Fifty questions that will free your mind

Something that got me thinking so I wanted to share. I have highlighted the questions that particularly resonated with me, although I assume that everyone would respond differently.

(this post is from Marc and Angel Hack Life’s blog:http://www.marcandangel.com/2009/07/13/50-questions-that-will-free-your-mind/)

50 Questions That Will Free Your Mind (written by Marc)

These questions have no right or wrong answers.

Because sometimes asking the right questions is the answer.

  1. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
  2. Which is worse, failing or never trying?
  3. If life is so short, why do we do so many things we don’t like and like so many things we don’t do?
  4. When it’s all said and done, will you have said more than you’ve done?
  5. What is the one thing you’d most like to change about the world?
  6. If happiness was the national currency, what kind of work would make you rich?
  7. Are you doing what you believe in, or are you settling for what you are doing?
  8. If the average human life span was 40 years, how would you live your life differently?
  9. To what degree have you actually controlled the course your life has taken?
  10. Are you more worried about doing things right, or doing the right things?
  11. You’re having lunch with three people you respect and admire.  They all start criticizing a close friend of yours, not knowing she is your friend.  The criticism is distasteful and unjustified.  What do you do?
  12. If you could offer a newborn child only one piece of advice, what would it be?
  13. Would you break the law to save a loved one?
  14. Have you ever seen insanity where you later saw creativity?
  15. What’s something you know you do differently than most people?
  16. How come the things that make you happy don’t make everyone happy?
  17. What one thing have you not done that you really want to do?  What’s holding you back?
  18. Are you holding onto something you need to let go of?
  19. If you had to move to a state or country besides the one you currently live in, where would you move and why?
  20. Do you push the elevator button more than once?  Do you really believe it makes the elevator faster?
  21. Would you rather be a worried genius or a joyful simpleton?
  22. Why are you, you?
  23. Have you been the kind of friend you want as a friend?
  24. Which is worse, when a good friend moves away, or losing touch with a good friend who lives right near you?
  25. What are you most grateful for?
  26. Would you rather lose all of your old memories, or never be able to make new ones?
  27. Is is possible to know the truth without challenging it first?
  28. Has your greatest fear ever come true?
  29. Do you remember that time 5 years ago when you were extremely upset?  Does it really matter now?
  30. What is your happiest childhood memory?  What makes it so special?
  31. At what time in your recent past have you felt most passionate and alive?
  32. If not now, then when?
  33. If you haven’t achieved it yet, what do you have to lose?
  34. Have you ever been with someone, said nothing, and walked away feeling like you just had the best conversation ever?
  35. Why do religions that support love cause so many wars?
  36. Is it possible to know, without a doubt, what is good and what is evil?
  37. If you just won a million dollars, would you quit your job?
  38. Would you rather have less work to do, or more work you actually enjoy doing?
  39. Do you feel like you’ve lived this day a hundred times before?
  40. When was the last time you marched into the dark with only the soft glow of an idea you strongly believed in?
  41. If you knew that everyone you know was going to die tomorrow, who would you visit today?
  42. Would you be willing to reduce your life expectancy by 10 years to become extremely attractive or famous?
  43. What is the difference between being alive and truly living?
  44. When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards, and just go ahead and do what you know is right?
  45. If we learn from our mistakes, why are we always so afraid to make a mistake?
  46. What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?
  47. When was the last time you noticed the sound of your own breathing?
  48. What do you love?  Have any of your recent actions openly expressed this love?
  49. In 5 years from now, will you remember what you did yesterday?  What about the day before that?  Or the day before that?
  50. Decisions are being made right now.  The question is:  Are you making them for yourself, or are you letting others make them for you?

Morning musings

So I read an article, 60 small things that can change your life in 100 days (posted separately). To be honest, I only skimmed over the first half of the article (it was a little long, although the advice was good). Anyway, one of the suggestions was to write two pages of long hand each morning to capture all your thoughts. This isn’t exactly that but close enough, I’ll give it a try (although I’ll admit, it is made somewhat harder by a puss-cat wanting morning cuddles).

So I took the UN Young Professionals exam in December – yikes it was hard! I haven’t got the results – please wait six months – but I’m pretty sure that I was not successful. It’s never a good sign when the econometrics in the practice exams is ‘interpret this equation’ but they hand you a scientific calculator on the way in and ask you to calculate the impact of being latino on earnings… needless to say, I skipped the question (partly because I had completely misjudged my time – who would have thought that four and a half hours could go so fast?)

In case anyone else is studying for the exam, the questions that I remember were:
– summarise piece on child soldiers (fairly legal? well not technical just not very to the point);
– a number of questions (40) largely hard to be certain: which was the first country where peace keeping, which of the following commissions etc does not belong under General Assembly etc, the WTO’s mandate is which of the following, only one or two were current events (which country does not currently have sanctions), who are G4, G77? who is second in command after general secretary (name of role, function);
– long and short economics questions – is a developing country better off with neighbour network or world network (pros/cons), econometrics questions with lots of data – calculate impact of being latino/how would you recalculate if you didn’t care about gender, ISLM , biofuels is cheaper, what are externalities on consumption, production, policy measures, if labour and capital are only inputs what happens if one gets more expensive, substitution effect, impact on production, debt – could inflation, growth, reservice/default, austerity (how/issues), email to country explaining how economic, social and environmental don’t have to be trade off, give examples where they are, advantages/disadvantages of developing human capital/technology first/simultaneously? Almost all questions asked for actual country examples to illustrate point.

Essentially a solid understanding of world politics since 1900 is what would have been needed to do well on the generalist paper and a fairly theoretical knowledge for economics (with some country examples). In fact I was surprised that there wasn’t much on the global financial crisis or the impact of austerity measures etc but the paper is probably prepared and vetted six to twelve months prior to being taken. Also, be warned, if you’ve allocated 15 or 20 minutes to a question you will probably spend at least five of that reading. The questions are often two pages long; one and a half pages of information and then a ‘single question’ broken into four parts with four or five sub-parts…

Despite not doing so well on the exam, I was happy I took it. (Although walking home alone in Canberra at 12.30am was a little uncomfortable.) When I weighed up whether or not to sit the exam I realised that I have wanted to improve my geopolitical knowledge and this was a good motivator for that. I am still probably a little on the rusty side but I am glad that I took the time to look into some of the issues over the past century. I think that for anyone considering doing it you should consider whether you will benefit from the process even if you aren’t successful. The UN is a nepotistic, bureaucratic institution – my friend recently went to apply for a job he was perfect for only to have it pulled a couple of days before closing due to the job being filled internally… – this means that the UN YPP exam is similarly bureaucratic and filled with little ‘insiders’ questions. The process will feel a lot like survival of the fittest. When they say “jump”, you say “how high?”, only in the case of the UN YPP the answer is “how many hoops would you like me to jump through, in what particularly crazy sequence?” But this is not to dissuade you, the process was helpful in showing me that I am fascinated by the types of issues the UN is involved in. And if the exam is anything to go by, if I am not successful that will most likely mean that the type of work they would want me to be doing is not quite right for me.

It’s also important to remember that while this is one way to get a permanent position in the UN, there are many other opportunities. I would probably avoid the internships unless you have no other choice as they seem like a form of degrading slave labour but the Junior Professionals, Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development (more slave labour most of the time) or Australian Volunteers for International Development programs all offer an opportunity for short to medium term positions with the UN and will at least cover your costs with a bit extra for side trips.

Sixty small ways to improve your life in the next 100 days

Article courtesy of Marelisa Fabrega, Lifehack; http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/60-small-ways-to-improve-your-life-in-the-next-100-days.html

Home

1.  Create a “100 Days to Conquer Clutter Calendar” by penciling in one group of items you plan to declutter every day, for the next 100 days.  Here’s an example:

  • Day 1: Declutter Magazines
  • Day 2: Declutter DVD’s
  • Day 3: Declutter books
  • Day 4: Declutter kitchen appliances

2. Live by the mantra: a place for everything and everything in its place. For the next 100 days follow these four rules to keep your house in order:

  • If you take it out, put it back.
  • If you open it, close it.
  • If you throw it down, pick it up.
  • If you take it off, hang it up.

3. Walk around your home and identify 100 things you’ve been tolerating; fix one each day. Here are some examples:

  • A burnt light bulb that needs to be changed.
  • A button that’s missing on your favorite shirt.
  • The fact that every time you open your top kitchen cabinet all of the plastic food containers fall out.

Happiness

4.  Follow the advice proffered by positive psychologists and write down 5 to 10 things that you’re grateful for, every day.

5. Make a list of 20 small things that you enjoy doing, and make sure that you do at least one of these things every day for the next 100 days. Your list can include things such as the following:

  • Eating your lunch outside.
  • Calling your best friend to chat.
  • Taking the time to sit down and read a novel by your favorite author for a few minutes.

6. Keep a log of your mental chatter, both positive and negative, for ten days. Be as specific as possible:

  • How many times do you beat yourself up during the day?
  • Do you have feelings of inadequacy?
  • Are you constantly thinking critical thoughts of others?
  • How many positive thoughts do you have during the day?

Also, make a note of the emotions that accompany these thoughts. Then, for the next 90 days, begin changing your emotions for the better by modifying your mental chatter.

7. For the next 100 days, have a good laugh at least once a day: get one of those calendars that has a different joke for every day of the year, or stop by a web site that features your favorite cartoons.

Learning/Personal Development

8. Choose a book that requires effort and concentration and read a little of it every day, so that you read it from cover to cover in 100 days.

9. Make it a point to learn at least one new thing each day: the name of a flower that grows in your garden, the capital of a far-off country, or the name of a piece of classical music you hear playing in your favorite clothing boutique as you shop. If it’s time for bed and you can’t identify anything you’ve learned that day, take out your dictionary and learn a new word.

10. Stop complaining for the next 100 days. A couple of years back, Will Bowen gave a purple rubber bracelet to each person in his congregation to remind them to stop complaining. “Negative talk produces negative thoughts; negative thoughts produce negative results”, says Bowen. For the next 100 days, whenever you catch yourself complaining about anything, stop yourself.

11. Set your alarm a minute earlier every day for the next 100 days. Then make sure that you get out of bed as soon as your alarm rings, open the windows to let in some sunlight, and do some light stretching. In 100 days you’ll be waking up an hour and forty minutes earlier than you’re waking up now.

12. For the next 100 days, keep Morning Pages, which is a tool suggested by Julia Cameron. Morning Pages are simply three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning.

13. For the next 100 days make it a point to feed your mind with the thoughts, words, and images that are most consistent with who you want to be, what you want to have, and what you want to achieve.

Finances

14. Create a spending plan (also known as a budget). Track every cent that you spend for the next 100 days to make sure that you’re sticking to your spending plan.

15. Scour the internet for frugality tips, choose ten of the tips that you find, and apply them for the next 100 days.  Here are some possibilities:

  • Go to the grocery store with cash and a calculator instead of using your debit card.
  • Take inventory before going to the grocery store to avoid buying repeat items.
  • Scale back the cable.
  • Ask yourself if you really need a landline telephone.
  • Consolidate errands into one trip to save on gas.

Keep track of how much money you save over the next 100 days by applying these tips.

16. For the next 100 days, pay for everything with paper money and keep any change that you receive. Then, put all of your change in a jar and see how much money you can accumulate in 100 days.

17. Don’t buy anything that you don’t absolutely need for 100 days. Use any money you save by doing this to do one of the following:

  • Pay down your debt, if you have any.
  • Put it toward your six month emergency fund.
  • Start setting aside money to invest.

18. Set an hour aside every day for the next 100 days to devote to creating one source of passive income.

Time Management

19. For the next 100 days, take a notebook with you everywhere in order to keep your mind decluttered. Record everything, so that it’s safely stored in one place—out of your head—where you can decide what to do with it later. Include things such as the following:

  • Ideas for writing assignments.
  • Appointment dates.
  • To Do list items

20. Track how you spend your time for 5 days. Use the information that you gather in order to create a time budget: the percentage of your time that you want to devote to each activity that you engage in on a regular basis. This can include things such as:

  • Transportation
  • Housework
  • Leisure
  • Income-Generating Activities

Make sure that you stick to your time budget for the remaining 95 days.

21. Identify one low-priority activity which you can stop doing for the next 100 days, and devote that time to a high priority task instead.

22. Identify five ways in which you regularly waste time, and limit the time that you’re going to spend on these activities each day, for the next 100 days. Here are three examples:

  • Watch no more than half-an-hour of television a day.
  • Spend no more than half-an-hour each day on social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Stumbleupon.
  • Spend no more than twenty minutes a day playing video games.

23. For the next 100 days, stop multi-tasking; do one thing at a time without distractions.

24. For the next 100 days, plan your day the night before.

25. For the next 100 days, do the most important thing on your To-Do list first, before you do anything else.

26. For the next 14 weeks, conduct a review of each week. During your weekly review, answer the following:

  • What did you accomplish?
  • What went wrong?
  • What went right?

27. For the next 100 days, spend a few minutes at the end of each day organizing your desk, filing papers, and making sure that your work area is clean and orderly, so that you can walk in to a neat desk the next day.

28. Make a list of all of the commitments and social obligations that you have in the next 100 days. Then, take out a red pen and cross out anything that does not truly bring you joy or help move you along the path to achieving your main life goals.

29. For the next 100 days, every time that you switch to a new activity throughout the day stop and ask yourself, “Is this the best use of my time at this moment?”

Health

30. Losing a pound of fat requires burning 3500 calories.  If you reduce your caloric intake by 175 calories a day for the next 100 days, you’ll have lost 5 pounds in the next 100 days.

31. For the next 100 days, eat five servings of vegetables every day.

32.  For the next 100 days, eat three servings of fruit of every day.

33. Choose one food that constantly sabotages your efforts to eat healthier—whether it’s the decadent cheesecake from the bakery around the corner, deep-dish pizza, or your favorite potato chips—and go cold turkey for the next 100 days.

34.  For the next 100 days, eat from a smaller plate to help control portion size.

35. For the next 100 days, buy 100% natural juices instead of the kind with added sugar and preservatives.

36. For the next 100 days, instead of carbonated drinks, drink water.

37. Create a list of 10 healthy, easy to fix breakfast meals.

38. Create a list of 20 healthy, easy to fix meals which can be eaten for lunch or dinner.

39. Create a list of 10 healthy, easy to fix snacks.

40. Use your lists of healthy breakfast meals, lunches, dinners, and snacks in order to plan out your meals for the week ahead of time. Do this for the next 14 weeks.

41. For the next 100 days, keep a food log. This will help you to identify where you’re deviating from your planned menu, and where you’re consuming extra calories.

42. For the next 100 days, get at least twenty minutes of daily exercise.

43. Wear a pedometer and walk 10,000 steps, every day, for the next 100 days. Every step you take during the day counts toward the 10,000 steps:

  • When you walk to your car.
  • When you walk from your desk to the bathroom.
  • When you walk over to talk to a co-worker, and so on.

44. Set up a weight chart and post it up in your bathroom. Every week for the next 14 weeks, keep track of the following:

  • Your weight.
  • Your percentage of body fat.
  • Your waist circumference.

45. For the next 100 days, set your watch to beep once an hour, or set up a computer reminder, to make sure that you drink water on a regular basis throughout the day.

46. For the next 100 days, make it a daily ritual to mediate, breath, or visualize every day in order to calm your mind.

Your Relationship

47.   For the next 100 days, actively look for something positive in your partner every day, and write it down.

48. Create a scrapbook of all the things you and your partner do together during the next 100 days. At the end of the 100 days, give your partner the list you created of positive things you observed about them each day, as well as the scrapbook you created.

49. Identify 3 actions that you’re going to take each day, for the next 100 days, in order to strengthen your relationship. These can include the following:

  • Say “I love you” and “Have a good day” to your significant other every morning.
  • Hug your significant other as soon as you see each other after work.
  • Go for a twenty minute walk together every day after dinner; hold hands.

Social

50. Connect with someone new every day for the next 100 days, whether it’s by greeting a neighbor you’ve never spoken to before, following someone new on Twitter, leaving a comment on a blog you’ve never commented on before, and so on.

51. For the next 100 days, make it a point to associate with people you admire, respect and want to be like.

52. For the next 100 days, when someone does or says something that upsets you, take a minute to think over your response instead of answering right away.

53. For the next 100 days, don’t even think of passing judgment until you’ve heard both sides of the story.

54. For the next 100 days do one kind deed for someone every day, however small, even if it’s just sending a silent blessing their way.

55. For the next 100 days, make it a point to give praise and approval to those who deserve it.

56. For the next 100 days, practice active listening. When someone is talking to you, remain focused on what they’re saying, instead of rehearsing in your head what you’re going to say next. Paraphrase what you think you heard them say to make sure that you haven’t misinterpreted them, and encourage them to elaborate on any points you’re still not clear about.

57. Practice empathy for the next 100 days. If you disagree with someone, try to see the world from their perspective; put yourself in their shoes. Be curious about the other person, about their beliefs and their life experience, and about the thinking process that they followed to reach their conclusions.

58. For the next 100 days, stay in your own life and don’t compare yourself to anyone else.

59. For the next 100 days, place the best possible interpretation on the actions of others.

60. For the next 100 days, keep reminding yourself that everyone is doing the best that they can.

11 November

I woke up feeling so sad today. I think I’m lonely being back and I’m haunted by feelings of stupidity. I don’t really understand why but I just can’t express myself. When I speak no one seems to understand what I’m saying. I went out with my sister and her friend last night and I can see the old patterns of childhood communication. My sister is very smart and she can talk for a long time without taking a break. She gets upset when I interrupt her so I try really hard not to but I guess by the time she stops everyone wants to speak because when I start talking people stop me two words in to ask a question and then go off on a tangent and I’m not really sure if maybe my difficulties expressing myself are rooted in the fact that I was never allowed to finish a sentence as a child so I just don’t have much practice… and then I overcompensate by trying to simplify things down into a brief interjection but even that doesn’t work… I feel stupid and at a complete loss as to how I can improve on this. How can I make what I say clearer, be able to finish what I’m saying, be interesting enough that people want to listen?

Musings on the seduction of time

About me, I am 32 years old and I have recently returned to Melbourne. There was a time when I removed my birth year off facebook, I don’t know why, it just seemed to be in vogue at the time. My sister tells me a story in which one describes oneself as ageless and in doing so lifts the stresses that come with ‘ageing’, so better to rephrase that and say ‘I am ageless’. The passing of time is better marked by my experiences and how I have shown myself to be, marking time by the passage of hours and minutes and days loses something – we do not just get old, we get lost.

And so the reverse is also true, taking time and turning it into hours and minutes and days creates a tension that is hard to overcome.

I decided to write this “blog” because I have just returned after 12 months living and working in Ha Noi and my short visits to neighbouring lands have left me with a deep desire for travel (a desire that is probably always there but sometimes lays dormant) and yet, I feel that I have come to a point in my life where travel is not enough. Learning and doing are not enough. Squeezing ever more into hours and minutes of the day has diminishing returns. Which raises the burning question for me, the one that I wish to explore, how do you seduce time? How do you make her your lover rather than fighting against her? Can one achieve more with one’s life if one seduces time?

I want so much from my life. I want not just to travel but to learn, to continue on as a student of life, to build my technical expertise, to gain wisdom, to create something meaningful and worthwhile with my time in this world – and beyond all that, to do so through a love of life and time that allows me to somehow have a loosely defined ‘it all’.