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Just a few days ago, Richard Oliver of Purposive Drift described Josh and me as “the children or grandchildren of the Sixties, without the crap.” And he’s absolutely right—we’re totally into peace and love, without all the bullshit.

I sent that link to my mom, because 2 weeks ago, she disapprovingly declared that my approach to life, work, business, and relationships is nothing but a rehashing of “flower power,” and that I was starting to come off as an “aging hippie.” (Needless to say, I spun out on that shit for a while.)

As frustrated as I was with my mom, there’s no denying that Josh and I do have a strong connection to the bits of culture that we now associate with “the Sixties.” And though that stuff did come with a lot of crap in those days (the aimlessness, the sloppy appropriation of exotic belief systems, the deep laziness, the pseudo-spirituality, the superior attitude, the gooey new-age sentimentality, the low-grade Mexican pot), we think there are some really good, useful, important ideas that shouldn’t be discounted just because they once wore tie-dye a long time ago.

You could call the following suggestions Flower Power 2.0: Strategies from “the Sixties,” Minus All the Crap. But strategy isn’t about the past. It’s about planning the future, so a better name might be How to Make Good Stuff Happen (and Restore Your Mother’s Faith in Humanity).

The foundation of this stuff is the fact that you have a significant influence on your reality. It sounds like a statement of faith, but it’s definitely a fact. Every moment of your experience involves some amount of choice on your part. In any given moment, you can say to yourself, “Wow, this is sucking ass” or “This is fucking awesome,” and either way, YOU’RE RIGHT. When you walk into a cocktail party full of fear and doubt, you create a different experience than if you walk into the same party feeling love and confidence. And the choice between love and fear, or confidence and doubt, is yours alone. These are FACTS. Nothing hippie dippie about this.

Once you see that you shape your reality, you also begin to see that the practice of doing so is rather like a craft. Here are some of our favorite techniques:

Experimentation—The only way to understand the power you have on your experience, your consciousness, and the world around you is to try doing stuff to them. That’s the only way to find out what works. Sometimes you will find your powers will fail you. That’s not a bad thing at all—in fact, it’s how you know you’re really testing yourself.

Choosing positivity—Happiness and optimism are choices. You can resolve yourself to be happy, to focus on the good things, and to be grateful for them. If you do that, you will accumulate a lifetime of good memories, and you will hone your ability to see good things all around you. This is advantageous for the obvious reason that you’ll enjoy more stuff more often, but there is a less obvious reason, which is that positivity is both contagious and attractive. It will bring good people and opportunities to you.

Obeying the logic of karma—The Golden Rule is incomplete. It merely states that you should “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” What’s missing is the WHY. The reason you should follow the Golden Rule is that what you put out into the world will come back to you. If you are a shitty person, you will find yourself swimming in shit. I can’t prove this to you, but you sure can prove it to yourself. Try being really good or really shitty and pay attention to how it feels in the moment, and then notice what comes of it. You’ll see.

Taking initiative—People have a strange tendency to see themselves as powerless or lacking authority. They want change and then ask someone else to create it for them. That’s not how things work. The rules of the world are yours to write, and everyone’s waiting for you to show us what you have to contribute. Will you leave a legacy, or will you live quietly until you die?

Cultivating fun—There are few things as powerful as fun. It makes things lively, and by that I mean full of life. Work, relationships, communities, and people all wither without fun. So pay attention to your own fun. Make sure you make enough of it, and notice when the fun comes easily—those moments offer insights that will make you very powerful.

Ok, I think I’m gonna stop here. But let me ask you: Does this seem like hippie bullshit to you?

04/04/07 by Axel Albin

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 4th, 2007 at 8:39 am and is filed under Thinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.