Basically saying that behavioral science can be applied to business systems in a broad strategy to achieve business success.

You may say to yourself, that's a lot of BS. And it is.

BS is that wonderful combination of letters that evokes vivid imagery for most people and is such a wonderful expletive to signal, with exact timing and proper projection, that you disagree emphatically with someone. Bullshit!

Ah, Basic satisfaction! 

It really rolls off the tongue well. Though, admittedly, it doesn't go on the tongue very well, but that's a different kind of bullshit story.

And there are many kinds of bullshit, which is the point I want to make.

There is a behavioral science to achieving the broad success businesses strive for. But you've got to know what is good BS and what, basically, is BS BS.

So to be succinct, briefly stated these ten tips top off my basic statement before shuffling off: 

• Remember 90 / 10 Rule

• Reward what you want more of

• Ignore what you want to see less

• Keep 'em guessing when the next treat will drop

• Perfection seldom arrives with the first crack at anything. Practice

• The mistakes are happy accidents that impress wise observers

• Doors closing are escape rooms, unlocked by creativity

• Try "Yes and... " as an approach

• Exert your efforts on the only thing you control

• You create the reality you seek to escape so you must create the universe where you wish to live, both from and where it originates

Be Strong. Be Steady. Be Safe.

moi

Brian, who is currently crashing on my sofa for the fourth month in a row (but who’s counting), provided that other point of view.

He saw it differently, the piece’s place in the Grand Master Plan, how the piece that I couldn’t place in the scene, fit into it perfectly.

He looked at the opposite end of the hose from the end I was trying to MacGyver onto the overall replacement thing for the shower head, the wrong end, as it turns out and I finally realized.

The reason it didn’t seem to fit where I was certain it had to go, was because that wasn't where it was supposed to go.

Brilliant!

Why is it, I wonder, that I/we immediately reject a point of view that’s other than the one we hastily formed when we first survey the problem and decide we have the answer, when what we really have is an answer, possibly even and sad to say frequently, the wrong one?

With that decision made, we cease looking for another one, often to our own detriment.

Being open minded to other ideas is a goal worth having, that far too few of us aspire to.

My bladder’s calls can’t go unanswered … safely. But it’s not just a have to but it feels a bit more like a get to.

I suspect it may be like trying to get all the meat off the bone of a particularly delicious roast.

It is trying to savor as much of the available nourishment in what’s left of the meal as possible.

A grasping of every last drop of Life that’s left to me.

Few days remain.

Savor each, young man.

My family and I are converging in Cleveland this weekend on a trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the first time in my life and I suspect for everyone of us.

I began a message thread to allow us to connect as needed while we travel  but also to document in real time the events and to perhaps capture what it feels like.

This was something I posted a moment ago to that thread.

Because Mike requested that I make sure that when we leave on Sunday, that the slogan for the city stays “Cleveland Rocks”, not “Cleveland Reeks,” I’ve baked myself some cupcakes of joy to make an effort at complying with his hope.

For insurance though, I’m packing your very thoughtful Christmas gift of Blaze Haze Eliminator.

Just in case I detect the odor of the Devil’s Weed anywhere in the area while I’m in town.

I’m sure if I caught a sniff, it’d make me look forward to getting back home.

Drive safely.

Well, thanks for letting me know.

While you’re here, in the sense that I’m reacting to your message, may I ask you a question, please?

In what document is it written that you have any right whatsoever to knowing anything at all about my off-meta activity?

I’m sorry to have to tell that is not unlike your asserting your right to add a camera to my bidet so you can help me avoid contracting cancer of my asshole. How magnanimous of you!

I am overwhelmed.

And, sure, I’ll go to a location on your site that I haven’t been on, since I swore “never again,” during that brief time I mistakenly examined the new phenomenon everyone said they loved, just to ask your permission to keep my shit to myself.

Thank you so much.

And to top it off, I don’t even do on-meta activity at all. And I haven’t since I made the mistake of checking out the book of faces when it was new.

But like the Baptist doctrine of “once saved; always saved,” you can check into Hotel Meta, but you can never leave.

So that’s why I titled this post what I did, Mr. Meta.

Who do you think you are?

Huh?

Is there a tomorrow here, I wonder?

By itself, that’s a terrific experience for them to create and on which to build some lasting memories that will strengthen their bond together. But to add to the thrill and the challenge of the experience, I was stunned when I learned that what they were bringing with them.

Well, not exactly what, but rather who. They are bringing four children with them!

Their three adopted (sisters), McKenzie (9), Oakland (5), Chesney (4), and oh, why not, granddaughter, Ansleigh (8)!

That an adventure awaits everyone, I have very little doubt.

So I gave the girls (and the adults, backhandedly) the departure gift of my suggestion in the following video, just so I don’t have to type so much.

I am pleased to share the suggestion (their gift) to them with you, too.

And I am also proud of Gi Gi and Two-Pop choosing to raise another family when faced with the need to do so. They are doing their part, plus more than most would choose to do.

You can appreciate that they are a joy to know and love. I look up to them.

The gift of a suggestion to all of you.

That song can be heard sung, quite powerfully, here.

Be moved.

From the video’s description.

Some music never fades… it just finds new ways to be heard.

If you’d like to hear more of our music, you can explore our Listening Room here:

👉 www.markwhitelive.com

We filmed this performance of “Canon in D” by Pachelbel in the beautiful Blue Mountains. A timeless piece that has been reimagined countless times, and somehow still feels just as powerful every time.

Here’s our take on it, on the Chapman Stick.

And it is amazingly good.

Take the time to join me, won’t you?

https://youtu.be/8Bj5YwVI2ic

Welcome to the beginning of your 85th year.

It’s good of you to join us “old hands” aboard this vessel sailing from here to the Sunset.

I’m hoping to do a video message for you today but I want to allow myself until the end of today to complete and send it. That means you may get it after your birthday.

Regardless, I celebrate your birthday because I consider our friendship to be a unique aspect of my voyage on the ship we’ve been sailing on together, experiencing the same events, from November 7, 1941, seeing the same history unfold (I was midway through Naval OCS in on November 22, 1963 when someone came in to report the President had been shot and killed in Dallas, to name but one) but each from a different perspective. Glorious!

So different, so similar.

I take note of the fact that, technically, I think, and as I see it, last night was your first night away from home at college.

So, how’s it?

Keep your observations of the experience for possible future use in your first book about your discoveries along the way.

You can throw those notes away later, if you choose, but you can’t go back and make them, once now becomes then.

I know I’d buy that book. And I’d find it interesting to read, I’m sure.

Love you, and have fun.

I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take.

God bless Grace and Daddy

And make Perry a good boy.

Amen.”

That was what I was taught to pray as a child. That last sentence, in particular, the part in italics, is the part that changed things for me.

I asked God to fix me. Every night. Religiously.

Why?

Well, silly, because I obviously needed fixing, from the moment I first learned to converse the One I now call “my old friend, God.”

I was stained, identified early in my life as in serious need of fixing, as was indicated by the fact I referred to my mother as “Grace,” not for its relevance in the act of forgiveness but because that’s what Daddy called her and I had no siblings with which to debate the issue. Never Mommy, Mom, or Mother, just Grace. I think in the early 1940’s they might have thought it was “cute” so if they didn’t correct me, and I don’t recall any attempts to discourage my doing it.

When, a bit later that I had an “abnormal” interest in my fellow males more than I felt an interest in the girls, I new I was “different.”

In high school I found a word that described what it was I was praying about since I was a child. It became very clear that I’d been praying since I first learned to pray that my old friend, God, would fix me so that I wouldn’t be queer.

Needless to say, He didn’t fix me because as I later concluded that’s the way He made me and what He intended for this life to be, another shot at creating a being that is both queer and happy.

In November I will celebrate my 85th birthday, and I have reached some tentative conclusions about things

Yes, prayer changes things.

It matters what you drill into your own head on a nightly basis because, remember, prayer changes things.

And I have learned that happiness can make its entrance only when you give in to the inevitable and be what you were meant to be to begin with.

Now I am still queer, with an unusual and some say “abnormal” interest in the “members” that belong to members of the same sex, but because I have signed a peace treaty the ends the long internal war that I’ve waged with myself through too many of my years, fighting thoughts and urges, and made peace with who I was meant to be, I am happy with Now.

Despite my prayers.

So sue me.

Anything else you tell yourself about meeting it is a lie that will prevent you from meeting it!

No, you won't start next week.

Yes, it most assuredly does matter.

Of course, it is possible!

You can do it ...

But only now, because that's where the action, or the acts shunned, happens.

So do it NOW, please.

loosing Now in screensaver Beauty

all toked up with time to ponder

and allow my minder to wander

o’er fields of metaphors of semaphores

or hidden doors through which to find out

what?

In the Navy, bravo zulu were letters that meant 'well done'.

Being able to reward/reinforce an action in a timely manner, hoping to increase the likelihood a living animal, such as let's say, a human being, as demonstrated by B.  F.  Skinner back in the 1960s with even less intelligent species, will repeat that action in similar circumstances in the future, has taught those who've been watching how to teach things to others.

In short, what pays off gets repeated.

And timing matters. Deliver it at the wrong time and you create confusion, and superstitious learning.

When timing matters, Morse Code was quick and could be timed precisely.

BZ said it all. At just the moment it needed to be said.

I thought you might like to know something I know from first hand eperience. Or from perhaps an hallucinated memory.

But what do I know?

But I believe that the unique experience you have gone through, that feels like being crucified and from which resurrection is the only just resolution, has a parallel in all of our lives.

And the way forward in that case is to get up and back at it, made different, yes, but better and one more bit stronger because of it.

I extend my arms, metaphorically, to you to help hold your hand, and to help you stand.

❤️