Laurie Austin

Secret to Lasting Love

October 1, 2011 by Laurie Austin Leave a Comment

It recently dawned on me that one component of to staying in love with someone may be related to the level of adoration that we feel for have of them. Think of what it feels like to have a crush on someone. It is particularly easy to believe we could love that person when we see them through adoring eyes. In my I know that in my own experiences, my love for people grew as I witnessed them change.

If we fall in love because we adore someone, we can stay in love by maintaining similar feelings, even if it is a more subtle – or differently dimensioned – form of adoration than the initial infatuation. The couple relationships that I’ve seen fail are often those where one or both partners lose that sense of wonder and adoration of the other. And while a state of total adoration of our partners at all times is clearly unrealistic, there is a lot we can do individually to nurture the qualities we possess that cause people to admire and respect us.

Behavior patterns such as complaining a lot, always being negative or unsupportive, not dressing attractively anymore, gaining weight, drinking and/or drugging too much, gambling, being overly busy, involved in too many things outside of your family and partner, are actions that can cause someone, who may have once adored you, to do so less and less. Conversely, sometimes the very things that first attract us to a mate and are initially adoring for us end up morphing into something we find reproachful.

For example, that sensitive side and a man’s career in social services may be very attractive at first, but may end up meaning long working hours and taking his work home with him more than a partner might like, becoming a bone of contention. Similarly, ambition and a socially outgoing personality can be very attractive in the beginning but over time a partner may start to perceive an underlying self-centeredness, status mongering or shallowness of thought in place of that outgoing personality.

Over the course of maturing together and individually, it is often the adoration of a beloved that gets whittled away and when the adoration is gone or eroded, it is only natural the relationship will falter. In fact, that loss of admiration and respect is like a crack – a fault – in the relationship, where further tensions will build up and store until such time as a major quake occurs.

So what can be done about this? How do we maintain the adoration in a relationship? The key is to keep yourself amazing. Keep striving and exploring for the amazing you and be that person. Cultivate an amazing you. And if you’ve fallen off the path and aren’t currently being very amazing, the good news is that you can start anytime and in many ways. Be pleasant, charming and fun when you are with your partner and other people. Pursue your passions and interests so that you remain an interesting person. Give enough time of yourself to your significant other. Be tolerant of their faults, even when you feel like you are working harder at the relationship. Work at being an interesting. If your partner doesn’t work to be amazing too, or if they still just don’t seem to notice how amazing you are, the relationship may still develop issues, but all you can do is work on yourself. You will reap the benefits of being an amazing person regardless, even if, ultimately, the relationship doesn’t survive. Human beings adapt quickly and are naturally pretty amazing anyway, so being or becoming someone who is worthy of adoration is an attainable goal. If your current partner doesn’t find you amazing, someone else will.

Keep growing and being amazing individually and as a couple. Cultivate charm and likeability, grow in wisdom, behave as good citizens, and pursue health and healthful activities. Be sensitive to the needs of others and show respect for others needs, especially your partner’s. That’s what builds adoration and respect, in the present and over time. Lots of people are already doing this and they tend to be the ones who are still happily married, even after 12 years, 20 years, 50 years. “Live Well, Laugh A Lot, Love Often” is a quote I recently saw that on a car license plate frame. and I believe that successful couples do, indeed, just that.

Laurie Austin is a freelance writer, researcher and thinker who writes under the self-proclaimed moniker “The Accidental Genius.” She currently resides in Seattle, WA and hopes to move to the Bay Area sometime in the future. Laurie can be reached at theaccidentalgenius@yahoo.com

Accidental Genius – Just Do It!

September 8, 2011 by Laurie Austin Leave a Comment

A big breakthrough in my life occurred when I realized something huge: that most of the innovations, processes and discoveries of men come in the form of accidental discovery.

On countless occasions I have witnessed groups of men involved in problem solving on the fly during a work project. I’ve seen first-hand that there is often a lot of what seem like stupid ideas tried out first, when all of a sudden, usually by accident,– the smart way finally becomes apparent or is stumbled upon. This is not meant as a diss on men; on the contrary, from them I learned you have to solve problems by just starting somewhere and trying something and it ends up being a process of trial and error. But that this was the process behind men’s accomplishments was my eye-opening breakthrough.

It’s not just a “guy thing” to be smart and mechanically capable and able to figure stuff out and problem-solve on the fly. It’s a “doing it” thing. You just do it, using any means and ideas you do have, many of which turn out to be inefficient or even stupid in retrospect, but everyone has to start somewhere. It usually takes a few different attempts to figure things out.

My breakthrough was triggered by watching what I perceived as “sheer stupidity” in some of the actions I’ve seen men attempt in problem solving. But it is not as easy as you might think to be the lone woman with a different vision trying to communicate with a bunch of guys focused on another idea. So I would just watch how it all played out, time and again. What I saw on multiple occasions was that genius happens after a lot of trial and error – sometimes very ignorant, comical or insurmountably stupid trial and error. And that’s not just a “girl thing” I discovered. Eureka! My self-esteem had found new ground.

This breakthrough gave me the freedom to pursue a lifetime of learning how to do things for myself, without fear or shame over things I don’t yet have full understanding of, and with resolve to plow forward and find out. It’s all trial and error; you just have to jump in. I have taken on the task of teaching myself stuff, because that’s pretty much what the guys are doing. It’s the best way to learn, though I’ve found it can be time consuming and inefficient, going that route of self-learning everything. Men have the advantage of working in groups with other men to collectively solve problems. Women could really benefit if they would start doing more of that, which I think they are starting to do, more and more.

Most of my own genius thoughts and ideas have also occurred either by mistake or somewhat randomly, but usually after I have been working on a thought or a problem for some time already. Context of knowledge is everything. Timing is everything. And so is trial and error. You have to just do it.

Structure Of The Universe or How to Make Your Brain Hurt

July 10, 2011 by Laurie Austin 1 Comment

What is the structure of the universe? Scientists are now fairly confident that it’s not simply duct tape and money that holds it all together and so modern-day physicists have been working dutifully to answer this cosmic question for quite some time now, as have I.

I am at an advantage compared with other people as far as contemplating solutions to complex scientific problems goes—I have an unfathomable amount of time each week that I can dedicate to lay-person research and abstract thought-experimentation. Surely it is not everyone’s luxury to have the freedom to ponder, at length, such age-old questions as, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” or, “Where did the universe come from?” while simultaneously watching every single science show that Dish Network broadcasts.

Recent research suggest that dark matter in our universe may form a lattice – grid – scaffold – type structure that branches out like the veins of a tree leaf, which then enables regular matter to form, thus creating the visible universe we know and love today. And we already know that there are elements in our universe that are fundamental, without which the rest of everything else can’t happen. For example, there are chemical elements, like those displayed in the Periodic Table of the Elements on the science classroom wall; there are classical elements, as identified by the Greeks as Earth, Air, Fire and Water; and there are elemental forces, like good ole Murphy’s Law of probabilities.

Everything else that exists or happens in the universe builds upon the fundamentals of the elements. Without Terra Firma, air, fire, and water, life does not seem to be able to exist in our universe. Without the fundamental chemical particles there would be no land, no water, and no oxygen. And without the fundamental forces of electromagnetism, the strong force, the weak force and gravity, there would be no planetary systems with all that incessant spinning and constant movement, which seems to be another fundamental component necessary for existence.

So what useful tidbit can we gain from all these facts? What may be an important link to understanding the nature and mathematics of the universe involves taking into consideration inherent, fundamental properties; in particular one really, really big one that scientist may not have factored in into all their mathematical formulas yet: That our Universe is a duality; that it is one of two—that maybe Universes come in pairs.
I don’t know if scientists are aware that what may be missing from their calculations for a Unified Equation of Everything, is taking into account that absolutely every time one thing comes into being, two things come into being. Inherent Duality may be a fundamental element of the Universe.

On Earth, we certainly experience a fundamental dualism with just about everything, right? In/out; right/wrong; conservative/liberal; privatization/socialization; male/female; traditional/exploratory; one side/the other side, yin/yang—the list is endless and many of the examples are profound. Things like Micro/Macro, and how fractals are the same patterns whether at the biggest Macro level or the tiniest Micro. That’s cosmic stuff.

Physicists already know that when one particle comes into existence it can be in two states or places at once and yet, so far, science has been unable to predict with accuracy which one place it will end up. I think this applies to certain individuals we all know, too, but I’m not naming names. But the reason there is always two potential extreme endpoints, if you will, is because everything happens along a scale between two states or two places of being, and that space in between interacts with time and forces, creating probability and eventual outcome. This is how computers operate, storing logic states of 1 or 0 in registers, based on data-information ‘forces.’ Even human beliefs fall across a wide spectrum from far–leaning one way to far–leaning toward the exact opposite opinion on the other side, and everywhere along the continuum.

This structure of two opposition states – connected by a chord of time, forces and probability, happens at the smallest levels of the universe as strings, in string theory, and also at the largest scale, as in the case of “universes.”

It was mentioned on a science program recently that one theory about gravity is that the reason it is so weak of a force in our universe is because we don’t have very much of it – compared to the magnitude that has been calculated for how much gravity would have existed during the Big Bang; and that there may be just a little trickle of it always filtering into our universe from somewhere else.

So maybe there are always two universes; one filled with matter and dark matter—the visible universe that we see and inhabit, and another universe—one that has all the anti-matter that was necessary to make the Big Bang explosion.
Perhaps it requires a lot of gravity to contain the anti-matter, which could explain why the vast majority of the total force of gravity is not found in our universe, as has been theorized by minds much greater than my own.

Perhaps the reason there is a chord of gravity (if there is one) that siphons from that one Universe into ours, is to enable a mechanism that allows for the two universes to maintain distance from each other, so as to not run into each other. Because that spells trouble for both universes, you know, and us in particular, since when those two universes collide, anti–matter accidentally touches matter and we get a new Big Bang, which starts the process over again.

This is a radical theory, but a lot of it is based on what theoretical physicists are already talking about and proving mathematically, like string theory and membrane universes and that there is not really ever a single point, but rather two places something can be every time you do the math.

So what might be being left out of the grand equation of the universe that physicists are looking for may simply be the other universe. If it were presumed to exist, and if the theory is correct, then it should fit very neatly into the mathematical equations of our universe.

Now this is where I must step aside, since we are going to need to call in some geniuses to apply the mathematical concepts. If scientists haven’t already started calculating the inherent duality of the universe into their “Unified Theory of the Everything” equations, perhaps they will start now.