Tuesday, January 10, 2006

What can we learn from the Million Dollar Homepage fenzy?

A British college student has a simple, but outrageous idea a few months ago. It’s so simple that he just asked anyone who were interested to pay him one dollar a pixel on his website. That was four months ago. And today, he is a millionaire. (www.milliondollarhomepage.com)

Wait a minute. Don’t leave yet! It has everything to do with Tai Chi.

While he was receiving tons of money everyday and participated in all the interviews you can think of, he still attended his classes. This type of calmness is a very high level of tai chi achievement.

Don’t argue with me yet!

Consider this: when you practice pushing hand with your classmates, do you feel frustrated when you were being shoveled away all the time?

Now consider this: if someone pissed you off and pulled out a knife to threaten you, can you keep your cool? Will you be calm and focused all the time?

The basic ideas of Tai Chi in martial application are using calmness against distressed mind and using softness against hardness. (This is my own understanding and translation.) During the course to achieve your goal in tai chi practice, can you maintain your mind like the British college student?

There are tons of million dollar homepage copycats out there. Even a California high school kid came up with a catch phrase “The evolution of the Revolution” and invoked our founding fathers and Lindsay Lohan recently. (www.American-Million-Dollar-Homepage.com). However, none of them can make a big impact so far, what do you think are the reason besides bad marketing, bad design, and bad luck?

Do you think the British college student can be a good tai chi student? Or, do you think he will even care with all the money he has now.

I’ll let you be the judge….