Can a tiger change his stripes? This is something that I have been thinking on for quite awhile. Change to me is somewhat like giving birth. It can be a hellish thing to have to go through but the result can make it all worth it.

Life for me has been more or less on autopilot for the last couple of years or so. Nothing earth shattering in the way of changes have occurred. This is an odd place to be for someone like me. I am very good with crisis management and clawing my way up from chaos to order. In fact, my entire life until lately has been a series of life altering changes. Some I created for myself and before I was able to do that others did it for me. When you find yourself in a crisis situation goals are very clear and one is easily motivated to reach those goals. Chaos, catastrophe and failure are something that I am home with. I usually know exactly what to do and proceed to do it, like a pitbull on cocaine.  

Without chaos and drama and it creates I am a bit disorientated and lost. The clarity and focus that drives me under profoundly negative circumstances is gone. As the zoologist Desmond Morris might put it I suffer from the “Stimulus Struggle”.

So what can I do about this? What can I do to get myself one step higher. One more step on Maslow’s pyramid. One step closer to Satori, if your into zen. One step closer to the Beatific, if you be Christian. Reaching your potential, if you like new age crap. Ultimately, its all the same thing.   

Well, not being a person with any common sense at all I have decided go radically alter everything all at once. I have a birthday in a few weeks and I am giving myself until then to prepare an action plan.

Firstly, start meditating on a daily basis again a few minutes a day at first.

Secondly, I will stop smoking cold turkey, with the Aid of the patch. I figure in the short term this will cause me to ingest mass amounts of food to compensate. That’s fine, I need to do that (just without my usual far of fast food) for step 2. I will need to plan for a high energy diet.

Next : Start working out again, nothing major at first. General free weight program that will lead to a 5 day split in a few months. Maybe some hockey or ultimate frisbee. After I am in generally better condition maybe I’ll get into Martial Arts again, who knows?

Finally, once the mind and body are working a bit better I will take on coding. Specifically C#. This will help me career wise as coding is my weak point, plus for project management and security aspects of IT. A step on my way to and end career goal.           

A lot to do, especially all at once, but like I said without any major challenges I just … stagnate.

What do you think? All out fanatsy on the level of "Alice in Wonderland"? Possible to do? Anyone got any advice for any of these steps?