I hated to weedeat. I never wanted to do it again. I thought that if I killed the grass, I wouldn’t have to do it again. Every spin of the plastic blades was murder. I wanted the grass to die. And it did.

But something worse returned.

Bare ground, like power, abhors a vacuum. There is always a nefarious weed seed ready to grow in place of the previous grass. But unlike grass, weeds grow at a faster rate, and in weirder directions.

Instead of simply trimming the grass, now I had to trim the tops and sides of the crazy-haired weeds. They too would have to die. But there was nothing I could do to kill them. It was me who had to change.

Instead of fighting the grass, I would work with it. Instead of trying to kill the grass, I would simply trim it back. Two things happened: I started to actually enjoy weedeating and the grass didn’t die.

Zen masters who trim bonsai trees seek, “a kind of oneness with nature and with the universe” and they used it as a discipline to aid enlightenment. Trimming bonsai trees was also used as a means to meditate.

When you’re out weedeating you have a lot of time to think. This time can be used to appreciate nature and practice an attitude of gratitude or it can be used to be vengeful and hate your life. I’ve done both.

Thomas Campbell, physicist, author, and expert on consciousness, believes love is the opposite of fear and love lowers entropy while fear increases entropy. 1 John 4:18 says, “perfect love drives out fear.”

When we decide to love what we are doing and change our attitude about work, we reduce entropy and help bring harmony to our lives and the lives around us. In this, I’m reminded of this poem from 1100 A.D.:

When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.
I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation.
When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town.
I couldn’t change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.
Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself,
and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself,
I could have made an impact on my family.
My family and I could have made an impact on our town.
Their impact could have changed the nation and
I could indeed have changed the world.”
by Unknown Monk, 1100 A.D.

One of the words I kept hearing over and over in 2013 was “mindset”. Mindset is kind of the new hip way to describe what our elders used to call “attitude“.

A mindset can be positive or negative, just like an attitude. A positive mindset is about overcoming limiting thoughts and having an abundance mentality.

When you start to reprogram your mindset to a more abundant mentality, you stop seeing problems and start to see how your limiting beliefs that are getting in the way.

“What stops people are their limiting beliefs about themselves, their self worth, what they don’t actually have. What I’ve found is that people are not actually afraid of failure, they’re very afraid of success,” said Dane Maxwell, founder of The Foundation, an organization that helps people start software businesses by overcoming their limiting beliefs.

Pat Flynn, a leading business leader said, “One of [the common themes that millionaires have] is that they don’t have that fear. They train themselves to be excellent ‘receivers,’ to be open and willing to receive massive amounts of money, which for some reason a lot of people are scared of. I know I kind of went through the same thing. I could feel myself sabotaging myself…not taking it to the next level when I totally knew that I could have. I think the whole mindset thing is so important.”

Dane Maxwell continues, “There are a lot of things that you can logically explain, but for whatever reason you can’t seem to make it happen. You’ve got a limiting belief, you’ve got something you’re stuck with, you’ve got a road block and you’re not going to be successful until you get that thing reversed. And unless you have a kind enough, compassionate enough, gentle enough teacher that without judgment will help you reverse that, you’re not going to move forward.”

You have a finite amount of mental energy so what you choose to spend it on matters. In business you might call this an opportunity cost because thought spent in one direction could prevent you from spending thought in another direction. What you think about is incredibly important because it influences everything else in your life.

There is a war going on in your mind. What are you doing to win? Are you moving towards success or are you self-sabotaging? “The Power of 1%” says that, “Just 1% [improvement] per day…has a dramatic effect and will make us 37x better, not 365% (3.65x) better at the end of the year.”

If you improve 1% a day you will improve 3800% in a year.” –James Altucher

I started writing this post on September 6, 2013. Almost 2 years later I’m just now completing it. What stories have you started that need completing? Let’s complete more stuff, 1 day at a time. A year from now we’ll be 37x to 3800% better. 🙂

A lot of people (myself included) often wonder how to meet new people as adults. As a child the interactions were facilitated and it seemed easier, but as adults it’s still possible – we just have to do more work to get the same results.

Here are some things you can do to facilitate friendship:

Attend Meetups

One thing I’ve learned about meetups is that to make the lasting friendships there, you can’t just show up and leave. You have to stay until the end, see who’s still around, and then ask them to go get a beer or a coffee afterwards. In that way, you’ll create a much deeper, longer lasting relationship with someone that could become a friendship.

Change Habits

Pick one habit to change such as your drive home. For example, instead of driving straight home, stop at a park and walk around. If you see someone there, talk to them. If you are the first person to leave work, be the last person to leave and engage in a deeper conversation with one new person. If you always take the same streets home, purposefully take a different path and pay attention to what you see. You might find a new place to hang out (and meet new people).

Or, instead of driving to work, see if there is a way to carpool, walk, or ride a bike to work. You could also wake up one hour earlier than normal and be the first person in a local coffee shop in the morning. If you don’t know the name of the barista or checkout person at the gas station, ask them their name and tell them yours. The next time you are there, greet them by name.

By making slight changes to your daily habits, you can cause unknown, unintended, changes (like the butterfly effect) that will lead you down a different path than the one you’re on now. In addition to small changes in your actions, here are some pretty standard things you can do to “meet new people” and “make friends.”

1. Be thankful for the life you already have.
2. When someone asks you to do something you wouldn’t normally do, consider doing it this time.
3. Join a local church.
4. Find a local meetup on meetup.com.
5. Start a new habit and do something consistently to see who else is doing that same thing consistently. Talk to that person.
6. Help someone younger than you or older than you without expecting to get paid.
7. Look for ways to volunteer.
8. Join a coworking facility.
9. Consistently visit a bar or coffee shop at a certain time.
10. Be the friend you want to have – invite other people to lunch with you, tell other people what you are doing and invite them to join you, throw a party at your house or apartment, rent out a gym and play some dodgeball, join a softball or kickball league, play a pick-up basketball game at the local park.

To do the things you’re not doing now, you’re going to have to do the things you’re not doing now. That means taking a different path through life, doing things a little bit differently, going places you normally don’t go, doing things you normally don’t do – and being consistent about it.

People who don’t have a clue what they want in life usually don’t know themselves very well. We all like to live in our comfort zones. Same life, friends and activities for years. We think that when we are more comfortable that we are more happy. But the key to happiness may be in getting out of your comfort zone.

The key is to throw yourself in situations which are out of your comfort zone. Go on a trip somewhere obscure, preferably alone. Take some odd job, Do crazy stuff. Break your barriers. Don’t just sit and think about what your passions are. Go find them.

When you do things that normally isn’t you, you will discover what truly is you.

It can be very difficult to get out of our comfort zones – they are comfortable after all. But comfort does not equate to happiness. I think we tend to believe that we know who we are, when in reality we have settled for what we are currently because we are afraid to get out of our comfort zones.

The best part about getting outside of your comfort zone is that it gives you one of the greatest feelings that money cannot buy: Appreciation. We are all aware that we don’t know what we’ve got until it’s gone, but that understanding hits a lot harder when we experience it first hand.

Why is it so hard to make friends as an adult?

As one New York Times article stated, “As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other”, which are things school and college are perfect for. The people at work would be the next best thing, but aren’t always the pool of people you’d necessarily want to be friends with (sometimes).

But there are other ways to get these types of interactions – frequenting a coffee shop or bar, church, or meetups that other like-minded people also frequent – all take care of those points. When we are little we make friends where we find them. Do you live next door? You’re my friend. Do you sit next to me at school? You’re my friend. Generally we have similar, but limited interests. But as an adult we filter out the people we don’t agree with politically, socially, or for other reasons. By the time we get to the few people left there’s a very small pool of potential friends via self-selection.

It may not be that it actually gets any harder to make friends as you get older, rather that you get better attuned to what you want in a friend.

As an adult I only hang out with people that I actually like and who I feel a mutual sense of value with: they bring something good to my life, I feel I bring something good to theirs. It takes time to find people like that, but it’s worth the effort.