I’ve tried many many many combinations of products on my face and here’s what’s been the best:

Honey

Aspiring

Olive oil on my lower cheeks

Fasting on lemon juice

sweating

eating mostly vegetables

alpha hydroxy lotion

biotherm superactiv

sleeping before 11PM – perhaps hormone related

changing my pillowcase

cleaning face gently

scrubs once a week

astringents and a mask once a week

It was 35 degrees in the shade today and the house was literally on fire – in addition to that my  kitchen is being cleared of all appliances for a new floor. Means lots of noise. The day before I was suffering from a massive sugar crash after a Wendy’s frosty – I haven’t felt that sluggish in years. So my fasting was intended to clear up both sluggishness and the shame I felt from the angry outbursts.

I felt a comfortable rumbling in my stomach initially. Some people are uncomfortable with the sensation of an empty stomach. I find it much more tolerable than feeling bloated. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel hungry at all past 12PM. I drank about 4-5L and still felt very thirsty until late at night.

Of course, a bucket of cookies and cream Soy icecream threw me right off the tracks – I cleaned up half the bucket. Big mistake. Right now I am fart central – and I feel like something is alive in my stomach and knawing at me.

I am no health expert. Various sources (including the Bible) credit water fasting as the most basic way to purify your body. The basic gist is your digestive system is allowed to rest – allowing your body to focus all its energy on healing and rejuvenation.

On July 16 I am beginning a 10-15 day water fast/master cleanse. For spiritual reasons, energy, and because I was just cast as a very fragile looking cripple in a feature that’s being shot on HD. So I feel that committing this time around will involving nearly no self-doubt or moral questioning. Exciting. Exciting. Exciting.

I will miss my piano when in Germany.

Further Reading:

http://drbenkim.com/fasting.html

http://www.gaianstudies.org/articles4.htm

Seen a website that was far and beyond what you thought the human imagination was capable of? Recommend it.

Being faced with a ‘virtually impossible’ task and learning that I have a lot to lose motivated me beyond belief. To stay in class, I had to complete 60 hours of research and 9 deep, personal, well thought out projects – in 10 weeks. I was essentially screwed – but I have never smiled wider in my life. I saw this as an opportunity to show people that I was capable of the ‘virtually impossible’. There is almost nothing as glorious and feel-good as knowing that you have done the impossible. And here I am, being given that chance.

Countless others have been motivated to greatness simply by being faced with what seemed like an ‘impossible task’. Peter Jackson and Lord of the Rings, for one. Nobody believed that J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic was filmable. Jackson proved them all wrong.

My definition of success. Just get through today successfully – the rest will come naturally. Never fails. But alas, we are all human, and sometimes it’s difficult to consistently have our successful days in succession. I’ve found running to be ‘the’ determining factor in whether my day will be ‘successful’ or not. Sound crazy?  

First, you gotta understand what constitutes as a ‘successful day’. I think it’s doing everything that makes you become a better you – which in turn makes you feel good. Maybe that means finishing everything on your ‘to do list’, doing something sweet for someone, having a really good time with friends, making people cry, making people laugh, baking a cake, beating your wife etc. Regardless of specifics – it’s whatever makes you ‘better’ by your individual standards.

Now, to do that stuff: you need to know what’s really going to make you a better person every day. To do that, you need to be rational in the decisions you make – hour by hour, second by second. We make our best decisions after a good sleep, a good meal, and when we’re in a good mood. We think better and act better when there is more bloodflow to our brain. Ever made a good decision after too many drinks? I assume not.

The equation so far:
Good day means doing what you need to do to be a better you, which means making good choices about what you need to be doing. Good choices are the result of good thinking. Good thinking is – at its core – the result of brain activity caused by bloodflow to your brain – via your heart.

The simplest way to get your heart pumping blood into your brain is to RUN.

Scientific side effects of running:

The moral of the story: If you’re feeling down, out, lazy, bumish, low down, and sick of life – go for a run. You’ll think better, act better, make better choices, and be truer to yourself. Each day will be more successful, then weeks will be successful, then months, then years. One morning you’ll wake up and realize you’re whole life has been exactly the way you wanted – because you made the right decisions – because your brain was working – because you RAN.

Zero jokes. Do your running. Seriously. You owe it to yourself.

Richard Wilson is an acclaimed British sculptor and installation artist.

Here he literally cuts into a building – connects the peice to a track – and rotates it. Unbelievable.

Want more ridonculous? Check out The Daily Serving

Art can open your mind like a chainsaw on a can of tuna.

I’m always on the lookout for abstract analogies now that I’ve made a commitment to dedicating most of my time to art-related endeavors.

This morning – being the priority-orientated person I am – I decided to stay up all night and bake cookies at 4:30Am. Mmm. Great idea mate.

Then I realized that the ‘formula’ for success is universal, even in the things as trivial as cookie baking.

How does that work? How did I do it? Keep reading.

1. Grab a Recipe - thats tested and true

2. Gather all my Ingredients - as close to the recipe as possible

3. Mix together the ingredients

4. Put the dough on the pan

5. Bake them at 375 for 13 minutes

Result: underbaked, buttery cookies.

Solution: put them back in

Obstacle: I want my cookies now, so I will take them out early.

Result: Cookies taste doughy

Solution: put them back in and wait longer. do something else in the meantime. multitask. alright. Full pah. Badaboom badabing.

Result: Burnt cookies.

Now I have a question for myself:

What is this telling me about the importance of patience – listening to the people with more experience than you until you gain your own experience – and focusing single mindedly?

Listening, focusing, and patience can get me a batch of cookies.

Perhaps they can get anybody anything they want.

I like to write down my goals, it’s a good practice. I’ve tried and thrown out a few ways to do this – in an ongoing attempt to keep that all important representation of my ambitions inspirational. Theres nothing quite as derogatory and banal as a having your set of goals mimic a grocery-list.

The following is my newest – I did three things:

1. Divide it into sections – for organization and focus

2. Put some words of people I can trust at the top – for days when I can’t trust myself

3. Ask questions – so each time I review my goals, I can also rethink them and refine them.

This took me about 3-4 hours to put together. The time is worth it’s weight in gold.

Feel free to take something from this, but remember it’s important for you to go out and formulate something that inspires you specifically.

Want to see this forever-changing goals-binder format?

THE ATTITUDE:
SMILE WHEN IT HURTS THE MOST

“Our attitude toward life determines life’s attitude towards us.”

“If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be.”

Is any part of your mindset holding you back?

Is there any way of behaving that upsets you?

Find a solution to the problem right now. Don’t sacrifice another tomorrow.

THE FAMILY:
JUST WALK BESIDE ME AND BE MY FRIEND

“A friend knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words”

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
- Dr. Seuss

“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.”
- Albert Camus

“Are you upset little friend? Have you been lying awake worrying? Well, don’t worry…I’m here. The flood waters will recede, the famine will end, the sun will shine tomorrow, and I will always be here to take care of you.
-Charlie Brown to Snoopy

How are you going to be a good person?

How are you going to make other people feel like the most important things on earth?

Spread that love like too much butter on just enough toast.

You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want

People need loving most when they deserve it the least.

Love Imperfections

THE IMAGINATION:
A PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

“We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everywhere.”

“Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.”

C.S. Lewis

Do you want to achieve any artistic goals? If so, what?

THE RESPONSIBILITY IN SOCIETY:
GO BIG

“Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.”
- James Dean

“Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?”

Benjamin Franklin

What level do you want to reach in your career?

THE UNDERSTANDING

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it”
- Albert Einstein
“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me”

C.S. Lewis

“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.”

Albert Einstein

“Those of us we have been true readers all our life fully realize the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors”

C.S. Lewis

Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular?
What information and skills will you need to achieve other goals?
Which books do I want to look into?

THE HELICOPTER, THE CHOOCHOO, THE STEAMLINER:
STAY AHHHHH…REFRESHING

“Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”
- Albert Einstein

“To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.”
Benjamin Franklin

I have a baseline standard for this healthy athletic safeguarding:

1. Heart beat to 170 for 30-90 minutes

2. Green unmolested RAW food. Just enough.

3. Digesting starts 7:59PM. Not even one grape after.

4. Yoga before sunrise

This is not anal. There is more to life than sugar, starch, fat, and cake.

I’d rather have energy than chocolate any day.

Food can be a major interruption. It can seriously trip me up, but I can easily step over it.

When taste is boring, life becomes more interesting.

120 years

I really want to meet my great great great grandchildren.

ADVENTURES

“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”

C.S. Lewis

How do you want to enjoy yourself? You should ensure that some of your life is for you!

RETURNING THE FAVOR:
We must become the change we want to see

“Only a life lived for others is worth living”
- Albert Einstein

“Always remember to slow down in life; live, breathe, and learn; take a
look around you whenever you have time and never forget everything and every person that has the least place within your heart.”

Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?

FINANCES:

How much do you need to sustain all of the above?

How many ways you can earn that sum?

I never would’ve expected something like that to enlighten me in any way.

Countless people have told me that the key to success in the world is a good attitude. Great. Thats easy. I just start to love my work and…whabam! Miracles.

However…

Sometimes repeating “I love work, I love work. I love work” doesn’t work. Sometimes work doesn’t give that love back. So, sometimes it takes a completely unconventional approach to kickstart that work into behaving itself.

I went out on a fragile limb – revisited my old attitude: Studying is a ‘waste of time’ and there are better ways to learn. As soon as I began to realize (again) that studying isn’t worth the time I put into it – I began to look for ways to speed up how I do school-related anything.

I was led to a site on holistic learning – it helps you to understand concepts better by linking them to things you already know.

This what I discovered via thinking it’s highschool, it’s bullshit, you’re missing out on life, fix it now.

Holistic Learning

But never say die.

So thats how I realized that you need to recognize that there is a problem before you can really solve it. Until you see that something is not right, it will keep getting worse.

An artist – blindfolded – painting a picture of a red rose in green paint will not remix the paint to fix his mistake. Take off the blindfold – make him aware that he’s got the wrong color – and he can turn the rose to red in no time.

I can wear sweats – and so can you. What a concept.

Personally, I feel more secure when I get up late, and go to school the sweater I wore to bed, socks sticking out of my shoes, sweatpants yanked on. Dressing like that seems to be a physical reminder to myself: “Hey, I really don’t mind what people think of me. Check out that tomato stain on my pant leg. Nobody’s commented on that yet. They probably won’t judge me on anything less obvious than that tomato stain – like my personality. Why is life so good?”

If I dress like nobodies watching, I’ll act like nobodies watching. And when you act like nobodies watching, life never lets you down.

On the flipside …

You know the saying ‘fake it ’till you make it’?

Self-help gurus and motivational speakers like Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar and Earl Nightingale preach it like their pants are on fire.

Vanity – and faking it – can work against you.

Sometimes I feel I might be the most secure person in the world, but dressing like I’m not can change that entirely. Vanity is a well-known characteristic of a person who is – deep down – insecure and unsure of themselves. By embracing vanity, one can unconciously become that insecure person.

I can spend 2 hours each morning making myself look like a porcelain doll. Coat my face with mascara and makeup. Lather myself in perfume. Wear clothes that give me wedgies and increase my risk of being arrested for public indecency by 50%. Make my hair defy gravity, put spikes on my heels, anything to make me feel entirely unnatural and fake but slightly goodlooking. Look at myself in the mirror a few extra times, to verify my existance. Make sure I’m still there.

Then I go out and I feel fake, like people are seeing, smelling, and evaluating every inch of me. I act like everyone’s watching, and thats a good recipe for stage fright.

Moral of the story? Wear your dirty sweatpants and forget about your worries.