Category: Philosopher comments on Reality

What we perceive IS or IS NOT reality?

The Game of Plausible Deniability

On By Pamala CliftIn Philosopher comments on Reality, SocietyLeave a comment

It saddens me when it takes sooo much work to help people understand and see “The forest for the trees.”

This is a critical skill, especially in today’s political roller coaster with perceptional “fake news”.

You have all heard me say my one phrase of wisdom I have learned in my life. “We do not Live for Reality; We live for our fantasies….Enjoy Yours!”

I am about to lay out some words that hopefully will not offend on a topic that perfectly displays the title of this blog. “The Game of Plausible Deniability”. The subject matter I will use to illustrate it is Ultrasounds on fetus.

I was chastised at work for congratulating a patient for choosing NOT to have an ultrasound. I mentioned how mental problems like ADHD and Aspergers seem to have a direct correlation to its use. Well that got me reamed by the corporation, when the patient had miscommunicated, and she had gotten one. She then decided to make me the bad guy for sharing with her that information since it made her feel bad, so she gave the place a bad review. Hmmm…

The corporation claimed for every negative research I found they could find something that disproved it. Ok let’s go through this step-by-step.

1. Follow the Money: This is always the first thing in the search for truth.

How many horrible occurrences have happened because a drug or procedure was claimed safe and rendered to women only to have the difficulty be shown later in births or children? 

Corporations follow the cigarette campaign steps of plausible deniability. 

     First-claim it is safe

     Second-claim there is not enough valid research and make no effort to research their own product. 

     Third-if demands for data increase, hire scientists to manipulate results (since they are paying for the data it comes out as they desire—I have witnessed this process first hand. Not by all though).

     Fourth- then as data and results can no longer be denied, express their concern that they got different information and still claim no fault due to ignorance and avoid prosecution.

This is a normal spin situation that is a well-known corporate methodology. Keep the product in the market as long as it can receive a profit. 

2. On the other hand….There is NO advantage to any researcher to report a white paper that goes contrary to convention. It has hurt many scientist, as they get black-balled, since the money for their research comes from either the corporations directly or Federal funds that also are used to validate the status quo. 

It is definitely a horrible occurrence for researchers to have scientific proof of something that they have tested and retested but then have their research squashed because a large corporation goes with the plausible deniability game. 

Corporations have the money to move their search results to the top of Google. They have the money to hire the less scrupled scientists. They can pay to flood the search results with ? opinions to push down the real white paper research. 

I personally met one of the PhD students that worked on one of these many studies as he expressed his deep-seated belief that their research was valid and families were being denied the correct information due to suppression from “Those with money.” 

His heart was sincere and his desire to get the word out was painfully apparent with his only motivation being altruistic. 

3. What Science Is: Scientific method is simply putting out a hypothesis and then testing it. Control groups…blind control groups all sorts of ways to test. But can anyone TEST with a control group how much an ultrasound diminishes IQ or mental agility? 

To do that you need two exact same subjects. Meaning two exact same mothers with the exact same child, one uses ultrasound and one that does not. Later test the IQ and mental agility of each child. …And you would have to do that multiple times to get sufficient data to validate. 

Well that can’t happen. So there can NOT be any real validating evidence saying that it is safe. All that can be done is say, “Well I am sure it is safe. Look at the cute picture.”

The only way that it can be used is blindly throwing the product out into the world and then AFTER the FACT, correlate data. That is what my PhD student and his mentor had done. It was definitely statistically relevant beyond speculation. But instead it was squashed.

The entire population of the world is being used as the experiment, and they are still trying to deny it.

4. What IS Ultrasound? It vibrates and heats so that it can be photographed. It sends the sound waves and receives the echoing waves. 

We have a fetus that is growing at phenomenal rates with cells splitting and dividing and restructuring into a complex human being. Then we stir up this process at What point in time? How many new functions are growing, splitting and configuring just at that moment? 

I’m thinking scrambled eggs here…

Yet vanity, lack of research and greed leads us to pretty pictures… and there you have the society of today. Make it look pretty, play the game of plausible deniability and do whatever you wish to extract money.

5. BTW there is research with mice now that says they have used control groups and have seen deterioration in the mice that had undergone ultrasound, but we are still getting our pretty pictures and we are still getting children with less mental capability. The poor parents that have an Asperger child are drained of all resources, but you still won’t see any give from the corporations. Even some of the ultrasound associations say that they can not claim that no harm will happen and discourage use unless medically needed.

Maybe I am cynical or maybe I am a realist… You choose. 

Please just be aware of your journey and turn no decision over to the masses, corporations or politics. They all have something to hide, gain or manipulate.

For my political friends. One side is boisterous and doesn’t think about the consequences of what they say… The other side has mastered the subtleties, but BOTH manipulate. They are living their fantasy, as are we all. 

Be conscience of your decisions, not compulsively following.

Enjoy the journey.

Hugs, Pam

(Roadside Philosopher)

The Story Motivates!

On By Pamala CliftIn Philosopher comments on RealityLeave a comment

Your story…

I may be a little redundant here but like I always say, “We do not live for reality; we live for our fantasies!”

We make up stories to give our lives meaning. Once we have a story it doesn’t even matter if it comes true. It becomes who we wish to be.

Here is a picture of Coral Gardens in Homestead, Florida. A man spent his life carving out of the land below him the coral rock in which he crafted a small house, table, clock, and a myriad of very crafty things for the woman he felt would return to him. She didn’t. 

The motivation was his story, not the reality. He created something of delight and value, based on his story.

I recently attended the Shen Yun 2016 Experience a story recital with classical Chinese dance.  It was about the stories from China and the heros that were obviously not real (Monkey King) that taught a precept. The people who dance in this have all taken over a decade to learn every movement. Total devotion to convey a fantasy! Their life has been spent focused on sharing a story. That is who they are. That is what they value. A lovely performance which was beautiful in costuming.

In the US we have joint stories that are morphed to be far bigger than reality and they get solidified into a culture. We have Paul Bunyan and Washington chopping down a cherry tree, etc. etc. None of which are true, but they convey a story of honesty and resilience that gets locked down as a core component for our identity as Americans.

Watching the staging of the presidential candidates as they search for a story to identify with that will resonates with the populace is somewhat entertaining as well. We have lost the belief in our culture. We are cynical over the politicians that lie and change their story with the audience.  It almost doesn’t matter what they say. The question is; Are they consistent?

We still grasp for the story. We reach for the motivation that resounds within ourselves. Whether it be Star Wars or Frozen, if the story is spun with clarity to a point that means something to us we will embrace that as a part of our identity. It doesn’t have to be true.

I would like a more unified fantasy story for humankind, but I don’t think it will come about until we have an adversary that is not human. Will that be AI? Aliens? or some morphed vision of a culture that we designate as non-humans?

The stories we hear in the news grants us very little hope. Money grabbing, war mongering, doesn’t offer a story that we wish to be identified with. No one wants to be the bad guy, but the bad guys get the most press. 

We have no cultural identity. We like being diverse but that dissipates any unity?  Do we want the feeling of being a tribe? Can you do it without a universal story? I am trying to write such a tale with the Hiccup Chronicles a whole new viewpoint on reality that may eliminate the divide. That is my story, my purpose now in life…will it come true? Doesn’t matter. The Roadside Philosopher offering to the world the solution of perspective that might just make everything alright. That’s my story and motivation.

What are your stories? What are the values those stories convey? Have you lived up to that vision?

Enjoy your journey and the stories you create to get you there.

Hugs, Pamala

*The Roadside Philosopher

Façade or Reality?

On By Pamala CliftIn Philosopher comments on RealityLeave a comment

Glamor? or Façade?

Glamor Shots use to be a big deal. Get yourself all fixed up, hair teased, sprayed and dressed up and take a picture.

We would look at ourselves and not recognize us. Who is that person in the mirror?

So 45 minutes of drawing on our face, covering our spots, making our eyes bigger, lashes longer, minimizing wrinkles … and THAT is reality for most women.

We can’t seem to go out in public without “putting on our face” Why is that considered Real? Why is that considered right?

Does it mean that we do NOT want reality; we want a story? We want the fairytale story of being beautiful forever…no matter how long it takes to dress up reality. It is only proper for a female to make an effort to please others. We have to reach for a visual perfection to be taken as relevant. 

Men have a different story they play. They want to be seen as macho so they get big trucks, tear their shirts, lift weights to get pumped up to look like the dude on the magazine… OR they let themselves go scruffy as if to say, “See I don’t care what I look like.” …but macho dude, you still need a bath. 

We keep asking for truth, but keep spending our effort in creating fantasy. 

Our politicians give us fantasy because that is what we want to hear. Media creates “reality TV” which is FAR FROM real, because the drama is something we desire to see.

Almost everything in our society that is considered acceptable is window dressing. The core of the truth is never examined if it looks pretty, or as we expect.

I did an experiment one time back in school. I wrote a paper in about 1/2 hour, did almost no research, put no effort into the quality of what was written, but… I put it in a wonderfully decorative high quality paper cover with clear plastic over a highly decorative font all laid out beautifully and typed with lovely spaces.

Guess what? I got an A. The paper was garbage. It doesn’t appear to matter. This is what we have become. So when I say, “We do not live for reality; we live for our fantasies.” it is not just in virtual that this paradigm exist.

How can we get this to change when we put value on the valueless? 

Politics is a bore, since we spend our time realizing it is all for show and have no idea what the candidates really think, or more important who is backing them, controlling the puppet strings. We don’t know and don’t seem to care.  He came in on a pretty helicopter. She is always dressed so nice. He is articulate and speaks lovely. 

If we want the world to change we are going to have to change what we expect and what we examine. There actually may be great beauty in that person sitting on the corner in that torn jacket. There might be greater wisdom in the withered grandmother than the PhD in the suit.

If we don’t spend effort in digging for gold, we will continue to get fools gold.

Enjoy the journey ! Hugs, Pam

Solidify Reality by Where You Focus

On By Pamala CliftIn Education, Philosopher comments on RealityLeave a comment

One of the hobbies I enjoy is reading books on Quantum Physics. So many unknowns speculated upon and extrapolations made. You can’t help think that philosophy is not dead…just renamed scientific hypotheses. 🙂

The illustrious double slit experiment is spun in so many different ways and used to validate new ideas almost daily. 

So to again try and explain the outcome of a complex experiment with a truncated definition; “Waves and particles only solidify into reality upon observation!”

I am going to leave it at that for this article. There are tons of resources if you wish to research it, but based on that, I have my own key to understanding reality.

Wherever we focus IS reality. Reality is a program where we choose the subroutines of our existence with our focus.

So if i focus on what I am missing in my life, it is a miserable life. If I focus on the beautiful sunrise and the things I do have, I couldn’t be happier.

I am writing the Hiccup Chronicles (will it never end…lol) and its premise is that we are outside of the universe engaged in a simulation program called our physical existence. (a slowing down of the energy waves so things can be solidified)

The physicists speculate that there are multiple worlds. Which I believe is partly correct. The program of this existence has already been written. We are just exploring all desired subroutines of that program. We possibly are creating and expanding the range of possibilities. How would the butterfly effect of “NOT taking that toy truck away from my younger brother actually affect the entire program of the universe?”

People yell at me quite adamantly when I say you choose your subroutine in the program. “I would NEVER have this problem or this illness or trouble if I had a choice. You must be freaking kidding me!”

Well lets look at the things we enjoy. We like to play games. We like to make artificial rules and then try to see if we can win with those limitations. We workout, take on challenges, create and build things.

If this world WAS just a game or an artificial construct, and we knew we existed elsewhere, then the difficulties we have here would be like moving the game from easy to hard. 

If reality is anything we can conceive and we have played this game on easy level, sometimes we will raise the difficulty, lift a heavier weight, run a greater distance.

The interactions of this program only allow us to engage with 5 senses, all of which have been scientifically proven to be foolable, yet we only count those interactions as reality?

There are obviously more senses out there. Animals have all sorts of abilities we do not. (radar, animal-direction sense for migration etc.) So we are limited.

We create measurement tools/math of our own creation and then act as if those are the only definitive truth? 

We try to quantify things and make rules saying “Well it works for A, B, C; so if it doesn’t work for the rest of the alphabet it must be the “things” that are wrong, not our measuring stick?”

In our digital age we try to put all the rest of the alphabet into an algorithm. It can’t be reality if we can’t shove it into our self-declared measuring compartments. 

If we limit our life to ONLY looking at the measurements of our self-created compartments we will miss a very entertaining existence.

Wonder, philosophizing and enjoying the “not knowing” is the journey. 

Focus and slow down on what you WANT to see, experience, choose your subroutines and enjoy the journey. 

Hugs, Pam 

The Secret to Happiness… Physical or Virtual?

On By Pamala CliftIn Interpersonal Relationships, Philosopher comments on Reality, Society, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I have been examining what makes people happy, and I have come to a few conclusions.

  1. They have a goal they are working toward.
  2. They have and/or desire these thing
  • a loyalty
  • b. love
  • c. courage
  • d. determination
  • e. appreciation
  • f. beauty 
  • g. creativity (observing or creating)
  • h. forgiveness 
  • g. honesty ..etc.
  • f. a place to fit in

Most of these nouns can be used as verbs as well. “I love you.” Love being the action. or “Love is wonderful.” Love being the noun and subject.

All that is fine if you are into epistemology but that doesn’t solve anything really.

What stood out most is that none of the things, that makes a person really happy has a physical component! None of them can be touched! 

Touch can be a component of love, but it isn’t love. Physical stuff can be a small part of happiness, but even with everything-under-the-sun owned, without those intangibles, a person is not happy.

So that leads me to the off-handed conclusion that we are NOT of this physical plane. This physical plane is not what brings us joy. We have happiness from the intangibles! 

So if this physical plane was say a computer game, money were points where you got to buy things IN THE GAME…you can win the game but still not have accomplished anything toward what you desire, which is to be happy. The game is a distraction while you seek the things that are truly valuable.

Maybe we are also intangible beings, however you wish to describe that…(spirit, interdimensional beings, pure energy, intellect, consciousness), but obviously not materialists. 

Playing and focusing ON THE GAME of this world will actually deny you the opportunities to find what will make you happy. 

Following someone elses rules is also a dead end to happiness. If you feel that you are not good because you didn’t do what someone else says, (organization, political party, religion) told you to do, even if it doesn’t fit with your situation, you will not be happy.

So many unjust things have happened because someone followed what someone else told them to do. Then they were forced to struggle with the internal conflicts of what they desired and thought was right and what others demanded of them.

Taking ownership of your own thoughts, your own actions, and your own consequences will relieve you of those conflicts. Being-you honestly, will free you to be happy. 

Following someone elses pathway will always be uncomfortable. I don’t know about you, but I hate the thought of being a cookie-cutter drone.

For any that have traveled third world nations you will recognize some truly happy people who have nothing. Why are they happy? Why do they play, and laugh so freely? It is because they have the intangibles!

Notice the sky, the air, water, plants, animals of this planet. The greatest joy can be the wonder of exploring. Even if a person sits on their doorstep and watches the world, the ants at their feet, the sun cross the sky, the opportunity for wonder abounds. Wonder inspires happiness. Gratitude is happiness. 

So many opportunities to be happy are ignored for the game. When will you take back your opportunity to be happy. 🙂

Hugs, Pam

Whose Dogma is Reality?

On By Pamala CliftIn Interpersonal Relationships, Philosopher comments on Reality, SocietyLeave a comment

Oh Yeah?

Reality is a variable which depends on who is spinning the tale.

It saddens me to hear people get on their high- horses and use invalid trump cards without ever really thinking things through from the beginning.

There are the religious people who throw the trump card, “The Bible, Koran, Confucius, Torah, Budda…Says…” and that is supposed to end any further discussion.

There are the materialists that keep throwing Science up as their trump card without ever examining their thought processes either. That is even more distressing. They claim the scientific method trumps just Faith. Yet they have faith in things which are just as much of a story as Venus rising from the waves. 

We have dogma. According to Wikipedia, “Dogma is a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. It serves as part of the primary basis of an ideology, nationalism or belief system, and it cannot be changed or discarded without affecting the very system’s paradigm, or the ideology itself.” 

The fight between the dogmas is just like the dogs above with the stick. “Its mine…no its mine.” The basis behind almost every war.

The materialists say things like…”I can’t see God, so it doesn’t exist.” (Well, that seems silly…since we have microwaves, music and all sorts of smells that can’t be seen either.) That does not mean it doesn’t exist. It only means we are infants in this universe and do not have enough ways of discerning something. You can never prove something does NOT exist.

…But I love this! This is where I bring in Gravity! Still materialists will say, I can SEE gravity work so that is real. 

What is Gravity? I will let you Google that, because the closest thing that science can say is it pulls matter together. Gravity is undefinable, just observable.  

Notice that the religious people use the exact same method of validation in their definition for God: “See the universe and all it’s amazing intricate complexities? This is an observable mathematical wonder that proves he/she/it exists. A painting can only exist if there is a painter.

So what materialists have done is given the word gravity to an observable unknowing interaction. That is when I say, lets switch words. Lets give gravity a new name…lets call it God. 

Now we have a construct, both unknowable, both do things that are observable but not definable, why is either name wrong? They are both just words for something we know little about. Calling it gravity, instead of calling it God does not clarify a thing! It is a dogma that we fall down on when we don’t know what we are talking about. One unknown, undefinable or the other still gets us no where. Everything is an infants story of how the universe works. 

Yes, science can take the few tinker toys we have and build a toy house, but never seem to be able to give the construct a complete enough infrastructure to make it work!

The cover of Scientific America May 2014 throws out an often repeated story to the gurus of the religion called science. It says: “A Crisis in Physics?” The article talks about the belief that was going to pull everything together appears to have died. In other words, just like the dozen or so other times that brilliant minds have come up short, they are almost faced with the confession that what they declared as fact is indeed fiction. 

That is the good part of science, at least at some point they may admit they are wrong, but it takes hell-in-a-hand-basket to get that.

As a philosopher that constantly examines reality, I see no point in arguing what is true, only what is perceived. Since every perception is relative any expressed perception or experience honestly conveyed has validity.

We don’t need more wars. We don’t need more dogma. We need to listen. We need the freedom to explore. We need to share without trump cards. 

Wouldn’t that be a wonderful journey to enjoy?

Hugs, Pam

Less is More

On By Pamala CliftIn Business, Insight Blog, Philosopher comments on Reality, UncategorizedLeave a comment

…more red tape

Marketing has always spoon fed us the notion that MORE=Happy. 

We figure if we have more food, a larger pool, a bigger house, more money, more friends that THAT will mean we are happy!

It takes a long time to reach the glutenous conclusion that “More” does not make one happy.

We have a government that figures MORE laws, MORE forms, MORE requirements will make things run smoother, but it doesn’t. More red tape helps no one. MORE is not the answer…less is! Wouldn’t it be lovely if all the laws were reduced to the Hippocratic Oath? “Do No Harm.” 

I have watched those that have it all, flounder, rot and die of boredom. The only thing that keeps them afloat is changing and starting over, because starting is exciting. We live to try things anew, to start new stories. A bit of danger and the insecurity of NOT knowing everything is safe produces endorphins that lift us out of ourselves and we strive to do the impossible. That is called living, whether we succeed or fail we have a story worth telling.

As you examine demographics of the baby boomers, you can watch the generation go through almost child-psychology-like steps.

  1. Everything is exciting and an adventure. (our childhood)
  2. What you tell me is not necessarily so, I will find my own truth. (hippies-teenagers)
  3. Well, I can do it better than you. (start families and/or careers)
  4. So I am successful if I have things? OK I will get MORE. I want to WIN! (cut throat “I” mentality)
  5. Deterioration of the dream, divorce, job loss, mid-life crisis, age related illness. (Awakening to the illusion 40-50s)
  6. What has been told me is not necessarily so. What actually makes me happy? (60)+
  7. Everything is exciting. To watch a new day dawn, a movement in the morning, the little things like a call or a card become extremely valuable…it is conscious thought that is valued. (70+ and maybe a good movement. lol)

So there you have life. The graph can be laid out on top of every generation as we start, beat ourselves up to play our cultures dictated game, give up and appreciate what we had from the beginning.

I am on the downhill side of this bell curve and watch others doing what I have done. Downsize which means, less to move, less to insure, less to lock up, less to look for things you have misplaced, less paperwork.

Your assignment is to look past your culture’s dictated game of life and create what makes you happy, taking the consequences and the lack of safety as part of your adventure. 

The only way that you will find your happiness is by first appreciating every little component around you. If where you focus IS reality, which is my premise throughout this blog, you will be far happier if you can focus on what a generation of experience starts and comes back to…its the little things that are of value.

Enjoy the journey by creating it yourself.

Hugs, Pam

Dealing with NEVER…the word that ends something.

On By Pamala CliftIn Interpersonal Relationships, Philosopher comments on Reality, SocietyLeave a comment

NOT That…

One thing is for sure, everyone reading this (outside of bots) are inhabiting a biological unit.

That deteriorating biological unit comes with an expiration date.

Nobody likes that, so we pretend it does not exist. It is the fault of everyone else or things, or insurance etc. 

I sometimes have a hard time with people when they start ranting about their 95 year old parent getting an infection and dying in the hospital. They act like death could have been avoided? 

There IS an EXPIRATION date in everyone’s folder, but that is not what I wish to talk about today. 

The term NEVER has horrible connotations. We use it when dreams and expectations come to a final conclusion. “You will never walk again.”; “You can never have kids.” “He/She will never love you again.” These are definitely impactful statements that require rearrangement in thoughts, mind, and heart.

How do you deal with the envisionment of your life story terminating. Well I can pretty much guarantee there will be a time of bewilderment. You should properly mourn your loss with grieving rituals, but set a time limit.

When we envision our future we create a narrative and a dialog of what we think it will be…but it is just a story. There are sooo many stories and “Happily Ever After” is rarely one. We KNOW that we should do this… and run full steam in that direction anticipating that it will go straight to the simple conclusion, but that is not so.

Our story is more like a map, but we are too blind to see it that way. Our journey of life gets insights to turn left here; join a group, go to college, marry this person, take this job, move to this location etc. And we somehow always take the stand that this is the ONE direction into infinity. 

There are many twists and turns that will happen but as linear-time-line entities we never want to anticipate doing anything but going straight through the direction the left turn took us forever.

Try looking at life as a GPS device. “For NOW, I will do this…”; “I went in that direction until I came to a new cross road and was told to turn right.” Can right at this intersection of the journey of life be right at this location but wasn’t right for the last decision. Yes! Timing is everything. You can’t easily get to work if you take the exit before the one that takes you to your work location.

Never just means you have to make another selection, it is not a termination of your travels unless it is a termination. If we look on Never as a detour sign, or a reroute it is simply the opportunity to create a new story, than we can deal with Never. Your story gets a refresh, much more creative and entertaining opportunities await.

You might never walk again, but that single person hover craft you will invent works so much better! You make new goals and challenges and as soon as you decide on the new direction and let go of the past fantasies you can again enjoy life.

Life is a convoluted map and all we need to do is keep going forward with a story. Pick a story that energizes you and that you have some control over. (“…When I win the lottery”…puts you in a forever holding pattern. There is no travel there.) 

The saddest most depressed people are not the poor ones, the broken ones, the lonely ones…it is a person without a direction and a story. 

And guess what? You are totally in charge of your story and can change it with just a thought. Striving is fun…succeeding is not necessary, but a direction is.

The power of your story is everything. I hand over to you the key to the universe. Create the amazing entity that will be you…not once but at every intersection of life, and enjoy that journey.

Hugs, Pam

Project Manage YOUR Life

On By Pamala CliftIn Business, Insight Blog, Philosopher comments on Reality, UncategorizedLeave a comment

…and the graph says?

I meet a lot of Agile and Project Management professionals, but rarely do they think to take their business management expertise and apply it to their own life.

People seem to just be flotsom (material or refuse floating on water). Wherever the wave or current takes them they deal with it as if they have no control.

No one thinks. The day is filled with noise and demands from outside. They keep “background noise” going on all the time so they don’t have to examine their own thoughts? Why is that? One of my favorite sayings is: It takes a pretty good person to be alone and find themselves in good company!

What a tragedy to come to the end of ones life having never known who you are? …or spent time on the the things that mattered most to you.

So lets take steps to fix that. In Agile/Scrum the Product Owner makes user stories for the team to solve a situation with a program. Like, “We need to create a table with all the customer’s past orders; so the customer can reference them for future purchases.”

So lets make YOU the customer. First what is it you want? Most people don’t know what they want because they have never THOUGHT about it. They just dream of it being all handed to them in the lottery or something.

So the first step is communication with the customer…You! Set aside time alone with no distractions and talk with yourself. It could be out loud or in your head. You could write yourself a letter or video tape your thoughts for later play back.

Remember to take in SCOPE, RESOURCES and a TIME frame. You need the user story to have a conceivable conclusion date. Example: “Walk 30 min. a day on Johnson pathway, until I can get into my black jeans.” That user story terminates when you successfully get into your black jeans. 

Now if you’re a size 24 and your jeans are 8, that is a timeframe and scope doomed to fail. Make your user stories no more than 3 month personal sprints. In business it is two weeks, which would be more toward the ideal. We all need to have successes. It leads to more confidence and comfort when taking the next sprint.

“I want world peace.” is not a desire that is within your power, nor something that you will eventually be able to check off. So that is not a good user story.

Start with three things that you want. 

Say you want a new job. Well if you make that your user story, you’re doomed. These need to be action steps that can be checked off and fully within your power, so the user story would be more appropriately stated this way. “I will rewrite my resume and submit it to three positions I desire before the end of the month, so that I can feel satisfied I am working toward a better life.”

No one can guarantee success outside of your efforts, but your efforts should be stated in a way you will be able to feel success.

Life is a journey and persistence says you have never failed till you quit. If nothing changes and you don’t get a new job. You can create a new user story that says, “I am going to join the Rotary Club and make 3 new contacts so I can start networking toward a better job.”

There is no failure. There are just steps toward success, some are backwards, around mountains, underwater, and delayed but the maze of reality is an adventure to be enjoyed.

Find out who you are and then make this exercise of breathing-in-&-out one that delights you every morning.

What a wonderful journey. Hugs, Pam