The new 7 great tricks to improve your life.

No, this isn't another "7 great tricks to improve your life" article. I have read many of them. I have read many great advice lists and found many great ideas on various sites (like Zen Habits just to name one). I have also found a lot of advice that doesn't suit me and finally, there's even more tricks that I have found and lost.

It's time for something different.

New year is coming, and with it, the resolutions. So, for that occasion, I have 7 awesome tips to make your life better:

1. find 3 sports activities that you will practice without making any excuses
2. find the 3 weight loss mistakes you keep on making
3. find 10 tips that will help you become more productive
4. same thing for organized
5. find 5 cool family activities to do more often
6. find 6 lunches that you will finally pack for work
7. find 7 more positions for the list you're reading that would best apply to you.

Once you've found all that stuff (and I bet you know where to look), you'll have a great starting point for improving your life in 2010. Good luck!

Ten little zen things that I do

This post is totally inspired by 10 Odd Little Minimalist Things I Do from Zen Habits, it's my take on the same subject.

1. No watch.
It started with a watch with a broken bracelet - I learned to check time on my mobile phone.

2. No alarm-clock.
Cell phone again. That's not really creative, as Lifehacker recently asked: "What's Replaced Your Alarm Clock?" and over 7000 people said "cell phone".

3. No "real" phone.
Primarly because of all the marketing calls you can get - haven't had one since I moved in! Also, only one number to give, one bill... But I really need a better cell phone plan.

4. No TV.
It's just a screen for the PC, the Wii and the X-Box. I might start watching it while doing housework, however, I don't promise I'll keep away, but it doesn't suck my time (the web, however, hmm...)

5. No iPod.
I used to prefer my cheap normal Zen Creative mp3 player, but It's getting more and more...

6. No mp3 player.
Cell phone taking over again.

7. No hairdresser.
Though maybe I should visit one once and again. But I wear long blone hair, which is a simple, but great look, cut my bangs myself and wear them slightly to the side so no one can see if they're cut unevenly.

8. No hairstyling products.
I never decided to sacrifice any time to first, learn some advanced hairstyling, and then just do it. I believe you can't go wrong with long hair.

9. No make-up.
Actually, I don't do this that often. You rather won't see me without make-up at work. But sometimes, I don't wear any and feel good about it. My mind is free (if I don't have time for make-up it's absolutely okay) and that's what counts.

10. No gym membership.
That's mainly for financial reasons. This may not work for everyone for various reasons, primarly motivation. Health is priceless and if you can't get motivated without attending a class, do it. You might also take bigger pleasure in that class, meet friends there, use equipement you don't want to store home, etc etc. But I like yoga, pilates and kick boxing and manage pretty well to make good use of my floor, big ball and Wii.

My biggest dream is to marry well (and that's not pathetic)

My biggest dream is to marry well. Is it. And some people find it pathetic. And I'm gonna prove it's not.

Just marry? And that's it?

People ask when I speak my mind. The thing is, it's not just marry and it's never it.

It's never it because marriage is forever, for better or for worse. I don't want to just get into it, but to stay in it. For life.

It's not just marry because it's about love everyday, it's about making a great commitment, it's about a lot more than just going through a certain ceremony. Love is easy on Valentine's day. It's easy when things are good. It's harder when you have to sacrifice a dream for it or the person you loved hurt you. Still, I wanna do it without exceptions: love that man every single day, even if he lies to me, cheats on me, put something above me... Of course, I want my husband to love me that way as well.

In the TV shows I watch, the protagonists keep on changing partners - otherwise, not much would happen. But they have someone predestined for them in a way that the viewers know it from the start. They might end up together after seven seasons of stupidity (or soon but drift apart and back), but they will, and when they do, everyone knows this relationship is not like the others - it's forever. That's what I want - to marry my Mr Right (I'll pass on the seven seasons of stupidity).

Attentive readers will ask:

But you're already engaged!

That's right, I am. Therefore, my biggest dream is to marry my fiance. There - I found a way to say it that sounds dumb even to me! What's a fiance for if not to marry him? But, if you read that post attentively, you should understand how much this means to me.

Perspective

• Your plane is two hours late because of bad weather: big deal. You're so tired now.
• The Warsaw airport is too small and no new one is being built: very big deal. Flying out of here is such a pain in the plane.
• A part of the Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport collapsed: huge deal. Major news featured on tv.
  
• The Tbilisi International Airport has been bombed: no big deal. There's a war going on.
  

The power of a good definition.

I heard once that most arguments are about definitions. I'm actually going to argue with that, as it implies that everyone thinks basically the same, different people just label things differently. However, I agree that it is crucial to precisely define things we talk about. And today, I'm going to talk about courage.

So what is courage anyway? No one ever asks because we all "know" since preschool that courage is "like when the knight fights the dragon and he is not scared".

I did however hear a good definition of courage once. In a Disney Channel movie: "The princess diaries". (I was young and needed something to watch, okay?)

Courage is not the lack of fear but the conviction that something else is more important than fear.

The biggest difference between those two definitions? Their impact. When you have the first one in mind and you're scared of doing something, you won't find the courage to do it. You'll think "I'm not like those courageous people because I'm scared". With the second one, you chances of doing the thing you fear skyrocket, but only if it's the right thing to do. Because it doesn't really work when it comes to something dangerous and stupid. Unless it has some value for you, like impressing some people, fear will stop you and courage won't help, because it's no courage to do something unreasonable. (Okay, there a whole other discussion about the difference between "is stupid" and "is stupid to you", but I'm not going there now.)

Realizing this made me really think. Why is a children movie the only place I heard such a good definition of courage? I read, go to the church and stuff, and somehow my environment never really taught me about courage. What else did I miss?

Another example just came to my mind: humility. As the opposite of pride, it's often confused with low self-esteem: the lower you think of yourself, the more humble you are. But, don't we hate hearing "Oh, I'm so fat"? And how about "I'm an expert on this, I will take this responsibility" - isn't it a really positive attitude? So can humility be something negative? Not if you define it like St. Bernard: "a virtue by which a man knowing himself as he truly is, abases himself". The crucial part here is the truth: if you're truly an expert in something, don't deny it, others will benefit more from your skills than from a so-called humility.

I think that after centuries of focusing on humility as the opposite of pride, our society needs now more to fight the exaggerated low self-esteem, which I think is a form of pride: "it hurts me I'm so fat, because I'm supposed to be fit". Still, it's hard to find the balance between the two sides, but keeping in mind a good definition really helps.

It's amazing how values that seem so outdated can become great when you give them a bit of thought and look at them in a new way.

Tolerance is intolerant.

Tolerance sounds nice, but personally, I think it sucks. Respect is much better. Go respect!

First, "tolerance" means that you think that what you tolerate is bad. With respect, it's the opposite. Tolerance is good for loud music totally incoherent with your taste. Or inappropriate behaviour. Can you tolerate inappropriate behaviour? You can, even though it's inappropriate. Can you respect it? No, because it's inappropriate. You can however respect people's freedom to choose to behave so, because freedom is good.

Second, tolerance is contradictive, as it doesn't tolerate intolerance. I just read an extremely expressive example of it today, in an article by Megan Carpentier about same-sex marriages:

(..) the opponents of gay marriage, those blind, blithering idiots who think that allowing people (...) to marry will hurt Marriage and religion and make the Baby Jesus cry and/or God smite us or whatever people like that use to justify their blind intolerance...

Nothing says "tolerance" like calling someone a blind, blithering idiot, making fun of his arguments and ending the article with "fuck that guy". I personally am an opponent of same-sex marriage. Still, I respect other's people freedom and privacy and do not deserve to be called an idiot. I'd really love my views to be respected as well, or at least tolerated.

Materialism

I've been getting quite frustrated lately over my lack of money. So, here are some thoughts about all the material stuff around that have come to my mind as a result.

First, I needed a solution to my problem. I saw two:

1. get money
2. get over it.

Number one. Asking parents was done a few months ago with a positive effect and I feel I can't really ask for more right now. Getting a job is a wider subject. I am considering it, but I have quite a bit of work at school and the only useful thing I can do right now is coding in php (or C, which I hate). Staying at home for a few more months and learning something like ASP (or Java) would get me a salary 3 times higher, so doesn't investing a little bit more time in education seem reasonable?

Number two doesn't exclude number one and can do wonders. First question: what do I intend to by and what do I really need?

1. A good mascara and a good blush. These would actually better wait a bit, like until I get a job and show my face to someone. The products I own are good enough for my couple of hours long trips to school.
2. Well fitting jeans. I brought some recently. My choice was very limited by my budget, but I found some. And besides, any skirt or dress looks better, so I don't need many pairs of jeans.
   
3. Some comfy pants for yoga. I found these among my stuff before I had the opportunity to buy some - isn't that way better?
4. Radiohead CDs, because I've heard they have great lyrics. These can wait a bit too, and in the meantime, I can listen to them on-line. This applies to other positions on my "music to get" list (Bowling for Soup, Three Days Grace...)
5. Some beads and stuff to make my own jewelry. Cool and way cheaper than actual jewelry, but I don't have time for crafting right now anyway. Again, can wait.

The conclusion is pretty obvious: I've got everything I need! This one has lead me further: for me, "hunger" means "move your butt downstairs to the kitchen", "no electricity" means "they'll fix it in a couple of hours, take your laptop to school or Boyfriend's office meanwhile". So let's take a while to appreciate all those things we've got and take for granted.

Okay, I'm slowly getting over it. I still know in the back of my head that I'm in IT and money-wise, great times will come soon. Just be a bit patient.

Besides thinking, I like reading sites with good advice, like Life Hacker (although they really abuse of the term "hacking") and Zen Habits and one day, I came across Oprah's organizing tips and among them, an article called "the urge to purge". In the article, the following advice:

"You should own nothing that is not useful, beautiful, or loved."

Sound simple and smart. But my question is: why do we own things that aren't any of the three above? Okay, there are all the mistaken gifts and free samples, but when we buy something, how do we know it's not going to fail that test? How soon until it does? No easy answers here. I got an idea, though. I try to postpone all my purchases (well, not shower gel, but you get the idea). I try living without the thing and see how it goes. Some things have been dumped and I don't even remember what they were - these are unnecessary expenses avoided!

Feel like reading more on the subject? Penelope Trunk has an interesting article, "5 steps to taming materialism, from an accidental expert", that really gives a lot to think about. My favourite part is the one about moving and having to leave almost all possessions behind.

Allergy to God

I'm writing today about a phenomenon I've been noticing quite often recently, which I call "allergy to God".

Allergy to God is when I asked people about their opinions on an article and one person replied:

"I didn't read the article 'cause I saw in the comments that god was mentioned a lot, not my thing."

Does this word bite? I have no problem with reading articles mentioning Buddha or Allah or ancient mythology or even atheism. Okay, yesterday, I decided not to watch a documentary about treating pedophiles, as it showed like they don't understand the harm they did to the victims and speak of what they did with a terrifying indifference. But if you feel in a similar way when it's about God, I say it's allergy.

Allergy to God is when people don't want the Pope to visit an University:

The students and some professors say the Pope's reactionary views and "anti-science" attitudes made him an unsuitable speaker.

So that's what democracy and freedom of speech is about?

Allergy to God is when Young People Who Rock reports about the the organizers of "I Am Worth the Wait", saying:

We hear about sex all the time -- sex scandals, sex tapes, sexual marketing. The young organizers of I Am Worth the Wait don't want to hear about it anymore. And they certainly don't want to hear how cool it is. (...) The goal of the group is to bring together teens and 20-somethings of all races, religions and backgrounds to talk about something other than sex.

And people reply (I'm quoting an anonymous comment here, there are many others alike):

So, this group is discouraging kids from talking openly about sex? That's EXACTLY what we need! Denial! Then again, that's always been the conservative religious way, hasn't it?

Where's the denial? Where's the religion? If you need to talk about sex, there are many opportunities, there's a lot of information easily reachable. The group doesn't forbid anything to anyone, it just offers something different.

Allergy to God is everywhere. However, I believe it's easy to cure.

Meeting with the ABW (NSA equivalent)

I just came back from a meeting with the ABW (Internal Security Agency). I'm enchated and excited as every little kid when he discovers his vocation at the early age of eight and says "I wanna be a agent!" (as well as fireman, policeman, austronaut,... I was gonna be a teacher and a writer, never an agent.). I'm seriously considering applying there. But not today.
The pros: the meeting was with people specializing in cryptology, internet security,... And what do they do? EVERYTHING! Cryptography, cryptoanalysis, testing network protocoles,... just make a wish and do it! The have access to all the newest software! And Arabic teachers! I think ths is a place where I could do exactly what I want and I would be able to change it easily as I change my mind. I'm afraid that companies can't provide so many possibilities.
The con: the giant responsability. I wouldn't exactly want to have the weight of the world on my back, and that's what this kinda work is about. I'm scared!
Scared... But that reminds me of one thing: the only good definition of "courage" I ever heard was in a Disney movie (Princess Diaries). I was: "courage is not the lack of fear, but the conviction that something else is more important than fear". Well, isn't the country's security more important than my fear?
This reminds me of another thing: the movie "Thirteen days", when the guys wish there were some great smart guys that would come and solve the issue... but there are no such guys! Or more precisely, they are those guys! All they can do is do their best. So maybe I am one of the guys? With a solid crypto knowledge and being only able to do my best?
That's how I see working at the ABW: as a vocation. You can't do that for the money (they won't hire you). You can't do that for your own satisfaction (allthrough you get it). You can only do it for the country and doing it means assuming a huge responsability, not going "yahoo! I got a great job!".
Now a more pragmatic point of view. It's a work full time, wich means I won't be able to do it for the next 2,5 years (still in school!). So there's no point in applying now. However, it's something that I am really going to consider in two years. I need time to find that vocation in me (or its lack!) and to consider everything. Meanwhile, it's school, hopefully Google Summer of Code this summer, a part-time job next year, and we'll see the rest in its time.