My writing has tapered off. For those who enjoy these posts, I apologize.

Life comes and goes with every day and our focus changes based on our present needs. Recently, I’ve been focusing on letting shit go. There’s so much to wrap ourselves up with from the holidays, muling over future job opportunities versus present work connection, and doing what we can to set our kids up for success intellectually, physically, and emotionally. My wife and I typically take time off with our kids while they are out of school whenever we can. It’s a great time to reset. It also affords us an opportunity to do things we normally don’t have time for or take care of pressing needs like replacing a heater or windows. It is amazing how time speeds up when you are enjoying living life and adapting as necessary. Work can seem to get in the way of this, but ultimately it is one of the many things we simply have to adapt to.

Adjusting our expectations is the hardest of activities. It involves admitting what we have control over which is not much. We think we have control but the truth is we don’t. We all make it up as we go along in life. Our illusion of control simply allows us to maintain connection with the present moment and not spin off into mental and emotional disillusionment. Don’t get me wrong, having a sense of control is a very useful illusion. Realizing this allows us more flexibility to better adapt to our ever-changing environment and interactions.

We think we control our data with regard to the internet, but the fact is the technology industry is unregulated and has been selling our personal information for years. Logging into Google maps and having a gmail account enables them to link our mail, contacts, where we are, and our search history. Amazon collects our buying information, movie consumption, and now with Alexa peering into our home activities. Facebook and YouTube are manipulating our information feeds like the Truman Show (1998 movie). Without knowing we have slowly been transformed from consumers into the consumed. Our meta data is the new “land” being conquered.

Much of this new land war is out of our control. What we do have control over is the information diet we consume. We have the freedom to choose what information to ingest. Like our physical diet, it takes some learning to enable ourselves to cook for ourselves and control our diets balancing our physical needs along with any pleasure we take from the experience of eating. Likewise, we need to educate ourselves about how companies alter information in ways to provoke emotional responses and clicks through to more targeted media and behavioral cages. Fear is one of the biggest motivators. When we hear we don’t have enough or need to look this way or that, the underlying motivator is our bias against loss coupled with fear. Companies have us when we start feeling the need to buy in order to fill the vacuousness inside or the sense of not having enough. It’s already happening to my eight year old son who is unconscious of the manipulations of the media he consumes or what is pushed upon him by his friends who are also in the informational prison before they are rational beings.

We are adapting to a new world as we consume information at all ages. To survive and thrive, we will need to adjust our expectations by asking new questions and connecting with others who share the same perspective. How can we become stewards of the future instead of being consumed and eroding what freedoms we have? What can we pay attention to in our current environment that will have significant long term effects on our success and failures? How can we manage our biz in alignment with others as well as the corporations wielding unrealized power over our lives?

We will need to connect with one another and have conversations about what is important to us in order to address aspects of these questions. We will need to stand up for what’s important for our biz in this life in order to create the sparks of change heralding a future we can all enjoy. My particular spark is the idea that we all have to manage our individual biz while integrating with the individuals, groups, corporations, and societies we are a part of. Expanding our awareness of the consequences of our actions helps us to pay more attention to the critical aspects of our daily lives. With this in mind, what reset do you need? What shit can you let go of to free yourself to do what’s important to your biz? How can you adapt to increase your capacity for independent action instead of losing freedom while being consumed by the meta data brokers warmly nestled into our pant pockets?

Information is critical to our daily lives and creating a better future. Use it wisely instead of allowing it to use you.

If you’d like to open a dialog on this or any topic on this blog, feel free to email jacob@bizofyou.com

I apologize for any typos, punctuation or grammar errors.
Feel free to comment and let me know of my errors so I may correct them and better my biz