I am grateful for you and everyone else willing to write their truth as they currently experience it. Your writing has often blessed me and I wanted to let you know.

Rose

One way to enjoy the ride - celebrate surprise!
http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2007/05/one-way-to-enjoy-ride-celebrate.html

I am going to be writing about some self help / psychology / business ideas in depth and the convergence of those areas over the next few weeks

I’m glad you’re not a troll. Thanks for getting back with a thoughtful comment. I do appreciate them. Funny, in a way, I do agree somewhat and I’m glad you’ve started a site. Feel free to leave a link in the comments when it is ready.

Glittering platitudes. Yep they are everywhere and frequently contradict each other.

The self-help list post is what seems to bother you and they bother me too, sometimes. I had great success with this blog in the first 5 months using frequent list posts. I tried going without them for the next six months and my traffic bombed. I’ve brought them back and guess what… my traffic is back.

People are busy and they like quick hitting hints that will help them with their lives and that is why the list posts are so popular. They may be somewhat shallow on substance, but if some people start journaling more because of this post, I believe it has done the world some good. If it helps them spot opportunities they’ve overlooked, even better. I journal everyday and it helps me spot opportunities I would have never seen if I hadn’t been writing. I’ve made writing a daily habit and it has changed my life.

I love self-help stuff, some of it is fantastic and some of it is useless. But let me tell you one little story…

An old alcoholic once told me, “I’ve been going to AA meetings for 30 years and I haven’t heard anything new in 29. But it keeps me sober and growing and reminds me to take care of myself. It doesn’t need to be fresh and new all the time. Think about what works and make it a habit”

Everything useful doesn’t have to be fresh!

Self-help is a lot the same way. If you get people thinking about business and opportunity they are more likely to spot it and develop positive habits around their daily routine.

Anyway,
Thanks for coming back and I apologize for calling you a troll.

And Dave, maybe you don’t need this self-help stuff but a lot of us do. We’ve been educated to think very destructive limiting things about ourselves and our world and this blog is my antidote. It works for me.

The problem is that complex things like creativity are the result of the interaction of many different factors. That doesn’t mean there couldn’t be some fundamental tips based on solid principles of human creativity, but finding them requires doing research across people & situations. Otherwise the placebo effect I mentioned will cause anything that you throw against the wall to stick. If you say getting a good night’s sleep aids creativity, or eating a big meal, or skipping a meal, there’s gonna be lots of people that try each and say it worked for them. But it’s not real knowledge about what fosters creativity; it’s just noise. Of which we’re seeing too much on the Internet these days, I contend. (And I haven’t even touched on the first problem, defining creativity.)

But that’s my opinion, and as you correctly point out, I can put it out there on my own site if I want. You’ve inspired me to do just that. I posted my comment on yours because if you e-publish something and ask for comments, the assumption is that you’re open to hear the range of opinions you’re likely to get. But you were under no obligation to do so; this is your blog and you can post & screen out whatever you want. You’re to be commended for displaying it — even if you did frame it as the ramblings of a troll in order to dismiss it :-)

Then I got a bit sidetracked with your response to the troll guy, but also enjoyed that immensely.

I will be back!