I like to give feedback to people about a whole bunch of stuff from professional to personal matters. However, I learned a while ago not to just give feedback without being asked because it just pisses most people off, and also to try to help the person see for themselves what you want them to see as then they will be more willing to learn and grow. It’s not that easy to bite your tongue sometimes and find a more subtle way when someone clearly needs some guidance 🙂

I saw an interesting quote on the Steve Pavlina forums today:

“Loving someone doesn’t mean that you let them get away with bad behaviour. Real love is about seeing the best in other people and holding them up to being their best selves.”

This makes total sense to me. I wish it was just as simple as giving people direct feedback to help them grow (this is what we do in an Aikido lesson for example). I personally like this sort of feedback myself providing that it’s delivered constructively and without negative energy/emotion. Also, on a selfish level, if you are involved with that person in a personal or business relationship then probably helping them to improve and grow will make your life easier! That’s a win-win situation.

An alternative approach is to say nothing and lead by example and trust that people will find their own way. The problem I have is that some people just don’t “look” so they never see your example, they just carry on oblivious. What should you do in such a case? Start making subtle hints, or maybe just avoid the person altogether! (not always possible). Certainly it’s a conundrum that I’m still learning how to deal with.

Another approach is to alter myself so that I don’t need to “fix” everything and everyone 🙂 So basically I’d need to just accept things as they are and chill out a bit. Sounds great right? But it’s not easy at all. Do you just let your kids throw food on the floor, or do you ask them not too? (or do you get a wipe clean floor?) Do you let your partner/friend regularly insult you to your face or do you tell them it upsets you? (or maybe you just get a new one!) Do you ask your employee to become more productive or do you just hope that they will anyway naturally without any input from you? (again, getting a new one may apply here too). These are some questions that I struggle with on a daily basis, and I try out different approaches, with varying, and often inconsistent results. I’m hoping to get closer to the answers over time by experimenting, and by asking other people what works for them.

What is your approach?

I was just reading an article by Steve Pavlina which starts off saying that having a fixed income (i.e job) is dumb. You may or may not agree with that but there’s some other great stuff in the article and I highly recommend reading it.

Anyway I wrote a comment in the forums and realised it would make a good blog post.

Positive Affirmation Posters

There was some talk about putting up positive affirmation posters at work and what colleagues might think. So I posted about my experience as follows:

I put up some positive affirmations at work about being highly productive and loving working on my current game and making the best games in the world etc. and got a funny look from at least one person, but I don’t care because it works for me. You do have to break through a certain amount of social embarrassment if you do something like that though.

Hire an accountant

I was doing a talk last night at the Vancouver Film School to a load of Game Design students about my Indie game developer days and I mentioned some key things that Steve mentioned today. One was about hiring an accountant because they save you time and money so are totally worth it. I don’t want to fill out boring forms, I’ll delegate that to an expert so I can do what I do best. I’ve used an accountancy firm for 7 years with zero regrets.

Speculate to Accumulate

Another thing I mentioned at the talk was “Speculate to Accumulate” in relation to spending money on a business venture. Normally people have no problem spending money on stuff that depreciates in value like a car or a huge TV, but when it comes to investing money in something, fear kicks in and they don’t want to spend the money. In 2006 I decided to spend about $2300 on a game I was making and I reasoned that the worst case was I’d loose it all, a middle case was I’d loose some or break even, and a best case was I’d profit by anywhere from $0.01 to infinity. Turns out the game has made $23,000 so far, nearly a 10x ROI, and it only took me 5 weeks to make, so I’m pretty pleased with that. Also, I constantly receive royalties for that game so the figure goes up every day 🙂

Why am I employed right now?

You may have noticed from my post above that I’m now employed instead of Indie (self-employed), and yes that was a hard transition but I did it for the experience of moving to another country and learning from the best in the industry, and to get paid loads. I still own my company and it still makes me passive income, which is nice.

So, who knows what the future holds? (Well I guess I probably do as I have a 5 year plan – do you? But things can change.) Most likely at some point I’ll run my own company again after building up more skills and contacts. Some people would worry about posting stuff like that on-line, but it’s the truth and don’t believe in having two personalities i.e. public and private like people do on facebook, how lame – and that’s a topic for a whole other post. Besides whilst I’m still an employee, I’ll be a damn good one because I want it to be win-win for me and them.

Anyway, that’s my thoughts. Hope they are useful to someone.

A good friend of mine just wrote me letter and he was telling me about the various growth-oriented things he was doing (hobby, business, family) and that he felt overwhelmed with everything and was wondering why he was doing all that stuff. Interestingly he felt a bit better towards the end of the letter just through the act of writing about it because he was able to clearly express and share his worries instead of them being a nebulous floating bad feeling in his mind (and no doubt a horrible physical feeling in his abdomen).

Lesson: Write stuff down, get it out of your mind whether it’s current tasks, future goals or fears. Don’t dwell on it.

Offer to you: tell me your worries in the comments (or email me if you want to) and see if it makes you feel better.

Anyway, I replied to him as follows:

So I hear that you are feeling overwhelmed by your new hobby, your new business venture, and your responsibilities as a parent and husband. Well that is understandable and OK to feel that way. In fact it’s GOOD. Do you know why? Because I was reading something a while back that said as we GROW we push the boundaries of our comfort zones, and we have to grow our comfort zones in order to be able to DO MORE and EARN MORE otherwise we would stay in the same (crappy) place.

So what happens when you grow is that your OLD mind tries to drag you back to where it was because it doesn’t like the change, it wants comfort and to curl up into a ball and do nothing (I experience this from time to time, and felt it Monday last week when it was raining and I was sitting on the toilet before going to work, BUT by the end of the day I had kicked myself into action and felt great about all the things I’m doing). You only experience that feeling of “why am I doing all this stuff?” BECAUSE you have changed and are growing – it’s an indication that you are doing the right thing.

My advice is roll with it; when you feel crappy say “that’s OK, that’s my old mind trying to drag me down, so I must be changing”. Then think about the amazing positive outcomes of all the things you are doing and visualise them. Hopefully you can change your feeling. If not, then go for a walk, connect with nature, listen to some music, read something positive, or get on with one of your projects until your *new* mind takes back over again. I hope this helps!