The Savage Philosopher

One the best pieces of advice my father gave me when I was a young man was the value of taking action. At the time, I didn’t really understand where he was coming from. I didn’t understand the struggle that he had in his life. And I did not understand how desperate he was trying to provide me with some of his lessons learned. But now I am at the age in which he provided me that advice and I understand. Through my own struggles of deflated dreams and hollow words, I understand that words are cheap and the only thing that has value in this world are actions. In fact I believe that actions create the value and is the cornerstone of our success. To experiment with this concept I am going to execute a massive action plan for the next two weeks attempting to accomplish more than I ever thought possible. This experiment starts with accountability of this blog and will end with the completion of five feats. (things I have been putting off because I fear their failure) Feat 1: Education.

Rule one, don’t suck! Sounds easy, but actions speak louder than words. There are just times when we are not feeling it.Times when we want to lay in bed rather then come up with the reasons to care. But then again, this is the struggle that us humans are blessed with. For the last couple weeks I have personally been struggling with finding my path and with finding reasons to be awesome. Being mediocre is so easy. It barely takes any effort at all. I have been trying to dig deeper into myself and I realized that I need more reasons to put in the effort. I need hope, I need the dreams, and I need to be inspired. When I don’t have these things my thoughts range from apathy to chewing on bullets. Deep down I know that I am not alone with these thoughts. I know that others are suffering in silence seeking some sort of glimmer of light in the darkness. So what to do about it? I have chosen to enact my divine right of choice. I am going to choose a higher purpose to believe in and ex

I am not sure if the Reaper came knocking or just did a drive by, I decided not to take the chance and ended my Fast. I started it officially on Monday evening at 1900 and ended on Friday at 1600; a total of 93 hours without food. My only consumption was lots of water, black coffee, and a 20 oz Gatorade split over two days diluted in the water. I went from 230.6 pounds to 222.4 pounds in that time frame and slept about 40% less than normal. I also worked out every day. Other than what was reported, on Thursday I jogged with a 12 pound weighted vest for 25 minutes in 100 degree weather followed by 10 minute rest and another set of 35 minute speed walking. Then on Friday, I took an easy and inclined walked for 20 minutes at a moderate pace without the vest followed by 20 minute sauna time. Bottom Line: I learned that I can control my hunger and push myself physically and mentally much further than I ever thought. I learned that by having big goals and not small ones are the key to a

Am I a Human or an Animal? This question is one of the central themes of this blog. We know biologically that we are part of the Homo Sapien species in the Animalia kingdom. This classification only helps us with taxonomy, but not it’s meaning. I believe that the only way to truly define what it means to be a Human is through experience and self awareness. This brings me to my current test to see if I am more Human or more Animal. To help me figure that out, I have started a seven day fast. That is right. Seven days of only water and black coffee. I’ve done all the research and will break the fast if I think the reaper is coming for me. The Plan. I expect that I will start to get hungry around lunch time. I have been on the One Meal A Day program now for two months and my body knows when it is feeding time. Specifically, the Ghrelin hormone (the reason you feel hungry at just before meal time) will spike between 1030 and 1130. I will need to just wait for the hormone to f

What does it take to make the impossible look possible? Elon Musk at SpaceX have given us a glimpse of that yesterday (25 Jun 2017). SpaceX flawlessly launched the Falcon 9 rocket with a multiple satellite deployment and returned the booster to the floating dock in the pacific. It is hard to put into words how impossible this was just a few years ago. This may be a turning point in human history. The place in time where we look back and say, “This is when we started to make a difference in space operations.” The only thing that has been prohibiting us from doing this sooner was cost. The cost was too high to go through the failures that are required to achieve breakthrough technology. SpaceX have effectively cut the current cost in half and the next phase of tech will cut it down to almost ⅕ the average. This will allow for more launches and more opportunity to improve on the technology at a faster rate than anyone else. Here is an excerpt from SpaceX on the launch ye

A journey of self-discovery has ended. I have defeated the main boss, received the treasure, and now back in the ‘real’ world. I have been changed on a fundamental level and I can no longer do the things I did before as this hero’s tale has come full circle and I bring my boon back home. The Boon. The treasure I gain by defeating the main boss of ‘undisciplined action’ and ‘small vision’ is a new sense of purpose and an upgrade in self-confidence. I learned that if I want to have a huge impact in the world I cannot do it alone. More than just building a team around myself to propel my career and success, I need to build other people’s teams to propel THEIR career and success. Only by developing other leaders into leaders can I even hope to achieve any sense of world-wide impact. This new purpose came with it a serious increase in my own self-confidence. Confidence is the gravity that pulls the universe inline with your goals. I originally thought that this idea was bulls

My journey so far has been one of self discovery. Over the last couple of days, I realized that I will need something more than self discovery to succeed evolving into something greater. I need to completely change everything I do and the way I do it. Every moment of every day needs to be aligned with the desired life that I want to live. To include the actions I take and the habits I form to support my long term goals. The truth is that life is only what we make it; to quote the Great movie series ”there is no fate but the one we make.” I also have a confession to make. I have been holding back on all the things that I am doing to prepare myself for my next step. In this post I'm going to rectify that error. Bottom line: I have chosen to embrace suffering and pain so that I can know myself on a deeper level. This is done through newly formed rituals and habits: I only take ice cold showers. I don’t mean that at the end of a hot shower I rinse off in cold water. I mean

I have two daughters and I am always looking for female role models to inspire them to be strong and independent. As a long time comic book fan, there are few heroines compared to the number of heros available to model. The choices range from super sexy Black Widow to muscle bond She-Hulk. Both are awesome, but neither represent the values I would like my daughters to center on. Here comes Wonder Woman to save the day. The on-screen adaptation in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was as awesome as it was inspiring. She was portrayed as elegant in long evening gowns and then as fierce in her armor. I was very happy to see this dichotomy accepted by both my daughters. That a woman can be strong and feminine. And in Wonder Woman’s case, her feminism is her strength. I believe that having role models is very important in forming who we think we are. As part of the Human species, we tend to learn best by watching others. How to act and react to life’s situations are programed in

Gratitude is a thing. Determines how we see the world to include how wealthy we become. I have recently started a gratitude journal. At first I wasn't sure if it was going to change how i saw the world or not. After about two months of consistent journalling every day, I am convinced of the benefits. My general state of happiness is much greater than it ever has been. Just to make sure that the journal was having the expected effects, I stopped for about 4 days. By the end of the fourth day my attitude had plummeted and my overall state of mind  turned very very negative. So find the time every morning to be grateful for the big and the little things. The more I do it, the more I think it is the foundation to success. It might even be the key to unlocking our full potential as a human being. We will see.

I took a couple of days off from this series to build up some successes (or failures) that were worthy of talking about. Our last discussion was very bland as I started to engage into a more optimal battlerythm. We left off with some simple goals of increasing the number of blogs and getting the dishes done. Well, with such low goals, I can say with complete confidence that over the last couple of days I had complete success….yea me. I did though begin to stretch into a couple of different areas and techniques that I think are pretty cool. I started to do some of my blog posts from my phone. I have the ‘blogger’ app on my phone and when I combine it with the voice-to-text technology, I am able to produce a 300-400 word blog without a keyboard. This freedom from the computer will allow me to blog more when I am not home and only have access to my phone and wifi. Another thing I started was drinking MCT Oil (C:6,C:8) with my coffee in the morning. So far I am very excited about

Pick something that you think is just out of reach. An accomplishment you have never done before and you think will take everything you have to finish. Some of the things that are out of my reach deal with the mechanical, physical, and mental aspects of my world. I have never changed my oil in my car before. This is something that I thought was far beyond my mechanical skill. So tomorrow, I will change the oil in my car all by myself. This will be a significant milestone in my mechanical career. I just never considered myself a car guy. Doing mechanical things simply is not in my current identity. This task was stretched who I think I am. I also just received the books for my school classes, business management and sociology. My goal is to finish both classes before June 5th 2017. Finishing these classes within the first week of the semester will be a significant achievement for me. I normally waite to the very last second that finished the classes. Sucking a at class work has been

You will expand to the size of your goals and dreams. Limited only by where you think you should be and your comfort zone. Dan Lok talks about how self image is a key to unlock out potential and achieve our goals. Who we believe we are, we become. This means who you are creates the life you live. We can approach this from two directions. We can change how we think and we can change what we do. At some point our thoughts and actions justify our identity, and we become the person who is big enough to fill our big goals and dreams. As Dan Lok said, "Who do I need to be..."

That’s right, I said it. Don’t be a pusillanimous! You need to take life by the axle and twist it for your advantage. If it was easy, anyone would do it. But it is not. You simply have to make a choice on what kind of person you want to be; pusillanimous or heroic. When a situation presents us with an opportunity we have about five seconds to take action. Five seconds until you will choose inaction over action. I learned this concept from Mel Robbins ( www.melrobbins.com ), and she is spot on. You know that I don’t just take anyone’s word for anything. I want to see it in action for myself, so I experiment with the different ideas I’m presented with. The five second rule is a thing. Just ask Mel. What this means is that our natural state is to be a pusillanimous. Or, at least we have a very small window to be heroic. Perhaps this is why we admire heroes. We think that they are awesome because we could never do such things. And as long as someone else does it, we won’t have to.

How to have a kickass day.  I want to take a few moments this evening and talk about how to have a kickass day by creating a morning ritual. The purpose is to prime your day the same way everyday, so that you can have consistent results.  Start the morning right. Here are three simple steps that I use every morning to get ready for the day. Do not be underwhelmed by there simplicity. I recommend you practice them with an experimental mindset and see the results for yourself before you judge them.  1. Make your bed. I get up really early and my wife is still sleeping. This does not stop me from taking my blanket, folding it half long ways, and laying it down on my side of the bed. After I take a moment to smooth it out, I top it off with my pillow. This is the first thing I do right after my feet hit the floor.  This first step is the trigger for the next thing, writing in my gratitude journal. It also puts me into a productive mood. I can say at the end of the day th

Ok, here it is. Day 1 of 17. A small sabbatical to get myself re-centered and upgraded. A time to rebuild who I am, so when I go back to the real world of work and the daily grind, I will be stronger and more capable to take on the world. Or so is the goal. The Plan. I am going to document my next 17 days here as part of a blog series called “Resetting Life”. It will be a way for me to look back on this time in the future and see what parts of this reset took hold in the long term. And of course, this is the best way I know how to share my experiences with you. Here is the list of the bigger accomplishments I want to have by the end of this reset. Some of these may be a little audacious, but that is the point. Consistently execute the One Meal a Day (OMAD) meal plan with a focus on fruit, vegetables , nuts, and seeds with a little bit of chicken or fish chopped in. Workout for an hour every day. Blog at least once a day and increase my subscription to 200

Before we get started, we should first define fear. According to our good friend Webster, fear is “an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger”. If we were to dissect this definition a little, we realize that there are two parts. The first is the “anticipation or awareness of danger”, and the second is the reaction to that perception with a “strong emotion”. This is important because I believe that the reaction is dependent upon the perception. This also gives us a possible lever of control. If we control our perception, than we can control our fear. Basically, we are only afraid of dangers that we know about. If this is true, then we could purposefully redefine what we consider as dangerous. In today’s world we are not normally chased by lions and tigers, but our fears of failure and loss trigger the same emotion. So, if we want to control our lives and make choices (the key to being Human) then we need a way to control our mind to minimiz

Who are the people in your life? Are they the ones that motivate, inspire, and pull you up to your greatness? Are they the ones that draw on your energy, make life harder, and pull you down to your baseness? And, who are you to them? The Human species are social animals and our ability to work as a pack through collaboration is what has allowed us to leap to the top of the food chain. It isn’t our thumbs, squirrels have thumbs. Nor is it our ability to think, lots of animals can think to varying degrees. What has protected our weak flesh, brittle bones, and lack of natural offensive capability (even my cats have claws), is our ability to work together for a common cause. Now that some of us no longer have to struggle to just live everyday, how has our pack/tribe evolved? I’m going to refer to your closest friends as your pack. It is a much more accurate term than tribe due to scale. We would of had the type of pack in the days of survival who are good hunters and would share their sk