If you help people in this forum, what would help YOU?

[Cat Dancer]

Hi, this question is directed to those of you who answer questions and help people in this forum!

I'm a programmer looking for a project to do, so I want to ask you: what might help you help others?

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, I assume that while you enjoy being generous and helpful you also have limited time. So if there was anything that could help you help others faster, easier, or better, that would raise the total amount of help people are getting

(The other day I approached this question from another direction, asking what issues people most wanted help with. I got a reply from SimonaRich, who said, "I sometimes help people with the issues they have with their partners or family problems..." I thought, AHA, maybe instead of trying to help people directly, perhaps there's something I could do to help the helpers!)

Please feel free to brainstorm... even if you don't know if an idea is practical, mention it anyway

[magi13]

^^ update on the methods/techniques for helping people. The people themselves already have the desire to make the change or improve themselves, what we need are the updated methods on how to make that change.

Ex. In memory - old way rote/ mnemonics - an update, but both ways are effective, the difference is time to learn them and master the material.

P.s. It should be an both objective and subjective methods, since most of the people here value different methods which either lean that or the other way.

EX. Those that value, objective methods/results. Others that value subjective methods/results.

[Brutha]

There a big question about communities: How do you measure success and quality of a post?
How do I know whether the post I wrote today was better than the one I wrote yesterday?

Why does this forum have a so high ratio better users that are logged in vs people that aren't?

A programming topic that I think myself about is the find out what characteristics make people integrate themselves into a community.
Does a forum in which people have pictures is more effective then one that doesn't?
The programming solution would be to spider 1000 forums and run statistics tests on those questions. Afterwards you could write an ebook to summarize the results.
That might be a book that some internet marketers want to read.

[Ralph]

Since a while now I have a dream of an interactive software that guides people step-by-step through various techniques. Something like Windows XP help:

Do xyz. Now:

a) helped a lot
b) didn't help because abc
c) didn't help because deg

Something like this would add more simplicity and precision to teaching people techniques like belief change patterns or curing phobias.

Just an idea that's on my mind. I'm far from making it happen

Ralph

[Cat Dancer]

Originally Posted by Ralph

Do xyz. Now:

a) helped a lot
b) didn't help because abc
c) didn't help because deg

I could write software to present such a guide easily enough. Who wants to write a guide for a particular topic? (The "xyz", "abc", "deg" parts ^_^) A guide-writer doesn't need to know anything about programming, they'd just need to know something about the subject matter so that they can ask the right questions and give the right suggestions.

[Brutha]

I could write software to present such a guide easily enough.

I think that you even don't need to know anything about programming to program such a guide as you could just have a website and create hyperlinks.

Maybe you find a clever idea to crowd source such an guide?

[Cat Dancer]

Originally Posted by Brutha

I think that you even don't need to know anything about programming to program such a guide as you could just have a website and create hyperlinks.

Sure, and you can write a blog using just HTML, yet using blog publishing software is more convenient. Besides, with software we can start adding other useful features, such as it could remember the responses so that the user can go on a forum or consult their friends to get additional help without having to repeat everything. Or on question 4 perhaps the guide author will need to have the system do something different depending on what the answer to question 1 was...

Maybe you find a clever idea to crowd source such an guide?

Um, what? Sorry, I'm not following you. Could you say more?

[Brutha]

Um, what? Sorry, I'm not following you. Could you say more?

People who take the guide might have already tried some solutions.

Your program might ask:
"What problem do you have?" let the user make a choice between multiple problems.
"What did you try already to solve your problem?" and store the answer in a database to give them to other people later.
People could rate whether something helps them on a five point or seven point scale.

Designing such a system isn't easy and needs some smarts but if you succeed you don't have the problem of writing content anymore and you can extend the guide to other problems without any effort on your part.

That the idea of the web2.0 you don't write your content yourself but find a way to let your users build your content.

[Cat Dancer]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Designing such a system isn't easy and needs some smarts but if you succeed you don't have the problem of writing content anymore and you can extend the guide to other problems without any effort on your part.

That the idea of the web2.0 you don't write your content yourself but find a way to let your users build your content.

Actually designing such a system isn't hard: I start with a very simple initial version, and iterative rapidly based on feedback. As Paul Graham says in Six Principles for Making New Things :

Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

That's why I'm asking for help: volunteers who believe in the vision so strongly that they're willing to come up with some guides on paper before the "web2.0" version is ready.

Why? Because the "web2.0" version needs to be built to help guide-writers write guides in the way that they need to write guides. I could sit down and program a "web2.0" version today, and it would be over-engineered and implement solutions that no one wanted, because I don't know what guide-writers need. If instead I start with guides that people want to write, then I'll be meeting the needs of guide-writers and their users.

[Ralph]

Dude, if you actually created an interface for us to create our own scripts of guides ... it's more challenging but it would ROCK. I'm not sure how much harder it'd be though. What do you think?

[Cat Dancer]

Originally Posted by Ralph

Dude, if you actually created an interface for us to create our own scripts of guides ... it's more challenging but it would ROCK. I'm not sure how much harder it'd be though. What do you think?

Yes, I am going to do that.

Now, the way to get there, to build an interface that actually does what you and the other guide writers need, is to start off doing it on paper.

Pretend that I am the guide creation interface. Send your guide to me as if I were the program. I will implement your guide as the interface would do for you once it is built. Then, when I build the real interface so that you can do it yourself, I'll know what to do because I'll have already done it manually!

[Ralph]

Makes sense, I'm on it

[Cat Dancer]

This morning I applied to Y Combinator's program which helps get early stage startups from the idea stage to a working system. (This month is the application deadline so I thought I'd get my application in while I could).

The program is located in California and runs over the summer, so if I'm accepted I'll be moving to California to work on the Guide system.

Getting into the program is probably a long shot since they prefer applicants with multiple founders, and Y Combinator is the top seed startup program in the world and so they have a lot of applicants.

If I'm not accepted I'll be doing the Guide anyway; getting into the program would simply be another resource for getting the Guide launched sooner.

[Ralph]

This is going to be totally awesome. People have enough articles and lectures. They want to be involved in learning, really explore this stuff. The interactive program provides them the opportunity. And an easy to use creating interface will convert many bloggers from writing articles to designing self-help interactive guides. If you can make it happen, you will help hundreds of authors to bypass a technological barrier.

This idea has the lifetime career potential. You could distribute the guide viewer for free and once the program gets good, sell guide creator licenses to authors. Make the licence such that they could themselves sell the guides they created with and for your program. Win-Win-Win! winwinwinwinwin

This sample is about my approach to LoA, based on this article. It's a bit messy and poorly designed, but I believe it's just for the preview anyways, to give you something to work on. The work aimed directly at helping people would be much better adjusted. This one is just to compare our view of how things will look like.


First there'd be some sort of introduction:

The overwhelming majority of us have been raised to believe that in order to achieve something, one needs to identify and directly follow a procedure that will make it happen. There’s an action and reaction. There are specific actions leading to a desired outcome, and that’s all there is about making something happen in life. Perhaps this belief is the very reason why most of us don’t have what we really want? And yet, there are those rare individuals for whom, strangely, everything seems to work out in favor. Could it be that just by taking more effective actions they have reached their abundance? I believe there’s more to it than that. I believe that the law of vibration manifestation is at work, both when you manifest abundance or lack.


The step-by-step process will be:

1. Notice vibration manifestation at work
2. Believe it
3. Become sensitive to vibrational frequencies
4. Align yourself with your desire

1. Notice vibration manifestation at work

Consider this story and answer the questions:

Imagine yourself having a friendly conversation with your friend at the lunch break. You exchange some polite comments and the topic arrives at weight loss. He tells you in a friendly manner that you shouldn’t eat so much meat and donuts because you’re slowly gaining on weight. You get defensive about your posture and answer aggressively. He gets even more defensive about his sincere desire to help being rejected. You tell each other to beat it and walk away. Once you’re done with your lunch, you go back to your office. You’re working with a new client. He’s a really nice guy, friendly and very cooperative. You however toss in sarcastic jokes at his requests for assistance. Everything is within your usual range of competence, and yet you hold a ‘Oh yea, and what else?’, minimalistic attitude. At the end of the day your boss asks you to join him for a word or two in his office. He asks you if you need any assistance or if you’re having a bad day, because your performance today was really lousy. Your defensiveness comes alive once again, as you communicate in a ‘I know how to do my job’ fashion. Your arrogance earns you a reprimand before you get out of the office. The next day you wake up really groggy.


From the scale 1 to 10 (1 being the worst luck possible and whole world conspiring against him and 10 being the most lucky and supported guy on the planet) how would you rate the external circumstances that the main character is facing?

From the scale 1 to 10 (1 being suicidal and 10 being spiritually enlightened) how would you rate the level of consciousness of the main character?

From the scale 1 to 10 (1 being a life-ruining disaster and 10 a crucial breakthrough) how would you rate the productiveness and amount of success in this day


And now consider another story:

You wake up really groggy. You decide it’s a great occasion to experiment a little with the exercises you picked up at yoga classes and see if they improve your wakefulness. First few rounds are tough, but you obviously notice them working. After a few minutes you are feeling refreshed and ready to set off to work. And you learned a new set of exercises! They are fun until your wife comes in and catches you in a total-weirdo, bent over position. She goes like ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing on that floor?’. You quietly wish she hadn’t said that, but you’re at least willing to make fun of the situation. You say ‘I’m looking for my penis. It’s hard to keep my balance without it, you know? Haven’t you seen it lately?’. She said she hadn’t and you both shared a laughter. It’s the kind of humor that kept your marriage together for a very long time, despite all the storms. You set off to work, still smiling.

From the scale 1 to 10 (1 being the worst luck possible and whole world conspiring against him and 10 being the most lucky and supported guy on the planet) how would you rate the external circumstances that the main character is facing?

From the scale 1 to 10 (1 being suicidal and 10 being spiritually enlightened) how would you rate the level of consciousness of the main character?

From the scale 1 to 10 (1 being a life-ruining disaster and 10 a crucial breakthrough) how would you rate the productiveness and amount of success in this day



[Now the answers should be presented so that he can clearly see that the level of consciousness is proportional to the success, while external circumstances don't really matter]



Now, what’s the moral? Stories without moral suck, and these two obviously don’t! Clearly no. 1 ends up negatively and no. 2 ends up positively. What determines whether you succeed and fail? Definitely not the circumstances. Vibrational frequency allows you to bend circumstances into your advantage, or disadvantage. You are bound to find yourself in both lousy and awesome situations in life. We all do. It’s what we do of them that makes a difference. We often look at successful people thinking that they’ve had more positive circumstances in their lives than ordinary people. In truth, the opposite is often the case. They had to twist the situations to their advantage really hard to reach their peaks.




[I could go on being convincing for a while longer, but let's keep it short for the purpose of the sample]


Paulo Coelho writes in his philosophical best-seller ‘Alchemist’:

When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

As soon as you raise your vibration enough to attract empowering circumstances, you are bound to experience some really weird stuff. I don’t think that it can be proven or explained logically. You’ll just have to experience it. And, believe me when I say: This is something totally worth experiencing.

The closest I can get to helping you decide to use the full potential of vibration manifestation is to encourage you to search through your past and present situation. Look for subtle intuitive nudges that helped you out in a moment of confusion or uncertainty. Find unexplainable synchronities that changed the whole course of your life. You are bound to find them in your life, provided that you search deep enough. Whether you believe it or not, this is how the world operates. Not believing only makes it slightly harder to notice it.

Make a list of at least three situations when you were positive that you'll get it done, and you experienced unexpected help from the outside, an intuitive insight or surprisingly favorable circumstances:

[put some text field here so that a nice list could be created and saved]

2. Believe it

Vibration manifestation model of reality can neither be proven or disproven. Although many have tried, nobody could even give a logical explanation or negate this mindset. It comes down to whether you want or don’t want to believe it and live it.

What’s the best way to see what is underwater? Take a dive! You can study the depths from above, but ultimately, nothing beats a good leap in. Of course you could go along with the metaphor and talk about sharks. However, adopting the vibration manifestation model can’t have any noticable negative consequences. In the very worst case you’ll turn out to be wrong. Not a big deal, considering that the history proves that we’ve most probably got it ALL wrong anyways.

Take a dive! If it turns out to be wrong and you don’t get the desired result, you’re no worse off. You probably wouldn’t achieve it with your current mindset anyways, so you’ll be back right to where you came from. Although in the best case you will start living your dream life today. You will make your heart’s desire happen. It sure sounds like a great trade-off to me! Everyday you try new things anyways. That’s how you learn anything. Testing or developing requires being wrong at some point. Is it really THAT bad? Or perhaps just a little? Even if you suspect vibration manifestation model to be wrong, there’s no real bad consequences, so go along and see where it takes you. The benefits can be enormous.

[Ralph]

[create your list of possible benefits.]

Rate in % what is the chance that the sceptics are mistaken and the vibration manifestation really works?

Can you really take any chances and risk all the positive benefits for the x% chance of simply being wrong about something for a while? Yes/No (I might also do it so that he gets redirected to more persuasion if he clicks 'no')[/B]


3. Become sensitive to vibrational frequencies


The first step for sculpting your reality is sharpening your psychic sensitivity to vibrational frequencies. Your brain is like a radio antenna that you can tune to perceive vibrations inside and all around you. You don’t learn anything new here. You have already had this ability since birth. It just takes some calibration before it can be used effectively. If you’re meditating frequently or you’re deeply in touch with your feelings, you have this sense fairly calibrated already. Even if you’re a complete newcomer though, it’s just a matter of time and it won’t take long.

It’s best to start from the extremes. Here are some portraits of highly-aware individuals: Jesus Christ, Chunyi Lin, Buddha, Bruno Gronning. Get a gut-level impression of how do they make you feel. To get a contrast, compare this feeling to: Marylin Manson, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Osama Bin Laden. Can you sense the difference? I bet you can! How do you feel about me, by the way?

[actually let them see the images. I've uploaded some here.


Once you will be able to clearly sense the vibrations of those portraits, move on to subtler differences. What has a higher vibration?

A fruit of a piece of meat?

Your mom or your dad?

List 2 friends and compare them to each other, which one has the highest vibration and which one the lowest?

From the scale 1 to 10 (1 being suicidal and 10 being spiritually enlightened) how would you rate your own level of consciousness ?

[Et cetera, huge amount of exercises could be created here]


4. Align yourself with your desire

What do you really want? What is the vibrational frequency of your desires? Imagine having and being your best in this very moment. What is your vibrational frequency when experiencing fulfillment of those dreams? Remember this frequency as a reference point. Strive to experience it as often as possible in your life. Aligning yourself internally with the frequency of your desire is inevitably followed by physical manifestation. Describe what you want the best you can and what's the vibrational frequency of having those things already done.

[A text field here. Perhaps even separate fields for relationships, career, money, health etc.


Increasing your vibrational frequency overall is another way to go. This way your overall quality of life will noticably improve. You will feel natural compulsion to leave behind that which holds you back and no longer serves you. Simultaneously you will fill your time with more productive and fulfilling activities effortlessly. More and more often high-level activities will appear to be natural, everyday things you do, instead of the work requiring peak motivation and energy.

[A text field here. Rank your level of consciousness from 1 to 10. List at least 3 doable ways to go 1 numer up that scale.



[Then I would also make an interactive list of exercises. Just that I have no time and have to go to school, so here they are in text way. They could be listed as resources to use for increasing vibrational frequency.]

Outside-in

Your vibration is affected by the vibration of everything you hold in your awareness in this very moment. This is why they say you become what you eat, who you spend your time with etc. It’s very hard to stay on a high level of consciousness when everything and everyone around you is disempowering and depressing. Use this to your advantage. Surround yourself with high vibrational frequencies. It can come through symbol of your desire, something you like, cheerful social circle, clean and neat desk, you name it.

This approach works particularly good when you’re aiming for overall increase of your vibrational frequency.The rearrangement of your environment is a long-term solution. It’s much more convenient than, for example, everyday meditation. Although you sure will have to throw away stuff you moderately liked.

Look all around you, sensing the vibrational frequencies. When you catch something particularly negative and you can survive without it, throw it out immediately! Even if it means getting rid of 75% of your house, it is worth it. The more negative clutter you get rid of, the stronger positive impact it will create. If you work on your computer, delete all the icons leading to distractions from work and low-level pleasure. You have no idea how refreshing it was for me to delete all my PC games. De-clutter your social environment as well. Make a list of all the people you interact with consistently, even on a monthly basis. Put each one of them into one of two categories: empowering or disempowering. Commit to absolutely stop spending time with people from the disempowering list, as soon as it is physically possible. Even if your parents are on that list (which is my case by the way), de-clutter them just the same. What good is it to stay loyal to someone that holds you back from living the quality of life that you truly deserve?

Once you’ve de-cluttered your space from negative vibrations, it’s time to clutter it back with positive ones. Place in sight anything that has the vibrational frequency close to your desired one. This most often includes living plants, portraits, photos, desktop, diplommas, awards, any kind of token symbolizing that, which uplifts you. Make the places where you spend most of your time optimally uplifting. You have no idea how much this really helps, to feel at home where you live. In addition to that, initiate and expand relationships with people that are operating on a high level of consciousness. Interactions with people are usually deeper, and therefore more impactful.

Inside-out

This approach includes all sorts of physical and mental activities. It is always a direct, one-time action. It is more impactful short-term than the outside-in approach, but requires consistancy if you want to get long-term results with it. It’s great for handling vibrational crisis like an illness, bad day, argument, death of a relative etc. There are loads of things that work here, and different things work best for different people. I’ll shotgun you some general techniques, but ultimately you will have to figure out by yourself what works best. The techniques here are all general.

Meet your high-vibration future self. Close your eyes and imagine talking to yourself 1, 5 or 10 years older than you are. He has already achieved what you desire. The circumstances of your meeting are irrelevant, so pick those that are easiest to visualize for you. Sense the vibrational frequency of that your future self as clearly as you can. Notice how his voice, posture, manner of speaking and physiology changed through the years.Talk to him to find out how does your life situation look like, when observed from a higher level of consciousness. Your problems and dilemmas are probably child’s play to him. Often he will point out that you already know the way, but don’t have the guts to follow it. When you feel ready, embrace each other and merge together, his vibrational frequency becoming yours.

Reframe your reality. If you’re surrounded by low vibrational frequency stimuli and you can’t get rid of them, reframe them. The impact they have on you is partially determined by the way you see them and what details do you focus on. Make a list of all what is, or could be positive about the item, person or situation that’s been bugging you. The more pros you write down, the better. Save the list in case you’ll want to come back to review it later and add more things.

Visualize being there. Imagine having already achieved all your goals at this very moment. Mind the trap: If you visualize abundance in the future, you vibrationally align yourself with present-moment scarcity. Always visualize abundance right here and now. If you think it’s impossible, it’s the most clear sign in the world that you aren’t vibrationally aligned with your desires yet.

Talk to somebody that empowers you and whom you love. The deeper the connection and emotional impact, the bigger benefit for your vibrational frequency. To magnify the positive effect, do together something that is uplifting by itself and brings you two even closer. Using another person is great because you increase their vibrational frequency along the way.

Humor, laughter and smiling is a great way to raise your vibrational frequency. Go to a comedy club, watch some funny movies, read some good jokes, have a funny chat with your friends. The simplest way is to just smile. Fake a big smile and soon enough it will become real. I really like the simplicity of this approach and gladly use it to get out of low vibrational frequencies.

Tune into the vibration of people on high level of awareness. For example: Jesus Christ, Chunyi Lin, Buddha, Bruno Gronning. Their high vibration is contagious. I have a picture of Jesus and Bruno in my room. I use this approach often because of its simplicity and because I like using psychic abilities like tuning into people’s frequencies.






Hope you'll make some sense out of it. If not, let me know ASAP! Can you see now the true potential of such tool? I do and hell, I'm excited!

Thanks a lot, and best luck!
Ralph

[Cat Dancer]

Ralph: I'll start working on it right away.

[Cat Dancer]

Ralph, what do you think of these sliders for the 1-10 questions?

http://static.catdancer.ws/guide/slider.html

[roxyruby]

If I was paid to give people my honest feedback and help I would do it more

If I was rewarded like with a holiday after I had helped a certain amount of people etc

Although Sometimes seeing people happy again is the reward in itself

[roxyruby]

People who take the guide might have already tried some solutions.

Your program might ask:
"What problem do you have?" let the user make a choice between multiple problems.
"What did you try already to solve your problem?" and store the answer in a database to give them to other people later.
People could rate whether something helps them on a five point or seven point scale.

Designing such a system isn't easy and needs some smarts but if you succeed you don't have the problem of writing content anymore and you can extend the guide to other problems without any effort on your part.

That sounds brilliant!!!! Like gather up all the helpful forum replies that have helped people and categorize them. Then when A person has a problem they can select from multiple choice what their problem is and it will go to the most related answers from people.

[Cat Dancer]

Originally Posted by roxyruby

That sounds brilliant!!!! Like gather up all the helpful forum replies that have helped people and categorize them. Then when A person has a problem they can select from multiple choice what their problem is and it will go to the most related answers from people.

Would you like to pick out one or two helpful forum replies and categorize them to get me started?

[Cat Dancer]

Originally Posted by roxyruby

If I was paid to give people my honest feedback and help I would do it more

Hmm, I have a couple of ideas that might help.

Many people have successful careers as coaches etc. being paid to give people good advice. One way to do that is to give away good free advice to build up a reputation, and then leverage that into a paid consultancy.

The easiest way right now to give advice is on the forums (easier than, for example, starting a blog and then getting people to come to your blog etc.) However, right now there's no easy way for you to show prospective customers the good advice you've given. You could point them to the link here in the forums that shows all the posts you've made, but that has the questions that you've asked yourself and the discussions that you've participated in all mixed in with the advice you've given.

What if the site had a link you could send people that would show on one page the contributions you had made, the solutions you had added?

If I wanted to hire a coach, what I'd want to know is that you give good advice. You could send me your link, and I could see the actual advice and solutions that you've done, with no extra work on your part. That would be a quite compelling to get me to hire you.

My other idea is that the same software that will be used for the collaborative Guide site could also be used by people to sell their own guides if they wanted to. So you could come up with your own guide for a particular issue and sell it to people, like how Steve Pavlina has his free blog posts and also sells his Personal Development for Smart People book.

[Cat Dancer]

Hmm, do we have two ideas going in parallel here? Or is it all really one big system? The first idea as I understand it a series of questions that would lead you to the right solution to your particular problem. The other is Ralph's project which seems more like a guide which would help you understand or implement a solution. Of course the two could fit together, you could use the first to find out that X is the right solution your problem and X could turn out to be a guide of the second type.

[dice]

taking philosophy classes - you learn to say a lot with very little and be succinct .

[Cat Dancer]

I have a placeholder up for the Guide site: http://guide.catdancer.ws/

There's nothing there yet except for a couple of sample links, but you can add more if you want.

[Ralph]

Looks awesome, keep up the good work!

PS. I think you already know about keeping parts of the guide on a serie of small pages, right? People shouldn't see the whole thing on one page, or it will be intimidating

[Cat Dancer]

Originally Posted by Ralph

PS. I think you already know about keeping parts of the guide on a serie of small pages, right? People shouldn't see the whole thing on one page, or it will be intimidating

Yes, I will keep parts in their own pages. Also, everything is easy to change, so if later to see anything that you'd like to be different, just let me know.

Have you decided on a copyright license yet for your content? You can go with the traditional "All Rights Reserved" which means no one can do anything without getting your permission first; or you can choose one of the Creative Commons licenses, which means that other people who wanted to create their own "Law of Attraction" guides (perhaps specialized for particular circumstances, for example) could build upon your work. Either way is fine, whichever one you want to do.

[Ralph]

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported

That sounds like a kind of thing that I have in mind Keep up with the good stuff, I'm currently working on my style of expression to optimize the impact I have on my readers.