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A Life at Peace Lessons from the Guitarist

By Michael Fletcher On August 6, 2011 · 8 Comments

One of the many pasttimes I took up during the last two years of my transformation has been teaching myself to play the guitar. I am no John Mayer but I think I’ve established a fair degree of proficiency considering the fact that I’ve had very little time to dedicate my instrument. While I learnt to play the guitar the guitar also taught me some lessons about life.

There is no substitute for practice. You need to put the hours in building up those calluses hitting the wrong strings. Until you have you’ll never gain mastery of your instrument. It is said that you need to 10000 hours of practice to attain mastery of any skill. The only way to get there is one hour at a time.
You get what you practice. Make sure that when you’re practicing you’re practicing playing the correct way. Your body doesn’t know the difference between the correct way to play and the incorrect. Avoid shortcuts learn the correct form. Practice using the correct form, pay the price now and you’ll reap the benefits down the line. Similarly in life if you spend your time practicing and focusing on bad behaviors don’t be surprised when you become really good at being bad.
Two hands acting as one. Playing the guitar is a true lesson in synergy neither hand can achieve individually what they can achieve together. Playing with feeling can only happen when your hands move as one. Each knowing the position of the other. There is an economy of movement a grace to the guitarist movement that should be a guide to all of us. The guitarist moves his hands no more than he must to get to the next note. Ensuring that he is able to give voice to each beat and to give each beat life. Live your life this way. The only way to succeed is when you are able to find this inner synergy.
Timing is everything. Playing music is all about keeping time. The guitarist needs keep his playing in time with the rhythm. Within the constraints of the rhythm the guitarist has complete freedom to explore himself within the music. Similarly in life there are immutable laws like timing which we cannot change but we can rule our lives within them if we only open our eyes and ears to see them.
Less Haste and more Speed. The Guitarist like any musician understands that speed is key it’s not about knowing what note to play but rather it’s about knowing when to play what not. Music is a rich tapestry of sound and silence. Knowing when to keep quiet is often as important as knowing when to play. Don’t rush your playing. When you’re truly invested in playing much like when you’re fully invested in living you will feel the urge to hurry along. Resist this urge remember the right note at the wrong time is as destructive as the wrong note at the right time

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Monetize Your Life – Blogging 2009 and beyond

By Michael Fletcher On July 26, 2011 · 18 Comments

At the end of a strange year even by my standards, I found myself proverbially flipping through the pages of this blog and looking back on all the posts of 2009. I forget sometimes how random the frothing rantings of a mad man can seem.

I hope you guys found some entertainment and hopefully a helpful idea or passage from time to time, reading all these posts now is strangely personal. It’s very much like a journal of the year, each post reminding me of a year that has been. A full stop in the paragraph that is my life.

This blogging business can’t help but be personal. The more I look at the time I spend and the record I’m leaving, I know that this blog will become a pillar for me in 2010. We get out what we put into our work. I plan to achieve a lot on this blog in 2010 and in return am steeling myself for a lot of hard work and dedication.

Lessons I learnt in 2009

Blogging is a social event not a post or a blog, writing a post is only the start
Get your own domain
Learn enough HTML to break your site
Then go learn some more to fix it
Blogging is the disease and the cure – pour hours into your blog for little gain when you begin and soon you’ll be pouring hours into your blog for not much more gain
Write often
Write clearly
Involve your family and friends or suffer the consequences it’s tough out there on your own
Give what you hope to receive
Spend less time on design and more on content – no one ever said “well that was a life changing message, but can you believe that font, I’m never coming back here!”
Don’t be to proud to ask
Don’t re-invent the wheel
Social media is your friend

It wouldn’t be New Year’s if I didn’t have regrets. ~William Thomas

Many of you are new and probably missed a lot of monetize so here’s a quick recap of 2009 on Monetize Your Life .

What's more important what's Right or getting caught

By Michael Fletcher On July 25, 2011 · 25 Comments

I’m becoming more and more annoyed with the state of humanity. It seems the notion of right has completely dissappeared from the world. Everywhere I go I see people trying to get away with a shortcut here, a corner cut there. By small degrees the world’s gone to hell. Next thing you know they’ll make a movie based on the A-team.

What’s right?

Nothing, well not at the moment. Having worked with the public for a while I can tell you parents are pretty much oblivious to the lessons they’re teaching their children. Every time a mother insists an under age child be allowed to watch an age restricted movie or that some policy doesn’t apply to them, they’re simply telling their kids the rules don’t apply to us. What do you expect in a society where kids call their parents by their first names and parents jockey for popularity.

So what’s that mean Mike?

It means the end of personal development as we know it. The contempt for the rules we’re breeding in our offspring is meaning kids are increasingly looking outside of themselves for the causes of their problems. We are as a planet becoming less self aware.

So what’s this ultimate right crap you’re talking bout?

Some would argue there is no ultimate right. What we should and shouldn’t do are relative. Fair comment. So relative to our current reality, what is the absolute right? Is that what we’re teaching our kids? Or are we teaching them it’s ok to wake up late and then break the speed limit on the drive in too work, as long as you don’t get caught?
Evidence of what we’re teaching our kids is all around us. Go walk round outside in an unpoliced area and tell me how safe you feel. We’ve socially devolved as a species by about 100 years and are heading back into the wild west where the only law is the law that can be enforced.

So next time you:

Jump a stop street
Jaywalk
Break the speed limit
Sneak food into the movies
“Borrow” some stationary from work
Cut-in in traffic
Talk about someone behind their back
Argue that the customer is always right when you know you’re wrong
Cut in line at a fast food outlet
Park illegally
Submit a creative version of your taxes
Overlook the cashier giving you too much change
Cheat at a board game
Put an empty milk carton back in the fridge

Think about the lesson you’re teaching and the statment you’re making. This rule doesn’t apply to me… Unless I get caught.
Image Credits

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bitterlysweet/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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If by Rudyard Kipling

By Michael Fletcher On July 25, 2011 · 6 Comments

Today I thought I’d keep it light and casual as we all slow down into the holidays. Last year this time I created the image, you see below from free stock and then got it printed and framed as a gift for a good friend of mine who was starting a new business. If by Rudyard Kipling despite it’s apparent male bias is for me a great place to start looking at your personal development journey. I was going to go through the poem in a bit of detail and give my thoughts on it, but reading it again now, I think the poem speaks volumes without my prattling.

So enjoy and feel free to leave a comment if any part of this resonates with you.

If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

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Real Growth, Personal Development from the Inside Out

By Michael Fletcher On July 23, 2011 · 9 Comments

Real Growth this way

It’s a tricky business. You can think you’ve pulled all the weeds of in-authenticity and the next thing you know, you’re realizing you’re doing something for the sake of “growth” that doesn’t really matter. The prolificacy of fake growth often hides in hard-to-find corners of your mind. It often arrives in unassuming forms.
Jonathan Mead – The Number One Self-Development Mistake, And The Fake Growth Addict

In the realm of Personal Development, Real growth is the key indicator of success or failure. So what defines real growth or false growth? Much of the information and programmes in Personal Development available are at best insincere and at worst scams. The belief that your problems can be fixed from the outside in, that your goals can somehow be found in between the covers of the latest glossy Personal Development book is the myth. Personal Development is well, personal. The Personal Development industry can only help accelerate real growth, it can’t start it.