For many LIFE has become life, which they choose to live out on a small screen instead of on nature’s infinite stage.

But for some, that small, smooth screen is becoming an onramp to the infinite stage.

Smartphones and tablets, with their flat glass touch screens and nary a texture anywhere, may not seem like the best technological innovation for people who cannot see. But advocates for the blind say the devices could be the biggest assistive aid to come along since Braille was invented in the 1820s.

Not surprisingly, the iPhone is a leader in assistive apps.

One such is VoiceOver, which reads aloud the name of each app as you run your finger over it, just as a visual label shows when you rollover a menu item.

Many developers either don’t think or can’t be bothered to take advantage of the technology by labeling the buttons on their app, which leaves sight-challenged users literally in the dark.

What those developers haven’t figured out is that this is a substantial market—ten million in the US alone and a globally aging population that guarantees it will grow.

Moreover, it’s a highly networked market where anything new and useful is speedily shared.

Even if you are strictly in it for the money enabling your app to take advantage of the assistive technologies built into iOS and Android is smart, since doing so can differentiate you from the pack and help you access valuable media attention.

Writing an app seems to be a right of passage these days even among non-techies for whom it is a hobby and not a job.

So why not write it for a built-in, accessible market and do a bit of good along with the added income?

Flickr image credit: Bonnie Brown

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

What kind of entrepreneur/person are you?

The kind who posts an “I hate” rant, then edits it and claims it as “humorous satire” when publically taken to task?

The kind who equates a problem like patent trolls to a truly heinous crime like child molesting. 

Or the kind who makes your money from an anti-societal app, with essentially (IMO) no redeeming characteristics?

Your legacy probably isn’t of primary concern when most of your life is still to come, but knowing that anything you say or do will exist long after your body has turned to dust should make you think.

Does it?

Image credit: HikingArtist

The world is an amazing place.

It’s full of comedy and tragedy; sound and fury; happy and sad; friends and enemies; family and lovers; beauty and ugliness; pain and pleasure; joy and sorrow.

There was a time that LIFE was LIVED and wisdom gained through direct interaction with all of these and more—much, much more.

These days direct interaction has been replaced by a screen.

That’s not LIVING; I don’t know what it is, but it’s not LIFE.

YouTube credit: charstarleneTV

I’m writing this long before election results are in, but it doesn’t matter. I can guarantee, without a doubt, that some of you are very happy campers and the rest of you are POed, angry, upset, depressed or scared.

No matter which, I suggest that you focus instead on your personal ikigai—your reason for being. Or, as is said on Okinawa, “a reason to get up in the morning”, that is, a reason to enjoy life.

Few Americans are willing to invest the time to get to know themselves well enough to identify their real ikigai, so they substitute all kinds of prefab things to give meaning to their lives.

Politics. Religion. Work. Followers. “Friends.” Klout score.

All of which are prone to failure as a reason to get out of bed, because they are external as opposed to internal.

In other words, they were created by others.

To possess a strong, stable ikigai you must come to it from deep self-knowledge.

Even if it includes one or more of the above elements you need to know why it/they are included.

If you do invest the time and effort to truly identify your own personal ikigai you really will live a happier, more satisfying and satisfactory life.

It’s guaranteed.

Flickr image credit: The Shopping Sherpa

Last week I shared quotes about living life; today I thought we’d check out commentary starting with what life is.

Sren Aaby Kierkegaard wrapped it up neatly when he said, “Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.”

Alan Bennett’s opinion is more depressing, “Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.”
Andrew Brown suggests that for many people these days ‘elsewhere’ refers to cyberspace, “The Internet is so big, so powerful and so pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.”

Pearl Buck has, to my mind, a more upbeat and accurate belief, “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”
For the many people who buy into Bennett’s attitude, while laying the blame elsewhere, I recommend they consider the words of Louis L’Amour, “There comes a time when it lies within a man’s grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, the times, lack of good fortune, or quirks of fate.”

Shaping your life usually means change. Change is a choice; a choice that every person makes many times during their life. William James offers three things to do to make it happen. He says, “To change your life;
-Start immediately
-Do it flamboyantly
-No exceptions”

Good advice, especially when we remember Winston Churchill’s wise words, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
But how do we know if we’re doing it correctly? We don’t; we can only do our best. As Goethe tells us, “Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.”

If you do look backwards know that you will find many things that in hindsight would be better done differently or not at all, but rather than wasting time on regrets consider Tallulah Bankhead’s attitude, “If I had my life to live over again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.”
I’ll leave you to day with this thought and a ling to my favorite Rule.

Diane Ackerman said, “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.”

I vehemently agree and expounded on that in the very first Rule I posted way back in 2006.

Flickr image credit: Joe Wolf

The most overused and abused words in almost any language are ‘lead’ and its close cousins ‘leader’ and ‘leadership’.

People are constantly exhorted to “step up and be leaders” and to “cultivate leadership skills” and therein lies my difficulty.

I googled a number of places and here is a partial list of leadership traits; I’m sure you can add many more.

Do you see the same problem I see?

Ignoring how they are interpreted, these are the traits that allow people to be decent human beings, no matter what they do in life.

Of course, the interpretation is colored by ideology and MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™), sometimes so highly colored that a person on the ‘other side’ won’t recognize them—politics and religion are two areas where this is most obvious—but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

If you prefer to see developing these and other ‘leadership traits’ as laying the basis for your emerging as a leader that’s fine, as long as the development isn’t contingent on your advancement to a certain position.

Ever wonder if there is one trait beyond all others that leaders of all kinds have and is obvious in every situation?

Join me Thursday for the answer.

Image credit: lepiaf.geo on flickr

Much will be done today to commemorate the lives lost on September 11, 2001. The story I’m going to share has a different focus than most and one I believe is worth your time.

Among those who died that day was the husband of a woman I knew casually and because our acquaintance was casual I was surprised when she called nearly six months later.

I’ll call her “Kerry” and we talked for hours, but the kernel I want to share is this.

She needed support to move; not just move on, it was too early for that, but to physically move.

Kerry said the reaction to “Craig’s” death changed when people found out he died in the attack. It changed from sympathy or empathy to an almost macabre interest in how she felt because he died “that way.”

Many seemed to feel that her politics should change (she is ‘liberal moderate’, her words) and that the event should be the main focus not only in her life, but also for her two young daughters and she didn’t want that.

Kerry said she called me because she remembered my saying that I found it sad that John Kennedy Jr.’s life seemed to be defined by his father’s death; that he never was able to become anyone other than the little boy who saluted at the funeral.

Kerry said that she didn’t want her kids to be forever known as “Kristy/Jenny-her-father-was-killed-in-the-September-11-attacks”

The problem was that many of her family and friends were horrified at how she felt. They acted as if losing Craig September 11 made his death a national symbol, not a personal tragedy.

We talked many times over the next few months and the upshot was that Kerry did move far away where no one knew them. When Craig’s death came up in conversation Kerry just said that her husband had died; she said when her daughters were mature enough she would tell them what happened, but not until they had the opportunity for a normal life—not one filled with other people’s baggage.

I think for Kerry I was “the stranger on the plane,” the uninvolved person to whom you can say anything because you will never see or hear from them again and I was honored to play that part.

The death of a parent is always tragic. I know; I was five when the driver of the car in which my father was traveling fell asleep at the wheel and drove off a mountain road.

The point I want to make today is that we don’t forget, but we do move on and as we move we grow and change.

No matter how horrendous the event we all have the ability to choose what defines us and what memories rule our lives.

Never allow others to force you into a role that fits their view of what should define you.

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Here’s all you need to apply it.

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“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.“ –Charles Richards (And it’s your choice…)

“It’s not the plan that is important, it’s the planning”. –Graeme Edwards (Unlike crosswords, plans should always be done in pencil.)

“Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans”. –John Lennon (Which is why you should use a pencil.)

“You see things and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were and say, ‘Why not?'” –George Bernard Shaw (One of the basics of my own plan.)

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Be sure to visit my other WW: bad business image

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