Statistics are like bikinis.  What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. –Aaron Levenstein

This image has a double meaning.  Know what it is?

I told a coworker one of my ex-students had found a passion for freerunning. He turned to me, crinkled his brow, and said, “You can’t make a living doing that.”

I turned to him, crinkled my brow, and asked, “What if Tony Hawk came up to you and said he was going to make it big as a skateboarder. What would you say then?”

My coworker’s response was interesting but represents the sentiment of most people. Would you say something like this?  “I’d tell him that the chances of making any living in that is very small. Maybe 5 out of 1000 people would make it,” he said.

I don’t know where he got that statistic, but his point was simple. There’s so many people who’d want to make it in skateboarding that the chances are close to impossible.

The average human has one breast and one testicle.  –Des McHale

I told him that statistics mean nothing, that any reliance on those lies is a reliance on your ownlimitation.

He then countered with a really good counter. So good was his counter that I had to think hard in my counter to counter his counter. Are we counting how many times I used counter?

“Tony Hawk was lucky,” he said.

I think if he said that to Hawk, he’d slap him. Hell. I’d slap him.

To say anyone is lucky does two things. One, the skill and hard work people put into their success means nothing. Two, people are powerless to live their lives. Take what you get, cuz you ain’t gonna get any better.

To accomplish anything in life worth having, a person needs to take the first step. And many times it requires a sense of courage in the face of failure. There was a lot of talk in the nineties to the turn of the century about the fear of success. But that took away from the very real fear of failure.

Torture numbers, and they’ll confess to anything.  –Gregg Easterbrook

And when you rely on statistics, which can be manipulated to represent anything that anyone wants, you give your power away to live your life the way you want.

This is the basic choice of my hero’s journey in my book. Does he let someone else determine his life and the lives of his province? Or does he choose to fight for a life of freedom?

Ultimately, we all have to choose. Too often I see people choosing the “easy” way out, like relying on stats so they don’t have to go out and follow their passions. Follow your passions, for they may lead to great things.

Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket.  According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable.  –Bobby Bragan, 1963

A couple of weeks ago I’d met up with a friend I hadn’t talked to for over a decade. He used to be an instructor at the martial arts school I’d taught at. Read about my opinions about that in my bio.

We’re both writers and we’d talked about writing the story that calls to us. With all the vampiric stories that are being churned both in the publishing and film industry, I don’t blame people for jumping on the band wagon.  But the point of being an artist is to express your soul.  And if your soul says write a vampire story, then write a vampire story.

When it comes to finding out what you want to do with your life, what story should be written, what path you should take, you need to be honest with yourself.  How do you be honest with yourself?

First of all, are you honest with other people? I’m not talking about being a saint, never telling lies, never doing anything wrong. Were human. But do you care about what other people say about you? Do care about what other people think about you? Do you put all your stock in your status in life?

Why is this important?

Because any of this, namely your ego, can block your true self.  You become motivated by the things that seem important–the size of your house, the German car in your massive garage, the name brand clothes you wear, the title of your job, bottled water.  Do these things matter?  That’s for you to decide.  Do they matter when it comes toexpressing yourself honestly? No.

When I went to the San Francisco Writers Conference, Richard Paul Evans, one of the keynote speakers said something that really hit home. Especially since he’s a New York Times bestselling author.  He said write your truth.  Don’t hop on the bandwagon. Don’t be a follower.  Lead by leading.

Bruce Lee said the same thing. Honestly express yourself.

Look at the things that you’re drawn to.  Do you love music?  Any particular kind?  Try that out.  Do you love software programming?  Try that out.  Do you love selling?  If you have an affinity for houses, maybe you should be a real estate agent.  Or if you love helping people get healthier, maybe you should try physical therapy, personal training, nursing.

Is there a common theme that runs throughout your life?

For me, I’ve always loved stories.  And I always loved fantasizing, putting myself in action movie roles, imagining what it would be like to be betrayed by a close friend, finding myself in a fantasy land where I’m a warlord.  Since my sophomore year, I’ve tried to write novels.  But when it came to deciding a major in college, I never thought of majoring in English or creative writing.  Why?  I’m not sure.  Maybe the things I had to go through as a person lent itself to writing the series of novels that I’m writing now.

I’m not angry about it.  Nor do I judge it.  I realize that I have stories to be told, and I’m telling them.

Today I saw a documentary of a woman who was diagnosed with an incurable cancer.  In her quest to find a cure, she has become a leader in the field of health and eco eating.  She’s not only lived with this cancer, but has found a healthy way of keeping this cancer to the level of benignancy.  Pretty amazing.

Link

One of the things about the documentary was the number of cancer patients who fought for life and found a renewed appreciation for life.  This led me to the question:  What would I do if I had a limited number of days to live?

In human reality, I do have a limited number of days to live.  I may live to be 100.  I may live for one more day.  I can’t be concerned with which.  I can only focus on what I want to do NOW.  And it’s the reason why I’vesearched for my passion. Once I’ve found it, I jumped in head on.

What would you do, since you also have a limited number of days to live?

The evil bad guy in my story uses ignorance to shed fear upon the people he’s terrorizing. Ignorance is a powerful tool. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen those shrink your tummy gizmos shizmos on TV and know it’s bullshit.

“It takes five seconds a day and you’ll see results yesterday. It’s so easy you’ll barely do anything but sit there.”

Yeah. The result is that you just bought a piece of crap machine that does nothing but take your $19.95 from your credit card.

I was eating cheese today with a group of people and heard a woman say how ignorant Americans were. She was talking about how the cheese made overseas was better than cheese made in America.

I thought, What?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!

What you see with the ?!?!?!???? is what we edumacated writers call a no no, a sin, a taboo in accepted English grammar.

Why we be so ignant? Cuz we ignant Americans have a law dat requires pasturizin da cheese.

For you folks I misspelled these words on purpose. Ignant for the Ebonics challenged means ignorant. Dat means that.

Getting back to ignance…

When I went to Walmart I looked at a ream of paper. One pack was a dollah fitty. Another was two dollah fitty. What was the difference? I have no idea. One dollah?

Can I make my own paper? No. In fact, I go to Walmart because I can’t make paper as good as the two dollah fitty version, let alone the one dollah fitty version. I doubt that ego ridden woman sitting on her highchair could make paper. Yes, the highchair babies use.

To further my point, she can’t make anything Walmart sells. That’s why Walmart sells stuff. So we don’t need to know how to make stuff. That doesn’t make us ignant. It allows us to focus on things that are more important. Like friends and family, our passions, or just being.

So the next time anyone makes fun of Walmart, ask them if they can make anything they sell. 100 to nothin they can’t.

In researching warrior societies for my book, a commonality is they started training at preadolescence.  There weren’t any real exceptions for good reason.  All of thesocietiesI focused on stemmed from hundreds to thousands of years ago where men had to protect or fight for what they had.

Native Americans had to protect their villages.  Scots fought for their land and freedom during the English occupation.  Samurai fought for their warlords during Japan’s monarchy.  Spartons threw their young into the agoge to become Greece’s special forces.

Life was treacherous.  As a result, fighting became a necessity.

But do you have to start at a young age to be good at anything?  It seems that a lot of successful people of today started their endeavors when they were children.  Michael Jackson is a good example.  The turn out for his remembrance is a tribute to his passion and hard work.  But look at the other brothers.  What happened to them?

What about the colonel?  That’s right.  The man who made fried chicken a staple in America?  Did he start frying poultry when he was young?  He had a variety of jobs that had little to do with flightless birds.  It wasn’t until his late forties that he started a cafe, and his fried chickens had become popular.  Then at the ripe young age of sixty six did he start selling franchises, which of course spawned the empire all chickens fear today.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship is about to have its 100th pay per view show this weekend.  The heavyweight champion, Brock Lesnar, started to train how to fight just a few years ago.  It’s fair to say that a lot of great fighters on the UFC roster started when they were young.  And Lesnar is highly talented as an athlete.  But the one thing the UFC has proven over and over again is talent and experience has little to do with winning.  More than hard work, it’s a mindset forged under the heat of severe competition.

For Lesnar to become the heavyweight champion in four fights, which is amazing in its own right, he had to overcome some very experienced and gifted fighters.  In listening to his many interviews, he always knew his unproven ability to win, worked extremely hard, and approached both his fights and training with an intelligence that some heavyweights ignored.  A lot of them relied on their weight and size to prevail.

He scoffed at critics who said he was too green for the sport of mixed martial arts, that he needed experience before he could even challenge the prior champion, and, despite his explosiveness and size, knew he had to learn quickly with a furious pace.

Is it ever too late to start anything?

Yes.  When you’re dead.

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be invited on a friend’s yacht. I was talking about my book to an acquaintance. We were talking about one of the most basic elements of a good story.

Disasters.

I told her that disasters occur at the end of most scenes. And if a scene did end on a positive note, a win for our hero, a disaster would quickly follow.

She was taken aback. And she’s well read. “Pollyanna is boring,” she said.

Now, I was surprised she didn’t know this. Because I took this basic story element for granted. All good writers know this, however.

So why am I posting this? Because I spend so much time hiding writing techniques, making sure different story elements work undercover like a secret agent.

When you watch an Olympic ice skater perform, you don’t see every single technique, the thousands of hours of practice, and the relentless coaching. What you see is greatness.

Not that I want to neglect the practice of making my writing seamless, effortless. But people are totally more concerned with a story being good. Whether they can see the technique used, doesn’t matter. Does your story have passion? Heart?

I read an interview of top editors from different major publishing houses. They said one of the worst things they faced were stories that were technically written well, but lacked heart. At that point they couldn’t tell the writer what to do.

Ask yourself. What is the purpose of your story? What is the message you’re trying to convey?

Take Matrix. The message is simple. Anything is possible if you believe in yourself.

A couple of years ago I injured my shoulder.  I don’t know how but assumed it happened at the gym.  My rotator cuff hurt severely when I did any type of chest exercise.

It sucked.

I was used to benching a certain amount of weight, but had to cut it by more than 50%.  I can tell you my ego didn’t like it one bit.  I still wanted to workout and knew how to rehab my shoulder.  Within a couple of weeks, my ego agreed to the necessary decreased weight.  But with every gym session I added 2.5 pounds to my bench.  Eventually, I lost track of how much weight I benched and focused on keeping healthy, writing, working, etc.

Several months later, I noticed I was benching a lot more weight than I’d had in my life.  And I workout by myself.  I can’t find a training partner that has a similar schedule to mine.  This taught me something.

Small adjustments can add up.

Writing theEpisodeshasn’t yielded the audience I was expecting.  That was my first mistake, expecting.  But the audience has grown little by little, even though not all vote.  Despite my desire to bring fame and fortune to my book, I realized something.  My disappointment always vanished when I sat down to write.  My heartbreak wilted when I went to the gym.  My love for story, my love for writing, my love and gratitude for the imagination given to me is precious.

Every day I take steps toward my wants and desires.  Every day I do my best to release my expectations by doing the things I love, andexpressing myself honestly.Every day I go to my day job knowing that I’m providing for my ability to live my night job (job is totally the wrong word here).  Every day small adjustments will be made because small adjustments make a huge difference towardsuccess.

To rebel or not rebel.  That is the question.

The hero in my book is confronted with a choice.  His close friend and former mentor wants to brutally take over the world.  The hero is given the safe and easy position of being the right hand man.  Doing so would kill tens of thousands of lives through war.  Rebelling against his mentor would kill tens of thousands of lives through war.  Probably more.  Nice choice, huh?

I was watching a documentary called Slanted Screen. It chronicled the stereotypical and racial barriers Asian actors have to go through and endure in order to be successful in Hollywood.  I enjoyed the documentary, but I have a serious problem with it.  More on that later.

The main message was rebel.

One of the main reasons Asians are not seen as much in Hollywood is that acting, singing, dancing, the arts, are not considered practical choices of occupation.  I know.  My family detested my decision to study acting, and at times isn’t the most positive when it comes to my success in writing.

Actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa has been in tons of movies such as Mortal Kombat, Rising Sun with Sean Connery and  Wesley Snipes, and in upcoming movie Tekken.  The list is just huge.  He said something that I connect to.  If your heart is in the arts, and your family doesn’t support it, then don’t listen to your family.

Rebel.

I think too much in life we succumb to the norm.  Afraid of marching to our own drummer.  Wary of listening to our hearts let alone follow it.

I wrote a post about themillion dollar question. It asked, if you were guaranteed to make a million dollars a year, what would you do?  Does it match the work you’re doing now?  If not, can you spend an hour a day, five days a week on it?  If that’s too much time, then reduce it to 45 minutes a day, five days a week.  Or 30 minutes, five days a week.  Four days.  Three.  Just start.

What happens, if you truly love it, or like it, is you’ll naturally spend more time on it.  You’ll sacrifice precious things like hours talking shit in the bar, or watching television.  Have your own vision.  It happened to me.  I started writing around five hours a week.  Then it grew to ten.  Suddenly, I was spending an average of 15 hours a week writing.  I loved it.

We all have bills.  We have to eat.  Take care of our families.  Have laundry that we have to wash on the rocks by the river bed.  After we clothespin the laundry on the clothesline, what do we do?  We sit down on the couch and watch TV.  We watch reality TV.  Watch others chase, attack their dreams.  We see a lot of them succeed.  Then we go to bed, sleep, wake up the next morning, and start the circle all over again.

This is called complaining, playing the victim, blaming things outside of ourselves, when it is us who stopped us from chasing our dreams initially.  And that was the problem with Slanted Screen.  A lot of people interviewed said being Asian made it hard to succeed in Hollywood.  Really?

Have you heard of a small guy namedBruce Lee?

Rebel.

Last post I asked how does someone know if they’ve chosen their right passion(s), be it vocation, hobby, career, etc. For everyone it’s going to be different. Some will tear up at the thought, others are ecstatic and jump right in, and when they do time flies by without notice.

For me, all of the above were true. But there was one other indication. I’m not a disciplined person. Motivation is not my specialty. What I’ve learned to do is to allow things to happen. Once I found my love of the 7^th Province, I wrote an average of fifteen hours a week. It was a driving force. No matter how tired, how busy my normal life became, or what was going on in my life, it carried me. There were days I felt like a robot, driving to Borders, setting my laptop up, getting my coffee, taking a moment, and diving right in.

I was never this disciplined in school!

Ultimately, there should be a high level of happiness, content, peace, fulfillment, serenity. A certain silence or calmness can be felt mentally, physically and spiritually.  And there may even be a sense of urgency to jump right in.

Think about children at play. They think nothing of time, parents, cleanliness, safety, or anything that would get in the way of their fun. Master artists can only match the joy in children’s eyes, the pleasure in their laughter and their elation in their imagination. Have a childlike quality in life and explore.

If you’ve read my bio, I went through different passions in my life. I became aware of what worked for me and what didn’t.  There were things that I did just for fun, and there were things I had to do in order to find what I loved.  It’s been said many times.  Life is a marathon not a sprint.

Just be highly aware of your likes and dislikes, be aware of your fears and work through them. Humans are born with two real fears, height and predators. Any other fear is a hallucination.

Brad Pitt. A friend on mine told me a story about him. We were talking about how we’re surrounded by people who’ve not only chased their dreams, but have achieved them. What most people don’t see is their perseverance. Pitt had dropped out of college, moved to the city of angels, did a lot of odd jobs like wearing a chicken suit to promote El Pollo Loco for years, before he landed his first major roll in Thelma & Louise. Now he’s one of the biggest movie stars in the world.

There was a study done on a high school class. The study followed late into their adult lives. It found those who stuck to one career path had earned and attained more than their combined classmates who didn’t. This story has floated around the self-help industry for many years, and is rumored to be just a folk tale. But its prevalence tells us a truth.

I was talking to a friend, and she’d reconnected with one of her long time classmates who works for Coke. This person is about ten years younger than I, but has climbed much higher on the corporate ladder. I’d always moved from job to job. She’s worked for Coke since high school, about eight years now, and illustrates an important point about consistency.

A few years ago, I went to a Renaissance Faire. I love them. My girlfriend at the time and I were watching a turtle race. Each person would place bets on a turtle of their choice. The race started. Contestants yelled and screamed, urging their turtle to crawl faster. One turtle, slow and steady, made great headway and was literally one step away from crossing the finish line. Then it stopped with one foot stuck in the air. All it had to do was place the foot down, and, bam, it won. It just froze. Another turtle from behind took the win.

So what’s the point? Once you find your passion in life, follow through with it. Whether success is truly overnight—it does happen—or takes time, love the process. If you love to act, go into every audition and act! If you love to work on projects for your company, or love reaching sales goals, go in every day and love working.

For the process is really what we love. The goals matter little. Why? Well what happens once an actor becomes a huge movie star like Pitt? What happens to the sales executive who reaches their ultimate sales goal? They continue to act, continue to sell, continue their work. All of them display a high level of dedication (knowing what they want), focus (loving what they do), and take each step toward their dreams (doing what they love).

Love your work. The goal will come.