The Mind is a Double Edged Sword - Networking

Something that I have strongly disliked for a long time is befriending someone for the purpose of potential future gain. I feel that such actions abuse the significance and trust of friendship. I have always disliked very politically motivated people for trait. However, today I attended a lan gaming event and stayed behind to chat and hang out with the organizers of the event.

I now need to reflect upon my actions to determine whether I'm acting hypocritically or why what I'm doing isn't the same as what I hate. Like I said before, I dislike "intentional networking" because I feel it abuses the value of friendship, that a friendship is faked in order to achieve potential favour from someone. So does actually becoming friends with a useful person alleviate this problem? I don't know. If one person was initially motivated by self-gain to meet the other, does their eventual friendship excuse the action of the motivated person? I feel like it wouldn't.

What if the person tells their friend that their initial meeting or friendship was motivated by self-gain? I would think that if the friend would still accept the person as their friend after hearing this entire truth, that such an action can be forgiven. So fundamentally, the issue is an openness of knowledge and intention. That if a person would still befriend you and help you even after you made it known that you initiated the friendship for personal gain, such an action is excusable.

To complicate this further, what if the person whom you look for help from, wouldn't freely give their help to people whom they do not know? Is it ok to befriend them in order to increase the likeliness that they would help you? I don't think so. In this situation the befriending has the intention of increasing the likelihood of personal gain.

I feel that the answer to this question lies within the primary intention of the person. I believe that whatever social actions a person takes, there must exist a realistic and true reason or interest other than networking. It could be learning the views of others, or attending a society or club that they involved in for personal enjoyment. I suppose what I mean in conclusion is that it is never ethical for networking to be your primary intention, it should only be an incidental benefit to what you would be doing either way.

For me, the primary reason for attending all these events, is the social enjoyment as well as learning about the various gaming communities and cultures. I can finally put my mind at ease, knowing that what I'm doing doesn't conflict with my own personal ethics. I also now have a blog post that I use as a guide in future whether I feel unsure of the ethicalness of my actions.

In Summary
- It is not right to befriend someone primarily to gain favour and personal gain
- Befriending someone valuable is fine as long as the friendship was incidental to you acting primarily for another reason

Mistakes and Lessons - Life Happens, Get Over IT!

Well, it's been quite a couple of days, I think maybe nearly 2 weeks since my last post. I have been kind of busy with moving out of my previous house. There was a ton of stuff to organise, sell and clean during the lead up to moving out. Now I'm working out new living arrangements, while also trying to sort out some stable work.

So basically, I've got quite a lot of "life stuff" to get sorted out. I have spent an abnormally large amount of time trying to get this stuff sorted. I've managed to waste 1 or 2 weeks of productive time while fumbling over living and work. All of this reminds of a Facebook post I once saw, some of you may have read about it. It's the poem of the professor and the mayonnaise jar. Here's a short Youtube version of what it's about.

Basically it's about priorities in life. Certain things like the sand in the jar are meaningless time fillers in life, some things are necessary but unimportant parts of life such as the small pebbles in the jar. Then there are the things in the jar that are truly important to us, the large stones in the jar. But it is interesting to note, if you pour sand in the jar first, then the pebbles, you'll never get the meaningful stones into the jar. This is all basically a metaphor, for putting the important things in life ahead in priority.

Relating this back to my issue of working on Gamer's  Life Convention 2013 and how life keeps getting in the way. I need to re-evaluate my approach to allocation of time. I've determined that stuff like living arrangements are like the small pebbles in life right now, I have to deal with them but they are not a priority. So I've decided that what isn't important but necessary, I'll get sorted out as quickly and efficiently as possible, albeit with some prudence so I don't make a bad decision that will cost me dearly in the long term. This will hopefully leave me with more time and focus for my own meaningful projects.

In Summary
- know what are the important goals in life for you
- when other necessary but less important things occur, deal with them quickly and efficiently
- try to leave unimportant things out of your life to leave time for more important things.

A Day in the Life - Sleepless Nights

History will always know the great exploits and achievements of leaders. It is rare for people to truly understand and comprehend the burdens that these people bear. The life of an entrepreneur is not for everyone, with the potential for freedom, also comes with the fear of insecurity. That there are no guarantees, and nothing is certain. What if you fail, or what if it doesn't work out? If things go bad, where will you be tomorrow, what will you do tomorrow?

Having gone through many academic and social challenges, I always thought that I was mentally invincible. That nothing can phase me. Even during year 12 examinations, things didn't worry me. It wasn't until the weeks before Gamer's Life Convention 2012, that I started becoming sleepless. Each night, the thoughts of what could go wrong and what needs to be done flow through my mind.

Recently, these sleepless nights started again. I am uncertain what the future holds, I don't know what I need to do, neither do I know what will I do if I fail. I guess this is one of the mental costs for freedom. I guess this is my body telling me that what I'm doing is now serious. That there is no looking back, that if I continue there is no return and that the only way I can get over this is to force myself through this next challenge and become comfortable with it.

Many of my recent posts have been about lessons and thoughts of my journey. But today's post take a more personal note. Challenges lie ahead and I will conquer them.

The Mind is a Double Edged Sword - Hunger

Continuing from my last post, which talked about purpose. Today's blog entry is an extension of that. Although at times there is purpose in one's life, there may still not exist the motivation and drive to achieve that purpose. One example is the hardship of study, most of us have gone through at least a decade of academic study, our young years were focused around learning more knowledge. But even though that may be the purpose of our life at that time, we may not strive hard for that purpose.

This related back to me recently, where I knew what I should do, why I wanted to do it, but there existed no drive for it. I had to really think about this one, why did I wake up in the morning and not want to do anything productive? Was it that I just needed a break from the constant study and work? I don't think so. The last 2 or so months were quite cruisy and I seldom done any work.

I didn't realize this at the time, but if one wants to work against the trend, to stand out, do something different, they need a strong personal force to carry that out. This personal force has many forms, for some it's confidence, for some it's arrogance, for some it's attention seeking, but for me this personal force is pride and hunger. Let us leave pride aside from today's blog and look at hunger.

Now I don't literally mean physical hunger, but I mean a more emotional, intellectual or spiritual hunger. To have a deep feeling of want, almost a sense of need so strong that they are willing to ignore social, emotional and economical forces working against them. I've yet to determine where this hunger derives from, I have feeling that it comes from external sources, such as living through a tough experience or seeing something you want to change.

I don't hunger for anything these days. That's what scares me, that I can let each day pass as if they don't matter. But they do, each day passed is another day out of 1000 that I waste. I want to achieve something, I want to do something unique, but I don't hunger it. So I decided that it was time to walk the unfamiliar to try and become hungry again.

The Mind is a Double Edged Sword - Purpose

So it's been about 3 months since I finished university. I feel that I've barely gotten anything done. True I've been doing some soul searching and now have a clearer view of what I'm doing with my life. But I can't help feel that each day slipping by is another that I'm wasting, a day that I could be using to move towards my dreams or goals.

I've slowly been getting Gamer's Life Convention planning back on track, but it just feels different to when I was planning the first convention. I lacked a drive, a desire, a want. Entrepreneurship became like a job, something that I would do to get by each month. I truly had to think about this hard. I finally remembered that I had something to prove. I wanted to show that I could create this convention, I wanted to show my peers that I could run the largest event the University has ever seen, I wanted to create an event that could continue to give back to the Bond Casual Gaming Society in the future.

When I finished uni and I wanted to plan the next event, many of the past motivations no longer existed. I was no longer proving myself to my classmates, I was no longer doing this for university causes. This is why I had to take time off to go soul searching. I wanted to know what I wanted to do and find out what it means to me.

The reason I wasn't driven, was because I never seriously saw my entrepreneurial work as a pathway into doing something great. No one has ever saved any families, educated any kids or cured any diseases by playing or supporting games. I wondered if building the gaming community could ever create any good. From my own thoughts and observations, I didn't think it was possible.

But when you think of examples of huge business people who have given their wealth, people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, their skills didn't directly facilitate in the positive contribution of society. They did what they did best, and then gave away what they could to good causes. Maybe what I'm doing now doesn't have to positively contribute to society yet. I don't know, this is something I hope the future reveals to me.

So, now with this "idealistic" mindset set aside for a while, all that was left was, "what do I want to do?" Amongst the many answers that came to mind, this was the  response that resonated with me the most;

"I want to create a community and run events for my friends. Not just my close friends at the moment, but all the people who I might meet in the future. I want to create a community where their hobbies and interests are accepted and promoted, a place where people can do what they enjoy.

I want to build the gaming community. Not just the competitive scene, not just E-sports, not just the commercial side, but the people side. I feel that each gamer contributes in their own way. I want to find a way to bring the community together by bringing that out."

After these thoughts passed my mind, I was mentally set. There would be many obstacles ahead of me, but for the first time in a long while, I felt that these obstacles were ones that I wanted to face. Maybe that's what causes us to go beyond, to create or do something much larger than what could be expected of us.

I still actually have more to write, but I'll break it up into a second part and finish off this idea later in the week. But to finish off, here's a short clip from the Matrix Reloaded that shines some light on the importance of purpose, Enjoy.