People who motivate me: Mike LItman

I fell down a rabbithole one day, no doubt looking for material for facilitating a group at work, and discovered a man whose philosophy has already begun to change my life: Mike Litman.

I don't know quite what else to say about him. His core philosophy seems to be this:

Don't get it perfect, just get it going.

Which isn't too far from my own:

Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

Though I think he's got a better positive spin in his than I do.

His website includes MP3s of discussions with successful entrepreneurs -- definitely worth popping them into iTunes for motivation. In Anthony Robbins-speak, I have a very positive neuroassociation now with just the sound of Mike's voice, and listening without even paying attention to one of his 15-minute phonecall audios is enough to energize me for the rest of the day. Sometimes, I make a conscious effort to talk to myself in his voice as a pick-me-up.

Current reading: The 4-Hour Work Week.

I'm currently reading The 4-Hour Work Week, which has the unfortunate side effect of meaning that I'm not reading anything else but Harry Potter 6. The book itself recommends a kind of colon-cleansing process of limiting your intake of information to only those things NECESSARY to your most important priorities.

I bought the book several weeks ago, and carried it with me back and forth to work as a kind of physical reminder that I needed to crack open my mind to another way to live. And there it sat on my desk, for all the world (including my boss) to see, espousing a 4-hour work week. On a time & materials contract? HA! Okay, that was bad. So I flipped it over, thinking that would be better. 6 hours later, I noticed that the back cover clearly said in large print: "Do not read this book unless you want to quit your job." *sigh* So much for not telegraphing my punches, right?

I'll be participating in a teleseminar tomorrow with the author. I'm looking forward to finding out if he's as motivational in voice as he is in print.

This is not a dragon.

Somewhere in my mid-adulthood, I came to an important discovery about things that are fearful in life -- that generally, we give them the power to be fearful through the act of fearing them; they don't hold that power intrinsically. And so I came to my motto on the subject:

A thing is not a thing unless you MAKE it a thing.

And then I began the slow and arduous process of owning my life, taking posession of my own power, and developing wisdom.

I begin this blog as a place to summarize and catalog the many ideas, techniques, and tools that I'm learning about that at least have the potential to advance my life in positive directions. I have only a few groundrules:

• Remain curious.


• Suspend disbelief as much as possible.


• But don't be stupid.


• Share what's good with the people it may go on to benefit.


• Be honest, and as much as possible transparent.

The title of the blog comes from something my son said one morning. He's 3, and he was holding a stuffed dragon, and looked at me very seriously and said "This is not a dragon." I hope he'll get this stuff much younger than his late-blooming mother.