Erich Stauffer

Tag: Thoughts

  • The 100th Monkey Effect: How Ideas Tip

    The Office UK Monkey

    Back in 2009 I was listening to a Coast to Coast episode regarding “Mind Viruses & Genetics.” Author and speaker in the field of self-development, Dr. Wayne Dyer, and foremost authority in bridging science and spirit, Dr. Bruce Lipton, discussed how genes and DNA do not control our body, and how MEMES, or mind viruses, are infecting our population.

    Whether you believe that thoughts can interact with the universe, God, or control the cells of our own bodies is beyond the scope of this post, but I would simply like to point out some new terms I heard while listening to the episode. The first term is “phase transition,” which is a physics term for when electrons in an atom line up to cause a transition from one phase to another such as from a liquid to a gas. This tipping point happens when a set number of electrons line up, causing all the other electrons to follow, which changes the atom’s phase. The author called that point the “100th monkey.”

    According to Wikipedia, the Hundredth Monkey Effect is where, “a learned behavior spreads instantaneously from one group of monkeys to all related monkeys once a critical number is reached. By generalization it means the instantaneous, paranormal spreading of an idea or ability to the remainder of a population once a certain portion of that population has heard of the new idea or learned the new ability.”

    You may have heard of the physics term, “quantum entanglement” which is “a possible property of a quantum mechanical state of a system of two or more objects in which the quantum states of the constituting objects are linked together so that one object can no longer be adequately described without full mention of its counterpart — even though the individual objects may be spatially separated. This interconnection leads to non-classical correlations between observable physical properties of remote systems, often referred to as nonlocal correlations.”

    Along with doctors who noted that cells taken out of a body respond to stimuli from their original host, you get the gist that there may be undetectable ways that matter communicates at the quantum or atom level, the cellular level, and at the organizational level (as with the 100th monkeys effect). W. Edwards Deming, the engineer whose quality management systems transformed Japanese manufacturing, noted that if you get the first 15 percent of any system right, the other 85 percent flows easily.

    At first I thought this was like Pareto’s 80/20 rule, but now realize it is more like the tipping point or the 100th monkey effect. I’ve noticed in working with one of my clients that when we create a new system, such as a tracking sheet, once we get buy-in from a certain number of individuals, the success of that system grows from there. But that could be more of a network effect rather than a ‘100th monkey’ thing.

    The reason I wanted to mention all of this is because I have noticed lately the power of the individual. Anything that ever happens can be traced back to one person first having the idea – and then sharing it. Once shared with enough people to get critical mass, it tips, the electrons align, and the phase transitions. The point is, although things happen best within teams of at least two people, ideas begin with one. If you have an idea. Share it. Maybe know one else will ever have the same idea.

    If Tesla had kept alternating current to himself, we would all be using Edison’s direct current today. That’s just one example, but there are many. The hyperlinked web you are using right now was invented by one man, Tim Berners Lee. It’s not just inventions, its deciding to love someone. It’s whatever you can imagine. I encourage you all to imagine, to stretch your mind, and cast off feelings of doubt and self-sabotage. Tell yourself you can and you will.

    Transitions have that kind of split personality where a lot changes, but very little gets done sometimes. Even static people can do that to themselves when they spend all their time preparing and organizing and never taking action. A friend of mine once announced he’s going to get a divorce and moved out of his house. His productivity level plummeted. I think that sometimes growth comes from stability, other times it comes from an uprooting.

    Around the same time I was listening to 50 Prosperity Classics. Like Canfield, co-author of Chicken Soup books and others have suggested, we hung a note on our front door that has a dollar goal, a list of things we’d do or buy with the money (pay bills, carry cash in our pockets, be able to help others, go out to eat guilt-free, get a faster computing experience) as well as actual checks made out to us. In addition, I started speaking to myself things like, “I can be rich. I am rich. I can make [X] dollars a year. I do make [X] dollars a year.” and even “I can be a good father. I can love the Lord our God with all my heart, mind, and soul.”

    What I began to notice from that practice was that normal inputs like web design requests and computer repairs started hitting my sub-conscious mind differently. When they came in, my “gut” said, “You make [X] a year. You can’t be coding websites anymore. Hire someone to do that so you can multiply yourself and make more money in less time. You build businesses for other people to work in. That is what you do now.” Yeah, I know, my gut is long winded – its kind of like those Chinese translations on TV, satirized by Wayne’s World, only in reverse.

    In that radio show I listened to on Coast to Coast AM, one of the guys said that the sub-conscious or “habitual” mind as he called it makes up 95% of our behavior throughout the day and that much of what we do is automatic. Only 5% requires us having to think to make decisions. This means that we have a huge opportunity to manipulate this habitual mind to our liking and to our benefit. The more I read and listen, the more I find that most writers are all saying the same things. “Ask and it
    will be given,” and “Tell yourself you can and you will.”

  • We Climb to Rest

    Skylines, rooflines, and
    antennas replacing crosses
    Television the new religion,
    Reception the new bosses

    In the morning we rise and fly,
    Leaving our home to give our best
    We tune the dial and tweak our lives
    The sun, it sets. We climb to rest

  • How to Successfully Manage People

    How to Successfully Manage PeopleThe purpose of How to Successfully Manage People by Jon Anshutz is to give you a better understanding of what it takes to effectively manage people. “How To Successfully Manage People” is a complete guide for managing. Anshutz goes out of his way to teach you the skills you will need to get the most out of your people. If you are serious about getting the most out of your people then you need to buy this book because it will show you how to create a “family” type atmosphere, how to set goals for yourself and your team, and so much more. No manager should be with out this book.

  • You’re so money and you don’t even know it!

    If you’ve never seen the film “Swingers”, I highly recommend it.  It came out in the mid-nineties and struck a chord with many in the Gen-X and Gen-Y crowd.  To get a great feel for the kind of movie this is, check out the short clip below from Youtube (it is an R rated movie and contains profanity):

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODjE-_OB3JI&feature=related

    The characters from the movie have taken the words “money” and “baby” and given them wholly new meaning within the context of their group of friends.  Vince Vaughn’s character paints a great picture of what kind of attitude Jon Favreau’s character should have about himself.  It’s not just about self-esteem, its about what kinds of actions he should take if he’s really going to act like a bear with this bunny!

    Now, it’s tricky to draw a metaphor from a theme in a movie that is being made by another metaphor, so I’ll try to distill the truth that I believe the metaphors point to.

    Let’s say that you are looking for a job (here is my metaphor), and you are frustrated at a lack of opportunities.  Now, even a cursory knowledge of successful thinking strategies will remind you to stay positive, but it still doesn’t seem to be enough.  You’re right.  It is not enough.

    You need to think through both sides of the transaction.  In this case, the transaction is a business looking for a new employee and vice versa.  Now, even referring to the former as a “business” may be the wrong word to use.  Chances are (depending on the size of the company), that it is a human resources director or some specific manager that is looking to fill a position.  Now, if you were looking to fill a position with your company, and you knew that the new employee’s success (or lack thereof) would have some sort of repercussion with you, what would you do?

    Would you look in a phonebook and choose the people with the three best ads?  How is this different from having a well put together resume?

    In all actuality, you would probably rack your brain to think of somebody whom you already know that would be a good fit, whether they are currently looking for a job or not.  Next, you would probably look to the people whom you trust and ask them who they might recommend for the position in question.  Only then would you put out a listing for a new employee in some sort of job-finder service.

    So, what does this tell us?  If you are looking for jobs that are listed online, it’s either because the business could not find anyone else who was qualified, or all of the people they have already talked to about it are not interested in taking it.  Its not the prettiest picture, but it is closer to accurate than you might think.

    Without a strong, but healthy belief in yourself, you will either stand still and achieve nothing, or stand still and unwisely wait for success to find you.

    So why do I encourage you to be a bad man from the rated R movie and not the guy from the PG-13 movie who everyone really hopes makes it happen?  Because we live in an R rated world, and great opportunities are MADE and not handed out.

    If you think too highly of yourself, you will expect the winning lottery ticket to be mailed to you, even if you don’t play the lottery!  You believe that you are destined for greatness, but immune to the preparation and effort that goes before it.  Even if you are handed a baton (let’s throw another metaphor in, shall we?), and you haven’t prepared yourself with effort and determination, you will falter.  You may get the digits, but by waiting too long to call, you will blow the opportunity.

    The other extreme is to be meek, and to look at opportunities with fear and trembling.  You can see 10 ways in which the endeavor will fail, so you abort before launch.  Even if you see one or two ways in which it could succeed, you stand still to avoid the possibility of failure.  The truth is that standing still is a failure all by itself.

    The key is to be balanced and healthy.  Get out there and talk to the people you already know.  Let them know that you are serious about finding something new and you value their opinion.  They may just refer you to someone else, but it is highly unlikely that they will ignore you.  In fact, the only way to guarantee that you will end up with nothing is to venture nothing with your current contacts.

    Whether you want digits, a job, a relationship, or a new chapter in your life, it takes belief in your mind before you can go safely in your body.  Don’t just think “money”…. BE “MONEY”!

  • Are you just going to stand there?

    Tipton Pork Festival ParadeI was standing with my family, talking and waiting for the parade to start.  It was that time of year again.  The Pork Festival had come to town and today was the big day.  On Saturday, there is a big parade and everyone who wants to see it lines up along the parade route for a view of the action.  My family had decided to set up under a tree and so I was hanging out in between the tree and the road.  You can see from this picture that I was basically riding the yellow line.  I was going to head back to the house either at the start of the parade or before in order to be at the house in case guests arrived early for my son’s first birthday party, but as I was standing there, the guy to my left said:

    Hey buddy, are you just going to stand there? I don’t mean to be rude, but I won’t be able to see the parade from here if you’re standing there.

    I replied, “No, I’ll be leaving before then.”  It was rude, but I didn’t really mind.  It made me think, “Erich, are you just going to stand there or are you going to do something about the situations you find yourself in right now?”

    I’m a big fan of the ability to change your outcomes based first on changing how you feel and think on the inside.  However, in practice this is not always easy to do, nor sometimes does it seem to be effective.  The Law of Attraction would tell you that the reason things don’t always seem to improve is because I say they don’t. This may or may not be true, but the result is the same.  I am going through the motions: I am limiting negative thoughts, I don’t listen to the news, I only read or listen to positive and/or educational material, I focus on what I want, not what I don’t want, and I take action.  I have been sleeping less and working more.  I am focused on Internet Marketing as my primary business model. And the results are starting to show.  I now have blogs that make money daily, but there are still those which are not.  The Law of Focus says that whatever you focus on, expands.  That is why T. Harv Eker says not to complain, but to act instead.  Acting is what I am doing, I just wish it was happening faster.

    So what are you going to do about it?

    Successful people never quit.  They are experienced at overcoming obstacles because they view themselves as bigger than any obstacle.  I will double-down and refocus my efforts, to ensure success.   And…my parents just showed up.  Let the party (and the rest of my life) begin!

  • 4 Steps from Wanting to Receiving

    I went to bed last night thinking about my experience earlier in the day with my daughter at the gas station.  We walked there to get my wife a coke, but had some “extra” money to get her some candy.  When we walked through the candy aisle, she started looking at the bags of candy on the left and I looked at the money I had.  I had to bend down and tell her that she could only look on the other side of the aisle, in a section in which I could afford to buy her something.  In bed that night I started thinking how much more awful it would be to do similar things in the future to clothes she’ll want to buy, trips she’ll want to go on with friends, etc..

    All that we have been reading about, hearing about, and preaching about, start doing and acting on it – believing it.  We know it’s true, but I would encourage you to develop the faith.  If I could boil all of our conversations about this down, it would go something like this:

    Develop and understand what you want.     – Desire, or love, is what keeps you attached or attracted (as in Law of Attraction) to the rest of the steps involved. I would venture to guess that for both of us right now, this desire is to first be able to pay all of our bills monthly, then be able to provide extra for our families.

    Believe or train your mind to believe it. – Faith is the next step, bridging the what (desire) and the how.  This is where limiting thoughts from yourself, friends, family, and society creep in, but can be let go through self-talk or mental exercises.  It’s a matter of being acutely aware of your thoughts and managing them towards your stated desires.

    Act as if you have already received it.     – This means both being thankful for everything you have now, but also what you will have in the future.  It also means acting how you will be after receiving the desire, for example, developing systems and/or routines for paying bills and saving money once the revenue starts coming in, believing that it will and we need to be prepared for it.

    Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. – This adage means to not review a gift before accepting it.  Once you have the desire, have trained your mind to believe it will occur, and have started changing actions to prepare for it’s arrival, the next step is it’s arrival.  Make sure that for more open-ended desires like “more money” you are also open-ended on where you expect the money to come from.

    I’ve been listening to an audio version of Peter Drucker’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship book.  In that book, Drucker talks about how entrepreneurship is not about starting a new business, but identifying surprises, incongruities, or miss-assumptions, and then creating something new that shifts resources from an area of lower yield to an area of higher yield.  The reason I bring this up is because sometimes businesses, which are ran by humans with similar brains and emotions to our own, go through this same process.  Some succeed and some fail.  Let me give you an example:

    Drucker talks about Macy’s department store in the early 1960’s.  We can assume that the desire of the business was to earn revenue.  They believed that they could and acted as if they had already received the revenue by purchasing buildings, inventory, and machines to process the transactions.  But in the early 1960’s, more revenue started coming from appliance sales than from fashion and for twenty years, managers worked to suppress these appliance sales in order to keep the ratio of fashion-to appliances the same.  Then in the late 1970’s new management embraced the change and despite rampant inflation, Macy’s department stores began beating the market.

    Another story is about IBM thinking they would sell equipment only to universities and scientists until one day they were bothered by a woman who complained that she could not get an IBM sales rep to come down to her library to talk to her.  The next morning, the head of IBM walked into that library and closed a deal with enough revenue to cover next month’s payroll.  That was when IBM decided two things: that they would start selling to anybody and start asking for the money up-front.  You see, the original sales rep desired to make a sale, he believed that he could make sales, but when a sale came by that didn’t match his idea of what a sale would look like, he passed it over.

    Even I encountered this yesterday while doing micro-niche searches for the Thirty Day Challenge.  I kept coming up with results matching resumes and jobs, but every time, rejected them as not what I was looking for.  Then it dawned on me that what I was looking for should only be classified by the mechanisms and categories that got me there.  As long as it fit the goal (desire) of finding a micro-niche that had over 80 hits a day and less than 30,000 competing websites with phrases that matched mine, I had found what I needed.  To clarify, there are two steps past that (SEO competition review and Monetization) which my brain may have been pre-filtering for, but it’s hard to tell pre-filtering from bias.

    Be sure and check out what Zac has to say about this topic in particular in a blog post he wrote back on January 6, 2009 entitled Who Limits Your Success?

    More > If you liked this post, be sure and check out > The Law of Focus…

  • The Gristmill at Spring Mill State Park: Mirror Matter Moon

    I always looked up to Zac at college.  He was cool and people liked him.  I can only remember talking to him once my freshman year.  He and I were both standing in line to make our own omelets.  I was wearing a Plank Eye shirt at the time and somehow we started talking about the band.  Plankeye - SparkI was amazed to find out that he was best friends with the drummer, who had quit the band to go to college.  I had seen the band for the first time, sans-drummer, in Chicago with The Prayer Chain during a reunion tour.  That is where I got the t-shirt.   I don’t remember ever talking to him again, but I do remember his role in John Mann’s play our sophomore year.  It started with Zac tilting his head all the way back in class as if he was asleep or bored.  Mann had the play start in a freeze-frame.  I later went on to study film with Mann at Milligan, but that is another story.  This one is about the Gristmill at Spring Mill State Park.

    In June of 2008, our friend Brian Reid, was killed in an automobile accident along with his wife, Jenna.  I and some friends had posted some video of Brian Reid on Youtube, which is actually how we found out he died.  People who went to church with Brian started writing comments about how much they would miss him and how they were glad “they went together.”  One of those to comment was Zac and I ended up striking up a conversation with Zac really for the first time.  Zac was actually in one of the Brian Reid videos, entitled Never Let You Go (which audio has been removed from for copyright infringement).  I don’t know if I ever told Zac this, but I was really upset to find out that Brian had been living less than an hour from my house and I didn’t even know it.  Brian and I had lost contact over the years.  The last time we spoke was in 2001.  It had been seven years.

    The Mirror Matter Moon theory is one of the most prominent theories on LOST to explain what the island is and why it might behave like it does.  Essentially, the island is a moon made of mirror matter.  There are two types of matter, the matter we know and love, and the opposite.  We can exist in either habitat, but one can not see the other.  This is why the island can not be seen until you cross into area around the island – into the mirror matter moon.  This website does a much more extensive job explaining it, but I wanted to use it and LOST as an allegory for my relationships with both Zac and Brian.  At college, Brian and I were best friends, and then I left to go to Milligan.  Zac and Brian stayed and graduated at Kentucky.  8 years later, Brian dies and Zac and I become friends when we had never really been friends before.   Brian’s car wreck – the “plane crash” – separated the world in which Zac and I lived in before the crash and the one we lived in afterward.  Prior to the crash, I couldn’t see Zac, nor did I know he existed, but after the crash, we were in a mirror world where Zac and I could both see each other and that’s when things started getting weird.

    The day I found out about Brian’s death I was contemplating running away.  I was going to drive to a farm house in rural Missouri, leaving my house, my job, and my lifestyle behind.  I was furiously hoeing my garden when my wife came out to talk to me.  She calmed me down and I went inside.  Upon checking my email, I saw the message from my friend about the comments.  By the end of the month I would have hernia surgery and a new job working as a business analyst.  I would be working with my best friend from that same college in Kentucky.  I would also begin communicating with Zac who was going through his own set of changes.  A set of changes that would eventually lead him back to someone he too met while at college in Kentucky.  What was it about this “island” in Kentucky that would not let us go?  Was Third Eye Blind speaking from Brian to Jenna in the video, from us to Brian, or from the college to us?

    The bigger story is how we all descended upon Kentucky in the first place.  Each person has their own unique story about what drew them to that place.  Just as in LOST, the characters both had a series of events that lead them together and a string of influence.  In me and Zac’s case, it was Eric Barnes.  Barnes made an impression on not just Zac and I, but on my friends who also attended Kentucky.  I remember Zac speaking to the entire campus during chapel saying how Eric impressed him so much by flying out to Arizona to meet him.  My friends and I would actually drive down to Kentucky on weekends during our senior year in high school just to hang out with Eric and eat in the cafeteria with Brad Green for free.  Eric was a critical “cog” to the systematic recruitment of students to the college, but the biggest factor was probably their summer program, which brought droves of high school students to the college each summer.  It was so influential that the dean of student life made it a point to tell us on day 1 that student life there was nothing like summer camp.  This should have been my first clue.  There are good cogs like Barnes and there are bad cogs like this dean.  And there were many bad cogs at this college, which is part of why I left, but this post is about the Gristmill at Spring Mill State Park.

    The Gristmill at Spring Mill State Park stands among several houses and other log buildings in a cleared plain in the middle of a large wooded area.  The terrain is crossed by a babbling brook (which cleared up within a couple of days after the rain turned the water a chocolaty brown).  This brook powers the mill, given the lever is pushed to allow it – and the cog is in place to accept it.  A lot of things have to come together for the whole system to work.  And one day, one of those things stopped working.  Why is it that this mill and these buildings are still in the same fashion they were in the early 1800’s?  Because the village was a failure.  The reason? The person who ran the mill died – taking with him the knowledge of how to run it.  Without food or a way to process their crops, the villagers left, leaving the log buildings as they were.  If the village had continued, the log houses would have been torn down and replaced in the name of progress long ago.  The park partly exists, and is named after a failed startup, but we wouldn’t have had the park unless the startup failed.  If it were successful it may have looked something like Gatlinburg, which has less log cabins, but more “cogs”.

  • LOST: From James Ford to Sawyer

    One of the easiest mysteries to solve on the pilot episode of LOST, was the question as to who would be “the bad guy” or “the outsider” in the group.  Josh Holloway‘s brooding looks and sneers of disgust when asked to help made it clear to the audience, that this guy, “Sawyer”, was not going to win any congeniality awards.  Whether it was his dimples, his sense of humor, or women’s tendency to be attracted to bad boys, the audience began to root for Sawyer.  Even fellow actor Jorge Reyes’ mother was more worried about Sawyer being killed off of the show than her own son.  Whether we loved to hate him, or loved him in spite of his shortcomings, he was loved.  Now, about those shortcomings….

    His name isn’t really “Sawyer”.  Through flashback, we learn that Sawyer’s parents died when he was just a boy.  His father shot his mother in the next room, and then horrifically, shot himself on a bed that the young boy was hiding under.  In a way we do not yet know, the boy found out who was responsible for scamming his parents out of their savings, leading to the murder/suicide of his parents.  This man went by the alias, “Sawyer”.  Our island survivor’s real name was James Ford.  Little James Ford thought of little else than finding the man responsible, and doling out justice for the loss of his parents.  Writing a letter to read to Sawyer just before killing him, James Ford was focused on revenge.

    Now, even as a young boy, James Ford could identify that what had happened to his family was wrong.  While Sawyer had not pulled the trigger, his scamming left the blood on his hands.  Why oh why, did James Ford end up growing up to become just like him?  Not just in taking his name, but in taking up scamming people out of their savings, just like the man he had hated for most of his life.  The simple answer may refer to a principle of cognitive psychology:  We move towards, and become like, that which we think about.  Our thoughts, whether they are lifting something up or tearing it down, get imprinted into our subconscious.

    This is also similar to Jack not wanting to become an alcoholic like his father, and by thinking so much about it, brought it into reality.  Mr. Eko’s thoughts of his brother as a priest eventually led him to become a legitimate man of God.  There are many elements of LOST that testify to this truth.

    As James Ford becomes Sawyer, he doesn’t even believe that he has any choice to be anything else.  “A tiger doesn’t change it’s stripes.” he tells Kate after a scheme to take all of the guns in the camp has commenced.  Only after he has killed the real Sawyer, and completed his task, is he free to let his thoughts move on.  The island gives him an opportunity to be a man of love and a man of leadership.  This new goal changes his thought patterns, and his behavior follows.

    What are you thinking about most of the time?  Do you see your actions as a result of your thought patterns?  Changing your life is as simple as changing your mind, but changing your mind takes the right kind of fuel.  Garbage in, garbage out.  What are you reading?  Who are you talking with?  What do you talk about?  If you are fixated on what you despise or hate…. be careful.  You just may turn into that same thing.

  • First Days of Summer Spent at Spring Mill State Park

    Vacation; The Art of Disengaging

    For the last few nights, when I go to sleep at night, I have been dreaming about my day job.  I’ve been helping out with business continuity planning for the last couple of weeks and it’s taken up more time outside of normal business hours than I realized.  It wasn’t until I looked back over the last two weeks to see where the time had gone that I saw how the business continuity planning and events had affected my life.

    During the day I am a business analyst.  This means I review, recommend, and maintain various systems.  At night I work as a business consultant providing business solutions to various customers.  When the two jobs start to occupy the same time, two things happen.  One, my stress level goes up and two, a lot less normal activity gets done e.g. mowing the yard, folding laundry, putting away the dishes.

    A while back my wife asked if I would accompany her on a business trip to Spring Mill State Park where she would be attending a training seminar.  I was to help her take care of our youngest child of three, who is still breast feeding. What this would mean for me would be watching him at night while she goes and studies in the lobby with her classmates and again during the test on the last day.  The rest of the time would be up to me.

    I asked my best friend, who happens to also be my boss, if I could get those three days off.  He said I could, but because of Federal laws I’d actually have to take five days off instead.  I agreed and so starting yesterday, I was officially on vacation.

    At first it was hard to disconnect.  I kept thinking about things I had to do at work as a business analyst.  For example, I realized I forgot to set my email and voicemail away messages.  And there were people I had talked to at the business continuity event that I said I would email, but did not have the chance to.  I decided to actively change my thoughts and chose to think about other things, thereby beginning the disengagement from work.

    Gaining Control of My Thoughts

    It wasn’t until we started driving down to Spring Mill State Park this morning that I started analyzing my thought patterns, only to find that I was focusing on what I didn’t want instead of what I did.  I was creating scenarios in my mind whereby people didn’t like what I was trying to do, did not approve of it, and were actively working against it.  I was looking for ways to spend less time and hide more from those I thought were my enemies only to realize that they were only enemies in my mind – and if I could change my mind, I could change my reality.

    In addition, my wife and I decided the night before that I would use the time alone walking the trails to be a one-on-one prayer time with God.  We want prosperity for ourselves, our families, our friends, and our neighbors.  We want to see others succeed.  We wanted to be thankful for all that we had been given: the children, the love we had for each other, the roof over our heads, and the incomes we are blessed to recieve.  We realize that wealth is part of prosperity and actively ask for God to overflow us with the abundance he has created.

    This morning, after arriving at the park, I set off on trail 3, which goes by three caves in a loop to and from the Spring Mill Inn.  I would love to be in better shape than what I currently am, but as it is, I was huffing and puffing from step 1 of the trail.  My body learned to adjust and I would say things to myself like, “I am healthy and I am strong,” in order to keep going.  The biting flies were out and so Erich Stauffer, Fly Killa, was brought out of retirement.  Then I remembered what my wife and I had spoke about the night before and I began to pray.

    I didn’t close my eyes.  I just walked and talked with God.  When I focused on Him, the flies weren’t around, but when I thought about the flies, the flies came back.  I had an incentive in this regard to keep my eyes on Jesus during my walk.  There was one point early on, about a quarter of the way through when I felt God say to me, “Run! Run as fast as you can!” I ran for about 20 feet then went back to walking and although it was later in the morning, the sky was not brighter.

    At the half-way point I was near exhaustion, but there was no turning back now.  I had to go on.  I began singing praise songs, just making something up or singing “Hallelujah” over and over. I was still having trouble controlling my thoughts.  It seemed I could not even take attendance of them as they were jumbling into a ball as dust gathers under a bed.  I could not tell if it was my physical condition causing my lack of thought control or my lack of thought control causing my physical condition.  I decided there was only one that I could change, so I began working on changing my thoughts.

    About 3/4ths of the way through I decided to ‘clear the mechanism’ and focus on one thing.  I decided I wanted to see a deer.  I figured this was a reasonable goal/request since it was early morning, I was in the woods, and with one clear thought, it should be easy to attract.  The woods were now getting darker, not lighter.  I remember saying, “Isn’t the morning supposed to get lighter, not darker?”

    I continued to walk, looking down at my path, making sure to not trip or misplace my step – and that’s when I had my aha moment.  How could I see a deer when I am not looking for one? I can’t ask to see something, then not look for it, can I? No rational person asks for help, then keeps no lookout for help, do they?  I am reminded, just now, of the story of the man in sinking boat who asks God to save him.  A boat comes by and a sailor asks the man if he needs help, which the man replies, “No, I am waiting on God to save me. This happens two more times until the man finally drowns.  In heaven the man asks God why he didn’t save him and God replies, “I sent three boats!”

    So I began to keep my head up, actively looking for the deer I had asked to see, noticing only how dark the forest now seemed. And that’s when I saw it – and heard it – and began to run.

    It was a wall of white mist moving through the forest like a smoke monster, but instead of sounding like a New York City cab receipt printer, it was a mix of snapping limbs, heavy rain, and thunder.  I ran as far as I thought I could and finding myself at the top of a ridge with no foliage cover, I ran until I reached cover again, but it was no use.  Even under the trees, the rain was too much and I was drenched.  I began to walk.  Limbs were falling all around me and I remembered what God had told me earlier.  I didn’t run and now I was stuck in a storm.

    How I Met Your Mother

    By the time I made it to the parking garage, I was soaked.  In two and a half hours Zac would be there.  I felt defeated.  I sat, dripping, in the back of my Vibe with the hatch back open. I wasn’t sure exactly what to do, but over the course of the next 45 minutes I ended up telling the rain to stop, completely changing my clothes, and walked in to eat an all you can eat buffet.  Like Jim Gaffigan says, the bacon tray was at the end and I said to myself, “If I knew you were down here, I would have waited!”

    I did wait on my wife – or at least intended to.  After breakfast I was zonked, but we were not yet able to check into the hotel so I went out to the car to sleep.  My wife ended up knocking on the window about a half hour later.  I couldn’t sleep after that so I went to visit the Gus Grissom museum until Zac was to arrive.  I have this thing where I know when to move in order to arrive on time or to meet someone so when I got the feeling, I acted on it.  I was to meet Zac in front of the Spring Mill Inn.  On my way back, I decided to guess what vehicle Zac drove.  I decided it was silver and probably a Jeep.

    I parked my car, walked to the front of the Inn, sat down in a rocking chair, and watched as a silver Rendevue pulled into the parking lot and Zac got out (at least I got the color right).  At the same time, my wife stepped out the front door with the keys to our room and together we met Zac by the flag pole.

    [NOTE: There is little to no cell phone reception at Spring Mill park, except in one location, around the flag pole.  They call it “flag-pole reception”.  I wondered why so I began to think about why this was.  I looked around and as you can see in this overhead photo, the entrance to the inn is like a parabola with the flag pole being the focus, thereby magnifying any signals enough to talk around the flag pole.]spring-mill-in

    Zac, my wife, and I sat down for lunch.  One of the things we talked about was how I met my wife.  Last week, a coworker at my day job asked if I watched, “How I Met Your Mother.” I said I never had and he highly recommended it.  This afternoon, Zac also recommended the show.  I feel that this was a show I should be watching so I will be recording it to do DVR when I get home and might even catch up online if possible.

    We hiked almost every trail in the park, including the one I had already walked that morning with God.  We talked about thoughts, love, and joy.  By the time we got back to the inn, we were both thirsty.  I had a Mountain Dew and Zac had Cherry Coke.  We watched Amazing Kreskin videos on Youtube until my wife got out of her class.  She handed me the baby and I handed Zac four quarters to play a pinball game.  With the extra lives he was able to play one pinball game for over 15 minutes.  Once my wife got back we went back up to the room and watched more Youtube videos and talked until Zac took off.

    It was a good way to spend my birthday.  I now realize that one of my love languages is time spent with people.  That is why I cherish time playing Settlers of Catan or eating a meal with friends or family.  I hope that even if those reading this are in a normal scenario this week that you can still look for God in everyday life.  Be careful what you think and ask for what you want.