Change.

There are no magic words to say, no clichéd little statements or cloying affirmations that will suddenly allow you to reach the potential you do or don’t realize you have. No amount of “likes” on a social website for bumper sticker slogans has the ability to abruptly change the fundamental essence of who you are, regardless the prettiness of the font or the serenity of the background.

Reading about change in a book, sell-help or otherwise, will not cause you to start consistently doing things differently. Change is not something you buy online or in a store. Change cannot be borrowed or lent out, it cannot be shared and it cannot be given away. Change is so simple that it may make you giggle and so horribly difficult that it will make you weep and collapse from exhaustion. Change happens in a split second and takes decades to occur. Change is impossible…and possibly the most natural thing to do.

Change is all of these things, but at its core, change is simply the sincere agreement you make with yourself that there *was* a before and there *is* an after…

…and you will not stop until it is true.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

I’ve been thinking about beauty lately. Well, the effect that the use of beauty has on society. I say “the use of beauty” because the media uses it almost exclusively to sell us things. The overriding messages are that—if we are women—personally we don’t have enough beauty (so we NEED makeup or clothes or a haircut or a gym membership) or—if we are men—then we don’t have the right material stuff that attracts other beautiful people to us (so we NEED that new car, house, gold watch or hair plugs). In both cases there are millions of manufacturers and corporations who are more than willing to sell us the things that will solve our little, um, ugliness problem.

Some really interesting questions arise from this thinking;

1. What has the use of beauty done to women in society and what is it continuing to do to them?

2. Does it even makes sense anymore for beauty to be used as any kind of determining factor for making choices these days.

3. Can we actually change who we are, as a society, if beauty shouldn’t be used as a determining factor.

4. If we are able to change, what will the effect be for women?

5. More importantly, if we no longer use beauty as a factor for the basis of purchasing choices, what replaces it?

First, some history…the idea of beauty came into being because nature needed a way, within a species, to tag the bearer of “good” genes (i.e. having genetic variants that promoted a species) so that the opposite sex of the species could pick those tagged individuals out of a crowd or verify that an individual has them. Because animals, including our ancestors, were tremendously wary of getting close to others (to stay as safe as possible), a visual mechanism that could be seen at a safe distance became the operant way that a holder of good genes was identified. None of this was done with any kind of thought process—this picking and choosing of high potential mates was completely instinctual—because our ancestral brains were much too immature and inadequate at the time. Over hundreds of thousands of years, this visual mechanism became inherent in who we are—as it still is in the many millions of current animal species around us—and how we chose with whom we procreated with.

While beauty can be defined as the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, color, sound, etc.), we also know that beauty is subjective which means that it requires comparison in order for it to be perceived. Simply, if everything is beautiful then nothing is beautiful. We absolutely need something “not beautiful” to contrast with beauty for it to be subjectively perceived that way. Like needing darkness to perceive light, we need ugliness in order to know beauty.

Back to the subject though, answering the first question turns out not to be that difficult. Today, with the filling out of brain capacity, the evolution of our conscious processes—language, both verbal and non-verbal—and our ability to conceptualize ideas, we are no longer slaves to our instinctual urges. Instead, we have built large and complicated social structures in order to better control and direct macro evolutionary forces (think religions and socio-political orders) for the “betterment” of society. While this has been adequate for promoting a semblance of social good over the years it has always been lopsided in its applicability and enforcement such that women and girls are significantly overrepresented as the gender to be controlled (versus the gender in control). Based on the fact that women produce offspring (they are the manufacturers of our species) from a minimal investment from men, the religious view of women as chattel and possessions to be traded, sold, bartered, etc. became the predominant view on the planet.

Fast forward to today where we all know (or should know) that women and men, aside from some physiological differences, are essentially equal if given the same opportunities as well as allowed to mature in similar environments. The idea that women are less than men can only ever be justified within the context of describing musculoskeletal systems and even then those boundaries are shrinking. What beauty also does, as it has for millennia based on the above stated social orders, is act as the de facto standard for the value women contribute to society…above and beyond procreation. However wrong and misogynistic this is in a modern context, it has been the reality for centuries and is what our current media-driven society is still predominantly based on. By focusing on this idea of value (in a purely subjective visual mechanism like beauty), women are devalued in all other aspects and thus we have the situation we have today.

Basically, women got fucked in the whole evolution thing.

That’s a boatload to digest so I’m breaking this up into two parts. The next will focus on the rest of the questions.

Was thinking about this over the weekend…what does a corporation do when products they sell habitually kill people BUT the products make them billions $$ so they don’t actually want to stop selling the product OR revise the makeup of the product to make it safer? As I see it, very few have the fiduciary balls to actually own up to the issue (the money to fix the problem is subtracted directly from profits) so they simply set the PR hounds on the trail who then set out, through massive ad blitz’s and sophisticated ad campaigns to “redefine” the products.

This redefinition often leads to increased sales, absurdly enough, based on heightened brand awareness and the intensified focus by the corporation on the new message. Same product, same deaths and injuries, different media campaign apparently equals increased sales.

The thing that got me thinking along these lines was this phrase, which has gone into high volume rotation and has been repeated a million times since last week’s beheading in London;

“The religion of peace.”

You can’t let them just die
just fade from made at home
memory like thoughts about
lunch, like an idea once had
…you can’t let them just die
and never have been because
they have and were…are
…most important is “are”
because they stepped up
they stood up, they stepped
forward when stepping was
death when saying yes was
a cruel and inhuman
punishment but gladly taken
forsaken, maybe mistaken
they stepped right the fuck up
and knowingly put their beating
pumping heart between you
and in the way of a bullet a
fragment a grenade a bomb a
torpedo a missile a mine, they
stepped right the fuck up and
maybe complained maybe
bitched maybe moaned maybe
cried a little at night when
darkness hides tears the best
they did what they did and
didn’t ask you a hundred or 5
years later for thanks for sad
appreciation of what was lost
they went, they agreed, they
saw vicious reality for itself and
they stepped right the fuck up
so you can’t just let them die
you must remember them, you
must think of them and know
that their beating pumping
hearts stood in the way of
the life you know now and
what could have been.

When someone is trying to “sell” you an idea (or convince you of something), and you’re trying to determine if it’s a good idea or not, think of it this way, are they trying to sell you bomb or target? What I mean by that is if their argument is all about presentation, the words used, or the forcefulness of their voice, then they’re selling you a bomb. On the other hand, if the argument is about what happens if you make that decision and the way things will be when all is said and done, well, then they’re selling you a target. Now, selling a well-made bomb doesn’t mean that the target is inadequate, and vice versa, selling a really great target doesn’t diminish the adequacy of the bomb sent to annihilate it but there are some significant differences…for example…

People usually sell bombs because they’re not at all clear about what the target is. They may have a really good idea or theory about the target but they lack real evidence or facts to back up what eventually happens…and they make really, really great speeches.

People who sell targets, conversely, usually do so because they have no idea what it takes to make a bomb. They know what the overall goal is (the target) and have facts to prove it but have no clue what it takes to get there…and they make really, really good brochures.

Which is better?

In both cases, the people selling you the idea only have half the story and half a story is a little worse than useless because you end up buying the idea without any real assurance about what you’re getting. Sometimes it works out but most times it doesn’t…simply because uncertainty breeds uncertainty and nothing kills an idea better than uncertainty.

The next time you’re in the situation where you’re deciding if someone is selling you either a bomb or a target, stop them and ask them if they can try instead to sell you a negotiated peace? In this context, a negotiated peace is where they stop trying to sell you anything and instead collaborate with you to understand the idea of what the target is as well as the way of jointly creating the bomb (a way to get there).

This is the only way to guarantee the smallest amount of uncertainty and therefore the greatest odds of success so…

…really…you should just give peace a chance.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

Think about this, as we proceed through life we are always realigning our expectations upward. A better job leads to better clothes or a better car or a better house but it seems to me that the act of living at one level (familiarity breeds contempt?) actually primes us to think about living at the next level…to essentially wish to live at that level. That’s what the media will have us believe, that now—right now—and whatever we’re doing is not good enough for us. That there is a better place/thing/activity and we should never be happy with what we have. Why else would we want “bigger, better, faster” products to replace the products we already own?

Why else would any thinking person on this entire planet ever watch the Kardashians?

So, because we are forever realigning our expectations based on some external force (society, peer pressure, the media, etc.), we know we’re capable of changing our fundamental perception of the world. We know that we can ignore years of experience and re-mold our thinking to be something almost entirely different. For example, getting a higher paying new job changes how we perceive the things we own, the clothes we wear…the cars we drive.

Knowing that, why then do we typically change our perception so that we feel so much worse than we did before?

To keep following the above example, based on that new job we are suddenly disgusted by the cheapness and lack of style of our clothes, by the area we live in, by the shitty car we drive when a just week prior to the new job we were OK with the suit we wore to work, we were OK with the car…the house we live in. None of those things changed one iota when we got that job. Not an atom, not a wavelength of energy changed.

We changed.

And it was so easy to change that we didn’t even notice ourselves doing it. We didn’t have to hire a tutor or coach, read a book or watch a lecture or spend hours practicing…we just changed. Happiness in our lives all at once became measured by something else and we were fine with that fundamental change…if we even noticed…and fine with suddenly being unhappy. It just seems so natural that as we grow and go forward in life, we tend to get unhappier the more successful we become.

The question I have is if we are able to change so easily—almost without thought—why can’t we just decide to be satisfied and happy with less? At any time, why can’t we look at the amazing life we have, the fantastic friends and family that surrounds us…and just make those things our expectations.

Instant happiness.

No realignment necessary.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

A star, nearly the size of our entire solar system exploded recently. It was close to the center of the Milky Way, our galaxy, and the amount of energy released in that instant—when the structure of the star could not support its own enormous mass—is almost inexpressible. Imagine the destructive power seen at Hiroshima or Nagasaki and multiply that by a billion, billion times. Then multiply it by a trillion more…and again. It is estimated that perhaps a million planets were instantly vaporized when that star went supernova. Planets like ours, maybe inhabited with billions and trillions of living things. Poof.

Gone.

What? You didn’t notice? An event, so destructive and so unimaginatively huge and powerful happens relatively close by and no one notices it’s passing? An event that destroyed the very reality of all the living creatures within a million light-years flashes into brilliance and then is silently gone and apparently it’s not enough to grab your or anyone else’s attention. Simply…an event catastrophically immense and vitally important to every being around it and no one cared to even look.

Think about that the next time you feel ignored by a friend, by your work or by society itself.

As much as we believe within our minds that what we think and feel is immense and vitally important to every being around us, we are really nothing more than a few insignificant atoms and shreds of vitality lost immediately amongst trillions and trillions. Our tiny bits of mass and energy combined with the 7 billion other tiny bits of mass and energy on this planet are close to being nothing compared to the universe around us.

Almost zero.

Yet, within our imaginations we are all of us individually greater than the size and content of the universe…because the universe (and all that it is) can fit inside a single thought in our minds…

…and that cannot be ignored.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

What do you know about yourself? I know it’s a tender subject and you may deflect that question saying ‘what does any of us know about ourselves?’ but you actually know a hell of a lot about yourself, admitted or not. A lot of it painful, as it turns out, so the deflection is normal but, that said, you certainly know your preferences, your loves and hates, likes and dislikes, but much more importantly, you intimately know how you got those preferences.

You know the magnificent triumphs and the dismal failures along the way, the screaming private demons as well as the joyously singing public angels. You know depth and breadth and are able to see all of your inner workings laid out in tableau…the connections, the linkages and causal relationships…and innately understand why you are you. And why you do the things you do.

OK, maybe not now but someday you will. 😉

Now I know I’ve said before that once you compare yourself to another, you’ve become their psychic slave, forever linked to their choices, they’re life plans. Another thing I want to point out is that when you do that comparison, you are comparing the massive library of inner data you have about yourself to the, so to speak, mere book cover that is the other person. Simply put, you can never, ever know another person as well as you know yourself. Ever. So you are comparing *all of you* to, what? .05% of them? 1%? 5%?

The reality is that you only know their joyously singing public angels, the superficial surface of their public view as they seem to excel and succeed in everything they do. What you can’t know—because these are the things we tell no one—is the seething self-loathing that may be a millimeter beneath the surface, a raging self-doubt that may only be whispered inside their heads. The dismal failures, strenuously hidden from the public, that have formed their preferences.

You are comparing the immense and far reaching totality of yourself to the very slimmest visible sliver of another person.

How’s that working for you?

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

There are lots of people writing lots of words for helping you be a better person. To lose weight, to make more money, to gain success and fame…to do things you want to do…they all write from different perspectives and have different methodologies and all of them aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. The reason why is because they all come from the angle of “this is what helped me” and, seeing that you are not them, that sort of advice is hardly relevant…to you.

Now you may disagree, thinking that with enough study, work and concentration you can become very much like them (and they really, really want you to believe that as well because it’s what makes them money) but it will never happen the same reason why a glass of water sitting on your kitchen countertop doesn’t spontaneously combust into a roaring conflagration; it’s impossible.

You are you; an amazing and uniquely human being on a planet of 7 billion other amazing and unique humans.

While you cannot change who you are, you can change your behavior (you do it all the time, sometimes without even noticing) so, the question is; how do you change your behavior? How do you make sure you do the things that lead to your goals (versus all the other bullshit that doesn’t)? That’s really what we’re all asking and the answer is surprisingly simple…

…and free.

When you look at your life, when you seriously examine the things you do, the habits you have, the routine and the spontaneous, you will see that the things you do the most are the things that are the most important in your life. That’s it. If something is important to you, you don’t forget to do it, you don’t misplace it, you don’t delay it…basically, you remember and do it. Consistently and all of the time. If you want to do something (or more of something) different like be better organized, have better time management, study or work harder, eat less or exercise more…whatever it is…make doing it important to you.

That’s it. Make it important and you will do it.

That’ll be $0.00 please.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

When you want to do something, maybe something you haven’t tried before, maybe it’s something that’s a little scary where you think you might fail. Try thinking about it this way; take the idea and strip away anything you’ve thought about it before, separate it from what you think it is. Remove any comments about it from people you know, forget that they said anything about it and isolate it away from anything else in your mind.

What you have left are just the actions that are required to complete the task…because that’s exactly all that it ever was. Nothing more, nothing less. It was never the turning point of your career…or the reason why he’ll love you…or whatever boogie man created in your mind. Simply, because it is just a task, an activity, there is no pressure from the shame of failing…or the glory of succeeding. There are no artificial barriers or contrived pitfalls because there is no emotion…no “what will my parents think?, or “what will I do when I bomb?”

Just the thing.

Not so scary anymore, eh?

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen