adam.benjaminbloom.net » thankfulness

happy independence day to my family and friends

adam — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 15:44:32 +0000

Independence has been a significant theme for me this year in many ways. So, I wanted to share a wish for all of you on Independence day…July 4, 2010.

More than anything, I wish you “mindful independence.” I wish you choose to pursue life, liberty, and happiness with vigor and resilience and patience…that this pursuit is your way of being. Cliche? Yes, of course. But think again…there is a reason people say, “think outside the box.” It isn’t a physical box…where is this box? It is the box in your head.

photo credit: qthomasbower

We are all oppressed in some way, shape, or form. If you’ve ever spoken with someone who has lived in a state of oppression where their “human rights” were materially or physically constricted, they value freedom unlike others. They value being able to wake up in the morning…every morning…in a free country…with the ability to do whatever they want to create their future…to work to serve their fellow man and make a profit from that service…they value the ability to pursue their goals and desires without limit…they value being able to love whomever they want and practice their beliefs without walls. The sense of this freedom is sacred…knowing this sense is sacred.

What I’ve learned this year is that independence starts inside your head. I’ve spoken to several people in 2010 who have chosen to put themselves in a cage inside their mind…because of their “situation” or what others are doing to them. When they put themselves in this state of thought, they oppress themselves by building these walls, chains, locks, and cages inside their head…they become their own pharoah…their own vader…their own “the man.”

For example, we all have the freedom to learn to ride a bicycle, but, as children, we get scared. We protect ourselves and say, “it’s not for me” or “I can’t do it” or “what if I hurt myself?” This self-imposed limit is a protection mechamism…and protection is a good thing…but sometimes we protect ourselves too much…we limit ourselves and our self growth. As adults, we do this…we oppress ourselves in our work and personal lives…and tell ourselves things that impose limits…tell ourselves that a relationship, or a job, or an abilitiy to learn is NOT there…and then tell ourselves “you cannot overcome it.” These are only lies we make our own truths.

So, on July 4, 2010, I wish you mindful independence. Know that you are free and that anything is a possibility…that your oppressors are largely inside your mind. These thoughts are not who you are…they are just thoughts. Thoughts could be focused on promoting the well-being of our fellow humans…as an essential element to the “pursuit of our own happiness.” Remember, your own well-being comes first…think independently…avoid oppressing yourself.

Be well. Free your mind. Enjoy the journey. To independence!!!

chop wood, carry water

adam — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 03:08:18 +0000

When life throws challenges at you…just keep going. Keep opening doors and walking through them. Keep your balance of positive in the face of difficulty and negative.

That is how businesses launch and ideas come to be introduced to the marketplace.

Betalkaboutable is a brand I came up with some time ago…and now the “business” (really just me right now ) has actually launched. It’s a milestone in my life…and I am very thankful. Special and sincere thanks to all the mentors listed here and many more!!!

As Bob says, “chop wood, carry water.” Good point…thanks Bob…hope you are well…though I kinda like “chop water, carry wood” better…go figure!

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

photo credit: geoftheref

a story i am proud to share

adam — Sun, 16 May 2010 13:59:47 +0000

If you haven’t been exposed to it, this was an inspiring event in my life. I have been fortunate to share it with a few folks who appreciated it. Just search “zen surfing benjamin bloom” and it will show up. (Actually, it doesn’t any more, so here is a link http://www.benjaminbloom.net/zenandtheartofsurfingandworking.htm)

photo credit: joiseyshowaa

photo credit: Bryce Bradford

photo credit: ?serendipity

photo credit: eschipul

photo credit: nosha

photo credit: kimdokhac

happy new year 2010

adam — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:50:33 +0000

My wish for you in 2010 is for personal growth from deeper relationships!!!

It’s been a few weeks since the new year started, and I wanted to wish everyone who reads this a Happy 2010. In particular, I am very grateful for all my family, friends, coaches, and colleagues…and wish them a great 2010. For the past 5 or 6 years, I’ve written something like this in my blog on New Years Day (though, the old blog is currently on hiatus). While I wanted to write this on New Year’s day and thought about it long before and since, I didn’t have a full sense of what to say…until last night…so, here it is:

As many others experienced, 2009 was probably the craziest year in my life…it was both terrible and super.

It was terrible to face a relatively short period of very deep depression in the latter part of the year. While provoked somewhat by being downsized, I found that really wasn’t the root cause of my depression…at the time, I didn’t really know what was causing me to feel so awful. It was surprising to find out so many people faced depression in 2009. For anyone that has been through a clinical depression, you know it’s not fun. If you have NOT been through it, a) imagine something you have strongly and emotionally dreaded doing, b) multiply that feeling by 100, and c) have it on your mind 24×7 whereby it drowns out most other thoughts. This should give you a decent picture of how it feels. The part that I never expected was that it’s not easy to shake “the feelings” without a hell of a lot of work to retrain your brain…in fact, some of the training involves physical changes to the brain…very much like training muscles.

What is super about 2009 is that I learned some tremendous lessons about life…and the journey we are all on:

1. It may sound funny, but my relationship with myself was without compassion. In fact, I was beating myself up about certain things for about 20 years…I didn’t realize I was even doing it…and I also didn’t know it was making me miserable!!! What I found out is that something can be making you very unhappy, and you aren’t even aware it is happening.

2. While it was already good, my perspective on interpersonal relationships drastically changed. All along the way in 2009…before, moving into, being in, and getting out of depression…various people in my life showed that they cared about me in amazing ways, small and large, deserved or not. Their care was given out of kindness, compassion, love, and good will. It cost them very little to give the encouragement, kind words, or thoughts, and it was worth a tremendous amount to me. People and relationships are quite amazing if you stop and truly observe, embrace the relationship, let the relationship evolve…don’t hide or put it off…don’t rebel against it…pay attention to it…get closer…give it respect. What I discovered is that relationships often have unexpected value…experiencing human relationships and interactions…these are like finding precious stones on the street…you have no idea how valuable they might be when you first see them.

In experiencing both terrible and super perspectives, I left 2009 with some clarity and insight about personal growth from human relationships…that I wish for you in 2010:

1. I wish you a new sense of the relationship you have with yourself…that you can be patient, supportive, and fair to yourself…that you know what you need and you give yourself what you need. This sounds funny, and I didn’t know what this meant until the end of 2009…but it actually was life-altering. Since it is ambiguous, I’ll also offer a related wish (something more concrete), I wish that: you can see your life’s purpose to be the best “you” that you can be, to feel a sense of worth from serving your fellow human in whatever you do, and you discover that joy is everywhere you look if you let yourself see it. These are hard to do daily or build a discipline to keep in mind all the time…but these were amazingly powerful things I learned and wish for you in 2010.

2. I wish you a new sense of deepening relationships with others. We all are human…we all have flaws, issues, failures, and imperfections…we all have so much in common…we share the air we breathe, we have a brain that generates thoughts and feelings constantly and with little pause, and we experience thousands of interactions with other people during our lives. What I wish for you is…to know you make a difference to others every day. I wish you truly and completely experience making a difference to another person just in the tone of your voice or by saying “hello” to a stranger. I wish you interact with someone this year…in a way that ultimately leads you to have a huge impact on their life 10 years from now…and I wish you live this year knowing that it could be anyone you come in contact with (pause and think about that). In 2009, people I met 28 years ago had a huge impact on my life…people I met 12 years ago, 6 years ago, 3 years ago, and even one year ago…all had a big impact on me in 2009…I didn’t know this would be the case when I met them or interacted with them over time. In looking at life this way, it creates a new view of how important relationships are, how they have completely unanticipated impact, and how people value each other. I wish this perspective for you in 2010…that your relationships with others grow deeper.

These experiences were blessings for me in 2009…and I wish them for you in 2010.

Happy 2010!

With Love and Gratitude,
Adam

behavioral systems

adam — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:03:25 +0000

Further below is a really interesting and insightful thought about “neuro-linguistic programming” from this site about psychology and business.

While this applies in many contexts, I think the most profound is the overall human relationship context and how people interact in general. A great manager I met from Microsoft once put it this way, “people don’t remember what you said, but they remember how they felt.” NLP reinforces how important this is in human dynamics.

From the link: “Control in human systems refers to the ability to influence the quality of a person’s own and other people’s experience in the moment and through time.

The person with the greatest flexibility of behaviour – that is, the number of ways of interacting – will control the system. Choice is always preferable to no choice, and more choice is always preferable to less choice. This also relates to the third general principle of NLP, mentioned previously. This principle is that a person needs to vary their behaviour until they get their desired outcome. If what you are doing is not working, vary the behaviour and do something else. Anything else is better than continuing with what doesn’t work. Keep varying your behaviour until you find something that works.”

very cool to come across this today – kinzan and scoble

adam — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:37:48 +0000

what was cool is this post (not related to the pic below…but the pic is bad-ass too). see an excerpt of the post below between garland and robert scoble. as background, i worked with garland (and many other bright, talented people) at kinzan…I left and went to Siebel Systems before this dialogue happened…and had no idea that the dialogue occurred.

Excerpt from Scoble’s post: “But, I had to admit it was cool. I’d never seen a coding environment that was like this. Just plop a component down on the screen. Draw a line to connect it into the system. No code.

Then the shocker. He closed down Eclipse, opened up Visual Studio and did the same thing. Only this time his system used Visio inside of Visual Studio. He showed me the code it wrote. Showed me the XML file it created. And how it enabled a new kind of development team.

‘Is this interesting?’ he asked.

[expletive] Yes!!”

Akin Arikan is THA MAN! (web analytics expert)

adam — Fri, 22 May 2009 18:15:34 +0000

Unica’s Akin Arikan presented in one of the eMetrics Marketing Labs session with Michelle Rutan of National Instruments where they provided a jaw dropping showcase of the power of the NetInsights product.

thanks @waynesutton for capturing and posting this social media interview

adam — Wed, 20 May 2009 04:31:50 +0000

enjoyed the mashable atlanta mixer last week…met a lot of cool folks.
thanks to wayne for capturing and posting this!

thanks to leland

adam — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:25:28 +0000

It’s great when people help you as part of marketing to you – this IS the future of marketing. Leland @ Themelab posted a great article – clear, concise, good pictures, etc. Honestly, it was one search to get just the solution I needed (and frankly should have started with…but I did get a WP upgrade for my efforts looking into other ways to solve the problem).

As a marketer, I am now in the “awareness” category for Themelab.
Thanks Leland!
Up, up, and away!

good wiring

adam — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 19:50:02 +0000

After complaining about idiots for just a minute or two earlier today, I’ve decided to just be thankful for the human brain across the board…I shouldn’t complain, sometimes I am also an idiot. If you have human brain, you are an amazing creature…other humans just urge you to use it more often than not .

t-fulness

adam — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 04:47:00 +0000

t-fulness is short for thankfulness…I am thankful for so many things in my life. The time I get to spend with amazing people, friends, and family…the opportunities I’ve been given. The fact that I live in a free country where people can dream and pursue their dreams freely. Realizing that people in this world are homeless, starving, and sick…I am lucky to have a good head, able body, and can afford food, shelter, and more.

penelope and mito

adam — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:02:14 +0000

My co-worker faces a tough battle every day (outside of work). Her adorable daughter has mitochondrial disease, and I wanted to post some information about it. Historically I’ve worked with several people who have children with special needs and illnesses, and it is quite amazing to hear some of the stories and challenges they have to deal with. Their influences always keep me in a mode of gratitude and to help me keep in mind how fragile life is…that life is to be respected. You can read more about mito below.

Mitochondrial diseases result from failures of the mitochondria, specialized compartments present in every cell of the body except red blood cells. Mitochondria are responsible for creating more than 90% of the energy needed by the body to sustain life and support growth. When they fail, less and less energy is generated within the cell. Cell injury and even cell death follow. If this process is repeated throughout the body, whole systems begin to fail, and the life of the person in whom this is happening is severely compromised. The disease primarily affects children, but adult onset is becoming more and more common.

Diseases of the mitochondria appear to cause the most damage to cells of the brain, heart, liver, skeletal muscles, kidney and the endocrine and respiratory systems.

Depending on which cells are affected, symptoms may include loss of motor control, muscle weakness and pain, gastro-intestinal disorders and swallowing difficulties, poor growth, cardiac disease, liver disease, diabetes, respiratory complications, seizures, visual/hearing problems, lactic acidosis, developmental delays and susceptibility to infection.