Thursday, January 10, 2013

God and Richard Dawkins Walk into a Bar...



What I had in mind is a series of video with various exercises for creating your vision for the future. After giving that some thought, I realized that one needs to find ones passions first. After giving THAT some thought, I realized that both things are something you should be constantly working on and evolving and they definitely don’t get 100% figured out with one exercise.

I also learned something about myself after taking the test found on theonequestion.com (if you want to take the test without giving them your email address, this link should work). I want to be am a teacher. There are 3 things I want to teach.




  1. How to “wake up” your inner guiding self and start walking the path towards liberation/awakening/enlightenment? (I’m still working on that one ;) )
  2. Taichi/Daoism (Still working on this one too)
  3. Building tribes (I have no idea what I’m doing with this one lol)

I suppose I knew I wanted to be a teacher already, but it was weird seeing how often “teach” came up in the answers to my questions.



What Does This Have To Do With God And Richard Dawkins?

Oh! Yes. Back to the title of this post and the series of videos. I have a series of exercises I picked up over the years that I was going to share. One of them asked you to imagine “God” walking into your room and telling you whatever you starting doing in life you wouldn’t fail. Then you’re suppose to think about what you would do.

I always liked that one and would imagine a bearded guy in a toga coming in my room and letting me know I couldn’t fail. Then I thought “That won’t work well for Atheists!” so I decided to come up with another version of this using the Atheist God Richard Dawkins. ;)

Imagine Atheist God Richard Dawkins walking into your room and telling you he just figured out some scientific shit about how when you believe you can’t fail it increases the chances of success to almost 100%. What would you do in life?

THEN, I figured there must be a good joke that starts with “God and Richard Dawkins walk into a bar...” :)


Passions First, Then Vision

I think I figured out why I’ve had a hard time getting people to come up with a vision of their life 5, 10 or 20+ years out. It’s because they don’t have a solid grasp of what they’re passionate about. Without clear passions how can you think about life 5 years from now? It’s probably scary. A vision built around passions isn’t scary at all. It’s something worth fighting for. It gives you that “burning desire” that’s talked about in Think and Grow Rich (without which nothing is possible).

Step one. Figure out your passions.



My Passions

So here are my passions in a simple list format. There are A LOT of things I’m interested in and would like to do if I had more time/resources, but my passions are things I’ve done regards of what my time/resources have looked like. I’ve always made the time and found the resources for these:


  • Taichi/Daoism
  • Spirituality (Enlightenment/Awakening/Liberation)
  • Teaching (and constantly reading and learning)
  • Problem Solving

That last one just came to me, but it’s something I’ve been aware of for a long time. It explains my addiction to board games and researching things like politics, barter exchanges and micro-lending to solve social ills (which I see as larger board games... :P lol )



What Are Your Passions?

The One Question” has the name of the website absolutely correct. If you’re clear about your passions and vision, you almost don’t need any sort of “goal setting” system. You’ll just keep running into that brick wall of failure until you eventually bust through (trust me... I know. ;) ). It’s obviously much better finding a system to help walk around or climb over walls when you meet them, but that will be another conversation for another day.

And for balance... “Why ‘follow your passion’ is bad advice.”

I’m glad I ran into that article. I pretty much agree with it and want to say this. We’re all different. Each of us has to find out what our balance of YAAAAAAAH PASSION vs common sense is. My whole life has been lived pretty much full throttle YAAAAAAAAH PASSION. It’s not something that I want to sell to others (or I necessarily recommend... lol). It’s what works for me and I like it. I don’t mind the bumps, bruises, setbacks, valleys, etc. Other people are different (my brother for example). They might take a more balanced approach to following their passions.

Sometimes the more balanced approach works out because your passion leads you down a path of “balance.” Sometimes it makes sense for you to be balanced because of where you are in life (hard to be YAAAAAAHH PASSION if you have kids, medical conditions, etc.)

The end goal of “my system” actually has nothing to do with passions and goals. It’s actually to craft your life such that you enjoy waking up everyday and tackling it (or dancing with it. :) ) Success in this system won’t be acquiring anything except a “blissful state of mind.” Everything else is tricks to get you there.

So... back to figuring out your passions. GO! Need help? Start googling, check “the one question” site, ask me in the comments. You’ll figure it out.

1 comment:

  1. I took the One Question Test, and the results showed...well, nothing. Guess I was expecting an answer, when DUH!!! They tell me outright only I can know what the answer is. But at least they posed questions to me and had me think what I usually don't. I have also saved the questions and answers, because I felt they were asking me something a little too deep that could just be thrown away. Make a blog post perhaps? ;)

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