How do you react when you hear that question? Do you stop, look within, and think about who you want to be, and what you want out of life?

Or do you get defensive, expecting another self-proclaimed expert to tell you how to fix your life?

My life’s [...]]]>

How do you react when you hear that question?
Do you stop, look within, and think about who you want to be, and what you want out of life?

Or do you get defensive, expecting another self-proclaimed expert to tell you how to fix your life?

My life’s not perfect.

I’d like to find/strengthen, or develop new abilities, and do things that seem out of reach.
I want to experience new possibilities in myself, so the world remains new and fresh around me.

There are endless books and methods of personal development that tell us what to become, and how to move along a path from where we are to where we want to be.

A few books are focused on giving us a new vision of life.
These books show us that who we are, what we’re capable of, and the way that we and the world live, is only one possibility among many.

Such books inspire us to rethink what is possible for ourselves, and the world.

I received a copy of a book like this recently, called A Life Worth Living, by Bill Giruzzi.

Typical for me, I try to get an overview of the book before I sit down to read it.
I look at the covers, the introduction, and the table of contents:

1. Work is a Cultural Phenomenon
2. It’s All Made Up
3. Building Blocks
4. Paradigm of Business
5. Is this It?
6. Someday the sun will go out
7. The Curtain, Please
8. The New Paradigm
9. Not of this World
10. Meet Your Narrator
11. The future
12. A New Mind, A New World
13. The Edge of Language
14. A Life Worth Living

It’s a small book.
And it doesn’t take long to read it.
But the issues that Bill raises, and the questions he asks us at the end of each chapter will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page.

 
I Don’t Know How to Create
The world we face is a result of people not wanting enough

One of the topics that Bill focuses on is our belief that we don’t know how to shape our lives.
There’s this subtle conversation in the background of our minds humming along saying something like, “There must be something wrong with me. If there weren’t something wrong with me, I wouldn’t have this life. ”

We create our lives with the choices that we make.
But we’re often unhappy with the results, so we deny our ability to create.
Why do we deny our lives?

Sometimes it’s because we can’t predict the consequences of our choices, and we’re unhappy with the way we feel about the life we’ve chosen.

We can’t understand how we got to this point.
What’s wrong with us?
How do we fix it?

We often pretend that we live and choose, unbound by any of the influences around us.
But Bill explains that we live and choose within a paradigm.

Our time, our culture, our parents, our life experiences, and beliefs tell us what is possible and appropriate.
The paradigm tells us what the choices us, and forces us to choose between only them.

Whose thoughts do I think?
Whose feelings do I feel?
Are they truly mine, or have I just borrowed them from the world around me?

A paradigm is a structure that binds us and limits us as much as the shape and size of a room that we stand in.

 
Changing the Paradigm
We’ve settled for what the past tells us is possible and as a result, we continue to be stuck surviving in the world we’ve created.

Whenever you think that you are tired with life as it is, change from the viewpoint that “this is life” to “this is life within this design”

We pretend that there is only one way that the world can be.
We pretend that our beliefs are as solid as the ground beneath us, and the sun in the sky.
But nothing in our lives is permanent.

Bill encourages us to think about our own death, the death of our loved ones, and the end of the earth and sun.
We realize that we treat so many things as permanent and inevitable, even though they can change tomorrow.

We accept the rules and thoughts that everyone lives by, and we assume that we have to fix our problems within this paradigm.

But many of our problems are simply a consequence of the paradigm we live in.

There’s another way.
We can adopt a new paradigm, a new way of thinking, with different rules, different choices, and different results.

Bill says:
I wrote this book to instill in you a desire for discovery…It’s about regaining what has been lost to us – the experience of powerfully and fully participating in our lives.

But how do we find a new way, when we have so much negativity toward our current life?
Most people are dissatisfied with their jobs, letting their lives slip away in pain, always waiting for another time and place to find meaning and satisfaction.

Our pain gives rise to our negativity.
We deny and resist our life.

Our resistance is directed toward our current life and the paradigm that our life is built on.
But we can’t imagine anything outside of that paradigm, so any thoughts of a new life are faced with the same resistance.

 
Living in Two Worlds
When we want to change, we don’t deny our present life.
We don’t quit our jobs, or ignore the urgent demands of our current world.

But we begin to create another structure.
We build another paradigm which can allow us to live differently, and make different choices.

We want to develop a way of life where it’s natural to experience joy, and find meaning and satisfaction every day.

The great challenge is to be aware of both paradigms, and yet keep them separate.
We have to learn to think and feel in two worlds:

• The world we are in, which derives from the past.
• And the world we want to create, which will derive from our actions, derived from our thoughts.

We’re not talking of a purely intellectual awareness of the new world we want to build, and the new paradigm that structures it.
This new world has to be placed in our hearts, and shine with possibility and meaning.

Robert Fritz, in Creating, and other books, speaks of something similar.
When we want to create, we have to hold at once in our minds, both our current reality, as well as the future to be created.

Each must be clear and distinct.
And we must care deeply about what we’re trying to create.

The contrast between the two worlds gives birth to a powerful energy, a creative tension that drives us to find a way to bring that future to life.

  Relative Freedom (In Part 1 of this series, we explored Sway, by Ori and Rom Brafman, a powerful book that discusses several psychological forces that drive irrational behavior. Here, in Part 2, we continue by looking at Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.)

How free are you?

Some people [...]]]>
 
Relative Freedom
(In Part 1 of this series, we explored Sway, by Ori and Rom Brafman, a powerful book that discusses several psychological forces that drive irrational behavior. Here, in Part 2, we continue by looking at Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.)

How free are you?

Some people pretend that they are completely free to make their own decisions.
But it’s not true.
Everyone is influenced in an endless number of ways.

Don’t give up, though!
We can focus on maximizing our freedom.

Learn about the common forces that influence you, and you have a chance to neutralize those influences, or use them to your advantage!

One of the ways that we make decisions is through comparison.

Most people don’t know if they want something, unless they compare it to other things.

Let’s say that there are two different items that I’m planning to buy.
One has a retail price of $20, and one has a retail price $200.
A seven dollar discount off the $20 item seems great, and I’ll go out of my way to get to the store that offers that discount.

But a seven dollar discount off a $200 item?
I’m not likely to go out of my way to get that.
It seems like no big deal.

But it’s still the same $7 that I’m saving!

You can be sure that marketers are aware of this, and use it to make an item seem more desirable.

Have you ever bought something, just because of the money you’d save?

One way to resist the influence of a good buy, is to change your point of view.
Instead of looking at the buy in terms of what you’re saving, look at the total spend in the bigger context of your available money, priorities, etc.

Zoom out, to take a wider point of view, the pull of some little advantage gets much weaker.

There’s another problem with our love of comparison.
On our own, we tend to ignore choices that are difficult to compare to what we know.

Marketers, on the other hand, use uniqueness to sell.
They’ll make their choice sound really good, and then emphasize the uniqueness of the product so much, that we can’t compare it to anything else.

Put uniqueness in perspective, by asking yourself if that unique benefit is really so unique, and if it’s valuable to you.

 
Ownership
Studies consistently show that owners value their things more than buyers are willing to pay.

Why?
We fall in love with the things we possess, and even the ideas that we’ve accepted.

How does this effect how we decide and buy?

The feeling of losing something we own, is more important to us than the money we get for selling it.

Similarly, if we’ve already mentally taken possession of some potential object, the thought of losing that ownership far outweighs what it costs to buy it.

Marketers make use of this bias in two ways, so be prepared:

• Companies give us a free or ridiculously cheap trial ownership in a product or service. They want us to feel ownership, and they know that we’ll hate to give it up when the trial is over.
• Companies give us guarantees. Just try it, and return it if you don’t like it. The companies know that once we take possession of something, we’re not likely to give up the ownership.

Protect yourself.
Ignore trials of things that you don’t really want.
And don’t let a guarantee sucker you into trying something out that doesn’t really interest you.

You’re always told that you have nothing to lose by trying out some product.
But you do.
Once you try something, and take possession of it, it’s much harder to return it, even if you don’t really like it that much.

 
I’ll Decide Tomorrow
Most of us feel compelled to put off our decisions, and keep our options open.
We push off making a choice, even it when it costs us money, energy, or time.

When we see options disappearing, even unexciting options, the immediate threat of loss makes those options seem big and important.

The antidote to delay is focusing on the consequences of not deciding.
Every delay is a decision.
Every delay has consequences.

We lose many opportunities because we delay making decisions.

Do you analyze the situation, and weigh all the pros and cons before taking action? Or do you just go with your gut, without giving it much thought?

Whichever way you decide, you probably feel that you’re in charge of your decisions, and your life.

Sometimes our [...]]]> Under the Influence
How do you make decisions?

Do you analyze the situation, and weigh all the pros and cons before taking action?
Or do you just go with your gut, without giving it much thought?

Whichever way you decide, you probably feel that you’re in charge of your decisions, and your life.

Sometimes our gut feelings are based on all kinds of subtle issues that our unconscious mind has digested to give us a quick answer.

Sometimes our feelings express what is truly important to us, even though we haven’t put it into words and thoughts.

There’s nothing wrong with going with your feelings.
Conscious thinking isn’t the only way to understand the world.

But our feelings are not always our own.

The world around us shapes our feelings.
We’re led to desire things, or act in ways that don’t make sense rationally, and go against our deepest feelings of what’s really important in our lives.

I’m happy going with my feelings if they’re really mine, if they’re based on what’s really important to me.

Inner Forces
There are people around us that manipulate our feelings for their own financial, political, or personal goals.

But that’s not the only way that our feelings and thoughts get twisted.

Our mind is built in ways that favor certain types of thinking, feeling, and acting.
(You can think of these as inner forces that shape our behavior.)

Often these forces work to our advantage.
But sometimes, they work against us.

Recently, I’ve read two powerful books that reveal some of these inner forces that drive irrational behavior.
Both books are based on solid research, but they’re written for ordinary, intelligent people to read and enjoy.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the first one, Sway, by Ori and Rom Brafman.
We’ll provide an overview of some of the forces at work within you.

I’ve also added some ideas about how you can consciously weaken the power of these forces so you can make a more clear-headed choice.

Pain vs. Gain
We feel the pain associated with a loss (or an anticipated loss) much more strongly than the joy of experiencing a gain.

It’s like your brain turns up the volume on the pain of loss, so you can’t hear the joy of gain.

How does this change the way you act?
You naturally focus, or even obsess on minimizing loss, instead of maximizing gain.

This force makes you avoid trying new things and making changes in your life.
You’ll do anything to avoid making a mistake.

Counterforce:

1. The best choices offer long-term benefits.If we stay focused on little moments, we’ll always be afraid of losing some quick, instant pleasure.

   Consciously focus on the long-term benefits.
   Build up those benefits in your mind.
   Make the sounds louder, the image brighter, the colors more vivid.

   Turn up the volume on those benefits.
   Then compare them to the little things that give you quick pleasure.

2. There’s something even more powerful that you can do.
   Your mind loves to focus on what you might lose.
   Your mind wants to protect the things that it possesses, or pretends to possess. 

   Let it.

   Think about the powerful things that you want, that you find so hard to act upon.
   Take possession of them in your mind.

   Feel them as yours.
   Feel yourself enjoying the benefits.

   Don’t obsess on the fear of losing them.
   But let yourself feel that fear for just a moment.

   And let yourself feel a strong desire to protect those precious possessions.

 
Commitment
Once you make even a small commitment to an approach, it’s hard to consider alternatives.

Counterforce:
Take a few minutes.

Imagine several different people who have made dramatically different choices.
See them committed to different choices, paths, lives.
And see each one happy and enjoying her life.

Let each one totally forget about the other choices, and just enjoy what she has.

It’s easier sometimes to imagine other people making different choices.
It’s not as unsettling as imagining a different life for yourself.

 
Chameleon Effect
People change their behavior and performance to match the opinions people have of them.

Treat me as mediocre or weak, and I’ll absorb that view, and act that way.
I’ll take on your image of me.

Counterforce:
Imagine yourself happier, more successful, more confident, or more powerful.
(Success can be anything you want it to be: relationships, family, career, business, money. You define it)

Now imagine successful people treating you as a successful person.
See and hear the way that they interact with you.
Feel the emotion in their voices, and see the emotion on their faces.

They see you as a different person.
Now accept their image of you.

 
Group Conformity and Dissent
There’s a powerful force within us that pushes us to go along with others and not stand out.
It’s much easier to think for yourself, and take a different point of view/action, when there is even one person already dissenting.

Counterforce:
Whenever it seems that you have to choose what everyone is choosing, imagine a powerful, popular person who is calmly choosing a different path than everyone else.

See that person as friendly and well-liked.
Pick any point of view for him as long as it’s different than the crowd.

This opens you to possibility, and gives you more freedom to make your own choices.

(In part 2 of this series we’ll explore the book, Predictably Irrational)

Are you the victim of bad drivers, rude salespeople, annoying co-workers, or bosses that never give you credit for anything?

How many times does it take you to get a problem resolved with a bill, purchase, etc?

My wife and I have a standing joke [...]]]>
 
You won’t Believe what Happened to Me Today…

Are you the victim of bad drivers, rude salespeople, annoying co-workers, or bosses that never give you credit for anything?

How many times does it take you to get a problem resolved with a bill, purchase, etc?

My wife and I have a standing joke that we always have to ask at least 2 different people at a company or agency what to do about a problem, since we’re not likely to get the right answer the first time.

Sometimes it seems like the whole world is conspiring to give you grief.

No wonder that you feel like complaining to anyone who will listen!

It’s so easy to slip into negativity, even when that accomplishes nothing.
And negativity is one of the most powerful ways to sabotage your own personal growth.

 
The No Complaining Rule
Jon Gordon recently released The No Complaining Rule, a book that tells how negativity destroys personal and corporate health.

Jon’s earlier books are about personal energy.
In those books he teaches you how to raise your energy level.

Why is that important?
It’s critical that you have enough energy to achieve the dreams that are important to you, while keeping up with our increasingly complex world.

His new book is written as a business story.
Have you ever read a book in that style?

Some people love them, while other people who read them are just waiting for the author to get to the point.

Stories are often a great way to pass ideas.
Our brains love stories, and the contents of the story often make a deep impression on us.

Have you ever wanted to make a change to your behavior or attitudes?
Stories are a particularly powerful way to sneak challenging ideas into our heads, and start the process of change.

 
Complaints into Solutions
Jon’s book is self-described as “A story about positive ways to turn complaints into solutions, innovations, and success.”

When someone discovers, or has important insight into a problem, they might write about it without providing any action plan.

That’s ok.
The writer wants to raise awareness about a problem that has no clear solution yet.

But in a way, it’s like making a valid complaint.
The company should hear the complaint, but unless that company tries to address the issue and find a solution, the only consequence of the complaint may be the negativity that it spreads.

Jon’s book points out some of the key dangers of negativity. For example:

• Negativity costs between 250-300 Billion/year in lost productivity
• 90% of doctor visits are stress related, and #1 cause of office stress is coworkers and their complaining
• Negativity affects the morale, performance, and productivity of teams
• One person can’t make a team, but one can destroy it. Just one negative person can create a miserable environment for everyone else

And negativity isn’t only a problem in the workplace.
Negative emotions are associated with:

• Health problems, and shorter life span
• More pain
• Less Energy
• Fewer friends
• Less success

Jon’s book doesn’t just complain about the hazards of negativity. He offers solutions including: the no complaining rule, three no-complaining tools, 5 things to do instead of complaining, and corporate and personal action plans.

You might be thinking:
This is ridiculous. If I eliminate complaints, I’ll never consider the risks or downside to my plans.

And you’re sort of right.
This book is not about completely eliminating complaints.

It’s about using complaints in a balanced way, tied to solutions.
Jon’s book is about eliminating mindless complaining, breaking out of a negative mindset where complaining is done for its own sake.

As an example, here’s Jon’s No complaining rule:
“Employees are not allowed to mindlessly complain to their coworkers. If they have a problem or complaint about their job, their company, their customer, or anything else, they are encouraged to bring the issue to their manager or someone who is in a position to address the complaint. However, the employees must share one or two possible solutions to their complaint as well.”

 
What’s Missing?
Is there anything missing from this book?

Yes.
Jon doesn’t give you an important warning.
This rule won’t work for every company.

Why not?
True, these are simple and incredibly powerful ideas.

But, the ideas in this book offer a fundamental change in the mindset of a corporation and its employees.

The No complaining rule must be implemented at every level of the organization to succeed.

A company’s leadership must commit itself to this change personally, to set an example for everyone else.

Fundamental personal or corporate change is hard, and some people, leaders or not, are not willing to face it.

Still, there are many companies that will be able to implement this new mindset in the organization, and benefit tremendously.

Is your company one of these?

(Take a look at The No Complaining Rule at amazon.com, or Jon’s website for more information.)

Barry Schwartz has written an insightful book on the dark side of choice, called The Paradox of [...]]]> Very few things in this world are one-sided, all good or all bad.
In Part 1 of this series I introduced the idea that the extraordinary human power of choice can lead us into our own personal hell.

Barry Schwartz has written an insightful book on the dark side of choice, called The Paradox of Choice.

I’ve extracted and combined the many ideas that Schwartz discusses into 7 key pathways or gateways into a personal hell.

In part one, I covered the first four gateways. In this article, we’ll discuss the remaining three gateways.

 
The Fifth Gate: Missed Opportunities and Regret
Every choice that you make leaves some possibility behind.
You’re always making trade-offs: price or safety, space or style.

Any trade-off you make is unsettling.
The truth is that you and I don’t want to settle for one option, while giving up the others.

We want it all.

When you plan your future choices, studies show that you find it easy to imagine choosing one option at the expense of another (for example trading safety for cost).

But when you get to the moment of choice, you find it much harder to actually give up one possibility for another.

In this world of endless choice, you are confronted with a mountain of alternatives, each with strengths and weaknesses.

There are few simple decisions.
Instead your decisions are full of a long list of trade-offs.

Studies show that we mentally exaggerate the loss associated with making a trade-off and missing an opportunity.

It’s as if you imagine yourself already possessing all the options.
Then, in your moment of choice, you feel yourself losing all the options but one.

When many options must be left behind for a choice to be made, you have a huge collection of perceived loss. These decisions can become painful enough to leave you paralyzed.

Result?
You do nothing at all.

And if you do take action and choose, you’re weighed down by the missed opportunities, and little satisfied with the choice you’ve made, and any benefits that it brings.

 
Regret
Do you ever feel regret?
It’s such a haunting feeling.

It gnaws and pulls at you, and whispers that you’ve missed out on great opportunities, by making the wrong choice or doing nothing at all.

If I asked you what you regret most in the last six months, you’d probably mention actions that didn’t turn out well.

If I asked you what you regret most in your life as a whole, you’d probably identify your failures to take action, and pursue things that you’re passionate about.

When you face so many alternatives, it’s easy to imagine that you’ve made the wrong choice, and that another path would have been better.

And you get buried in regret for not taking action, because you’re afraid to make a choice, and give up all the other possibilities.

When we think about the options for a choice we’re making, we imagine the regret we will feel for making a bad choice, and this drives us to delay or avoid making any choice at all.

In today’s world of endless choices, and hesitant decisions, regret follows us everywhere, and grows stronger with every decision we make, and fail to make.

 
The Sixth Gate: The Curse of Comparison

Whenever you say that something is good or bad, there is an implicit or explicit comparison to something else.

Social scientist Alex Michalos writes that people measure their satisfaction based on thinking about three gaps:

1. The gap between what you have and what you want
2. The gap between what you have and what you think others like you have
3. The gap between what you have and the best you have had in the past

When you encounter more and more options, you are driven to want more and more.

Why?
You can see others enjoying those possibilities, whether in real life, or the media, and imagine yourself in their place.

You can see yourself possessing those things, or enjoying those experiences, or being that person.

Comparisons between what we have and what we might have can be a powerful driving force to motivate us to take action.
That sounds like a good thing, and it often is.

Comparisons can enhance or diminish your experience of what you have.
But typically, our comparisons make what we have seem dull and empty.

What if those comparisons are not used to motivate us?
What if comparison is used in the absence of action?

In a world of options, and possibilities, comparison can readily convince us to be unhappy or unsatisfied with what we have.

How can any one option compare with a whole world of alternatives?
The potential excitement and mystery of the new and unknown dulls the familiar beauty that we already know.

And if we are not ready or willing to take action to change our situation, we are setting ourselves up to be miserable.

 
The Seventh Gate: Control and Blame

Do you need to feel in control of your life to be happy?

Studies were done where animals were put in unpleasant situations (mild shocks) that they could do nothing to stop.

These animals were later put in situations where the animals could act to positively affect their environment.

But the animals sat passively and did nothing. They had learned to be helpless.
There are many parallels between helpless animals and clinically depressed people. They both feel that they have no control over their situations, and are passive and miserable.

It’s not as simple, though, as feeling you have no control over a single situation.
There are always things that you and I have no control over.

Dr. Martin Seligman suggests that helplessness induced by failure or lack of control leads to depression if a person explains to herself that the causes of failure are far-reaching, recurring, and personal.

Do you tell yourself that your successes are a result of your own actions, in a way that’s readily repeatable, and relevant to large portions of your life?
And, do you tell yourself that any failures are due to temporary, narrowly relevant causes outside of yourself?

That’s what optimists do, according to Dr. Seligman.
Optimists see success under their own control, with endless possibilities to repeat success throughout their life. Failures are little bumps in the road that will go away.

Pessimists, on the other hand, see failure everywhere, and blame themselves for it.
They are prime candidates for serious depression.

Our world seems full of unlimited choices and possibility, but we can only get a tiny bit of it, while the rest seems forever denied to us.

We’re often disappointed with the results of our choices, and easily label our choices as failures, just because we can imagine some better alternative.

In this world of great choice, and great dissatisfaction, we see explosive growth in depression.

 
What’s Next?

We’ve discussed seven ways that choice can darken your life.
These are real dangers.

But the burdens that come with endless alternatives are not inevitable.
In Part 3 of this series, we’ll look at some changes in mindset that help us take advantage of choice and possibility, while avoiding the seven gates.

 
Resources
The Paradox of Choice Online

Each day you step through that door and visit a distant and strange world for a few hours. In that world you have a different name and face and body. You live, work, earn money, face challenges, create, succeed, and [...]]]> Leading a Double Life
Imagine that there is a door in your apartment or house.

Each day you step through that door and visit a distant and strange world for a few hours.
In that world you have a different name and face and body.
You live, work, earn money, face challenges, create, succeed, and grow – every single day.

And then, you return to your everyday, ordinary life.

The contrast between the two worlds is dramatic.
You can’t give up either one, and you can’t see how to bring them together.

If one person leads this double life, the two worlds may remain forever separate
But what if 100’s of millions of people lead this double life?

Soon, they will demand that their everyday world becomes more like their magical one.

In Part 1 of this series, we spoke of virtual worlds on the Internet as the new frontier.
We suggested that the 100’s of millions of people living hours of their days in these worlds would have a profound effect on our everyday world.

 
Second Life, or Escape from Reality?
Why do so many people find the virtual worlds so enticing, so enjoyable, and so meaningful?

Is it just the adrenaline rush of a world with fast action, danger, wish fulfillment, and the opportunity to express dark sides of us that are unacceptable in everyday life?

While we can’t completely discount this aspect of video games in general, and virtual worlds, in particular, this is only the surface of it.

It’s much the same as the way pornography was a driving force in the adoption of video, dial-up bulletin boards, newsgroups, and even the Internet.

The opportunity to express and pursue certain behaviors dominates some new technologies, at least for a while. But we would be foolish to conclude that those behaviors are the measure of those technologies.

 
The Meaning of Fun and Games
Exodus to the Virtual Worlds, by Edward Castronova, discusses life in the virtual worlds in great detail. Castronova identifies a number of profound benefits that visitors find in these virtual worlds:

• Equal beginnings. Each player starts with nothing, and succeeds through her own efforts.
• Players proceed at their own pace, but when they finally succeed, they gain new skills and resources, and they join a community of players at that level.
• Exceptional players find recognition within the community of their peers who truly understand and appreciate their efforts.
• The worlds provide challenges which are appropriate to the skill level of the player
• There are clear measures of success and failure.
• The benefits of success are available without long delays.
• Failures do not permanently stop you. There is always the opportunity to start again.
• There is clarity in the virtual worlds between good and evil, and the world calls upon individuals to make choices.
• Activities are performed alone, and in groups, and typically benefit you and others.
• The most successful virtual worlds have clear rules, which are as simple as possible.

The virtual worlds, like our lives, are games — environments with rules, where the outcome is not certain.

But unlike many people’s experience of their everyday lives, these games are designed to be satisfying, meaningful, and fun.

One of Castronova’s most profound observations is that people quickly lose interest in games/worlds that provide no challenge, or challenges that are too easy or too hard for the current skill level of the player.

I would add a few points:

• We crave the opportunity to remake ourselves, to break out of our current boundaries and find a way to explore the possibility that we know is waiting for us.
• While we want to break out of our old patterns and rules, we don’t want a world without order.
• We want fair, consistent rules that shape a predictable world, but leave us plenty of freedom to change.
• We want a world with stable civilization, and frontiers. We can then choose how much of our time to spend in the more civilized areas, and how much of our time to spend in the more wild areas. The frontiers provide unique challenges and opportunities to grow.

 
The Death and Rebirth of Civilization
Civilizations that lose their frontiers become old and frightened of change, and ultimately collapse and die.
Sometimes civilizations with frontiers still decay. This often happens when the frontiers are too far away from everyday life, and have little influence on the old world.

The virtual worlds are always close by. They have an ever-growing population that will bring their lessons of possibility and meaning back to the old world.

As the Internet began and developed, we saw a glimpse of frontiers in the distance.
The virtual worlds will continue this process, as they restore ever-growing, ever changing frontiers to us.

 
**Resources for further exploration:
Exodus to the Virtual Worlds
I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life
The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds (Ex Machina: Law, Technology, and Society)

Terra Nova Blog on Virtual Worlds
Virtual Worlds News
Standford University Virtual Worlds Group
MIT Webcast on Virtual Worlds

So I checked out her reputation, and looked at recommendations from people like Deepak Chopra, John Gray, and Tony Robbins, and decided that reviewing this book [...]]]> For a while, I’ve thought about including an occasional review on this blog.
Recently, someone approached me suggesting that I review Sound Health, Sound Wealth by Dr. Luanne Oakes.

So I checked out her reputation, and looked at recommendations from people like Deepak Chopra, John Gray, and Tony Robbins, and decided that reviewing this book was a good idea.

As I began to read the book and did some work, I listened to the CD that accompanies the book.

Dr. Oakes produces many products that use sound to relax and heal, but this is the first of those that I’ve experienced.
This CD is beautiful and relaxing, about an hour long.

I listened to it twice, and enjoyed it even more the second time. I came away refreshed and alert.

What is a Review?

One of my beliefs is that there is no such thing as a completely objective review. A good review expresses the personality, talents, and belief system of the reviewer as much as the work under review.

There are many types of reviews.
The most common reviews probably answer one or more of these questions:

• Do I like it?
• What is the subject matter of this book?
• Is it well organized, and easy to understand?
• Does it entertain and/or inform me?
• If it makes promises, does it deliver on those promises?
• Is it worth my time to read this book?

The more objective parts of a review tell me what the subject is, and if the material is clearly presented.

But there are no absolutes in a review.

What’s clear to you may not be clear to me.
We have different experiences, and come to any book with different beliefs, likes, and dislikes.

I may like a certain author’s style, and you may not.
I may like the way an author uses language, and you may not.

For example, Dr. Oakes likes to make up new phrases to describe the ideas that she writes about. There are many authors who do this.

Sometimes familiar words and phrases are burdened with old, limited associations.
New phrases can be a wonderful way to explore an unfamiliar mindset. The unfamiliar terms tell me that I’m walking into the unknown. I take a breath, and prepare to learn something new.

I can’t so easily slip into those very dangerous three words: “I know that.”

Some of my favorite of her terms are future memories, action-based faith, and first and second thoughts and feelings.

Future Memories
If you are familiar with the law of attraction, manifestation, or visualization techniques, then you’ve heard of visualizing a desired future state in full emotional and sensory detail.

But she puts a slightly new spin on it, by also relating to that experience as a future memory.
I love that idea.

Action-based Faith
Action-based faith, asserts that belief in a desired future is expressed through every thought, word, and action. The more that belief is expressed in our thoughts, words, and actions, the more power that belief has to shape our reality.

First and Second Thoughts and Feelings
Dr. Oakes writes that we cannot always find the presence of mind to respond to a situation with the thoughts and feelings that we would like to. Our first thoughts and feelings may flow too quickly.

But, she writes, it is much easier to choose our second thoughts and feelings. We can choose to replace our initial thoughts and feelings with ones that more powerfully represent who we want to be.

Hunting for Ideas

Some people may not like her new language.
I don’t resonate with all of the terms myself.

But, I’m a bit of an idea hunter.
I look for ideas that will shake up my thinking, and enable me to live in a bigger world, and understand more of it.
One powerful idea is often worth more to me than a well constructed, easy to understand discussion of ideas that I’m already familiar with.

And I’ve found many such ideas here.

Certainly the book is well organized, and covers a number of fascinating subjects such as manifestation, beliefs about what is possible, our relationship with time, saying no, welcoming resistance as a sign of change, health, and wealth.

This book may be a bit too ambitious at times, and some of the topics deserve a more lengthy treatment.

Conclusion
Above I discussed some questions that book reviews typically answer.
There are two more questions that I want to add to that list.
These are the questions that I personally want to see answered in a review, and they are the ones that I’ve focused on in this review:

• Is there something new in this book?
• Does it introduce ideas that enable me to think about my world and myself in new ways?

The answer to these questions, for me, is a resounding yes.

(Dr Oakes’ book is available in the usual places such as amazon.com, and her website is Sound Health, Sound Wealth.)