Notes of a Paranoid Schizophrenic

” The most depraved type of human being … (is) the man without a purpose” – Ayne Rand

If you want to be successful in life you must set goals. Now that statement might seem obvious, however we live in a time of many distractions, particularly in the western world. TV’s, Radio, Internet, iTunes, telephones, cellphones, while all these things are interesting inventions, and some might argue are even life-enhancing, I would argue that they are mostly distractions that pull us away from achieving our goals. Sure, they can provide pleasure and entertainment, but if they become the center part of a person’s life, then they can only provide anxiety and depression.

I have always had trouble paying attention for long periods of time. As a child in school, I was always the one gazing out the window and thinking about playing after school. As a result, I got pretty mediocre grades throughout my school life.

Back then, I had a love for airplanes and aviation (and I still do). The school I attended decided to have a craft day every Thursday afternoon, and I decided that my craft was going to be designing and building a model helicopter. I started drawing my plans, and eventually came up with a decent framework for a helicopter. I got so absorbed in my project that time seemed to stand still, I had entered “the zone”. As I got older, my model airplanes became more and more sophisticated, and every time I sat down to work on my model airplanes, I became lost in time and entered “the zone”.

Creative people know all about “zone” experiences. Perhaps I should rephrase – Actively creative people know all about zone experiences. I say actively creative, because all people are inherently creative, but many people in our modern world have become lost and distracted. They watch too much TV, or they sit in front of the computer for hours on end browsing the internet. They may start out searching for “how to make money” and end up looking at a monster trucks site. Has this every happened to you? It has certainly happened to me!

The majority of people also work at autopilot jobs, working for an hourly wage, doing their ceaselessly boring repetitive work every day for their entire working lives. They clock in at 9 and clock out at 5. Then, being under-stimulated throughout the day, they come home to their TVs to try and save themselves from their boredom. Eventually, their lives go by and they get old without ever really accomplishing anything.

It is important to set goals and then stick with them until they are completed. This provides us with the immensely rewarding zone experience, reminding us that we are creative and powerful beings that can create anything we want. I always think about large bridges. I think, wow, somebody had a vision to put a bridge here, then he sat down and wrote a plan to build a bridge. Then, he assembled all the right mixture of engineers, city councilors, concrete workers, steelworkers, welders, electricians, and all the other myriad skilled workers to make the bridge a finished product. It all started with a goal! If that person had instead thought, “I’d like to build a bridge” and then sat down to play solitaire on his computer, or watch Seinfeld on TV, the magnificent bridge would never get built.

“Most men live lives of quiet desperation” - Thoreau

***The purpose of this blog is to learn how to be happy and successful***