The Home of Steven Barnes
Author, Teacher, Screenwriter


Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Resistence: Fall of Man

So far so good...Jason woke us up at four in the morning with a cough and sore throat. Ordinarily I would have been worried that I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. But I used my new method (a few minutes of concentrating on breathing with a 6:8 ratio of inhalation to exhalation) and dropped right back out. Not 100% perfect, but wow, I've never come across a method of sleep induction even half so reliable.

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DAY SIX of the 101 emphasizes the theory behind the Five Minute Miracle. Namely, Neurosynaptic Facilitation. We've talked about this before, but in short, if you wanted to learn piano, it would be better to practice for ten minutes six times a day than to practice a solid hour. If you wanted to improve your chin-up total, doing several short sets during the day would be better than spending twenty minutes in the morning.

We've concentrated on

1) Creating goals in the three major arenas of your life.

2) Committed to taking a little action toward all three, every day.

3) Developed a technique (breathing) to prevent stress from becoming strain.

4) Integrated the concept of the Hero's Journey, which accepts "failure" as a natural part of the feedback loop.

If you move toward all three, you WILL run into every internal and external obstacle you have ever avoided. If you are patient, maintain flexibility and pay attention, making another small move every day, never allowing yourself to fall into imbalance, over time you will begin to clear out your mental/emotional attic. I mean, there are only so many tricks your unconscious has up its sleeve.

And once you've seen the repeating pattern of fear, procrastination, lying, false pains, internal voices or whatever, you should begin to Know Your Enemy. Once you do, again referring to the Hero's Journey, you can begin to gather the Allies and Powers you need to overcome your own specific demons...or convert them into friends.

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I have NEVER played all the way through a video game before, without cheating. Medal of Honor was great fun, but I was hitting those cheat codes like crazy before I got to the end. But I got "Resistance: Fall of Man" for my Playstation for Christmas, and the dual-player mode has made this incredible fun. T and I have been playing daily for the last couple of weeks, and I have to say this is first-class gaming entertainment. What a rush!

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It took me a little while to get into the Christmas spirit in 2008, and now it's taken me a couple of weeks to get back out of it. I'm feeling just so lazy, and it's a great feeling, but it never lasts.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You may be interested in this:

In a British interview, Will Smith is asked about his lack of love scenes opposite white actresses, and expresses his thoughts on the matter.

http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/79786

LaVeda H. Mason said...

@Anonymous:

I saw that, too... and I immediately thought, "I wonder what Steve Barnes would think about this?"

I didn't want to call 'horsefeathers', but I did think that he was trying to keep the agenda under the radar. I wouldn't be surprised one bit to find WS lurks on this blog.

Steven Barnes said...

Well, he was asked about whether Hollywood would "pair him" with a white woman in a romantic comedy. There was no mention of love scenes. He kissed Eva Mendes. That was it. Notice how slippery this is? The specific bugaboo is depictions (even PG depictions) of reproductive behavior. If you don't grasp that, you won't get the point.