I’ve always loved the saying that “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, is the very definition of insanity” and yet, in daily life, so many try to fit recurring personal expectations into everything new, and are unwittingly setting up for repeated failure.

I think to truly be open to new things, we have to be able to let go of our own expectations and allow ourselves to see the values that don’t match our own, rather than try to change them to conform. We need to accept the fact that we are just as fallible as the next person, that we aren’t somehow better or worse because of education, intelligence, abilities. I always think it’s a bit sad that so many have the need to compare themselves against some model, have the need to assess a sense of place against that of others, have a need to achieve so much so that they can think of themself as “just that little bit better”. I also think it’s sad that we spend so much time focusing on how everything affects us that we forget to think about how we affect other people, how our words and actions, or inactions, can make things worse rather than better.

Sometimes when we think we understand and we try to empathize, we aren’t really understanding because we are too busy making assumptions that we are the one with the “right answer”, that we know how to “fix” things. The person we are trying to empathize with is obviously therefore “not right” or “needs fixing”. Obviously the other person needs to change somehow to meet our expectations of what would make make things work “better”, or for them to reach some new “level”, based on a different, possibly faulty, set of assumptions and biases.

I like how the narrator highlights the fact that humans are famous for trying to fit old ideas, ones they won’t let go of, into a new context, and that it doesn’t usually work. It’s hard to let go of control and certainty, what little most of us have. As he says, (paraphrased) we can ignore it and plow along, or choose to acknowledge that current perspectives aren’t working. It takes humility to put aside our own biases and assumptions, to put aside the need to control, to try and force things work the way we want them to, to listen to a different perspective and manage to empathize, but doing so will surprise you because you will wonder why you hadn’t seen such a simple logical way of thinking before. By shifting our thinking and our point of view, putting ourself in the other person’s shoes and try to see our own failings, and how those have impacted those around us, it can provide a resonance, a better understanding of people and place, and it can change the meaning of perspective. (He started to sound a little crazy there for a bit – with the whole ‘resonance’ thing, but I’ll go with it, because we all experience things differently.)

I agree that we are infatuated with creativity, innovation, transformation, – our own usually – but, being too obsessed with the ideas we hold close means we get stuck, we miss the big picture because we become too obsessed with our own ideals and forget the validity of those of others. That much I totally agree with him on.

Great video here.

I’m inclined to think it’s better to stand up and say “look what I did” than “look what I want to do” since what “I did” is an accomplishment, “what I want to do” is just as likely to become “what I wish I did”. I prefer the no regrets, or no one knows my regrets, approach to goals.

So it’s an interesting thesis he has. Perhaps we now have so many self help books because we are all so freely telling each other what we are going to do, and therefore we set ourselves up for failure by doing so? And when we fail to achieve our goals we seek help from books and people to help us achieve the things we really could accomplish if we just set our minds to it and kept it to ourselves?

I can’t judge, but I know that I do generally keep goals to myself and am pleasantly surprised when I get where I was trying to go, but there was usually a lot of work to get there. What is it they say? Anything worth having is worth working for?

So forgive me for being skeptical of your goals. It’s just my nature, and I am trained as a scientist…which means I was trained to be a skeptic.

iDentify 2 is an OS X application for tagging iTunes compatible MP4 video files. Normally, when you convert a video file to the format used by iOS devices such as the iPad, iPod, iPhone or AppleTV, all the information about the video is missing! The only thing you see is the name of the file where the title of the video should be. iDentify 2 looks at the name of files as they are added to it. Based on the name of the file, iDentify determines wether it is a TV Show or movie based on common naming conventions. From the file name, a lot of information can be gleaned, such as movie title, show name, season number, episode number, year of release, and imdb code. iDentify can then automatically look on The TVDB, The Movie DB, and tagChimp to gather more information about the title, such as description, rating, chapter names and more! iDentify also inspects the file and can automatically turn on the HD flag on the movie when the resolution of the file goes above a set minimum!

Want to change the tags of multiple files in one fell swoop? No problem! Add the files to iDentify, select all the ones you want to edit from the list, and click edit. All changes you make are now applied to all selected files! When you are done, just click “Process Files” to write the new information to your files, and when iDentify is done, you are ready to add your videos to iTunes!

And since all the movies are already in my iTunes library, iTunes automatically updated them all after things were finished.

And all that tagging, effortless, and for the low price of free (or $6.99US) if you buy from MacUpdate right now – ($9.99 regular price). It never ceases to amaze me how inexpensive, and good, Mac software is. I used to download hacked software (yes, it’s true), but since moving to the Mac platform I don’t bother with the searching, finding serial numbers, dealing with viruses….why bother when everything is so inexpensive and I can get the support for anything, or ask questions, directly from the developer.

Yup, looking for a program to tag videos? This is it!