All posts by Aaron Simmons

I’m figuring out how to be the best possible version of me, a journey that takes me down many roads — like Leonardo DaVicinci, but not nearly as awesome.
card, game, game reviews, perception

SET: More Fun Than Reading The Directions

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Reading The Directions Only Tells Part Of The Story

This has to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of, I thought to myself. Why did I even buy this? And I hadn’t even finished reading the directions yet! Fortunately, reading the directions and playing the game are entirely different matters.

Reading the instructions for SET is a strange experience — the premise of the game is so simple that it doesn’t even sound challenging: Each card has a number of shapes on it with different colors and patterns. Your job is to find a group of three cards that are all similar or different in each characteristic.

That’s it.

Well I learned shapes, colors and matching in pre-school, so I was afraid I must have accidentally bought a game to pass the time rather than stretch the mind.

One Twist That Makes All The Difference

But I was wrong! The tiny little element of the game that I overlooked while reading the directions was this: everybody else at the table is playing at the same time. And let me tell you, that simple twist changes everything. Not only do you have to match groups of cards based on four different characteristics, but you have to find it before somebody else does!

Perfection In Simplicity

The genius of SET is its simplicity. It’s very easy to teach other people how to play, and the actual games take very little time. Depending on the group you’re playing with, you can complete the deck in 15-30 minutes — faster, if you are playing with some pros.

It can even be played with younger children in the family as long as they understand the concept (the instructions even have a learning format that can be used with new or young players). SET is an excellent family game and I heartily recommend it.

communication, public speaking, speech, toastmaster

Toastmasters — Doorway to Success

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Toastmasters, you think, that’s public speaking, right? Well, yes. But that’s like saying a computer is an electronic filing cabinet.

Building Skills For All Forms Of Communication

Toastmasters focuses on helping its members improve their communication skills overall. Learning to be a better public speaker is a part of that, but you become a better communicator along the way — whether speaking to a stadium full of people, to your co-workers or to your children.

Real World Practice Without The Real World Dangers

If you are like most people, you want to be a better person tomorrow than you were today. Unfortunately, you can get some wicked bumps and bruises when you try out a new skill in the “real world”. Toastmasters provides an encouraging environment where your fellow club members help you learn from your mistakes in a positive and encouraging way. That gives you the courage to persevere and before you know it, you’ve mastered the skill — without suffering the negative effects of the real world’s learning curve.

Learn Skills With Immediate, Practical Benefits Beyond Public Speaking

You learn how to develop effective speeches by working through a series of workbooks and projects. Advanced members, however, continue on to learn things far beyond the realm of public speaking. Public speaking may have limits in scope, but “communication” covers nearly every aspect of living. Want to learn negotiation skills? Toastmasters teaches that. Want to prevent discussions with your spouse from escalating into the next big argument? Toastmasters can help you build those skills. Want to share memorable and engaging stories that will be passed on from your children to your grandchildren? Toastmasters shows you how.

Big Changes Through Small Successes

Most importantly, by building on many small successes, you develop greater self confidence. Toastmasters encourages you to reach out of your “comfort zone”, and by doing so you discover that there really is nothing you can’t do. Your new self confidence opens your eyes to the vast world of opportunity that awaits you. And your improved communications skills give you tools you need to make it happen.

game reviews, mmorpg, pirate game, puzzle games, rpg

A Pirate’s Life for Me

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Hoist the sails and mind the cannons, that merchant brig looks ripe for a pillage!

Puzzle Pirates is a remarkable creation — a perfect mix of puzzle games, role playing and socializing, combined to create the singlemost satisfying and re-playable gaming experience on the web.

The concept is simple: you’re a pirate, trying to make yer mark in the ocean — and you play puzzle games to do so. Many of the puzzles may remind you of your favorites on Yahoo, PopCap or MSN games, but Puzzle Pirates adds a new multiplayer twist. No pirate is an island, and your crew mates are counting on you to do your best!

Your Puzzling Skills Actually Matter

That’s right — on Puzzle Pirates, your puzzling skills directly impact the success of your crew. To get from one port to the next, you and your mates will play the sailing puzzle. The better you do, the faster the ship sails. Wanna pillage that other ship? You’ll have to play the battle navigation game and use the cannon puzzle to boost your firepower. And if you get on the receiving end of a cannonade, better work on your carpentry and bilge-pumping puzzle skills!

Get Pirate Bling With Yer Pillaging Money

So, what does a pirate do with all those pieces of eight won from a successful raid? Why, buy some fancy clothing and furniture, of course! Or perhaps a ship of his (or her) own. The economy of Puzzle Pirates is intricate and well-built. Different commodities are produced by different islands and can be shipped back and forth. Those commodities can be bought by shops that create new goods out of them (using labor puzzles), and many of those goods can be combined to create even more goods. What’s more, inflation is slowed by allowing items to wear out over time. After all, nothing good lasts forever.

Engaging The Pirate Community

Are you a competitive pirate? Puzzle Pirates has a rating system that lets you track your pirate’s progess as you play the game. Over time, you will find that your skills in some puzzlesare far beyond those of your fellow pirates, while others may require more work. You can get trophies if you are incredible at puzzling or if you have proven invaluable in a naval battle.

But the community on Puzzle Pirates completes the puzzle. While a real pirate might be perfectly happy to send you to Davy Jones’s locker and take yer treasure, the players on Puzzle Pirates are extremely friendly and helpful. In fact, much of the support for new players comes from experienced players who volunteer their time to assist new pirates. And to make the experience complete, you will find that yer most enthusiastic players all have a tendency to use piratey words like “blimey” and “ahoy”.

If you enjoy puzzle games, you will surely enjoy being a pirate. Here’s wishing you a long and successful pirating career…PLAY “PUZZLE PIRATES” NOW

budgeting, financial freedom, goals, money, money management, self improvement, time management, values

Financial Freedom Series 5 — Money

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Imagine Building A Car From Scratch

To understand the function of money, imagine what life would be like if you had to make everything from scratch. Like, for instance, a car.

It’s not impossible for a person to build his (or her) own car, but it may take the majority of his life to do so. First, he would have to study how cars work. Then, he would have to travel the world to collect the raw materials (not to mention the time to construct the vehicles needed to transport the raw materials). He then would have to refine the materials into usable components. And lastly, he would have to assemble the components.

Spending Money Often Saves Time

As you can see, building a car on your own can save you tons of money — but it would instead cost you thousands upon thousands of hours, perhaps even an entire lifetime!

In my previous article, I demonstrated that time is supremely valuable because it cannot be reclaimed. Well, here’s the dirty little secret: that’s not entirely true. We can save, store and exchange time through a convenient tool called “money”.

Your Paycheck Is Just Time Converted Into Money

If you don’t believe it, think about your primary source of income. Many of us get our income from employment. But why do we get paid for our work? It is because our employers know that there are other things we would like to do with our time. In essence, we exchange time for paychecks.

As the car example shows, spending money is like saving time. When you buy a car, you are saving yourself the thousands of hours it would take to build it yourself.

Some Spending Is More Valuable Than Others

But before you start buying everything you want under the guise that it’s saving you time, here’s the catch: not all time saved through spending money is valuable. If you do not make valuable use of the time you have saved (that is, managing your actions to build toward the completion of goals that are aligned with your values), the money is wasted. It can be valuable to pay somebody to mow your lawn if you use that time to do something that is important to your goals and values. If you pay somebody to mow your lawn while you sit on the couch and watch TV, you would have been better off mowing the lawn yourself. At least then you would have gotten some exercise!

Time Really Is Money, So Use It Wisely

And so, the old saying is true: time IS money. Or rather, money is time. Since time is so precious, it places an important duty on our shoulders to ensure we use it wisely. Money wasted is time wasted. Use your money to help you directly or indirectly accomplish those goals that help you live your values, and you will have used your money wisely.

The Complete Financial Freedom Series

  1. Cause and Effect
  2. The Value of Values
  3. Goals
  4. The Value of Time
  5. Money
financial freedom, goals, money, self improvement, time management, values

Financial Freedom Series 4 — The Value of Time

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Time Is An “Equal Opportunity” Commodity

Time is so commonplace that its value is often overlooked. The extraordinary thing about time is that each day is equally given to everybody (with the exception of death, of course). No matter who you are, or what happened yesterday, we get as much time as everybody else to make today better.

Time Is Valuable Because It Can’t Be Earned Back

Time is valuable in a way that nothing else is. Most things are valuable because they are rare. But time is valuable because of its most important aspect — we can’t get it back! Not only can we not get it back, but we HAVE to use it whether we wish to or not! Everything that we do is paid for in seconds and in minutes. Even doing nothing is paid in seconds and minutes! For this reason alone, we must cherish time. It is as important to our lives as the air we breathe.

The Secret Is to Control How We Spend Our Time

We may have no control over WHETHER we use our time or not, but we can control HOW we use our time. When there are many things that must be done, how can we gauge what is a good use of our time and what is not? The answer is as simple as looking at our goals and values. Anything that moves us closer to accomplishing goals that help us to live out our values is a good use of our time. Technically, anything else is not.

The Complete Financial Freedom Series

  1. Cause and Effect
  2. The Value of Values
  3. Goals
  4. The Value of Time
  5. Money
financial freedom, goals, money, self improvement, values

Financial Freedom Series 3 — Goals

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Goals: The Next Step

Hopefully you have experienced for yourself what incredible influence you have over your destiny through the simple tools of purposeful action and value-driven living. Next, by developing meaningful goals, you will harness that power and direct it toward accomplishments you may not have previously believed yourself to be capable of!

Goals Are Like Building A House

To understand goals, look at the process of building a new home. Before any building takes place, a blueprint is created. Why? Because a team of builders can’t properly build anything if they don’t know what the outcome is supposed to be. Sadly, we are much more cavalier with the construction of our own lives — few of us have a blueprint for our own future.

There is a definite order to the way homes are built. Doors can’t be installed until walls are built. Walls can’t be built until the foundation is poured. And the foundation can’t be poured until the ground is leveled. Goal building is similar. In most cases, you cannot get from where you are to where you want to be in one simple step.

Build Your Goals, Beginning With The Future

If your goal is to donate one million dollars to charity, and you’ve never owned more than one thousand dollars’ worth of anything, then you will need to work through some intermediate steps along the way. To discover those steps, you need to backtrack from the ultimate attainment of your ideal life, using the principle of cause and effect. What would you have to do to raise that much money? Would you earn it through business or fundraising? If through fundraising, how would you meet eligible donors? Keep backtracking until you reach where you are now. You then have a series of small steps to take to get from where you are to where you want to be.

Accomplishing Big Things With Small Steps

While it may be daunting to think about going straight from where you are now to where you want to be, it looks much more believable when many small steps are put together. For instance, the first step might be to simply save $1 every week. The next step might be to save $2 every week. Then, to earn $2 more every week (saving $4 per week). While saving a million dollars can seem downright impossible, saving two dollars can seem ridiculously easy. By completing all of the small steps toward your goal, you eventually will have followed all of the steps toward your goal! Marathon runners don’t leap from the start line to the finish line, they take one step at a time.

The Complete Financial Freedom Series

  1. Cause and Effect
  2. The Value of Values
  3. Goals
  4. The Value of Time
  5. Money
financial freedom, money, personal fulfillment, self improvement, values

Financial Freedom Series 2 — The Value of Values

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The Happiness Paradox

Why is it that some rich people are happy, while others are miserable? Why is it that some poor people are happy, while others are miserable? Obviously, the answer is not in their billfolds. The answer is in how well they are living their “values”.

The list of things that you can do to make a positive difference in your life and in the world is virtually endless. So, how do you decide which things you should do? This is where values come in handy.

Values Are Your Guide

Values are those things that matter deeply to you in a way that matters only to you. Your deepest, truest values are the ones that have been with you all of your life — they are “hard-wired” into your being. That makes them your ideal, personalized guide through life. Your values help you survey the many opportunities that are available to you and to choose the ones that will bring the most fulfillment into your life.

Discovering Your Values

If you want to know what your values are, imagine you’ve won so much money that you’ll never be able to spend it all. What would you do with that kind of money? Your answers will point you toward your values. Some answers require more interpretation than others, though. Wanting to buy a fancy new sports car, for instance, doesn’t lead to any obvious values. But asking yourself WHY you want the fancy new sports car does. In discovering your values, it helps to play that favorite game among toddlers — keep asking “why” until you get to the root of your values.

Values As An Objective Standard

Knowing your values gives you an objective standard for judging your actions. When you act in a way that goes against your values, you feel terrible. When you act in a way that is consistent with your values, you feel great. With an objective measure in place, you free yourself from any need to “keep up with the Joneses” because you recognize that you don’t necessarily want what the Joneses have anyway. An understanding of values, therefore, frees you once and for all to truly be you.

If you are not completely satisfied with your life, look to your values. You will find that your actions in the past have not been aligned with your values. Thankfully, the cure is simple — begin now to act out your values.

The Complete Financial Freedom Series

  1. Cause and Effect
  2. The Value of Values
  3. Goals
  4. The Value of Time
  5. Money
cause and effect, financial freedom, habit, money, responsibility, self improvement

Cause and Effect: The Power Of Habits, For Good Or Ill

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Cause And Effect In Daily Experience

Imagine that a mother suddenly hears a loud crash down the hall. She dashes into the room and finds a shattered lamp and a surprised child. Now, what do you think her conclusion is? Does she shrug her shoulders, resigned to the fact that lamps randomly leap off of tables? No! She instantly searches for what CAUSED the lamp to fall off the table.

The Chain Of Effects

The routine of cause and effect is so common that its full value is often overlooked. You see, the remarkable thing about causes and effects is that they are inextricably connected. Nothing happens that wasn’t caused. And everything that happens causes something else to happen (which then causes another thing to happen, and so on). In essence, every action sets off a chain of effects long into the future! There is also a high level of predictability to cause and effect — certain actions (causes) are known to lead to specific effects. If you heat water to 100 degrees Celsius, it HAS TO boil. If it doesn’t, then it’s not actually water.

Powerful, And Dangerous!

And so, this is the most important lesson of the Financial Freedom series: through the laws of cause and effect, you possess a tool that is at once extraordinarily powerful and unimaginably dangerous.

Powerful? Yes! By taking deliberate actions that lead to expected effects, you shift from merely reacting to random events to actively influencing your future. In short, you gain remarkable control over your future.

Dangerous? Yes! If everything you do causes endless chains of effects that project into the future, then how important is it for you to be mindful of your actions today? Ignoring the influence that your actions have over cause and effect is like walking into the street with a loaded gun and firing it randomly in all directions!

Harnessing The Chain of Effects

Harnessing cause and effect means to finally, unequivocally accept responsibility for your life. Implicitly, everything you have done so far has brought you where you are today. If you are dissatisfied, the cure is simple. First, examine what actions have led you to where you are and quit them immediately. Then, determine what actions will lead you to where you want to be, and commit to them. You are one action away from building either a better future for yourself or a worse one. Which will you choose?

The Complete Financial Freedom Series

  1. Cause and Effect
  2. The Value of Values
  3. Goals
  4. The Value of Time
  5. Money
accomplishment, introspection, self improvement, self worth, wisdom

Define Yourself, Liberate Yourself

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Few people realize just how much power is contained in the two simple words, “Know Thyself”.

Life is complicated. There are many things to do, many people to meet, many things to fear and many things to be happy about. It can be overwhelming. And all people eventually reach a point where they ask the Big Question: “WHO AM I?”

The Most Important Question

So, take a moment to answer the question: Who are you?

How did you answer? You may have been tempted to define yourself by your career (salesman, electrician, manager, etc.). You might have defined yourself by your physical characteristics (tall, brown eyes, long hair, etc.). Perhaps you defined yourself by your personality (lover, giver, thinker, etc.). But in the end, it is a trick question.

The Ultimate Liberation

You see, any attempt you make to define who you are inherently limits you. In the end, the only proper response that fully captures who you are is “I am.” This is the only answer that strips away all of the self-imposed limitations that all other responses create.

This realization is peculiarly liberating. By recognizing that we are not defined by our personality, our actions or our ideas, we finally have permission to simply be. Our self-worth is no longer tied to our actions or our appearance — we derive our value simply by living. Things that are rare are the most valuable of all. And you are the only person like you that will ever live! That rarity certainly has value.