Week 7 - Ethics, Integrity and Self-Mastery go hand in hand.

Well, it's been yet another week. 

This week was good. I found myself doing a lot of internal reflection and finding some things I did and some things I didn't like. 

The videos and papers we read had to do with integrity and Ethics in my other class and this class was about mastery mostly.

I listen to a podcast called Startup and this most recent episode has a lot of what I would consider reflection.

It addresses some of the hard things we have to do in life. It may be applicable to you, it may not but I think that listening to the process of how they got there was great and could be applied by anyone if they truly wanted it.

I found it curious that all these classes and things aligned.

In order to truly master something, you have to be aware of yourself. Your thoughts, feelings, etc. You have to do a kind of deep dive into the dark spaces of your soul to figure out what makes you tick.

Everything mixed in a sort of wonderful cocktail of introspection that made me think a lot.

We did a book report on the book Mastery by George Leonard. It addressed the principle of mastery and how we go about achieving it. The most interesting part is that there isn’t an end goal necessarily. It’s a goal unto itself and has no end. It’s learning to enjoy the process and not just scrambling for an end goal. You should read it if you haven’t.

Until next week.

Week 6 - Priorities and Speed

Week 6. A satisfying, almost-halfway through the semester kind of week. Workloads in many classes have been increasing, but this week for this class wasn’t too bad.

I felt that this week was mainly focused on, do you really want to be an entrepreneur? There was some thought inducing videos about family and the importance of it even while creating a business. The main point in those is that you cannot sacrifice your family for the business. Your responsibility to them and to God must take priority over the business work to achieve success and happiness.

We also read an article called, “How Entrepreneurs Craft Strategies That Work” which was very interesting as well.

The article went through several ventures and some of what might be called standard criteria for opening or starting a business. There were a few interesting points on the benefits or opportunity costs of planning very well vs just diving straight in. While planning worked well for some, it didn’t work as well for others. In fact, it addressed the possibility of the idea no longer being good if one waited too long. I think that’s even truer in today’s world due to the amount of technology we have available. Just because you have an idea, it won’t stick around for you if there is actually a demand for it and there are so many people out there looking for something great to do.

Bottom line, there is risk, but if you can look, act, and take changes into stride, you could do very well.

Until next week!

Week 5 - Spreading Happiness

This week was pretty good. We watched the video, “A Hero’s Journey” which was quite interesting. I know there are lots of takeaways from the video. The main ones presented were:

1.  Was I a good person?
2.  Have I contributed something meaningful?
3. Who have I loved and who loved me?

Contained was the thought that after living a long life, that these would be the burning questions that were actually important at the end of it all.

Another item that was touched on is a list of “I will nots”. Write yourself a letter for each of these moral boundaries, or temptations, call them what you will, and take it out and read it when  you are approaching the thought of doing one of these I will nots. I think that’s very interesting and it also brings the topic of pre-decision decision making.

The last and most interesting thing I found in the video was the thought that, the hero does it first, the fool does it last, but they both do the same thing.

This, above all the others, really made me think. Am I taking initiative to help someone in need now, maybe when it’s inconvenient vs. later when I feel bad about it after living my life not having done so. Am I the hero or the fool? Did I take the risk, did I make the move, and did I make the leap? Now when I have so much to lose or did I wait until I felt secure, beyond the point when it would actually make a difference?

It’s going on my wall.

Levi

Week 4 - Overcoming Fear

Alrighty, so this week, addressed our fears, read some motivational literature and did a book report.

This week, the hardest exercise for me, and I think it would be for many, was to actually write down and address our fears and then look for solutions. I found that when you look at fear in a logical way, you realize, that if you can just plan it out and reason through it, it’s not actually that scary.

I realized that my worst fear is the unknown. It’s a hard fear to overcome as there are always going to be unknowns for as long as you are alive. The best way to mitigate the risk for the unknown is to learn. You must educate yourself by any means necessary. Whether this be through a formal education such as a University or Trade School, or a great mentor or friend with hard-won life experience, we need to learn.

The more we know, the less afraid we can become and the more able we will be to predict the outcomes of our choices. I personally would want to start small and then grow and gain confidence based on my successes and more importantly on my failures. As I learn, I will have that larger body of experience to draw on when making larger, or riskier decisions.

That’s what I really learned this week. If you have any thoughts, comments or just want to link to a great article, please do so in the comments.

Until next week!

Week 3 - Code of Conduct

Hello again!

So this week focused on a woman named Magdalena Yesil. She was pretty interesting.

Here is some of my intro which gives some insight of what I learned from this assignment.

Yesil’s lifelong habit of learning allowed her to change from one career type to another as they naturally flowed one into another. She accepted challenges and less-than-ideal situations and used them to learn everything she could about what she was doing. By being a lifelong learner, she was able to learn multiple aspects of each business and transform herself into the power house she became. This aspect of her personality also made her attractive to others searching for intelligent well rounded individuals such as Dan Lynch and brought different options to her several times.  If she had refused and decided to just stick with Computer Engineering, she probably would have never even been presented so many large opportunities down the line.

My brief conclusion is that she was a hard worker, intensely passionate about it and willing to learn anything that would make things better. No excuses, just solutions.

The other part we discussed was a personal code of conduct. I think this goes for everyone in that regardless of religion, creed or upbringing, we should all choose a code to live by and attempt to stick with it. That isn't to say that it can't be changed or modified when we find confusion or discrepancy, but taking action when your core beliefs are already decided is a much simpler process in the moment. 

Just to clarify, when I say "core beliefs" I'm not talking about ones like, I believe in God. That may be a huge motivator for your code of conduct but I'm talking about ones along the lines of, I will be honest always. 

Until next week. 

Week 2 - Questions

• Why do you think Randy Pausch was able to achieve so many of his childhood dreams?

In it, Randy ( who is diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer ) give some great thoughts on life. He says that tenacity is the key. "Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to to show how badly we want something."

• Do you feel that dreaming is important? Why or why not?

I feel like dreaming is very important. One thing about dreaming is that it doesn't necessarily have to be realistic. In dreams, anything is possible and our minds can be as creative as they want. There are no boundaries and no impossibilities. Snapping back to reality, our dreams allow us to attempt to create something that is impossible today, but might not be tomorrow. 

I think many people have dreams of flying but this guy actually decided to figure out how to do it. Pretty impressive for something cobbled out of zip ties, duct tape, a pair of pliers as a hand held accelerator and a bunch of electric motors. 

• Discuss at least one of your childhood dreams. Explain why you believe you can or cannot achieve this dream.

I honestly don't remember any of my childhood dreams. I've had other desires since. I really wanted to build some great speakers. I have them in my living room right now, almost completely built and am starting to test them and measure them today. It took me at least a year of research and a good solid several months to build them, but the dream is finally coming to fruition and I'm EXCITED. They should rival some very high end speakers in the 10's of thousands dollar range and be able to reproduce pretty much anything I want to throw at them. 

Until next week.

Week 1 - Feelings/Commence Launch

So, I'm starting the course B 183 entitled "Introduction to Entrepreneurship" at University this week. It requires a weekly blog post.

The purpose of the blog is to both chronicle events as well as record thoughts, feelings, and archive things that we learn or insights gained during the course.

Currently I feel a little overwhelmed as I've just started 3, 3 credit hour courses which all tell me they are actually going to take 9 hours a week. For me that is totaling 27 hours a week which should be interesting considering I have a full time job, a spouse and 1.5 kids. They need time to so the balancing act should be fun.

For the actual content this week, I really don't have much. The assignment was pretty much to introduce yourself to your fellow classmates, read or watch motivational content on leadership and start a blog. Check, check and check.

In the interest of attempting to do some further exploration, take a look at this article from Forbes on first impressions. I thought it was pretty interesting and laid out both side of a first impression not mattering at all but also that we have ingrained first impressions which may be very subconscious in nature.

The other content, aka required reading, I read through, point to the importance of self assessment and thinking of ourselves as always in a developing or changing stage. They talk about how to get our entrepreneurial juices flowing and then maintaining those good habits so as to "etch them onto your character".

All in all I think it will be an interesting ride throughout the semester. If you feel like it, subscribe to the blog as I'll be posting weekly insights into my course work. You might, just might, learn something fun along the way. I'll even try to include fun pictures as time permits.

Until next week.