The Science of Goal Setting, The Road to Joy & Prosperity

---

Continue reading Living life on a curve. If you have not seen the movie or read the book, both of which I highly recommend, there will be some spoilers for the movie in this post. The explosion of zombie movies and science fiction about intrepid survivors either abandoning Earth for new planets or struggling to get back to Earth suggests that subconsciously, we know we are beyond our limits and headed in the wrong direction on this planet. Mainstream cultural memes derived from this movie suggest the power of human technology and inventiveness through know-how and persistence. NASA may have used this movie as a rallying cry in support of more funding in general, and funding for longer-range space travel specifically.

Good luck with that. It is no accident that space travel in the US peaked with the US oil peak in When we venture beyond the energetic limits of what is sustainable, bad things are guaranteed to happen. Some years ago now a team of Swedish scientists proposed an interesting framework for understanding planetary environmental problems. It generated a range of responses from the environmental community, mostly positive.

I had what is undoubtedly a very unusual response to their framework, and while it is perhaps old news, it may still be useful to present it here. As an anthropologist, I see planetary problems from a cultural and evolutionary perspective that could offer a different take on the subject. Raising awareness about the problems and emphasizing nonlinear feedbacks effects, and so the possible triggering of abrupt global environmental changes, are integral to a more sophisticated discussion of climate change and the other problems they highlight.

To list them, they are climate change, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, nutrient fluxes, global freshwater use, land use change, biodiversity loss, aerosol loading, and chemical pollution. The green space in the center represents the safe operating values. If the wedge exceeds the green space then it has already crossed its threshold and become a threat of flipping to a disastrous state for our human presence on the planet.

Worse, the problems are interrelated and interactions are a grave threat. As an example of dangerous interactions, loss of soil moisture, degradation of land to new land types, and biodiversity loss all reduce the ability of ecosystems to sequester CO 2 , and thus increase greenhouse effects. These same issues can be found today in a number of diagrams such as the one above. Continue reading Sociocultural Boundaries. Repost by David MacLeod.

As a new flow of energy enters the system and interacts with a resource, transformation of energy can happen, where some quantity of energy is liberated from the resource and transformed into a higher quality energy. Odum argued that all processes entail a reduction of energy quantity as they are transformed into a higher quality energy, a new quality of energy available for use by the system to function in a new and more powerful way.

The reduction in energy quantity is the 2 nd law of thermodynamics at work — the energy that is dissipated out in all processes to increase entropy. The 1 st law of thermodynamics is not violated, however — the total quantity of energy in the larger system is conserved, but a portion of it has now become unavailable for additional work. See the entire article, published at Integral Leadership Review , here. I recently decided to take an epidemiology course to fill in gaps in my knowledge base. The entire online graduate certificate in Environmental Health looked interesting, so I applied for the entire certificate.

Environmental Health was the first course that I took online at this flagship Florida university. The online experience would be a separate post in itself — the online course was mechanically flawless but grossly deficient in interactions and building critical thinking skills. Since the course and the textbook were too reductionist for my tastes, I argued using macroscopic arguments. I doubt the teaching assistants read it—like all other assignments in this MOOC , it received a grade with no comments.

Various friends are asking me what I think of GMOs, and most students in the class and most of my friends think that GMOs are a great solution for our food problems, so I am reposting the paper here. Most science and policy arguments are reductionist. We must learn to see the world anew, from a larger scale to see a complete picture of the processes involved. Reductionist science is not the answer to the problems engendered by a finite biosphere with a human population in overshoot.

Continue reading Arguments against GMOs. This is a repost of a Jan. Ulanowicz is a member of the Advisory Panel to the Howard T. Odum Florida Springs Institute. As Americans we are understandably proud of our commitment to efficiency. It is no surprise, then, that in order to save our aquifer and springs in North Florida, we encourage ever more efficient ways of using water.

At the individual level, we endeavor to install water-saving showers and toilets or to plant drought resistant shrubs and lawns. This paradox has been documented through the outcomes of a number of projects that were intended to save groundwater by implementing more efficient ways of irrigating crops. In regions that ranged from Kansas to New Mexico and Colorado, increased water use followed in the wake of adopting greater efficiencies.

This counter-intuitive phenomenon is not new. It was described years ago by British economist William Jevons. There are many ways whereby improved efficiency can lead to greater overall consumption, but in most cases the savings gained by better efficiency are overwhelmed by an increase in total demand, spurred on either by the new technology itself or by extrinsic factors. Certainly, as individuals we need to redouble our efforts at conservation and efficient water use, but at the community level it becomes necessary that we reorder our priorities and focus instead primarily upon ways to limit total extractions.

Unfortunately, as the courts have discovered, MFLs are difficult to define, making them almost impossible to adjudicate and enforce. Applications for CUPs, meanwhile, are almost never denied. The permit regulating extractions by the Jacksonville utilities, for example, rewards the reuse of wastewater an efficiency by allowing additional withdrawals from the aquifer without requiring any replacement!

At this time we do not have a firm idea of how much water is being extracted from the aquifer. To avert tragedy we need to begin to measure all that is pumped from the Floridan aquifer. A program to monitor all users — domestic urban and rural , industrial and agricultural — must be initiated. Secondly, we need to use water balance models, independent of developmental goals and desires, to establish a cap on what can be sustainably removed from the Floridan aquifer. While capping withdrawals might seem draconian to some in North Florida, it should be mentioned that caps restricting pumping have already been established around Orlando and Tampa.

Such limits are long overdue for North Florida. Finally, we must develop a schedule of charges to be assessed to all users commensurate with their metered use. We in North Florida are indeed fortunate to have our springs and lakes as visible indicators of the health of our aquifer. Elsewhere, as with the Ogallala aquifer in the Midwest, the deleterious effects of overpumping remain largely invisible, and these groundwater resources are being tapped to extinction.

Of almost equal importance to our well-being, it is extremely fortuitous that we possess our springs and lakes for recreation, scenic beauty and inspiration. However, if we fail to make our top management priority the capping of total extraction from the Floridan, it becomes inevitable that we will lose these irreplaceable treasures.

We need to redouble our efforts at conservation and efficient water use, but we must reorder our priorities and focus primarily on ways to limit total extractions. Happy Solstice and Happy Holidays, everyone! These can be big wishes or small wishes like learning 3 songs on the guitar or abstract wishes like being a better communicator or very specific wishes that would relate only to you. Then next year on solstice, open your list and see how you did. May your New Year be blessed with peace, gratitude and joy. Hospitals in the US cause about , premature patient deaths each year due to preventable harm iatrogenic causes.

Our dysfunctional healthcare system tolerates the carnage of preventable patient injury and death, and potential occupationally-acquired infectious diseases by healthcare workers HCW. This deadly problem may add to the list of poor outcomes of our healthcare system, spreading the disease, since caregivers are vulnerable to being infected and carrying it into communities. I was careful in public places such as airports, trolleys, and the BART, washing my hands frequently and keeping them folded in front of me.

I was much more aware of impulses to touch my face.

Angel Prosperity Joy And

I watched a couple in the San Francisco airport who were headed to Nairobi touch their faces, many times, as they waited. Airport bathrooms were mostly hands-free, but the automatic toilets sprayed their contents powerfully in all directions when flushed. TSA used gloves to pat me down, but they were not washing their hands after contact with people.

Boarding passes, drivers licenses, and credit cards were swiped and exchanged, along with bills and coins. I saw a large homeless population on the waterfront in San Francisco with no access to bathrooms or handwashing, who were using the streets as open latrines. I saw people hugging, and shaking hands, and doing all kinds of human, caring, or even loving things that would be extinguished in a pandemic.

My nursing friends are worried. Are we ready for this? How do we communicate risk, or should we settle for optimistic reassurance that our system can handle this? What are our biggest needs in preparation? Continue reading Clutching our world views with a death grip. We are in uncharted territory with the Ebola virus disease EVD. We have lost control of a deadly outbreak, and our responses to its exponential growth are linear at best, ensuring that this plague will most likely spread further.

Many in first world countries think we are immune to plagues. Continue reading Uncharted territory for a system in overshoot. Welcome to the arcane and short-sighted world of public health strategic planning. This post introduces the term surge capacity, a term we will hear often in the coming months of this growing Ebola EVD epidemic.

A Prosperous Way Down – Our civilization can thrive in a future where we live with less

During a pandemic, lack of surge capacity in all four of these areas become key limiting factors: In crises, anxiety focuses attention. Overpopulation, inequity, peak oil, and disturbed natural environment have converged with the problem of Ebola, to set up the conditions for a pandemic. If we add a slow response from complacent, frozen bureaucracies to this toxic mix, then we can expect a global pandemic to occur. We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Healthcare professionals need to speak up about healthcare inequity and US readiness for pandemics. I have studied handwashing in hospital settings, with insight as to the gaps. So I will continue to perseverate here, and add my nursing voice to the choir of concerned healthcare professionals. Continue reading Ebola as a game-changer? This week I finally read John M. The story of the deadliest pandemic in history.

The Science of Goal Setting – The Road to Joy and Prosperity

The book is well written, albeit with a lengthy introduction of the medical researchers and their personalities. Since my PhD is in Nursing-Health Policy, this is a topic that interests and worries me greatly, so I will expand on my earlier post as this threat has continued to expand and evolve. This post serves as book review and comparison of similarities and differences between the Great Influenza pandemic and the current looming threat of another pandemic, Ebola EBOV.

I took some time off from writing this summer, as I was busy getting unmarried and moving back to my original home, Florida. The divorce was quite amicable, after almost 40 years together, and Alaska provides few obstacles to the process. Instead of wolverines and bears traipsing through the yard, it is raccoons and possums. Instead of goshawks eating the chickens, I have fledgling cardinals at my feeder. I have encountered enough old friends and acquaintances here that I am quickly regaining my sense of place in this sunny, hot, subtropical, watery paradise.

Continue reading Stop growing or meet the four horsemen? This diet consists of highly processed, mass-produced foods grown with unsustainable practices. Processed foods generally have lowered nutritional quality and are usually not organic. Eating such foods increases the risk of a multitude of health problems. So what are the solutions? We have the power to make the change by Going LOW! What are LOW foods? Continue reading Go LOW for health and sustainability. Bullfrogs, treefrogs, bogfrogs, and the like, all singing an almost deafening spring hymn in welcome to the returning rains, making a joyful froggy noise.

The Bus Stops of Botswana took on a life of its own the first time I drove from one end of the country to the other. Batswana the people of Botswana are called Batswana or Motswana are not competitive by nature, but in this subtle way they compete. Pressing Mike further, he suggested that they are the places where people, who live kilometers back in the bush come to the main road to wait for a bus, or possibly a passing friend, to take them to town.

I imagined the first bus stop was constructed out of the urge to create and the time to do so. Waiting for a bus in the bush of Botswana can take some time, as they may only come once a day, or they may not come at all.

Essay Archives

Some are very elaborate, others simply a plastic jug impaled on a stick I think of these as just getting started, as seeds, or at most seedlings just emerging from the chaos. As my understanding of the bus stop culture grew so did my desire to photograph them. Traveling anywhere in Botswana became an all day affair, no matter how short the distance.

No one wanted to ride with me, as I stopped at every bus stop. My collection now stands at well over bus stops, and almost images. I often reflect on the bus stop culture. It was our expectations that led to our downfall, as we never imagined anything different. Continue reading The great migration. Modern societies have developed as adaptations to a high-energy world by producing surpluses of non-renewable energies, especially in the United States. If we are to have any future society, it will be more cooperative and self-organizing one.

What are self-organizing societies, and why should you be hoping for one as an alternative to the current emphasis on centralized control? How can we develop them? Continue reading Self-organizing societies. Continue reading Energy ethics for survival of people in nature Share this: By Mary Odum In case my fellow Americans have been overwhelmed by all the other news during this chaotic era of descent, a white supremacist is making the rounds on college campuses inciting racism, hatred, and ethnic cleansing.

By Francesco Gonella The problem of climate change has become a part of the current global discussion, due to the Paris Accord. Continue reading Systems thinking and the narrative of climate change Share this: Odum diagram of the uranium chain, Share this: Walking the talk This essay explains how I introduce fundamental concepts of self-organizing systems to students who are new to the discipline: Energy transformation and energy hierarchical organization, suggested as the fifth law of thermodynamics Maximum power and maximum empower, suggested to be the fourth law of thermodynamics for open self-organizing systems.

Continue reading A systemic perspective on life Share this: By Tom Abel I recently visited China for the first time. A rural farm in Guilin, China source Something that connects them is this. Free renewables made it all possible Share this: Continue reading Responsibility for regeneration Share this: Continue reading Treatment wetlands equal cleaner water and more birds Share this: By Francesco Gonella Dr. Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.

Continue reading Reflections on scientific illiteracy Share this: Odum on energy equality Share this: Hiawatha Wampum Belt of the Iroquois Confederacy It is also said as a daily sunrise prayer, and is an ancient message of peace and appreciation of Mother Earth and her inhabitants. Continue reading Greetings to the natural world Share this: By Tom Abel This is a story of energy, and how it makes our worlds go round. To start simply, a question or two: On Human Time We all live day-to-day.

As you commit to believing in yourself, also make a commitment to toning down the complaint department. Look at what you are complaining about:.

Really examine your complaints. More than likely you can do something about them. They are not about other people, other things, or other events. They are about YOU. If you are going to be successful in creating the life of your dreams, you have to believe that you are capable of making it happen. Whether you call it self-esteem, self-confidence or self-assurance, it is a deep-seated belief that you have what it takes; the abilities, inner resources, talents and skills to create your desired results. Have unwavering faith in yourself, for good and bad. Make the decision to believe that you create all your experiences.

You will experience successes thanks to you, and you will experience pain, struggle, and strife thanks to you. Sounds a little strange, but accepting this level of responsibility is uniquely empowering. It means you can do, change, and be anything. Stumbling blocks become just that—little hills to hop over. This one is straightforward: Imagine how much easier it would be to succeed in life if you were constantly expecting the world to support you and bring you opportunity. Successful people do just that. Experts on the science of success know the brain is a goal-seeking organism.

Whatever goal you give to your subconscious mind, it will work day and night to achieve. To engage you subconscious mind, a goal has to be measurable. At least it comes with a few actions to achieve. A first step simply can be making an immediate change in a single area in your life. Are you unhappy about something that is happening right now? Make requests that will make it more desirable to you, or take the steps to change it yourself.

Making a change might be uncomfortable and overwhelming for you.

It might mean you have to put in more time, money, and effort. It might mean that someone gets upset about it, or makes you feel bad about your decision. It might be difficult to change or leave a situation, but staying put is your choice so why continue to complain? You can either do something about it or not. It is your choice and you have responsibility for your choices.

Search PWD

Use daily affirmations to focus on your goals and reprogram your subconscious mind. Bear in mind that you have to be willing to change your behavior if you want a different outcome. You have to be willing to take the risks necessary to get what you want. So, if you need just one thing to do different today than you did yesterday, make it this: Decide to make changes, one step at a time. Reserve your spot now. Are you good at teaching others how to do something?

Would you be interested in teaching my Success Principles to others to make more money? Could you teach seminars locally? Can you offer a class at the local high school or community college? Could you lead a workgroup at the office to incorporate these principles on the job or in your department? Or could you boost your existing career as a professional trainer? If you can envision yourself as a dynamic and powerful presenter you should apply for my Train the Trainer Live certification program. The results would be miraculous.

• Hell and Back: A Short Story
• A Book of Mormon Christmas
• Probleme und Vorteile sozialer Interaktion im Segeln (German Edition)
• Guardian
• A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages (1887)