Why I can’t meditate

I have read about and been told repeatedly about the benefits of meditation. However, no matter how hard I, try I just have not been able to do it for more than a few seconds at a time.

The leader of the Unity Church I attend simply says, “Begin again.” But I end up getting frustrated with all the beginning again and I don’t feel I benefit from the meditation that way.

I think I have found my answer in a book of Taoist exercises. In Internal Exercises by Stephen Chang, he explains that people who think a lot – I am pretty sure I qualify – can have disastrous results if they force themselves to empty their brains for meditation. He warns that they will experience confusion, illusion and frustration. In worst cases it can lead to schizophrenia. But mostly it leads to a worsening of the stress and tension one is trying to overcome through meditation.

The solution he recommends is a balancing between the brain and solar plexus. He mentions that the symptoms of cerebral brain over use are headache, stiff neck, confusion, forgetfulness and spaciness. He offers a simple exercise to help balance the mind and body.

The Solar Plexus Exercise:

Begin by sitting or standing with both hands placed on your stomach. Face forward and inhale. Feel your stomach expand with you hands.

While exhaling, push in and up with your hands on you stomach. At the same time, turn your shoulders and head slowly to the left as far as possible without straining.

Face back to the front as you inhale releasing your stomach and feeling the air push your hands out.

This time turn to the right as you exhale.

Repeat up to 36 times or as often as the flexibility of your neck and shoulders will allow.

I have found that after only a few days of doing this exercise, my mental clarity has greatly improved. I have not yet tried to meditate. I will give it a few more days before I try again. I was able to complete a mental focus exercise last night that I have been having trouble with however.

For more information on the solar plexus exercise and many other wonderful Taoist exercises see Internal Exercises by Stephan Chang.

Driving in Southern Snow without Snow Tires.

Driving in Snow
Wild Oak Road In snow

I live in Tennessee so we rarely get snow. When we do, it is usually not like the snow they get in colder climates. When I worked the Snow*Drift Rally in Michigan, I got to see what driving in real snow was like.

Here we normally get slush. In colder climates, the snow is more powdery and from my experience in Michigan, actually has some traction. The ice however is about the same both places. Except in Michigan, it seemed at times to actually get cold enough for the rubber to stick to the ice. Here, it never does.

In colder climates, they use soft siped tires like Nokians that get great traction in the ice and snow. A set of siped soft compound tires would not last long here as the roads get warm and dry pretty fast.

This morning I woke up to 17 degrees and about 1/2 inch of snow on the driveway. The ground was solidly frozen underneath. This is rare for Tennessee. Normally the ground will still be slushy under the snow.

I actually considered mounting up the Kumho Rally tires to my Jeep, but correctly guessed that the snow would only be on my half mile long dead end road. Once out on the main road the snow was packed to ice. My BFG AT’s get poor traction in snow and ice but the Kumho Rally tires are not much better on ice.

I used the part time setting of my NP 242 transfer case which locks the center differential as I headed down the steep hill of my driveway. The snow and frozen gravel gave plenty of traction. As I made the transition onto pavement, I found it a bit slipperier but still fine.

As I turned off my dead end road onto the secondary road, I found it covered in ice. I could see from the tire tracks in the ditches and from the number of downed signs and mailboxes that it must be pretty slick. I had no trouble accelerating even up hills in Part Time four wheel drive, but I knew stopping would be another matter.

Just before I topped a steep hill, I tested the barking traction and found indeed it was very slick. I was glad I had topped the hill slowly as I saw there were lots of skid marks on the down slope. I am glad I did not meet whoever was trying to get up earlier and left all the marks in the oncoming lane.

One I made it out to the State Highway which had been salted, I found the normal slush and mostly just wet pavement. Here, I switched the NP 242 to Full time opening the center differential. This allows the transfer case to compensate for my unevenly inflated tires and allows cornering without binding.

As I got closer to town, the pavement was mostly dry with occasional slick spots. With the open differential I was able to remain in four wheel drive for added security all the way to my office.

[phpbay]Snow Tire, 10[/phpbay]

Black Friday at Wooly’s Off Road

Jeep Cherokee off road at Wooly's off road
Jeep Cherokee off road at Wooly's off road

Last year my son Scott and I visited Wooly’s Off Road park near Lewisburg, Tn while our wives shopped on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Last year we took his mom’s Cherokee complete with street tires and Motives Makeup decals. We saw enough of the place to know we wanted to go back. It took us a year but we finally made it back to Wooly’s with our off road Jeep.

Playing on the rocks at Woolys
Playing on the rocks at Woolys

The trails at Wooly’s straight right out of the parking lot. There are also trails on both sides of the road. Unfortunately they don’t have maps available. There is a crude map on the wall where you check in but nothing to take with us. However the trails are really compact so you really can’t get very lost.

After playing around on the trails a while and exploring, we decided to tackle so of the more challenging obstacles. There is a nice rock climb right behind the barn. As I was going off the top of the climb we saw a couple of Wranglers. They told us about another rock climb near by so we headed over to try it out.

The trial we were on led us to a spot about a quarter way up the climb. It was a narrow trail that intersected at a 90 degree angle. As I tried to maneuver onto the rocks to head up the hill, I got hung up on a stump. I thought I could use it to pivot the back of the jeep down the hill an get the nose pointed up. However, that did not work and I ended up sliding sideways down the hill. After a few dozen back and forth movements while feeling very tippy, I finally got my Jeep pointed up the hill. However in the process, I managed to severely bend one of my newly installed ZJ lower control arms. With the aid of my front locker I made it up the climb relatively easily.

With the control arm bent we decided to take it easy the rest of the day. I went back down to the parking lot and it seemed to track straight so we headed across the street to the less rocky side of the park. I thought this would be a good time for Scott to get more experience behind the wheel.

It took him a few stall to get used to the clutch but after he did he got really good at maneuvering up and down the hills. At one place there are several paths up the same hill. Scott did three or four runs at progressively steeper climbs.

We then headed over to the part of the park where the old home place is located. There we found an old spring house.

Spring House
Spring House

Water trough
Water trough

We remembered a rock garden that we had tried in Janice’s street Jeep but did not go very far last year. It took us a while to find is because it had become over grown by weeds and briers.

Small Rock garden
Small Rock garden

This was a good place for Scott to learn where the tires were and how to place them on the rocks. He ran the course several times taking different lines.

Fun in the rocks
Fun in the rocks

It looked like fun so I decided to give it a run. We played around on some more trails before heading back to the trailer in the early afternoon.

We then decided to explore the south part of the park. With no map, it took us a while to find the right trails to connect to that part. Scott found a really fun climb between two trails. It had large rocks but with good access.

Scott climbing rocks
Scott climbing rocks

After running this climb several times using different lines, Scott noticed were running low of fuel. We took a long run around the perimeter of the park to make it back to the trailer. Even though there was still daylight left, we decided to pack up an go because we were very tired and there was now fuel station anywhere close.

There is still alot of trails that we never ran. A guide or a map would be a great help. Thinking back, we should have joined up with the two Wranglers and followed them around. But we did have a lot of fun just exploring on our own pace.

[phpbay]jeep cherokee, 10[/phpbay]

Golden Mountain Off Road Park

Golden Mountain Off Road Park

Golden Mountain
Golden Mountain

For Halloween, Janice, Jenny and I decided to visit Golden Mountain Off Road Park for their Halloween ride. We really had no idea what to expect. We had seen pictures of other off road parks that had Halloween rides and expected to see lots of rigs decorated for the holiday.

Princess in costume
Princess in costume

Jenny had decorated her Jeep for a spirit contest at Caleb’s school so she left part of that in place. She and Janice also dressed as Bunnies. Her son Caleb dressed as the Black Knight.

What we first noticed when we drove through the gate was the beautiful fall colors. It was easy to see why someone named it Golden Mountain. The landscaping around the many pavilions was very nice as well. I am not sure what this place used to be but it was something really nice.

We waited at the vacant pay booth for a while. Finally I decided to call the phone number listed. The fellow said he was doing some work on the toilets and would be right down. He was very friendly and when he found that it was our first visit, he gave us a map and told us the general layout of the park and which trails he recommended we start with. He then informed us that we had the whole park to ourselves and he did not expect any one else to come.

We parked in the huge gravel parking area just inside the gate and I unloaded Scuffy while Jan and Jenn found the restrooms. The restrooms are located in a big building that overlooks what used to be a stock car dirt track. It has more recently been used for motor cross racing from the looks of it.

The guy had warned us that it would be slippery on the muddy trails. Well, with that warning in mind we set out for trail 1 marked “easy.” We made it a few yards up the trail before we found out just how slippery the mud is there. No worse than Harlan or Aetna but no better either. The “easy” trail was now quite a challenge.

Jenny got hung up on the first few rocks and had to take time to air down before she could go further. I made it to another set of rocks and my lockers just allowed me to get scarily sideways before I called it quits and let the front end slide back down the hill.

Trail 1
Trail 1

Easy trail? What else was in store for us here?

We then took trail 3 also marked easy but at least it was flat. Off to both sides was lots of fun looking hill climbs that would have to wait for a drier day. We soon intersected trail 2 and followed along to an interesting pavilion in the middle of nowhere. It looked like it had a fishing pier but there was not really much of a lake there now.

We followed trail two on further and came to a ledge that reminded us of the one on trail 15 in Harlan. Remembering to keep up momentum going into it we both made it up just fine. Trail two ended at a gravel road beside a beautiful lake and more picnic pavilions. We walked around the area for a while before following the gravel road down to the parking lot to get our rain gear.

Bunnies at the picnic pavilion by one of the many lakes.
Bunnies at the picnic pavilion by on eof the many lakes.

This time we took trail two up the hill. I tried in vain to stay out of the big rut on the down hill side of the climb but I eventually gave up and hugged the rut to the top. Once at the top I realized I was in two wheel drive. Jenny made it up just fine.

Running between trails 2 and 3 is trail 16. It looks like a rock garden. It reminded me of Pinball at Harlan just about one third as long. The rocks were slick form the mud but I really enjoyed the small climb. Janice and Jenny took turns riding with me as I ran the trail two more times.

I then tried to run another upper part of 16. This trail looked easier but it was not. The rocks were larger and there was more mud between them. After banging on my rock rails a few times I finally backed out and we went exploring again.

The park is really compact so you are never really very far from lots of fun trails. It looks like there is plenty of variety for every body from stockers to buggies with plenty of fun stuff in between for trucks like mine.

We drove back up two and this time took the other loop of the gravel road. This lead us to the camping area which has RV hook up as well as lots of space for more primitive camping. There is also a huge and I mean HUGE picnic pavilion there. It has restrooms, a full industrial kitchen in the concession area and a beautiful fireplace. There is even a bar.

Beside the pavilion is a monster playground for kids. We took time to walk around this area and explore before heading back to the trails.

Play Ground
Play Ground

We then took trail 2 again and attempted to loop back to the part of 1 where we got stuck in the morning. The trails were drying out and the easy trails were in fact easy. The moderate ones were still difficult and the difficult ones impassable.

At the top of the hill on trail one we found a spot marked difficult. Jenny and I both drove between the rocks. I think you are supposed to go over them but we had fun running the trail our way just to say to ours selves we ran difficult trail in the mud.

Coming up trail one we had crossed some ruts that we really did not want to go back down through so we scouted the top of the hill and found trail 21 with connect down. The top of the hill was the only place in the park where the trails were not perfectly marked. However with the aid of the map I quickly figured out where we were.

We drove down trail 21 and took a few minutes to walk around on trials 22 and 23. I don’t think I will ever run 23 in a Jeep but 22 looks very interesting. I will have to give it a try some day.

Trail 22 - want to try this one.
Trail 22 - want to try this one.

Late in the evening we decided to head out. We really did have the whole park to ourselves all day. It was fun that way but I really hope the owners get more business in the future to keep the park open.

I think Golden Mountain is now my favorite place to go off road. The park is small but there is a lot to do there. Lots of trail variety and the fall colors were simply beautiful. I am already looking forward to returning.

Heading out
Heading out

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Rich Dad Poor Dad – book review

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki – Review

While I have heard the principles of Rich Dad Poor Dad discussed in many places over the years, I had never actually read the book. I mostly assumed I already knew what it said. What Kiyoski calls arrogance that leads to ignorance.

I don’t remember what got me curious, but after reading a reference to Kiyosaki and Rich Dad Poor Dad, I wanted to know how it was that he had two dads. Eventually the curiosity got the best of me and I headed over to the book store and picked up a copy. I figured I could at least use it to impress my coaching clients since I did not really expect to learn anything about making money from this book.

Boy was I wrong! This book was a real epiphany for me. I have been having a lot of these lately. I suppose it is evidence of my becoming more in vibrational alignment with my virtual fortune as Ester Hicks would say.

So, if you are curious like I was about how he had two dads, I will let out that little secret. The “poor dad” was his actual father whom he lived with. His father was not exactly poor by most standards. He was a well paid educator with a good middle class job. The “rich dad” was the father of his best friend Mike. Mike’s dad was a businessman who was just starting his empire. While Mike’s dad probably had less to show for his efforts in the early days, his philosophy of life led him on great wealth.

Robert learned much about life from both men.

Looking at my own life and my mentors, I see that although my own father was very successful in his career as an engineer, he still had the philosophy of specialization offered by Robert’s poor dad. Even though my grandfather owned his own business, he was more of a solo artist and not really into the business building philosophy of Mike’s dad.

I was taught from a very early age that if you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself. Over the years, I have become very good at several specialties such as engineering project management, workplace safety systems, and machinery maintenance. While I am good at managing a team, I have always had the idea that I could do everything better myself. When working on my own time, I prefer to work alone as I get more done.

From reading this book, I finally realize why so many “smart” kids do not do well financially and the C students become rich. The first reason is that the school systems focus on creating good employees. They create students who learn to follow the rules and don’t cause trouble. While I was a bit of an exception to the not causing trouble part of that as I became Valedictorian of my high school, I was better at conforming to the rules than breaking them.

The school systems do not teach financial skills. While I had plenty of courses on chemistry, physics, English, and mathematics, I never had a class on money management in high school. Even in college, I studied general economics and engineering economics, but I never really learned how wealth was created. I just learned how to be a good employee and help corporations make money from my engineering skills.

My formal education totally failed me in teaching me how to produce wealth.

I did once have the opportunity to learn about wealth, but I let that opportunity pass me by. I never realized what an opportunity it was until after reading this book. I remember that while I was in my freshman year at Ole Miss, I spent a lot of time with my Grandfather. He had what I would now call a benevolent sponsor. This man owned several businesses and thousands of acres of land in North Mississippi. He gave my granddad a shop to play in and work on his inventions.

He saw how I worked with my grandfather and seemed to like me. I did not realize at the time he was offering me an opportunity to learn like the one Mike’s dad gave Robert in the book. I totally missed what he was trying to give me.

In the book, Kiyosaki explains how he was groomed to understand the various aspects of businesses by working at various businesses owned my Mike’s dad. Often the work was without pay. The only reward was the education received. This is one of the principles taught in the book – “work to learn not for pay.” Kiyosaky goes on to describe how he took a series of jobs after college that taught him various skills that enabled him to build his business empire. Mike apparently did very well also in managing and continuing to grow his fathers businesses.

Kiyosaki learned the importance of education from his poor dad. He realized that lack of education is what holds most people back from great wealth. So thankfully for his readers, he has decided to build a business out of teaching people how to become rich or at least more financially aware.

As, I mentioned earlier, the primary concept that has been my big epiphany is that of using the skill of others to help me. As I learned more about business, I realized that there are skills that I just don’t have that I need to make money. I had set out to learn them but even though I am a fast learner, I will be too old to care by the time I learn all I need to know to do it all myself. I need to learn to take advantage of specialists who do know these things.

I have had to make some real emotional decisions as I realize that there are people much younger than me who already know what I need to know. Deciding that I can learn from these “young punks” is an ongoing struggle, but my previous spiritual work has prepaved the road for this. I have learned to value all people and not prejudge them based on some stereotype or other prejudice.

The most important concept I found in the book however is his redefining of an asset and a liability. In my corporate engineering work, I defined all capital and physical goods as assets. These were things that had tangible value and could be sold. I thought of my car and my boat and my house as assets. After all, I could list these as collateral for a loan.

Kiyosaki however defines an asset as something that brings in income. Houses, cars and boats cost money to maintain and operate so they are really liabilities.

Kiyosaki’s wealth building strategy is one of building assets. He continually adds to his collection of income producing items. He is not worried about saving for retirement as he continues to build a passive income generating system. He can now do what he enjoys which seems to be teaching. Naturally he has found a way to turn his love of teaching into an income producing system as well.

For a while, I worked with a client who was a house flipper. He would buy a run down house and we would fix it up together. Then he sold it. While this was a way to get income, in the end he had lost his asset by selling the house. Had he chosen to rent out the house he could have had a steady income. Or, had he traded up the property he could have continued to grow his business as explained in the book. This particular client eventually returned to his job as a truck driver and I got a bad taste for house flipping. I now see how he could have had much better results had we both had a better understanding of how the money system works.

In chapter eight, he covers the major obstacles to success and how to overcome them. While the list is familiar to anyone who has studied self help literature, his recommendations on how to deal with them hit me differently.

In the section on dealing with fear, he acknowledges that we all have fears. However, most of us never face them. Instead we avoid what we fear. We create protective systems to help us avoid what we fear. I saw this in the corporate world and thought it must be the right way to get ahead. However, as explained in the book, even the CEO of a major corporation is still an employee. A high paid employee, but still an employee. It takes a different mind set to be a business owner or investor.

Facing my fear of loosing money will be my biggest obstacle in implementing what I have learned in the book. I have gotten very good and minimizing risks in my career. At one time, one of my job duties was risk management. I got very good at eliminating risks for the company. However as Kiyosaki says, there is always risk. We just have to learn to manage the risk.

When I read that paragraph, I remember riding in the co driver seat of a rally race car. We were sliding toward a tree after my driver entered a corner just a little hot for the low traction conditions. After he recovered control of the car, he told me that rally racing was all about risk management. You had to go fast even if there was risk of sliding into a tree.

Another obstacle to success that Kiyosaki talks about is dealing with cynicism. In school, you don’t get to be valedictorian unless you are good at pleasing people. If teachers and principles like you, you will get better grades and get the benefit of the doubt when you make an occasional mistake. So I learned to take cynicism very seriously. I always wanted to be a perfectionist. I learned this both in school and at church. What I wanted was not important. I was here to make other people happy.

My recent spiritual awakening has reversed my perspective on this. Now that I have learned to love myself and understand that nothing is more important than that I feel good about myself, I can now face the cynics. Most of them have no idea what they are talking about anyway. He gives several examples in his book about how people have backed out of deals that could have made them a lot of money because they listened to a totally uninformed cynic. It is always easier to find potential fault in something than it is to actually build a system that works. I intend to work on creating my own systems from now on and see how they work. At least as soon as I get over that fear I just mentioned.

Another obstacle he addresses is laziness. He defines laziness in a different way than I have ever read before. He says people who busy themselves to avoid a task are lazy. He says people often find excuses not to do what would make them successful because they don’t have time due to too many tasks like mowing the yard and doing their jobs. Even though most people would see these people as busy and productive, he calls them lazy because they do not focus their efforts on income producing activity. They avoid what really needs to be done by focusing on menial tasks.

The most important concept I got from the book was to look at my assets. This weekend, I will be attending the Rich Dad Poor Dad stock trading seminar. Hopefully there I will learn how to do a better job of managing my stock portfolio. My son and I have started looking at rental property and I am always looking for more ways to start businesses.

I still believe my greatest assets are my skills and experience. I hope to be able to share those through my web site and classes that I plan to teach. I know I have a lot of knowledge that can be of benefit to others and I believe I can make a business out of sharing that knowledge with people who will benefit form it.

I have passed on my copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad to my older son. When he is done I have asked him to pass it to his younger brother. I hope our generation can be the one to break the cycle and they can become Rich Dads to their children.