my pet peeves is when someone asks another question while the person is answering the first question.  This is another way of saying that you are not listening to their first answer (since you are thinking in your head about another question).  You most likely will miss out on a lot of information if this is your common practise.

We have two ears and one mouth.  We should listen twice as much as we talk.

Our children only live in our homes for about 18 years and then they typically move out to start working or start some form of post secondary school education.  18 years is not very long, don't wait until they have moved out to be ready to listen.

Solving Problems Quickly

Do you ever have a problem to solve and immediately come up with a solution?  As you start to implement the solution, you start to realize that it is not as simple as you originally thought.  Your ego gets in the way and guilts you to continue even though you start to realize that it may not work at all or is just too complicated.

I'll give you a good example that happened to me last night.  I recently got the newer model Apple TV.  I planned to hook up my older model Apple TV in the basement in our "work-out room".  This room has an older TV that does not have a HDMI connection.  It instead has a DVI connection, which in simple terms means only the video gets transmitted to the TV (you need a special cable that goes from HDMI on the output of the Apple TV to DVI on the input of the TV).  I needed to figure out how to transmit the audio as well (which usually gets transmitted through the HDMI cable).  I hope I haven't bored you with these details but these are somewhat important to understand this example.

Here is a listing of my immediate solutions without giving them much thought:

Failed Attempt 1:  I have a small TV that has HDMI connections, so my first solution was to go HDMI from the Apple TV to the HDMI on the small TV.  My plan was to connect the small TV to my larger TV.  From the small TV, I connected an RCA cable from the output (yellow for video, white and red for audio) to the input of the larger TV.  I could not get the video to work on the larger TV.  I tried many things to get it to work but only the audio would work.  What a crazy idea trying to use a TV to run a TV.

Failed Attempt 2:  I have an older Sling box that I was no longer using.  I could plug the HDMI from the Apple TV to the HDMI on the Sling box.  From there, I would use the component output (green, blue, red) to plug into the larger TV.  I went through the setup with the Sling box, which kept crashing on me, but could not get the picture to work.  I think the issue is that Apple TV has some copyright protection that prevents you from going HDMI to another type of video cable.

Failed Attempt 3:   I went from my Apple TV HDMI output using my cable that goes to DVI.  The picture on the TV worked but no sound (which was not a surprise, but I was desperate).  The Apple TV also has an optic audio output.  I looked on the Internet for a converter device that went from HDMI input to DVI & RCA output.  No such device existed that I could find.  You will see later on in the story that I almost had the right idea, but I continued to jump to conclusions.

Failed Attempt 4:  I looked online to see what it would cost to buy a modern TV to replace the old TV.  The cost for a TV around 60" was in the ballpark of $1,000, which seems crazy when I have a TV already.

Failed Attempt 5:  I thought that maybe I could connect a bluetooth speaker to the Apple TV and then the sound could be played through it.  It appears that Apple TV only connects via bluetooth to things like keyboards.

I looked up many other options on the Internet (many more failed attempts) and spent the better part of 3 hours trying to get all these ideas to work.  I even dreamed about it last night.

This morning, while I was not thinking about it, I realized that maybe I could buy a converter that takes an optic input and outputs RCA.  I could keep my DVI connection and use the converter for the audio.  I looked up online and quickly found such a device for about $15.   I ordered it and hopefully it works.

As you can see I spent a great deal of time and energy trying a lot of bandaid type solutions with little to show.  If someone was with me, they would think I was crazy.  If I had been successful with any of the attempts, it would of been mostly by luck.

Don't be so closed minded when you are trying to solve a problem.  Don't let your pride get in the way of being open to other solutions.  Don't think that the first idea that pops in your head is the best one.  I have seen at work this happen many times where things are implemented because someone came up with the solution fast.  Lots of time and money gets spent following the wrong path that eventually gets scrapped.

I almost bought a $1,000 TV instead of just spending $15!

Ownership, Versus Blame & The Victim

"Some people claim that there's a woman to blame, but I know, it's my own damn fault" - Jimmy Buffet

I love the above quote from the song "Margaritaville".  During the first chorus he starts by saying that its nobody's fault, but by the end of the song, he finally admits that it is his fault.

We live in a world where people spend a lot of energy deflecting blame onto other's for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes it can be that they work in an environment where mistakes can affect their performance appraisals, which then affect their promotions and future salaries.  Sometimes it can be just a natural reaction to a negative situation, a sort of defence mechanism.  Nobody likes to be wrong for many reasons, some of which I discussed as fear in a previous blog called Work, The Carrot, & Fear.  I think blaming others didn't just happen once we started working, but something within each of us from childhood.

Children now are raised in an environment where they are praised for whatever reason possible.  Sayings like "good job" or "you're really good" when the child actually fails are heard all too often when "good effort" could be a much better thing to say followed by some instruction/guidance on how to improve.  Kids get trophies when they win and get trophies when they lose.  When a child no longer gets the fake praise, they begin to wonder if any of it was ever sincere, and have a harder time without that type of reinforcement in the future.  Kids sports sometimes don't even keep score.

In a Star Trek Next Generation episode, Lieutenant Worf states "If winning is not important, then, Commander, why keep score?"

Kids need to learn from their successes but equally need to learn from their failures.  Learning from failures (whether it is their own or from observing others) is very important as they mature so that they will know how to handle future situations.  Helicopter parenting prevents children from learning from their mistakes, since the parent circles around the child and immediately swoops in and makes everything ok if the child is having any problems.

Once we get in the mode of blaming others, we start to feel like the victim all the time.  Being the victim takes away the ownership of our actions and as a result, the person never really learns what went wrong and how to prevent it in the future.  Saying things like "that always happens to me", or "I am not good at that" are another way of saying that you are the victim.

When really bad things happen, we always need to ask ourselves, "Is this a thing that will define me in the future?  Will I now be limited because of this past negative experience?"  For example, if someone was bitten by a dog when they were young, they can have the attitude that all dogs are bad, they must stay away from dogs, and they always seem to have bad luck with dogs.  This may limit them in the future, such as anytime they are around a dog, or their children want a dog and they tell them that all dogs are bad.  The child may actually believe the parent and now share the same belief.

We have this one life during our short time on Earth, and it is up to us to try to live it as happy as possible.  When things go wrong, take ownership of your actions (or inaction's), always look at what you could do to prevent it, how in the future you will handle the same situation, and don't blame others, or you will always be the victim.

Mindfulness: Staring So Long You Could Draw It

Mindfulness is the latest craze today.  It is simply, not thinking about the past, not thinking about the future, but living in the now.  Easier said than done.  I am not a mindfulness teacher, just a student.

Someone once told me that office buildings should have showers in every bathroom so that employees could go there to think about their problems and hopefully solve them.  Showering is such an automated process to humans, that it seems like a good time to solve all problems.

However, how many times have you driven to work and when you get there, you cannot remember any part of the drive?  Somehow you got there, but most likely you were thinking about some problem you needed to solve or some past issue that was bothering you.  Unless something like a deer runs out in front of you, you may not remember any of the drive.  I think our brains are wired that way to filter out some of the noise, but unfortunately, distraction of what you're really doing is happening.

A friend of mine who died way too young from cancer, once said in a blog to take a look outside tomorrow and try to see something that you have never seen before.  I think when our life is nearly over, people often start to see the important things and no longer filter them out.  Practising mindfulness helps us see that now.

The next time you are somewhere, most likely waiting for your child to finish a sport or some other hobby, instead of pulling out your phone to surf the internet, try the following practice:

Start first with something that isn't moving.  Something simple like a tree.  Look at it pretending that in a minute, someone is going to turn you around, hand you a piece of paper, and ask you to draw what you were staring at.  You will start to notice things like how the bark looks, where branches come out of the tree, the details on the leaves, possibly some imperfections on the tree from damage, and many other things.

You will realize that in the past, you were often looking at things like a person who needed glasses.  Once they get the glasses, they realize that now they can see the details like blades of grass.  (Instead of a green blur).  Slowly over time their eyes weakened and they did not realize that they were no longer seeing the things they use to see.

After doing that exercise, try looking at everything ahead of you.  You can even test yourself by really seeing if you can draw it.

Another exercise is to stare at something that you have looked at many times before (something simple like a wall) and see if you can see some type of detail that you never noticed before.

By doing the above exercises, it forces you to concentrate on what you're doing and therefore keeps you in the present moment.

If you have something really bothering you, try going to a mall and sit down on one of the benches, leave your phone in your pocket on airplane mode, and just concentrate on staring at the people as they go by.  Sometime later that day, your solution will pop in your mind.

I find that if I practice mindfulness, the answers to my problems will come to me later, usually when I'm doing something else besides thinking of my problems.  By doing other things, your solutions will come to you when you least expect them.

This topic is so large that I will contribute more to this subject in future blogs.

Work, The Carrot, & Fear

What motivates you to do a good job at your work?  Is it personal satisfaction or is it fear?

Most of us dream of having a career that we would love to do day in and day out.  Waking up in the morning wishing you were already there working away.  However,  most of us instead only have a job that allows us to pay the bills and hopefully retire one day.  When we are motivated by the latter, it is fear that ultimately drives us daily.

Fear of losing our job, fear of being embarrassed, fear of not getting a raise, fear of not getting a promotion, fear of being reprimanded, fear of making mistakes, fear of not meeting a deadline, fear of being demoted, fear of feeling like a failure, and on and on is the fear.

There is an analogy of putting a carrot on the end of a stick while sitting on the back of a horse or donkey, trying to get the animal to move forward to get the carrot.  After a day of chasing the carrot, the animal is given the carrot, but the next day the same routine is repeated.  Maybe this will go on for days, but eventually the animal may grow tired of the chase (realizing that the carrot keeps moving forward as the animal walks forward) and instead decides that it is better to graze in the open field where there is plenty to eat.  The animal does not have the fear that humans have, not knowing what the future consequences may be if they no longer perform whatever task the person is trying to accomplish with them.  (I remember trying this with my dog when I was young, it was not motivated at all).

Our human minds are a blessing but also a burden when we create scenarios that have not happened and may never happen.  Humans can imagine and overthink many potentially fictitious outcomes if they don't chase the carrot.  Not staying late to finish tasks or in general putting in more hours to continually meet deadlines;  fear is what motivates the worker.  The manager sees that they are motivated, and often puts more on their plate.  However, at any given time, when the worker decides that they do not wish to chase the carrot, they know there could be consequences for that decision.  And instead of going on a vacation with their family, they stay behind.  (I must admit, that I have done that before, twice).

When I first started my career, I didn't mind putting in the extra hours to try to learn, get ahead, and get noticed.  The carrot was always dangling there in front of me.  But as I got older and started a family, I started to realize that there is a need for work / life balance.

Some people however are motivated through fear and put their career before their family.  A good movie that tells the consequences of that mentality is "About Schmidt" starring Jack Nicolson.  After he retires he realizes that the company is moving on just fine without him, he barely knows his wife, and never really had much of a relationship with his daughter.  When he tries to give her marriage advice, she tells him he has no right to do that since he was not there when she was growing up.

There will always be that carrot, but you need to decide if you will let fear motivate you.  Don't live your life where you are counting down the days to retirement and reacting to fear.  Ultimately, you need to do what makes you happy.  In a future blog, I will review a book on that very topic.

I Think Guardian Angels Are Real

During my post secondary education, I decided that it would be better to ride my bike to school instead of driving my car and paying for parking.  I never really rode a bike that much on the road growing up and therefore did not have as much experience that I should have had.  Also, at the time, bike helmets were not very common so there was not much in place to protect me if I had an accident.

I can remember the day.  I had a lot on my mind as I was leaving school to return to my apartment.  I obviously was not thinking of what I was doing, instead I was worrying about my problems, future problems and how I was going to resolve them.

The campus has a ring road around it.  I usually would cut across a street to get to the path that I used.  Instead of going to the lights and crossing properly I choose to cut across the road.  The road had two lanes going one way and two going the other.  There were several cars stopped in the closest lane as they were waiting for the traffic lights to change.  I guess I was thinking that all four lanes were stopped (even though I was not really thinking about what I was doing).  I decided to cut between two stopped cars and started to cross.  As I crossed, I looked to my left and saw a truck coming (faster than the spreed limit for sure).  This second lane actually did not have all the traffic stopped waiting for the light to change.

This is the part of the story, when I tell it, that I start to get a chill all over my body and get goosebumps everywhere.  I remember someone grabbing me by my hips and pulling me off the bike.  As this happened I came off my bike and landed in a standing position.  My bike however, went right under the front right wheel of the pickup truck and was crushed flat.  It was a bike right-off.

Standing there shaking, I looked around but there was no one standing by me who grabbed me.  I remember a driver who was stopped in a car nearby say that they saw everything and that the truck driver was going too fast and it was his fault.  I knew that it was my fault, I should not of crossed the road where I did, and I did not have my mind on what I was doing.

I swear to this day that a guardian angel must of pulled me off my bike.  Some could argue that it was my own reflexes that helped me, but I can still remember the feeling of someone grabbing me at the hips pulling me off.

The truck driver stopped, who happened to be a 4th year student in the same program that I was in.  He gave me a ride home, most likely very happy that he didn't kill anyone that day.

In a future blog, I will talk more about daydreaming and not staying in the present.

Let me know if you have had any similar experiences with guardian angels.

I Choose None

When my son was much younger, around 3, we were in a store shopping.  We came upon a display that had dvd's for sale (please tell me you know what a dvd is, if not, google it).

I told him that he could choose one.  I took him out of the shopping cart and set him on the floor so that he could choose.  He immediately picked up two dvd's and said that he wanted both of them.

I reminded him that he could only choose one.  He said "No, I want both of them".

I said "You can only choose one".

He said "No, I want both of them".

I said, "You can choose one, or you can choose none".

He then surprised us and said "I choose none".

I picked him up and we left the store.  Never as we left did he say, "Ok, I will just choose one"! or "Wait stop, what are you doing, of course I will just choose one"!  He just sat there looking slightly upset and never mentioned the incident again that day.

What the hell was that?  Why wouldn't he at the last minute realize that we were serious and decide that he better just choose one instead of getting nothing?

Perhaps the problem was that in the past we would give in to him.  Did we do that because we wanted to be like a friend?  Did we want to buy his happiness?

I think it was a combination of the above and perhaps some stubbornness or pride on his side.   (And some stubbornness and pride on my side).  Either way, I think that if you give a child everything they want, they will not appreciate things in the future and you are just setting them up for future depression issues.

Also, when they get older, they may not be in the same financial position as you the parent, and if they cannot get everything they want, this "get everything" attitude will bring them down.

It also teaches us as parents that you should not give in to them so that they get everything they want.  A child needs to understand boundaries and know that you are serious about the consequences.  If you tell them to stop a certain behaviour before you count to 3 with the consequences of not getting something, and you count to 3 (or dramatically stop just after 2), they will learn that you are a pushover.

We want to give them everything, but there is more to life than material objects.  Most people who win the lottery big time, usually do not in the long run claim a higher level of happiness.

Someone once said "The person who dies with the most toys, is still dead".

Calculate The Area Of A Circle Simple Explanation

Ever wonder where the formula for calculating the area of a circle came from?    I learned this in public school and thought it was a great way to explain the formula in simple terms.

Lets take an example of a circle with a diameter d.

By definition, the radius is half the length of the diameter of a circle.  The diameter is a straight line that goes through the centre of a circle and each end goes to the circumference of the circle.  The radius is a straight line that goes from the centre of a circle to anywhere on the circumference of the circle.  Written as an equation:

Diameter (d) = 2 x radius (r)

Some guy figured out that if you take the diameter of a circle and wrap it around the circumference, it will go around it 3.14159265359 times (the decimal numbers seem to go on forever, but using 3.14 usually is accurate enough, or you can use the pi button on your calculator).  For example, take a string and cut it the length of the circle's diameter.  Draw the circle to scale on a piece of paper and see how many times the string will wrap around the circumference.  You should find that it goes just over 3.14 times.    See crude sketch below.

Written as an equation:

Circumference (c) = pi (3.14) x diameter (d)

or

Circumference (c) = pi (3.14) x radius (r) x 2

If you cut the circle up like a pie (no I don't think thats where pi comes from) into 16 pieces, it will look like the sketch below:

Now if you take those 16 slices and stack them up, it will look like the sketch below:

The length shown in the vertical is pi x r.  This is because the length is half of the total circumference of a circle (half the circumference is on the left side and half is on the right side) which is 1/2 x pi x d which is the same as 1/2 x pi x 2r (which equals pi x r). 

The length shown in the horizontal is simply the radius of the circle r.

Now that we have converted this circle into a crude rectangle, and imagine that as we make more slices out of the circle and continue until we have infinity (really big number) slices, the circular arcs will now become straight and we will really have a rectangle.

Therefore the formula of a circle is derived from the length x width formula of a rectangle, in this case it is:

Area = length (pi x r) x width (r) = pi x r x r = 

A

=

π

r

2

Note the symbol  π  stands for pi.