Mind the Beginner

You there, sitting at your screen, looking at this text. What the hell are you doing, staring at a screen and reading this text. As if the act of reading by itself will change your life.

All those self help, personal growth and success instantly blogs are lying to you. Zen habits? Useless! Blogmastermind? Don’t make me laugh. All those stories about setting up a payed member site and raking in six digits a year. Just that, stories and marketing. Designed to lure you in and and to keep you coming back. RSS feeds, mailing lists, their sole purpose is to feed you more info and through advertisement, affiliate programs and memberships earn the smarter guy on the other end some (or a lot of) money. The latest of them being “Project Mojave”, even Jonathan Mead over at Illuminated Mind got sucked into this one and is now “Director of Ass Kicking” apparently.

That is exactly what you need right now! A kick… How many blogposts have you read about setting up an online business. How many bloggers are you following who write about this? Is the Tim’s Four hour workweek in your bookcase? Along side Seth’s Purple cow, Ramit’s I will teach you to be rich and all those other books that tell you how to do things. I should probably kick you myself but that is the problem with Internet. I can’t actually kick you for reading all that!

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So, now I probably got your attention, if you are one of the few who is still reading this. Why am I pissed? It’s simple, you’re only learning what you should do. That’s all that reading does for you. It let’s you learn how to do it. But the simple fact that you are reading this blogposts states clearly that even though you know how to do it you are not doing it right now!

Close this screen and start doing what you have learned. Don’t spend another minute reading all the info and stop being amazed that these people got so successful. What sets them apart from you is the ability to not only learn but to act it out, even if they don’t know every detail. Although they do fear the unknown they respond with  ”I’ll figure it out while doing it” in stead of “I need to learn more before I get started”. The guys over at Project Mojave have learned some skills and now they want to sell you those skills. Where did they get them? Probably through the same books and same blogs you read. They threw in some common sense though and did some serious research. Now they expect you to buy in to what they have to offer and buy their nice little package so you can learn more, and more….. and more…. but will you ever act on it? I sure hope so otherwise you’ll have made another author some money and didn’t get anything back from it other than more information and dreams about how things can be if you just do so and so.

What are you waiting for, shut down this screen, get off your chair and start actually making a difference right now! I’ll still be here tomorrow and so will this blog, the minutes you spent reading this blogpost are gone forever. Were those minutes of your life worth it?

Don’t just read and learn. Reading is useless! Stop reading and start doing what you know!

This all being said and after reading the liberation manifesto written by Jonathan for the Project I can tell you he does manage to kick virtual ass in there. They might just really be on to something. Although they have posted a “success” video log on their site please do remain critical and ask yourself “Is this genuine or did they ask someone to make up a story just to get things rolling?”. There is great potential on the web to make a side income, many have done so. However, for every one person that succeeds there are countless who don’t make it. Be ruthlessly honest and do what you believe to be right. It’s damn hard work and ever a  ”get rich quick” scheme. There is no such thing as easy money. However concerning making money (earning a living/dying) the paradigm has shifted considerably because of Internet.

If I offended anyone with this post I’m truly sorry, I’m just trying to make a point here and I hope that writing about it this way actually got the message across. I’m sure all the people I wrote about are nice and honest people and actually do want to help you achieve financial independence or a better life with healthier (financial) habits.

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This blog has been running now for about six weeks and it’s time for me to tell you why I chose to blog, what I want from it and what’s in it for you. It’s a bit of a lengthy post, but I want to let you know who I am and what I’m aiming for.

About me

The “about” page on this blog does tell you some things about me but to keep it easy to read I haven’t told you everything there is to know.  It states that I’m an exercise therapist. (A bachelor’s in Health) What it doesn’t tell you is that I am now 26. If everything went according to plan I should have had that degree at 22. Four years that don’t really make my resume shine. 

So what happened? It took me a long while to decide what I wanted to do after highschool. I dabbled in chemistry and physiotherapy but neither of these quite did it for me. To make matters worse when I was about half way through my bachelor’s the realization came that this wasn’t for me as well. After investing 2 years already I thought I might as well get it finished otherwise I would have spent all that time (and money) without having anything to show for it. Little did I know that there were a few huge walls ahead that would slow me down even more. Walls in the area of social interaction and empathy. 

I’m not the most social guy around, it’s what you get when you grow up in a family like mine. I don’t want to blame it all on them, it’s just that to me it was normal not to interact with people so much and try to sympathize. A gap in my skills that became apparent when I started working with patients. Part of the problem was that I was constantly drifting off with my thoughts. How to manage that? That’s where my zen training started. The rest as they say, is history. It changed the way I thought and allowed me to develop empathy (finally). I got through the last part of my training with flying colors. 

Seeing as exercise therapy wasn’t my calling I started to look round for other things to do with my life. I’ve always been “good with computers”, I enjoy working with them so much that I wanted to pursue a career in the IT sector. Many people have written about being good at something doesn’t mean you should make your job of it and kill all the pleasure you have with it but I feel that for me it would be the best choice. 

I’ve decided to get a masters in information science. The link between the programmer and the consumer. You can see it as the architect, whereas the programmer is the contractor and the consumer is the client. A mix of computer technology and people, just my niche. 

Why I started this blog

Although zen is the main reason for me to get through university it’s not the only thing that made my life easier.Over the years I’ve picked up all sorts of skills, habits, lifehacks and whatnot that got me where I am today. 

When my teachers told me I had a writing style that was very accessible and a pleasure to read they advised me to do something with it. Although they have only read my assignments in Dutch I’m sufficiently bilingual to try and write in English. Although my grammar isn’t perfect at best I do my best to put my thoughts to words. This blog is constantly helping me with developing my language and writing skills.This blog is my channel to develop myself and to tell you what I have learned and how I did it. 

I have started to think more about what I want to do with my life and I can tell you it’s not a full-time job and retire when I’m 65. I want to see the world and have a degree of freedom. To pursue this further I will be using this blog to generate a side income if I can. Although I won’t do this shamelessly with all sorts of advertising. You deserve better than that. No ad sense…Personal development, development of my writing skills, geting to know people and a very modest side income are what’s in it for me. 

What’s in it for you

I believe that I’ve acquired certain skills in my life that can help others with developing their goals. I want to help you with reaching your goals in life, with the use of elements of zen and (un)common sense. I want to get you to feel excited about what you do and thoroughly enjoy your life, even if what you want to do is nonconformist. 

I want to get to know you so I will be interacting with you and try and find out what I can help you with.

What will happen on this blog

This blog will continue to get at least five posts a week. Currently I post every single day, I don’t know if that will stay possible when I go back to university but that’s not until September 2009. For the time being I will keep posting daily. (update 2009-05-14: I’ve reduced the number of postings a week to somewhere around 4. This because my posts were lacking in quality and I was making that up with quantity. In favor of quality I will no longer churn out posts just to say something but will blog only when I truely feel I have something to say.) 

Posts will become better as I develop my writing skills.

Aside from the blogposts I will start writing a few longer essays that will become available as eBooks. 

This blog will slowly grow over time and I aim to reach over 1000 readers a day in the course of a year.

Within a few months this blog will move to a different domain: www.mindthebeginner.com. Once there I will tinker a bit with the layout but the feeling will stay the same.

I hope this post gives you a better understanding of what mindthebeginner is. If you like what I’ve written so far and want to keep up to date on all my posts please subscribe to my RSS feed. If you ever have any questions, suggestions or just want to talk feel free to mail me. 

About a year ago I started out with zazen, a type of sitting meditation to get my mind back under control. My mind was all over the place most of the time and I couldn’t focus on anything much longer than a kid with ADD on a sugar high. I was constantly drifting away in my thoughts on things that weren’t important a that very moment. This gave me several problems but the biggest of them being I couldn’t keep my mind to my work as exercise therapist. Imagine your therapist working with you and at the same time not actually being there. Sounds dangerous doesn’t it. This had to stop of course or I would get into serious trouble eventually. 

But how do you get back your focus. For me it was a simple answer since in my early life I’ve already had copious contact with martial arts and Asian philosophy. Just take a look at kyudo, the Japanese art of archery. Look at how concentrated the archer is while going through all the movements to shoot the arrow. You can’t not be there and shoot like that. A kyudo dojo wasn’t near my home though, and it would be hard to practice every day seeing as my back yard isn’t that big. So, the Japanese have a way of concentrating that I would like to obtain. 

Delving deeper into the Japanese budo arts (martial arts) I found that the basis of all of them was zen Buddhism. How could I tap into this source of concentration and oneness with the now. Fortunately there was a zen school (zendo) in my home town and they offered weekend courses to get the feeling of what they had to offer. I participated immediately and found that just sitting there in zazen – a style of sitting meditation – was all I needed to get back in the drivers seat of my mind. I haven’t looked back since, I’ve incorporated a daily session of just sitting into my habits and every evening at 9 pm, I go upstairs and practice zazen for twenty minutes. What do I do in those twenty minutes? I sit motionless, counting my exhales up to ten. If a thought comes up and disturbes my concentration on the counting, I go back to one. Give it a shot right now, move your chair back a bit, fold your hands in your lap and count your exhales. Don’t think about anything… 

…counting to ten was never so hard before in my entire life.

Zen brought me a stillness and concentration I never had before, more in contact what now, just what I wanted.

I’m writing this blogpost because I’m curious, have you ever tried meditation? What exactly did you try, how did it feel, what were your experiences? Please tell me all about them, I really would like to get to know you.

And again, when looking around I got a new idea for a blogpost. Inspiration is everywhere. I want to write a bit on attention. Or rather, the Japanese character of “Nen”. Which translates to “wish, sense, idea, thought, feeling, desire, attention”. 

The last time I talked with m Zen teacher he talked about this character and what it means. How can we distinguish quality? What is the difference between a work of art and a mass product. It’s nen, or the amount of honest attention, honest thought that was put into it’s creation. Just think about if for a second, can you tell just by looking at something if the one who made it was totally involved in making it? Or was he (or she) manually going through the motions and at the same time being somewhere else with their mind. 

My zen teacher explained all this through a chawan, a Japanese bowl used for the preparation and drinking of tea. At first glance some of the bowls look absolutely hideous. You can find some examples on ebay in the ebay store of Magokorodo. A gifted Japanese potter. (I’m not a customer or friend, I’m an admirer of his work and want to share it.) If you take a longer look however and don’t immediately dismiss them you start to see all the details, all the perfections and imperfections. A very delicate balance that takes years to master or perhaps even a lifetime. This nen is very subtle and because of that, most people don’t even see it or take the time to learn and see it. 

This one thing, this nen… is what distinguishes the master. In all Japanese arts (be it kyudo or ikebana) this is what they are trying to achieve. 100% Attention to what is right now, without the preconceptions. True beginners mind lets one be right here and right now and express attention. 

Can you find nen in a blog post? Of course you can, but not in every blog post. This is what distinguishes a good blog from a bad one. You can make or break a blog with nen. Put your mind into something and stand for it. Be responsible for what you make and do. Is something just “good enough” or is it really good? It’s in the details and the balance.

Anything you do, do it to your very best standard and look to improve your standard every time.

The Phrase Beginner’s mind  is a phrase coined by Shunryu Suzuki or as most call him Suzuki-Roshi, a Zen master who ran a Zen temple in San Francisco in the 1960’s among other things.  But what exactly is beginner’s mind? I wrote about this in my first post on this blog but I want to explore it a bit more. Beginner’s mind is a mind free of judgments, free of preconceptions. The mind of a child so to speak, open to anything. With a beginner’s mind we can see what truly is, not only what we expect.

This is key in just about anything we do. Only by letting go of our preconceptions can we see what is out there. 

Preconceptions are everywhere. We expect things to happen a certain way and eventually we get stuck in this. Not stuck in the way I wrote about in my last post, but really stuck. Th kind of stuck you have when you’re dragging along, waiting for relief (the end of a shift perhaps). I know it’s hard to be surprised when you grab your mouse and the cursor moves on the screen. But what would a child do? Look with amazement at the cursor and perhaps try and grab it. That’s beginner’s mind at work right there. We “non-beginners” only act amazed if the mouse is not working. We have the preconception that the cursor should move, but it doesn’t. Amazement (and perhaps irritation) step in as something new unfolds before our very eyes.

We take a lot of things for granted in our daily lives and because of this we get bored or depressed. Drop the judgement and the preconceptions and look again. Life is fantastic! If only you let it and truly see what is in front of you. I promise you: you’ll never be bored again. 

I would like to close with these two quotes from Susuki-Roshi, give them some thought.

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

“As soon as you see something, you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is no longer what you saw.”

Got that coffee? Great, and welcome to my new blog! On this blog I’m going to investigate what it takes to begin, where to start, anything and everything on starting anything and everything. Finding new ways to do things.

There are allot of things I haven’t done yet, that I really would like to do. I’m not alone in this I figure. Everyone on this planet surely has dreams of doing things, learning certain skills, seeing places, changing their life….

..and as always there is that one question in all its forms…

“How do I begin” ” “Where do I begin”

The simple things as learning to ride a bike, as complex as learning a new language, or even setting up a new business. I want to explore it all. Eventually I want to become somewhat of an expert on beginning. You see, every thing you do in life is a beginning. Every sip you take of your coffee while reading this is the first sip you take actually. You’ve never drank this cup before and you never will again. 

A few of you will instantly recognize this as a train of thought belonging to Zen. Everything you do, you do for the first time. You’re always the beginner. (Beginner’s mind) In this state of mind your first cup of coffee is as exiting as your first kiss. You see, this way you can never be bored. Now how does your coffee taste, after reading this? Go on, take another sip.

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Every day is filled with beginnings and I want to explore them. I want to experience them. I want to write about them. As a personal touch to this all I also want to find out new ways of doing things. Question how I do things now and see if there is a better way out there. I hope you – my readers – will help me with this. Together we know a lot of ways of doing things. A joint venture in beginning. Mind you, some things might be a bit confronting. Exploring the way you do things and finding out it’s not the best way (even for you). Only by questioning self you can grow. Keep questioning, keep growing and mind the beginner in it all. The first thing I’m exploring with this first blog post is how do I build a blog. How do I write a proper article. 

In the following weeks I’ll be setting up a list of things I’d really like to learn to do. I hope to be hearing from you.