Monthly Archives: May 2011

Quest For Truth

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Chances are you are on some type of quest. What your individual quest is and whether it is defined in your being is something only you know. Most quests are completed silently in solitude. They range from rampaging emotions through to quiet desperation, always looking for a speck of confirmation telling you that you are on the right path.

Once the basic three needs were solved, who knows long ago, regular amounts of food, shelter, and offspring, we started to have have time to ponder other life mysteries. The search for, The Fountain of Youth, goes on yet today, as does the quest for ruling the world, the secret to creating and sustaining life, and the search for our own personal truth(s). Searching for our own personal truth, whether it be religion, lack of religion, or fairies in the hedge row, we all are on the same search, hoping to give meaning to our life.

Michael Ayers has been on a quest for his personal truth for some time now. Michael’s blog has a dedicated following who have stood along side of Michael at various times and topographies, as Michael set off to pursue his own personal truth looking for answers to the question of his own reason for being alive.

You will have to read Michael’s blog yourself to find what Michael has found to be true for him. Michael searched and suffered, hitting deep lows and reaching new heights, only to be plunged into new lows, a repeating cycle of ups and downs. Perhaps Michael’s search is not over yet. Maybe Michael has only reached a higher plateau, and is unknown to himself resting and regrouping, before his insatiable curiosity spurs him onward to find more.

My own quest for what is true for me took decades. I tried to fit everything I knew to be true into a hand me down mold. What I believed to be true was always at odds with my inherited package of what was supposedly true. It was not until I accepted almost everything I was told to believe was not quite true, and my flighty willingness to accept what I knew rather than what I had been told, that I started to believe my own truths.

I am curious if you are your own quest for your own personal truths? Does the version of truth you were given by your family meet your needs, or is there a little niggling voice coming out of the background of your mind every now and then suggesting what you think you believe is not quite true?

If you have heard the voice, have you done anything about it? The first steps as Michael can attest to are the easiest. It is once you are well down the path when the cobble stones beneath your feet start to crumble, and the way becomes slippery, frustrating, and difficult. During these times a second voice is heard. Every explorer and risk taker who stepped out from the herd knows this voice. It is a voice of steeling.

You rarely hear the second voice when the sun is shining and you are sure of the route. You know the truth you are seeking is just around the corner, you can almost see it if you strain your eyes the right way and bend your neck in the correct position. Our final truth is only a short way up the path, we are almost there.

Maybe we become too needy in this moment. We are worn and haggard, and we want to find what we are looking for and be done with it. We are tired from our journey. The quest that seemed so romantic, simple, and fun in the beginning is taking more time and energy than we bargained for.

As the sun sets, and we are tired we hear a new voice, “Maybe we made a mistake? Maybe there is no truth to find? Maybe what we were told is the only truth we need to believe?” The same question formulated into a hundred different doubts makes its presence known. Maybe we should quit it say’s

Putty or steel, what are we made of? To give up the search because it is not fun and is becoming painful, or move one foot in front of the other to the end? Fall back into the fold and safety of the herd, accept their murmurs of welcome, or continue on?

Moving on means more of the same, deprivation, restlessness, loneliness, and doubt become our companions if we choose to continue. It is not an easy choice, and there may not be a correct answer. It is a test of your spirit, and everything you are made of. If you are like Michael and others like him, you too may find what you are looking for.

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Job, Pay Check, Satisfaction

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AJ asked in this post, Taking Pride in Your Work, by asking this question: “I live in Canada and therefore haven’t gone through major disparity. I do see validity in what you’re saying; my question however is: What if money is the ONLY thing you get from your job? or What if you had a job where you were well over qualified for but allowed you to snowboard and the pay was terrible? In the situation I have I would obviously love not to work at all, however I have to. I am referring to both questions here. I work at a gas station. Although I don’t define my self by my job I still am there and it is a constant reminder of the part of my life I hate. Is there any advice you could give to a person that already finds it hard to take pride in many things to find some in my employment? Thnx AJ”

I like this question! “What if money is the ONLY thing you get from your job?” I once worked in a Hotel Laundry for a Ski Resort area myself, so I can relate to this type of job. Let’s pretend money is the only thing you get from your job. Everyone should be asking themselves, “…is money enough?” Is money all I want to define my job by?

In many cases money is all there is, like my job in the laundry room. No one outside of my boss, and one coworker ever saw me at work.  No one else cared what my name was, where I was from, or what I did in life besides hotel laundry. All the Hotel cared about was clean sheets and towels. In my particular situation I also needed to work to support my winter skiing and summer fishing. Money was all there was in this job, and not a lot of money either.

After not too much time went by, money was not enough, so I took on to two different jobs that satisfied my needs better. At the time, I did not realize the advantage some jobs have over other jobs. Your job AJ is one of those jobs that have a huge advantage over the laundry job I had.

AJ’s job at a Gas Station opens up a world of possibilities the average working person does not have. You have access to Customers, lots of Customers. Premium Customers from out of town who are potential employers.

The number of Gas Station Customers who see you each day is probably one of the largest customer bases outside the mountain you snowboard on. Your Customers generally drive newer, more expensive vehicles, and they can afford to leave home for a weekend of skiing. Some of your Customers own their own business, and others are well placed in business. Do you see where this is leading?

When I am out an about in public, shopping or whatever, I pay attention to the people who help me. Whenever someone stands out from the crowd, I make it a point to let them know I appreciate the extra effort they take for me, a customer they may never see again. Whether it is their dress, attitude, knowledge, or professionalism, I let them know I think they are special and stand above from their peers.

These people are usually not highly paid professionals who make six figures listening to my chest wheeze because I have a cold. These Folks are workers at convenience stores, grocery store, and the gas station. These folks could be the same as their co-workers, they could be dress to minimum company standards, maintain a minimum of interaction with their customers, and do the absolute minimum they need to get by. They could choose be average among their peer work group, but are not.

Instead they choose to do their best. Whether their reasons for doing their best are intrinsic, or extrinsic, I can not tell by watching them. Rarely do they say why they are top performers when I tell them I notice the great work they are doing. Unless they reflect their answer back on me, so only they know the real reasons. They might know something I did not know when I was their age, and something that may not have occurred to you either.

I generally tell those outstanding people I come across, that if I were a business person, I would try to hire them away from their present job for more money than they make now. And I mean it! One person who goes above and beyond in a small organization or even a medium sized organization can make a huge difference to how successful the company may be.

Not many of those outstanding people are still working for low pay a few months later. Most have been hired away and work places better suited to their talents with a much larger paycheck – or at least the ones I have run into.

Back to the first part of AJ’s two part question. If AJ chooses to do the minimum, which if any of his customers are going to see anyone other than an extension of a cash register when they fuel up their vehicles? If money is enough, there is no need to do more.

However, AJ has unnoticed skills and more ability than the Gas Station job requires. If I were AJ, I would be looking for ways to make myself stand out from my peer group in front of my customer base. I would look for ways to advertise my other higher level skills.

Eventually one of your Customers, or possibly even the Gas Station owner is going to recognize AJ may be a good fit for their company, or a friends  company. AJ may be mentioned to a business friend in conversation. Someone saying there is a pretty sharp individual working at the Station who is looking for more is not out of the realm of possibility.

AJ should look consider looking beyond another job in town. If all the jobs are low paying, think bigger. Be open to the possibility of being one of those people who drive into the area for a weekend skiing? What if AJ makes the effort, is noticed, offered a position, and hired away by a weekend skier, and now has a serious job in the city? If AJ really wants more, it can be done, and a Gas Station’s Customer Base is a great place to start!

 

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Working for a Living

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I remember my first real job. I was a bag boy – as we were called, someone who bagged groceries at a grocery store. The ‘Work’ concept was a mystery to me even though I started working for money when I was nine years old, and I had recently quit a job that paid twice as much because I disliked what I was doing.

It was so formal. I had trouble with the clocking in and clocking out. We had to clock in and out within two minutes of our appointed time. If we missed we were docked some amount of time from our pay. I did not know it then, but the system was set up, so someone always had their time card docked. No matter how people tried, not everyone could clock in within the allotted minutes.

Breaks were another matter completely. The time I was allowed to go to break was always random. Some days break was after the first hour of work, other days it was four hours after starting. This to was a hard system to adjust to. If you went to work hungry, you might be starving by the time your break rolled around. If you ate before going to work, you may not be hungry until a few hours after your break was a dim memory. That too was a planned system to frustrate employee’s.

There are various roadblocks associated in many of the jobs each of us do every day. Some frustrations are intentional. Management makes life difficult so no one becomes too settled in their job. Management in some jobs prefers a high employee turnover, for varied reasons. In other situations, like when I worked an assembly line, or in my case a dis-assembly line, lunch was dictated by the work flow. The line stopped, the line started.

At lower pay levels, many jobs are worse than they have to be. The company may give time based raises or other enticing benefits to long term employees. Then they set up the way work is done to ensure most people are frustrated and have left before they can become a long term employee. This way a business can claim to be friendly to the employee. When in truth, they operate using barrier tactics that other less polished companies do not use. These types of businesses polish up the exterior a little more to make working their look worthwhile.

There is also the problem of too many people available to do the job. If an employer knows they can lose and retrain half their workforce every few months, some companies choose to do just that. Working conditions are barely tolerable, and become worse as time goes on. The law of supply and demand. There is too much supply (workers) and too little demand (jobs).

By the time I was twenty-five, I had worked at over twenty ‘real’ jobs trying to find a place where I fit in, and could be happy. Work to me was a revolving door. Quit one job in the morning, and start at a different job in the afternoon. Most of those jobs were the jobs described above. Poor pay, hard work, and little real prospects of any long term goals with one particular company.

There is a golden lining in working conditions like this. If you pay attention, you learn how to manage  people in a manner they appreciate. You learn many different skill sets, of which most carry over from one job to the next. You see many different ways of doing the same thing, and with enough job hopping, you eventually start to look pretty sharp because you can and do suggest better ways of doing the same old thing.

Work if you are like me, contains a basic flaw. No matter what form the work takes, there is a drum beat in the background setting the rhythm of a work and life. The biggest secret to enjoying your work is to find creative ways to manage the drum beat.

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Improve Your Poker Skills, Play a New game

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One of the most difficult parts of playing poker is to play fair to good poker consistently. Some casual players all the way to the die hard players who should be dialing Gamblers Anonymous suffer the same malady at the tables. Players arrive at their favorite card-room with the best of intentions. They are going to only play good hands. They are only going to bet the flop with the best hands. They are only going to the show down with pat hands. In other words they are not going to chase to the river hoping to catch a miracle card.

If these Players did not exist, poker games would be very boring. Everyone would be playing correctly, the average pot would be small. Rarely would more than two players face off at the river. One hours observation of an average Low Limit Holdem game dispels the relationship between what players should be doing and what players are really doing.

Of course if it is you or I we are discussing, we always play perfectly for table conditions. We never get ruffled, and we love it deep down when someone chases to the river for that one in forty-something miracle card and gets it – even it happens way too often.

You on the other hand think you are watching your chips drain away. Throwing away hands you see the rest of the table winning with s the round crawls on. An hour or so passes, and we start playing those hands because they are looking better than an hour ago, and ‘everyone’ is winning huge pots with those same bad hands

Almost everyone at the table is playing poorly except us and that old man who has no life outside of the card room. Everyone is laughing and having fun. The problem is that old man has forty years of patience and a limited bankroll. You and I only share one of those attributes with him. My bet is it is not patience we three share.

Before you realize it, your ‘just this once’ bad play has evolved into playing as bad as everyone else at the table. Any edge you had from your skill set is now reduced to luck of the cards, and they are not feeling so lucky at the moment. But it has rewards attached, you won a big pot on your second bad hand.

One of the hardest to rules to adhere to, and one of the most expensive rules in any form of poker is: “A bad starting hand does not improve by throwing more money into the pot, and one outers rarely arrive by the river.”

Whether you think you are changing your game up, playing in late position with many callers, or the big blind with six players and one raise, a bad starting hand remains a bad starting hand. The only variable that changes over the play of a few bad hands is another players stack.

One idea that may help you improve, and only if you are not addicted to action is changing games. Some poker games are slow and boring by default. Mid level Holdem according to many players is pretty much abc poker. Learning an entirely different game may help with the boredom of throwing away hand after hand, watching some Turkey win more pots than seems humanly possible.

Ever thought about learning Omaha Hi-Low, Stud Low, Pineapple, or another poker game that may be offered? The one you never really looked at, but you see chips flying around faster than players can stack them?

Any game offered other than the game you normally play offers new challenges. You learn to think differently, value cards differently, and see card combinations in new ways. New strategy means new thinking, and new ways of thinking are good for your old game.

Two outcomes from learning a new game are possible. You may find you really enjoy playing the new game. It may be more fun, more competition, lets you think more or less, and use different strategies. You see other players in a new light, and perhaps come to appreciate the talent they bring to the game that you do not quite have, yet.

A second less obvious non-monetary win from playing a different game arrives in a round about way. Learning a new game will make you a better player in your main game. You become a better player because by learning and playing other games opens you up to knew ways of playing.

It may be easier to understand why certain plays you make are mistakes and other plays are high level plays in a different game. In the long term, with enough experience at other games, you may find you have become that Turkey others at the table are mad at and at and envious of, both at the same time. Your skill level improves as will your play.

Because we tend to do what ever our group does, it is easy to slip into the poor playing habits shared by many players in your usual game. Bad playing habits at the poker tables, are offered, learned, and reinforced every time you sit down to play in your normal game. Because it seems they all play poorly, bad play starts to become good play for you, and it is fun, when you win. Unless the penalty for bad play is somehow sternly reinforced, there is a strong tendency to play at the same level others are playing at.

Learning different types of poker games may not be the cure all, end all of unlearning reinforced bad playing habits, but they certainly help. All poker skill is built on previous skill. Poker skills are learned in a variety of ways. The basics are the ground floor to becoming an exceptional player.

Depending on the other players in your game to help you improve your game, is rarely going to happen. You may see a good player play well, but unless you can get into their mind it is hard to understand what makes them a good player.  No one is going to give you your chips back after you throw them away via poor play, and take the time to teach you what you are doing wrong.

Some players are consistent winners over time, most are consistent in they know how to play better but play poorly instead. Playing in different games can help you become your own coach. Watching yourself  learn to play in the light of a different game can help you improve faster than playing more of the same game with the same bad habits.

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