CREATIVE SOLITUDE

Albert Einstein wrote, "The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind."

PASSION AND TRUE CALLING

“Determine early on whether your passion is your true calling, or just a fantasy to get out of your system.”  - - - -Tami Zhu

DREAM POSTS

“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” - - -  Earl Nightingale

Life is a long journey filled along the way with pot holes, obstructions, smooth pavement and challenges. It is how each person deals with things in their path creates a lesson on a "life well lived."

One has to ponder whether the next generations will have a similar view of their world.

For example, in the 1970s, a boy would dream of becoming a millionaire and owning a Cadillac. He was told that if he worked hard in school, and got a good job with a good business, he could achieve anything. The generation who got through college in the early 1980s and into professions probably made those dream posts along their paths.

But can the same be shared with boys today?

He is immersed in technology from an early age. Before he speaks, he can play simple games on his parent's smart phone. He views the world as an entitlement. He is pampered by his parents and spoiled by his grandparents. He will have a different view from his parents dreams. He may not want to own a car. He may not want to work hard (spending extra time to get promotions and salary/benefit increases). He may not want to learn about 401(k) or retirement planning. He wants to live a free and simple lifestyle with his other Millennials in a faux sense of utopian ignorance.

He really does not ponder future dreams but instead views the world in the present. What can he consume, digitally and physically, in this moment. His goal is to move through life and experience it as it comes to him like a shark wandering the ocean currents for food.

There will be exceptions to this view. But many employers have commented in the past five years that they have good, well paying jobs that remain unfilled due to the deficiencies in entry level hires, especially their personal views toward work and self-determination. They need supervision, encouragement and rewards for simple tasks. Employers want employees not burdensome babysitters for managers.

Dreams and goals are the markers for people to expand their horizons, to push themselves to greater heights, to prove to themselves there is more in this world than just what could be handed to them. There are the creators and there are the consumers of content. The gulf seems to have widened in the passing generations.

 It is like the professional who is bogged down in their regular job. But they have always dreamed of writing the great American novel. But they seem to feel there is not enough time to start or finish one. Your mind will trick you into that trap of procrastination. Instead of watching a TV show repeat, fire up the word processor. Instead of going out to eat, set a slow crock pot meal and fire up the word processor. Instead of just walking in a nature preserve taking in its beauty, multitask and think about your novel's characters and story structures.

Time management seems to be the biggest hurdle for people who want to accomplish their dreams.

EFFORT

“Don’t follow your passion; follow your effort." - - -

Mark Cuban

It seems counter to what we were told as children. Following one's passion would lead to success. The idea is that if you are passionate about something, your effort to accomplish it would be an easy.

Following one's passion seems like common sense approach to life.

Anything arousing enthusiasm is supposed to be a good thing. But passion is an emotion.

Effort is a vigorous attempt to accomplish a result.

A good example of this would be a student who wants to be an artist. She loves to draw, color and paint. It comes natural to her. But she does have the will to go out, ambition to make the rounds, or put in the long hours to get employed or meet deadlines in order to make her passion her career.

Effort is not considered an important personal tool. Technology has made productivity easy (you can look up anything on a search engine and cut and paste a report.) Smartphone addiction has made people lazy zombies who can easily waste hours doing mindless things. 

Effort requires concentration, attention to detail and focus. Only experience can drive people to attain excellence in their chosen goals.

 

LAZINESS EXPLAINED

Science is trying to unravel why some people do not have the drive to meet the minimal demands of daily life.

There’s a neurological reason for apathy and laziness, according to new research. Inefficient connections between certain areas of the brain may make it harder for some people to decide to act.

Although inefficient neural connections don’t explain away everyone’s laziness, new research could shed some light on the kind of pathological, extreme apathy that sometimes plagues people with Alzheimer’s disease or recovering from certain types of stroke. 

To understand the neurological basis of apathy, neurologists at Oxford University looked for differences in the brains of young people who appeared motivated (based on a questionnaire) and those who appeared more apathetic. Participants played a decision-making game while researchers watched what happened in their brains, using an MRI.

In each round of the game, the researcher offered the subject a reward in return for some effort. Participants had to decide whether to accept the offer, based on whether the reward as worth the effort. Predictably, the participants who had already been identified as apathetic were much less likely to accept offers that required effort, even if the reward was large - but when apathetic subjects did choose to accept an offer, their MRIs showed much more activity in the pre-motor cortex, an area of the brain involved in taking actions, than in more motivated participants.

That was the opposite of what researchers expected. They had assumed that lazy people’s pre-motor cortices would show less activity when deciding to take action.

“We thought that this might be because their brain structure is less efficient, so it’s more of an effort for apathetic people to turn decisions into actions,” said lead researcher Masud Husain, a professor of neurology and cognitive neuroscience at Oxford University.

 After further investigation, it turned out that people who identified as apathetic had less efficient connections between the anterior cingulate cortex, a part of the brain involved in making decisions and anticipating rewards, and the supplementary motor area, a part of the brain that helps control movement.

“The brain uses around a fifth of the energy you’re burning each day. If it takes more energy to plan an action, it becomes more costly for apathetic people to make actions,” explained Husain. “Their brains have to make more effort.” Husain said.

What motivates people used to be tied to environmental upbringing and the need to feed any or all of the Seven Deadly Sins. But the Oxford research seems to explore that there may be a physical neurological basis why certain people are slackers while others are motivated Type A personalities.

Even brilliant people can be apathetic in certain areas of their daily lives. Take for example, Jack. He was a brilliant surgeon, but he failed to put in the time and effort in his social relationships. He had no friends, only distant colleagues at work. He had no real social life; his marriage failed from jealousy and rage because he failed to work on his communication with his spouse. 

In fact, most of the main characters had a clear lack of attitude toward being social animals. They were basically loners. They shied away from commitment or change for fear of rejection. 

Of characters like Shannon used their spoiled, rich upbringing to conclude that they did not have to put themselves on the line in order to get what she wanted from men. Even when she was rejected or abandoned, she did not have the mental strength to change or adapt to the island circumstances.

If one looks at LOST as an experiment in human neurology, did the base line of the island trauma and need for survival override the inherent physical neurological deficits that cause them to be normally apathetic? It would seem that despite the need for the characters to change their behavior, very few did except to form loose friendship bonds. A lazy friend is a bad friend.