Pushing Rocks Downhill: empowering the relationships of business: customers, employees and myself

In 1978 I was a young and promising child psychologist specializing in Applied Behavior Analysis procedures. Personal issues led me to giving up my dream job to return to my home town where I was unable to secure suitable employment in my field. I eventually accepted that I was not about to get hired, and watching my own kids get hungry convinced me I had to do something about it. Having house-painted throughout my college years, I was able to fall back on that. At first I only wanted to make a little money to tide me over, but soon I was captured by a more substantial impulse: to design a business model from the ground up based on good will, mindfulness and, of course, my expertise in behavioral engineering. This collection of essays presents my investigation, conveying the learning, discoveries, analyses and many anecdotal shenanigans that portray the useful and serious as well as the comic in the events that shaped me. The substance of the story is the development of novel applications of Behavior Analysis in behaviorally engineered employee and production management procedures, with a profit-motive under the ever present oversight of good will, driven by a vigilant, curious mindfulness awareness. The character of the investigations is represented in sensitive insight, specially revealed in the third part: Relationship With My Self. The result is what you will read here in "PUSHING ROCKS DOWNHILL". Coupling my behavioral background with mindful good will, I assembled skills and attitudes to form a very satisfying simple business. Anyone can do what I did. With so many today being downsized, outsourced and plain-old fired, there is much hope in doing what I did: make something out of nothing.