Stop complaining then things start working?

Based on some negativity I was projecting (aka bitching) my Life Coach asked me or rather ordered me to read “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne.  She said that it had a good summary on encouraging good thoughts.  I was a bit skeptical to even purchase it because the cover reminded of the video game Myst and so I thought it was going to be some fantastical, cryptic read.  I happened to see it at Costco and picked it up because what’s $14 when you are spending a few hundred on other things you really don’t need.

I tweeted my friends asking if they had read it and I got a flurry of responses, most were highly opinionated from the usual suspects:

• If you waste your time reading more than 5 pages of that we’re going to have an intervention. Avoid.
• The only secret in “The Secret” is how such a crappy book made so much bank. Seriously, if you want it, make it happen. Done. 
• everyone is screwed, that’s why the book is a hunk of crap.
• You’re way past the “The Secret”. It’s basically a dumbed-down voodoo version of “Flow”.
• The Secret is that you may accidentally be supporting an out-of-work comedian.
• clifnotes: If you sit around thinking you dont deserve anything you won’t get it. If you know you deserve it, you make it happen.

Based on my own principles, I opted to read the book and form my own opinion.   I’m about half way through and the gist of what I’m reading is that you need to be in a good state of mind because you project your feelings out into the universe and then they get reflected back at you – so if you are in a bad mood, bad energy will flow back and the opposite is true too (which is what we’re going for).  Additionally, you need to Ask, Believe, and Receive:  Ask the universe for what you want (but only once), believe deep in your soul that it will happen (no timelines here), and be open to receiving it when it does – as if you were expecting it to happen all along.  The book also discusses how you need to put yourself in the right frame of mind before asking for anything:  If you want a house then go look at houses, if you want a car go sit in the one you want.  Also, size or price of the item has no bearing on the ask…$1 is no different than a million dollars.

So far it is a really easy read and hasn’t said anything that I didn’t already think about in one way or another because I’ve been reading the book Flow and I have also taken an Art of Living course (not promoting here…just took it for the breathing exercises…maybe I’ll post something on that experience later) which is about being in the present and focusing on what you want.

Going back to the title of this post - if I were less negative about things that annoy me, would the annoyances stop occurring and everything just work?  My first inclination is to refute that hypothesis because there is no way that me alone can project my positive thoughts onto every new social networking website or gadget that I come across and want to use.  I think that my experience in working through issues could be vastly improved, but everyone involved would have to be practicing “The Secret” in order for it to truly work holistically across all experiences.

Ultimately, the answer to my question is “no” however I think there is a level in which I can discuss the things that I find difficult in a way that is positive towards the receivers that they are afforded the opportunity to work on a response and a solution in a positive way as well.

We’ll see how this works out – I will try the sandwich way of writing: start out with a positive, details and criticisms in between, then end on a positive note.

Filed under: annoyed, annoy, complain, feelings, Flow, life, life coach, positive, The Secret

Two days of fail

I have a big long list of crappiness that I experienced yesterday and today.  No intro needed, let’s just dive right in shall we…

• I made a bunch of folders on my phone for my fave text messages and then my Smartphone crashed and when it recovered it burped out all my text messages into oblivion.  I have a very bad memory and I require documentation to even remember what movies I’ve seen.  This was a huge bummer.
• I Brightkited a bunch at Emerald City ComiCon and then when I got to the best part – meeting Wil Wheaton (@wilw) I didn’t get my frickin’ pic with him. Dammit! I guess that means it never happened.
• The actor who plays Peter Patrelli on Heroes didn’t show at ComiCon. Fail!
• My knees have been bothering me while I jog and someone suggested that I get some new shoes so I went to Niketown.  I decided to get some Nike+ compatible shoes (of course) and asked for the watch+sensor because I don’t have an iPod Nano.  The salesman took 10 minutes to go through all the nuts and bolts of the system and then at the end of the pitch I exclaimed “sold!” and he said “sorry, we are all out”.  WTF? Why would you bother even trying to sell something you don’t have in stock. Thanks for nothing.
• Twitter is ticking me off a bit…first, on a couple of occassions the web version will indicate I have entered 140 characters into the update well and then I press enter and it tells me I was >140 chars. Wtf?  Second, sometimes when I send a direct message and then refresh the page, it appear to post the message again because the confirmation message will appear over and over again. I’m always worried that I’m spamming the same message over and over.
• I forgot to get my Mum a Mother’s Day card. I fail.
• I have to reboot my smartphone everyday because the browser will stop rendering webpages.
• A Seattle weather report is texted to me at 8am everyday. And everyday it reports rain.
• Forgetting Sarah Marshall was a terrible movie, with horrid editing and the walk home made it even worse because the cold wind was ripping into me like a hard slap.
• My real estate agent told my ex today that she thought the house was priced too high.  It has been on the market for 7 weeks and she decided to tell us this now? Are you kidding me?
• I have to keep my house clean everyday because it is for sale and this has become quite the onerous routine every time I want to leave the house.  I never used to make my bed or put every single dish into the dishwasher after use. I feel like I am living in a museum not a house.  I hope it sells soon but then I have other decisions to make so its a bit of a catch 22…
• Today I had plans for a bike ride with friends but I couldn’t find my bike pump and neither could they.  Then it started raining and we gave up.
• Lastly, I would love to be tapping away on my keyboard from the comfort of my bed, but my wireless router is broken and I am tethered to the modem. Meh

Filed under: annoyed, annoyed, complaints, fail, life

Sunny in Seattle but I’m Still Complainin’

Until recently I didn’t realize how often I get annoyed by things…We aren’t talking just once or twice per day, we are talking upwards of at least 10 times.  I started counting the number of times when my Life Coach (aka shrink for people that want to think outside the box) requested that I start journaling my day.  I would leave her office after an hour still rambling on (to myself at that point) and in her absence she wanted me to have an outlet.  She handed me a notepad and pen and said “write down every thought as it comes to you.”  I looked at her with my usual ‘wtf’ raised eyebrow and explained that I got hand cramps after about 30 seconds of using those old fashioned writing utensils and if I wrote down every thought I would surely develop tennis elbow.  We agreed or rather I *told* her that I would journal on my laptop while riding to and from work on the Microsoft Connector bus which is a total of about 30 minutes.  After she figured out that the Internet can “travel” with you, she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of me spending more time on my laptop because she thinks I spend too much time online already, but conceded to the idea that I would use some of my brain energy “constructively” and for my own well-being.

I started listing things in my wiki throughout the day that annoyed me (I give credit or curses to Tantek who told me to use a wiki as my instrument of thought).  Interestingly enough all my thoughts were really complaints as opposed to just ideas, and I didn’t list everything because I thought that the trivial things didn’t really matter, or if it wasn’t technology related then it was bunk.  But, then I got to thinking that I would really love to get an actual count of the things that tick me off so I know how much of my day is spent being in a negative state of mind.  Not that it would change anything, but just an interesting statistic. Also, I thought that for my own mental health I might also want to list out the things that make me happy or “happified” as I like to say.  I was a little worried at first that I would have nothing to report on this front, but in fact there have been a few instances of good karma coming my way and so my life isn’t just all spit and vinegar.  I report on that now in my Tiger Love blog.

Alright, enough jibber jabber, time to get to my list of annoyances:

• I have this dumb idea that if I weigh myself every morning I won’t gain a lot of weight because I can catch myself before gaining too much.  Well, I just realized that the stupid display on the scale has been frozen to my weight from 2 months ago and in fact, I have gained more than a few pounds. So I’m annoyed at my fancy scale, SXSW for starting me on my partying rampage, and alcohol in general.
• I got on the bus this morning and flipped open my laptop lid.  I hadn’t shut down Windows Vista the night before (stupid me!) and so waited the 10 minutes (literally) for it to wake up and figure out where it was (I’ve had a few of those mornings so I had some empathy).  It finally started ticking a bit but everything was so slow then I decided to reboot.  Waited another 10 minutes for this cycle.  By the time is was humming an elevator tune I was half way to work and realized I had better type super fast.  I finally got online (wifi..not annoying) and started writing in my blog.  About 5 minutes later my screen froze.  We are talking no ctrl-alt-del, no right clicking task manager, nothing.  Oh, and I hadn’t saved yet either.  This totally freaking annoyed me and I hadn’t even gotten to work yet.
• On the bus I was sitting on the back bench sandwiched between two somewhat large guys.  The song playing on the radio was “I feel like making love” by Bad Company.  Needless to say, this was ironic and uncomfortable all sandwiched together.
• Got to work and had a 9:00am meeting with three other people (oh and 9:00am meetings really annoy me).  One person was giving guidance on something and writing a chart out on a piece of paper (we already know how I feel about paper…). The other two people started copying his chart on their pieces of paper.  I just couldn’t handle this redundant behavior.  Is that really necessary?  And it was a chart with 4 boxes in it..come on.
• As I have mentioned, I now take the MIcrosoft Connector bus…originally I decided to use it on M-W-F but then decided to try 5 days/week because I have a frickin’ huge SUV that sucks gas like me drinking Kahlua and milk.  I navigated to the Connector website to change my recurring appointment to add Tuesday and Thursday.  I clicked on edit but the checkboxes to add those dates were grayed out.  So I decided to create a new recurring appointment for those two days and it told me that I had already booked those days. Well I hadn’t of course because I checked my schedule just in case I had some sort of memory fart. Nope, hadn’t. At 4:30pm I called the number to talk to a support person (available 10:00am-7:00pm) and it went to voicemail that said they were gone for the day.  A friend is coming into town and will be borrowing my car and I was worried that I wouldn’t get the days and times I needed so I promptly programmed single trips, one by one, morning and evening for one month.  If you can’t do the math that’s 16 operations times 8 clicks each which is 128 mouse clicks.  Needless to say, that annoyed me.
• I have had my work laptop for long enough that I am permitted to get another one.  I asked if I could get a Mac and run Windows on it (I mean come on, I’m like the only one at conferences without the kewl kids laptop).  I was told to give a business justification because otherwise everyone in my workgroup would want a Mac.  What kind of freaking answer is that?  I don’t really care what others want, if a Mac is going to make me happy after 8 years of servitude at the ‘Soft, then I should be given one wrapped in a red bow.

I know I had a lot more grievances, but those ones are burned into my head still.  Maybe I will do a better job of jotting my “issues” down on my Smartphone…oh boy, don’t even get me started on that.

Filed under: annoyed, annoyed, bitching, complaining, complaints, humor, life, personal, random, rant, thoughts, wtf