"The sign of an intelligent person is their ability to control their emotions by the application of reason." It's interesting that I found this quote because I am always telling my daughter to let logic rule her decisions not emotion. In fact, I encourage her to use logic when she wants to sway my decision on a matter.
At my house, I try to make it that the adults are not always correct just because they are older. I mean, think about it, is that how it is out in the real world? Absolutely not! So why should I teach my daughters that someone is right just because they are older than them? Instead, I tell my daughters that if they do not agree with something that I tell them to do, they can ask me to change my mind. If they want me to change my mind, though, they need to give me a logical reason on why I should change my mind. If they can give me a logical reason on why I should do it their way rather than mine, and it has been thought all the way through, then I will change my mind. Meanwhile, if they only approach me with an emotional appeal, I will turn them down outright. One of the reasons I home school is because I want my daughters to learn how to think, not just memorize answers that are given to them. The best way I know to get them into the habit of thinking for themselves is to actually show them that there is some benefit to it. It is easy to tell them there is a benefit, it's another thing to show them. I started to teach Maddie to think for herself when she hit about six. She has gotten very good at it, and I often find myself changing my mind on things due to the strength of her logic. Sometimes when people hear Maddie speaking to me about something I told her and I then change my mind, they think I am being easy on her. I'm not. I ask her to think rationally and then tell me why she wants me to change my mind. If her argument is not logical, then what I originally said goes. What would be easier is to just say "Because I said so!" and force her to do it anyway. This is not fair and not good parenting in my opinion. If we want intelligent children, then we need to expect more of them. And in return, they will expect more from us. I for one, do not believe that might makes right. Many problems can be avoided if all look at a problem logically, and also try to see the situation from the other person's point of view. Usually, a middle ground can be found that can help to make a win/lose situation into a win/win. I believe that the more practice my daughters have with this type of reasoning while they are young, the better they will be at it when they become adults. Imagine if our current pack of political leaders were taught in this manner. Ethics and the common good might be a bit higher on their agendas than it seems to be now.
0 Comments
"Be as simple as you can be; you will be astonished to see how uncomplicated and happy your life can become." is a quote by Paramahansa Yogananda. To be honest, I had never heard of this guy until I read his quote. I figured that he was probably like the Dalai Lama, and it ends up he is an Indian holy man. Close enough! Paramahansa was an Indian yogi active in the U.S. between 1910 and 1953 who was responsible for introducing millions of westerners to meditation and yoga.
Although I don't practice yoga, I do practice the martial arts, and I can tell you that it is often the simplest techniques that are the most effective. I also find that holds true with stock analysis. Oftentimes, the companies with the simplest press releases are the ones that perform the best. If you have to read to page six of the release to find out how much the company made during the quarter, you know that the company is trying obfuscate the poorness of the results with other points that shed the company in a better light. Two industries that I cover where this happens all the time are in telecom services and mining. A simple way of dealing with this, is to ignore what management says in regards to results, and instead let the numbers do the talking. Once you figure out the truth that the numbers are telling you, you can always go back and see what management has to say! This post isn't about stocks, though, so I'll bring it back to how simplicity in life can really add to your happiness. I find I am happiest when I try to follow three simple rules to happiness. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of little rules I make for myself to follow in my life. But there are three that I think are critical for happiness and that all of the other "rules" work from these three. Below, I'll try to define my three rules in there simplest terms. "Treat others as you want to be treated." Rule number one in my book. Deep down we all know how we like to be treated. When we are not treated the way we like, we wonder what could have caused it. Well, if you treat people poorly, then it's likely you won't be treated much better. All people deserve a modicum of respect. If you zing people or deride them, then it is likely that when they get a chance, they will return the favor. Instead, treat people with kindness and respect. Smile and make small talk. People of a similar disposition will follow suit, and all will have a more pleasant time. "Look to the little things for your happiness, since they happen far more often than the large." This one is really true. I try to find pleasure in the little things in my life. The view of Mt. Monadnock while I drive to karate, my first cup of coffee in the morning, The hugs my daughters give me when they first see me in the morning, are all examples of the little things that make me happy. Because I find happiness in the little things around me, I don't feel the need to go looking for those big things that others need to find happiness. The grand annual vacation? No need. I moved to where I thought I would be happy. While we do go on vacations occasionally, I usually set them up to be educational as well as fun. Find happiness in the little things and you will never be far away from your next smile! "Set small, medium and large goals and commit to them." This one is very important. By setting goals and achieving them, you get into a habit of success. For larger goals, set up a number of smaller goals that relate to your larger ambition. For instance, if you are looking to lose 40 pounds, set smaller goals like I will cut back on the portions of the food I eat, or I will workout three times a week. Use these smaller goals as starting points. As you hit these goals, you will build confidence towards hitting your larger goal. Set medium goals too, such as by the end of the month I want to lose ten pounds. By setting small goals that work towards your large and medium goals you are setting yourself on to the path of success. Don't just set the goals, though. Commit to them. Believe me, setting and achieving goals will go a long way towards building your happiness. Well, to tie it all together, none of my three rules are tough to implement. They have helped me through very tough times and I am still using them. Am I happy? I believe so. Things are definitely turning in the right direction. Keep it simple...and see how far you can go towards a life of happiness! "The secret of getting ahead is to get started" is a quote by Mark Twain. When most people read this quote, they think of making money. That's logical because people oftentimes say they have a tough time getting ahead when they are speaking about their financial situation. Still, the quote doesn't have to pertain to money.
Getting ahead with anything you want to do, must always begin with actually starting. There is no way around it. You will also be happier for it as well. I have always noticed that the longer I put something off that I know I want to do, the more dissatisfied I am with my own life. The longer I put it off, the more worked up I get about not doing it...and the worse I feel. Many people say, well I don't know how to start! Bullshit, I say. There is a simple beginning to everything you can possibly want to do. Do you want to lose weight? Start by cutting portions. Or start by exercising. Why, maybe just cut out desserts! There are lots of ways to start that one. Do you want to start your own business? Find something you like to do and start offering to do it for others for a modest price. Frequent places where your product or service would be welcomed. Remember, million-dollar businesses do not become that over night...It takes time. After starting your goal, the next secret of getting ahead becomes following through. It's silly to start something if you are not then going to follow through. Why start to cut your portions on Monday if you are going to pound down an entire pizza on Tuesday! Believe me, you will feel even worse about doing that than if you had done nothing at all! It just goes to show that the first thing you need to do to "start" is to make a commitment to the change. If you are unhappy in your present state, whether it is physical or financial, the first step to starting is to make an actual commitment to the change you want to make. Without a commitment, you are dreaming about getting ahead, not actually getting there. When I started writing this post, I wanted to write about my wife and her dream of publishing a book one day. She died before she got to accomplish that dream. She had started it though. My wife had written a large pile of poetry that my daughter and I are using to put together a book for her. So far we have compiled over 120 pages of poems. You see, my wife had started on her dream, she just didn't have time to finish it. While she was in a coma, I promised her I would try and complete her dream for her. My wife always loved butterflies. Because of this, we have named the book "Butterfly Screams". If you want to get ahead, you have to get started. My wife started it, now my daughter and I will finish it for her. For my readers, I recommend that you get ahead in life. If you have a dream, take the steps necessary to start it today. That way you can get ahead in your lifetime. Okay, so on the surface the above quote doesn't seem to make sense. If there was positive, then it wouldn't be a negative event. Not so, something CAN be negative, yet still have some positive aspects. If the negative outweighs the positive, then it is a negative event. Even so, there is likely some positive from the event, and if there is, you should try to see it and profit from it.
A very personal negative event for me was my wife's death. No matter how hard I try, there was more negatives tied to that event than positives. While that is definitely true, if I think about it, there were some positive aspects too. Since it is personal, I don't want to get into this example too deeply. Suffice it to say that my daughters were removed from a situation where they were seeing the sufferings from addiction up close and personal. Midnight trips to the police department or hospital, while I tried to help Sharon, have become a thing of the distant past. That is the only example I will use here. Another negative turned positive that I will talk about involved the treachery of a friend when I was younger. On the surface, treachery of any type would seem to be a negative. The long-term repercussions of this one, though, were so positive that in hindsight, it would have been better if it had happened sooner than it did. So what's the story? When I was younger, I had a friend who was very manipulative and self-centered. It was hard to see though. You had to have known him for quite a while and seen it happen in a repetitive manner to notice it really. You see, this guy was always nice and friendly to people while he was with them, but as soon as someone annoyed him, he would work behind the scenes to make sure that person wouldn't hang out with the group as much. He would do it subtlety. To one person in the group, he would start to say negative things about the person, saying that that they had said something bad about the person behind their back. This was not always true. A lot of times the "negative" comment was usually only a part of the full thing that was said, with key pieces of information missing such as a qualification or a context. Next he would set up things to do and conveniently forget to invite the person he was mad at so that everyone who usually hung out together would be there except for the person he was mad at. He would then say he couldn't get in touch with him, or couldn't get an extra ticket or any number of excuses on why that person wasn't there. After a while, once people were enjoying themselves, he would say something like see how fun this is without so and so being here...trying to reinforce that things were better when that other person wasn't around. This went on for a while before I noticed it. Once I saw it though, I noticed that this behavior happened in cycles. For a month or two it would be one person who was getting the treatment. After a while, that person was let back in and another person was getting the shit treatment. All of it seemed to be designed to keep him at the center of the group and give him undue influence over who was in or out at any given moment. Once I figured it out, I started to distance myself from the guy, although that wasn't always possible since most of my friends hung out with him too. All of us had been friends since junior high school. We were all still partying together after college too. The event that changed everything happened soon after I got back from college. A bunch of us would usually get together to go out barhopping on the weekends. We lived at the Jersey shore and the bars were always packed on the weekends. We were in our mid to early twenties. During the week we all hung out together as well, and we often hung out with a group of girls that were slightly younger than us. It was good because while they were all above the age of 18, they were below 21 years old, and couldn't get into the bars. We liked that since we could hang with them during the week, but not have to worry about buying them expensive drinks at the bars on the weekend (all of us were working our first jobs and no one was making lots of money yet). Anyway, one of my friends started dating one of the younger girls, but was keeping it kind of casual. He'd still go out to the bars with us on the weekend, but he wasn't actively hitting on the chicks while we were out. My other friend was back to his old tricks and trying to stir trouble within the group. He let slip to this guy that I was interested in his girl friend, which wasn't really true. I liked one of her friends and was working on her. My friend knew this and told me on the side what the other had said. Well, that made me smile, because the guy stirring up all the trouble had told me earlier that he liked the girl the other was seeing and was calling her later. I kept quiet about the whole thing but just watched to see how this thing was going to play out. Later that night, I saw the sneaky guy get on the phone. Soon after he complained of a headache and said he needed to go home. Now back then, all of the bars had cover charges, so we had all paid to get in. It had been his turn to drive so the rest of us could get drunk without having to worry about DWIs, so we all had to leave when he was going so we could pick up our cars. I suspected what was going on, so I told my friend to hop in my car and that I would drive. Instead of going back to the bar though, I drove around the corner and parked the car so we could see my friend's street. Now just so you know, I am not naming names here for a reason. This all happened long ago, and I am sure the people involved can recognize themselves. I am not certain wives can, though, so I will keep all names out of it. When I stopped the car, my friend turned to me and said, "hey, what the fuck are you doing?" I said "dude, you know so and so has told you I am not really your friend and that I am after your girl." "I am going to show you that not only is that not true, but that he is really the one that you gotta watch out for." "I am cutting ties with him as of tonight. Sit here for twenty minutes or less and let's see what happens. If I am wrong, we'll go to the bar and I'll buy you a couple of rounds for your time. If I'm right, you'll see him for how he truly is." You see, this friend thought this other guy was always on his side, even though nothing could have been further from the truth. In fact, the other had been actively trying to get him out of the group behind his back for months. Well we waited five minutes and sure enough, the other guy's car went by the street and up to the other corner. My friend looked at me and said "okay, what's going on?" I said "If I am right, he is going to your girlfriend's. Well he looked at me in shock and couldn't believe me. I said "Watch." and pulled out to follow the other. When he got to the corner the other guy made a right hand turn and sped off. My friend gave a sigh of relief and said, "See he is going in the opposite direction." I said "The liquor store is in that direction. Let's just go and sit across from your girlfriend's apartment. We sat there for about five minutes before the other guy came walking up the street with a 12-pack in his hand. I will leave that story there. Needless to say, that was the last I spoke with that guy. As far as I know, that was the last that a number of people spoke with him. Many of us always felt that if you couldn't trust your girls around your friends, then they weren't really your friends. As far as I know, anyone who was there that night, never spoke with him again. So to tie it together, what positives came from this? Well, to start, the guy whose girlfriend cheated on him went on to meet another girl who then became his wife. Meanwhile, a negative force left my life and my friendships improved with all of the other people who used to hang out in that group. You see, this guy had multiple negative gossip going around about a number of people. Once that influence was no longer around, everyone got along better. Thus, negative situations CAN have positive outcomes. Just because you may not see them now, doesn't mean they are not there. Only time will tell! "A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds." That is a quote by Saint Basil. I didn't even know there was a Saint Basil until I read his quote. There was more to the quote than this, but I decided to distill it a bit. He was getting a bit wordy.
Sometimes, words aren't necessary. Sometimes, they are. Wisdom comes in knowing the difference. Oftentimes people look at a man and make a judgement from what they see. While it's understandable, sometimes there is rot below the veneer. Other times a battered exterior covers over the spirit of a warrior. If you really want to know a man, or anybody really, watch what they do. Not what they do in front of the person they want to impress, but what they do when they think nobody is watching. A man's private actions never lie. A picture can be photo-shopped, a tale of daring can be exaggerated. What a man does when he thinks he is unobserved is the best way to judge his character. I have met many people over the years. Usually, you don't learn about a person until they let you in...they let you see a little part of their private life. No, I don't mean they friend you on Facebook. That is usually just more phony stuff. I mean that they introduce you to a family member or have you over the house or something like that. Oftentimes, the insights you get into their character will amaze you. Sometimes, when a person has invited me into their lives, I see them looking at me, as if I am going to find them wanting or something. I never find this is the case, though. Insights into someone's true self are almost always interesting to me. In truth, I find no one is really the public persona they try to portray. Tough guys are often very gentle with their children. Needy women are usually strong for their families. What does it mean? We all try, to some extent, to be someone we aren't. No one wants their true selves to be laughed at or mocked. Thus, they put up a phony front hat makes the hit to their self-esteem softer if they are ever confronted. If anyone ever calls you their friend, and then invites you into their lives, I recommend taking up the offer. You'll get to see who they truly are...and you'll be able to tell from their actions who they truly are. There is one exception to this rule though. If the person is interested in you for romantic reasons, then its likely you won't truly get a chance to see who they really are. That will likely take time since they will keep that mask on longer to protect their ego. That's about it for this post. It actually went into a totally different direction that what I originally imagined when I sat down to write this post. "Most folks are as happy as they make up their mind to be." That's a quote from Abraham Lincoln. He's right, too. Think about your last day off for instance. I am sure you were happier with a day to do with what you wanted, than you otherwise would have been at work. When our time is our own, we do things that interest us, not just things we get paid to do. That is why the best advice I can think to give anyone is to find something that you like to do, and then find a way to get paid for it.
About 40 hours of every week you are going to spend either working or travelling to or from work. Wouldn't it be better to actually enjoy your work if you are going to devote that much time to it? Outside of work, there are lots of ways to be happy. TV is not one of them. I find I am always happiest when my mind is engaged. Whether it be an interesting article, a quiet conversation, or even playing with my daughters, I find my mood improves as I think about things. Rarely am I in a good mood and then just decide to watch TV. If you find you are not happy, and its not due to losing someone close to you, then it's likely because you are spending too much time in front of the TV or videos and not enough time actually engaging your mind. Another way to become happier is to set goals for yourself. Don't set gigantic goals that can't be reached. While it is nice when you can achieve one of those, I find it is better for my happiness to set lots of little goals that are easy to accomplish that lead to that larger goal. For instance, if I want to see all fifty states. I might get frustrated if I didn't set up a time schedule. Even if I saw five different states in a month, I may feel unhappy because I did not see all fifty. Instead, break that large goal into smaller ones. I want to travel to one new state every six months until I have seen them all. Although it may take you a little longer to achieve the main, larger goal, you will be happier because you will be accomplishing goals all along the way. Moreover, you will likely spend more time in each state and actually get to know them better. Remember, you will be as happy as you want to be. I just find it is easier to be happy moment to moment if I try and set myself up to be happy in the first place. I hope these ideas work for you as well. "Life is only a reflection of what we allow ourselves to see." I think this is a beautiful quote because of its truth and simplicity. Ever wonder why some people always seem happy, while others are borderline miserable? I honestly believe it is because of what we choose to focus on.
My daughter Ashleigh is a great example of this. Three times this week I have heard her say "This is the best day of my life!" And each time, it was on a different day. Was she exaggerating and just repeating something she had seen on a video? To some extent yes, but at each time she was expressing happiness about something that was going on around her. When you focus on the positive, you have a tendency to see the positive. Positive things don't have to be something large, there are plenty of tiny things going on around us that have the ability to make us happy. Watching a video with Maddie, playing Wizard 101 with Ashleigh, or sharing a cup of coffee with my mother all bring little breaths of fresh air to me. A hard work out, a joke among friends or even a moment alone are all things that I enjoy and that bring me momentary happiness. Too often, we allow other people's problems become our problems. Too often we feel we have to save the world for our friends. What we really need to do is step back and save ourselves. The best way we can do that is to have a kind word for those around us. Listen to others, but don't take on their burdens. Offer a kind word, a smile, a hug. Point out the little joys to them. Celebrate their positives and play down their negatives. Surround yourself with positive people...people who are trying to do good. Avoid those who bring you down. Also, have the wisdom to know the difference. Some people WILL get on your nerves sometimes. You need to be able to look past that and instead look at whether or not that person truly has your best interests in mind when they do get on your nerves. Overall, you are the sum of the twenty people you hang around with the most.If three of those people are happy, and the rest dissatisfied and unhappy, then it is likely you will be unhappy too. There are plenty of happy people out there. Find those people and surround yourself with them. Look for the good, point it out to at least two people you know. Do this over and over, and in time, you too will find happiness. "Thus life and death, good and evil, the blessing and the curse, are set before us, that we may choose our way, and as our way so shall our end be." That, of course, is a quote from the bible. I like to look at the bible as both a history lesson and a road map for living. It's a history lesson to the extent that it tells us about life in ancient times. Unlike most history books though, it tells the story not from the victor's point of view (at least not all the time), but from the conquered's. Throughout history, the Jews have been both victor and conquered, and so have the Christians.
To me, it's the new testament that can be looked upon as the road map for living. The sayings of Jesus and the interpretations from the apostles really give you food for thought about how you want to live your life. When I started to write this post, I was thinking of the writings of Matthew. To be specific: "verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not unto me." I think of this quote from time to time, especially when I go to New York and see bums sleeping on the street. Everyone walks past them. On occasion someone stops and gives one or the other something to eat. I usually don't, so this isn't a I want to show off how moral I am story. Personally, I think this isn't what Jesus was talking about. I don't think that he wants any one person to go out to save the world. I do think he means to take care and treat kindly the people in your own community however. Closer to home, I do think he means to try and take care of each other. A kind word to a stranger in your own town. Helping a neighbor who is down on their luck...Even the way you interact with the people at your own place of worship. The reason I thought of this is because of a story I read on the internet the other day. A pastor was hired at a church where the congregation had never met him. With the permission of the church elders he wanted to walk among the flock before he was introduced to get to know them. On the Sunday he was to be introduced, he went to the church early. He didn't dress as a pastor, but instead wore shabby clothes and just introduced himself with his first name. He nodded and smiled to many people among the congregation and shook hands with others, saying a kind word here and there. Many people seemed put off by his appearance and spoke curtly with him. When he went to take a seat near the front of the church, ushers tried to steer him towards the back. When the church services began, the church elders stood and told the congregation that they wanted to introduce everyone to the new pastor. There was silence as the little man with the shabby clothes stood up and walked behind the lectern. (The church elders were in on the pastor's plan.) He looked out at the crowd, and his first words were: " verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not unto me." Whether or not this story is true, I think it shows that there is a vast difference between going to church and living one's faith. And I think we can all use a reminder about this every once and a while. God has given us a road map (the Bible). It is up to us to use it. There are many paths to both heaven and hell. The farther you stray from paths leading to one, is the same distance that you are straying towards the other. The Bible points out that none of us are perfect. That is true. That is why there are many paths towards grace. We must all do our best to stay on paths that lead towards salvation. One of the easiest paths to follow is to treat all members of the community with a modicum of respect. Remember, many of the apostles and the other followers of Jesus likely looked shabby. These were men and women who oftentimes gave away or left everything they had to follow Jesus. They likely weren't dressed in the finest clothing of the day, and personal hygiene likely wasn't high on their list of heavenly virtues. I try to treat everyone with a modicum of respect and meet them with a kind word. I only try to avoid people that I think could be dangerous, whether by chance or by choice. When I am in New York, I do not feel the need to save the world. In general, I do not feel the need to stop at every homeless person and give them food. I do feel the need to treat them with respect if they do come up to me and start speaking to me. That doesn't mean I feel the need to give them anything...It just means that I will not pretend that they did not speak with me. Instead, I will talk to them nicely and tell them no, nicely if they do ask for a handout. Closer to home, I try to help out where I can. There are many paths to heaven. No one can trod all of them. We can try to stay on the paths that can lead us there though. The Bible gives us a road map. Make sure to check it once in a while to see if whether the paths you are on lead in the right direction. Socrates once said that "The unexamined life is not worth living." People have debated for centuries what he meant by that. They don't know, you see, because after saying that line he chose to drink hemlock and end his life, rather than to live it in a way he did not choose. Quite a ballsy call!
You see, Socrates was a bit uncompromising when it came to his philosophy. He felt that people needed to examine their lives and make any changes necessary to make their lives more fulfilling. He shared these thoughts publicly, and would debate people on many topics. Oftentimes these debates would illuminate peoples actions in a negative light, and the people of Greece hated him for it. They also hated that two of his start pupils went on to start revolts trying to overthrow the government. He was taken to court on two charges and was found guilty. The charges were impiety against the state-sanctioned gods and corrupting the youth. Although no one knows for sure, which was the more serious charge, one of Socrates' three accusers was a politician whose son had had a relationship with Socrates. Little of what remains of what Socrates said at his trial had to do with the corruption of youth charge. Instead, the arguments that are recorded focus on the charge of impiety. Needless to say, Socrates is found guilty. Both he and his accusers are asked to propose a punishment for the jury to vote on. The accusers state that they would like the death penalty. Socrates counters by asking the jury for free meals in the Prytaneum, the public dining hall. The jury voted for death and Socrates, at the age of 70, got the hemlock. One author, Doug Linder, said that "The trial of Socrates was the most interesting suicide that the world has ever seen." To me, and I am no scholar now, it seems that Socrates treated his entire trial as a farce. In fact, he seems to be a martyr for free speech.An unexamined life, for Socrates, was a life with little or no principles. In other words Socrates decided for himself what truly was worth dying for. He viewed his life's mission as saving the souls of the Athenian by pointing them in the direction of an examined, ethical life. He then told the jury that "he would rather be put to death than give up his soul saving. By being so bold, the jury seems to have felt that the only way to stop Socrates from lecturing about the moral weaknesses of the Athenians was by killing him. So, to bring it back to today. Would you be a follower of Socrates if he was around today? It's really hard to tell. Socrates wasn't an angel either. Times were different then and so was the moral code. Going strictly on whether or not I think about my actions, and there impact on others before I do them, I would say yes, I do. Do I try not to lie, steal or hurt others? Yes, I believe in peace over power and that my actions should not do harm to others or their property. But to me, examining my life has to go much further than that. Am I happy? Am I taking the steps necessary to lead to my own happiness? Am I doing right by my children? Am I allowing my morals to falter due to the culture I am living in? Am I taking care of my body to the best of my abilities? All of these questions also have to be answered in my opinion. Also, where does my personal philosophy fail me? If I am unhappy more than I am happy, then likely I have a weakness in my philosophy. Here, I am not talking about the sadness I feel from time to time due to the death of my wife, I am talking about a deeper, longer lasting sense of sadness. Thankfully, I do not suffer from that one any longer. If you, or someone you know, does suffer from that type of feeling, then you need to examine the rules you personally live by and see what it is that you are doing that is conflicting with your moral (ie. personal philosophy). Usually, I find, it is not your personal philosophy that needs changing, but the actions you are taking. In the end, Socrates was certainly a brave old goat. Where would you draw the line between your personal beliefs and what you are asked to do? And I mean that both categorically and metaphorically. Answer those questions and you are well on your way to a happy examined life. That's a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. I guess to be a Ralph and a Waldo, you really did have to be your own person! All joking aside, I think this is a great statement. He says to be yourself, yet most people don't really seem to know who they are.
How many people do you know, who you think you know well, yet if you stop to talk to them for twenty minutes, you find out they are someone completely different. Now sit down for twenty minutes and really think about yourself. Are you really who you think you are? Or are you an amalgamation of things you see on TV or read about in books, or even the average of the twenty people you were closest to when you were younger? What is really you? What is begged borrowed and stolen from others? No one can answer that but you. For me, I think I am about 40% me, 30% my parents, and a 30% is a mish-mash of old friends, TV shows, heroes from books and movies, and parts of the people that I meet. You don't have to tell me who you are...but you should know for yourself. So that begs the question: Am I who I want to be? Are you? I don't know the answer to either question. I do know I am mainly the father I want to be. I try to teach by example. I try to remember what it was like when I was a kid and treat my children accordingly. There are things I did when I was younger that I certainly don't want my daughters doing. There are other things that I think can and will be good life lessons for them. The most important thing I am today is a father to my children. In fact, I would go so far to say that THAT is who I am. Anything else in my life I could and would give up for my daughters, so a father IS who I am. One of my favorite quotes is " All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts..." I always remember it as "and we all wear many masks" Ask ten people about me, all from different parts of my life and I think you would get ten different answers about who I am. All would have an undercurrent of truth to them...but yet I think they would all be seeing me through a mask. While all of the masks would be real, all would have a portion of unreality as well. Who are we? Who am I? It is a question that has bothered me for years. Because the real me doesn't easily fit into the stereotypes you see on TV or in a book. When I am in a funny mood I feel like I need a laugh track with me to point out the things that I say or do that were meant to be funny. Other times, I feel like I am on the razor's edge of being crazy. Usually, I feel that most of the other people I have met have already gone over that edge. The people that scare me the most are the ones that don't seem to have any deep thoughts at all. I do not know how these people can even exist. I sometime wish that I wouldn't think so much, but in the end I know that that would be a false wish. I do like to think. And if I didn't think constantly, I wouldn't be me. In the end, I think being yourself is a great accomplishment. As long as you truly do know that you are being yourself and not just a clone of someone you have seen on TV. Imagine, trying to imitate a character from TV. A character that isn't even a real person! Just a persona being played by an entirely different person. How sad that is. That's a quote from Albert Einstein...What a brilliant guy. Some people just don't realize that words have power...including the words you tell yourself! If you have an attitude of disbelief about yourself, then things will rarely work out right.The smallest failures will be magnified in your mind until your outer self matches the inner picture you have already created of yourself in your mind's eye.
Fortunately for us, the same thing will happen with positive affirmations, as long as they have some basis in reality. For instance, I am an introvert, yet most people believe I am a type A extrovert. When I was younger, I always worried that people would think I am strange because I was quiet. Since I didn't want people to think I was shy or weird, I would listen to what was being said, and then try to add to the conversation with my own thought on the subject. If I did not know the topic well, I would instead make a witty comment about something that was said or ask a question to help increase my knowledge on the subject. Soon, I was making conversation easily and I lost the feeling that people would think I was a little off. Am I still an introvert? Yes. I love my alone time and I am still not a big fan of small talk. Still, I like to talk about serious subject matters, and once I get to know people I can do the whole small talk thing too. In fact, when I go to the store or out somewhere I usually go out of my way to make people smile. My secret is is that I usually say something funny to make myself laugh. If someone else laughs too, then that's just a bonus. So what is the best attitude to have? Why a positive attitude of course! If something goes wrong, as they sometimes will, look at it as a learning experience, not as a personal failing. Life is too short to bring yourself down worrying about something that has already happened.The best thing to do is to acknowledge that something went wrong and then take steps to make sure that they don't occur again. If what went wrong hurt someone else, then apologize if it is your fault. Particularly if the relationship with the person you hurt is more important than whether you were right or wrong. It's all about attitude. You can have the right one or the wrong one. Which one is yours? Okay, that quote was by Seneca. At first, I was going to write a post saying that I thought he might be wrong, but after thinking about it, I see that he just may be right. I often find happiness when I am striving to accomplish a goal. My goals usually involve accomplishing something that usually happens in the future, and that is why I thought he was wrong. But after I thought about it, I see that I am happiest when I am striving to accomplish the goal, not when I have accomplished it. There is a distinct difference!
In every day life, I like the pursuit, the chasing down of the dream so to speak. In karate, for example, I like to focus on improving certain skills. For months I practiced to get my spinning hook kick to head level. I enjoyed practicing that kick every day until I could bring my kick up to head level without losing my balance. Now that I have accomplished that, I still practice that kick, but the thrill is gone. Now I am working on getting my jab to land accurately and quickly. This isn't as hard to do...anyone can throw a jab. The skill is in being to land it quickly and accurately. To do that, you need to practice throwing it from all different types of situations. Can you land it when you are pulling back? Can you land it when you are charging? How about when you are ducking? Or dodging? Does it hit with speed and power? Can you throw it multiple times with the same result? How about when your target is moving too? The happiness comes from practicing those skills and seeing improvement. Seeing the improvement brings satisfaction, and happiness. Once you have attained the goal, the satisfaction becomes more of a smugness. Smugness is nice, but it doesn't bring happiness. Happiness comes in the present. You can't decide to be happy at some future date. You need to experience it in the present. So am I happy? At the moment, yes. In exploring my thoughts on happiness, I find that I have been happier in the past than I have given myself credit for. I am happy now, because I have written this post and examined how and why I get happy. Another way that I experience happiness is by making others happy. A hug, a touch, a kiss, a smile...all of these can make someone you know happy. Remember, this kind of depends on context too. If you run up to a complete stranger and give them a hug and kiss out of the blue, I am quite certain that it will likely scare them rather than make them happy. A smile or a kind word works for most people you meet. For close friends and family members, a hug and a kiss can work wonders. I am happy right now. Think about your own life...you might find that you are actually happier than you thought you were. If you are not, then analyze what actions you have taken to become happy lately. If you are not taking actions to be happier, then it's likely you won't be happy. Remember, happiness is found in the small things. If you base your happiness only on the large infrequent occasions, then you will necessarily spend a lot of your time unhappy. Actively pursue what makes you happy, and in so doing, you will be happy. That's my story, and I am sticking to it! Sometimes excruciating pain can be hidden by a smile. A lot of times, it's hard to tell when someone is in pain. To me, there are three types of people in this world.
The first type, feels pain and is stopped by it, Whether it is physical or emotional, these people feel pain and stop. They just can't function until the pain goes away. Often times these people won't admit they are in pain, at least not to friends and family, they will just slowly withdraw from life and do the minimum they can to get by The second type of person is the type that feels pain and wants everybody to know that they are hurting. They usually won't come to a dead stop, they will just keep on, but with a reduced capacity. They will go to doctors if the pain is physical, or seek emotional support if the pain is mental. These people will often times find an end to their pain and are likely to have gotten help to fix things. In my mind, they are likely the healthiest of the three types. The third type, are people like me. I am a pain blocker...or at least I try to be. When I get hurt, I acknowledge the pain but then try to put it away some where so that I can go on doing whatever it is I am doing. I do this both with mental and physical pain. In the past, I have walked around with broken ribs, practiced karate during a bout with gout and I have popped a number of my toes back into place after they dislocated. Physically, probably the worst pain that I worked through was when I was a walk in to the intensive care ward at Princeton Hospital. I had caught C-diff and was bleeding internally. The doctor told me he didn't know how I was even standing let alone walking. As a child, I remember playing sports while injured. I played team sports, and I often believed it was better for the team to have me play hurt than to not play. The year I did that, I was the scoring leader for the entire league. Our team went on to win the league championship and we had an undefeated 12 - 0 season. I honestly believe that by playing hurt (sprained ankle) I helped to keep our team undefeated. We had a good team, but our bench was not deep. Later, I played football and soccer the same way. I remember my first knee injury, when I initially cracked the cartilage in my knee. I was taken off the field after the initial injury, but went back into the game a few plays later. While it hurt, I didn't yet know the extent of the damage. I just figured it was badly bruised and I would get over it after a play or two. I played defensive tackle for the rest of the game and also played on the offensive line. After the game, I then went off and played in a soccer game. By the time I came out of that game, my knee had swelled like a soccer ball. X-rays later revealed I had a hairline crack in my cartilage. Over the years, I also got good at hiding mental pain...well, maybe not so good. I drank a lot when I was younger, and some of it was to help me to change my mood. If you asked me back then why I drank, I would say to get fucked up and be social. But those weren't my only reasons. I see that now. I also drank to ease the emotional pain I was going through. I always tried to bury that deep, but it was there none the less. The sad part is that I can't even tell you why I had those feeling. Why I felt sad, or unliked. I had lots of friends and acquaintances, and a family that loved me. Still, my head was filled with self doubts and sadness. Going out with my friends and getting fucked up let me forget for a while. I never seemed sad while at a party, but there was always a part of me that felt I didn't actually fit in, even though I usually seemed to. Our minds can be our own harshest critics. While we can use our minds to block pain, sometimes we also use them to block the realizations that can help us to resolve our pain. My pain stopped when I felt needed. Not wanted, not liked or even loved, but needed. My wife and I fell in love. I needed her in my life, and she needed me. Her need for me to be strong for her and our family took away my pain (at least the pain that had been haunting me...new pains came from our relationship). I look back at my younger years and I see a pain that didn't need to be there. My wife's need filled my heart with love. It healed me of my sadness. Everybody needs to feel needed. To not feel needed, to not feel like your life makes a difference, is a pain much worse than any physical pain you can endure. My wife died two years ago. She still needs me. She needs me to pray for her and light candles (and I do) and she needs me to take care of my two beautiful daughters. My daughters need me...to be there for them and to show them how to live a happy and fulfilled life. I try my best for them. And in return, I need my daughters. I need them to teach me about myself, to remind me of their mom, and to enjoy their company. I love to watch them grow up and to keep filling my head with new memories. I love to have one on one talks with Maddie while we are riding to or from somewhere. Meanwhile Ashleigh is my ray of sunshine! I love to watch the progress she is making while she learns to read, and the leaps of logic that she makes when she recognizes a pattern in what she is doing. Watching the girls learn new things is a thrill for me! Do I still block pain? Sure. My knee is a mess and I have my usual bouts with arthritis. Mentally, I am still coming to grips with my wife's death, but I am seeing more rays of sunshine all of the time! In the end, don't let pain stop you. Mental pain can go away. Fill the empty spaces where it had reigned with happy memories that you create each day. You can create a happy memory each day! Sometimes you just need to look for them. It's the little things that drive happiness. Fill your life with little bits of happiness and you will soon find that the mental pain will recede to the back ground. I hope these thoughts can help some of you out there who may be suffering with something similar. There is already too much sadness in the world. Work at bringing a little bit of happiness into your own world each day, and I think you will soon find that it will be infectious for the people around you. Good night, I just read an article that said that every good writer has an emotional anchor...something deeply personal that happened to them that they can tie their work to. By having that anchor to ground them, they can then go crazy and really write about anything, because they will always have that deeply personal experience to pull them back to reality.
I disagree. While I am sure everyone has something deeply personal that has impacted their lives, I think the anchor just works to hold you back. It stops you from reaching your full potential through fear, or sadness or both. To really move forward in life, or to write something different you need to cut the chain to the anchor as best you can. You want no distractions as you ride the stormy seas of life and write about them. In my life, my wife's death is my anchor. It numbed me, and made it very hard to get anything accomplished. My daughters were the winds in my sail, however. My daughters needed me to be functional. I couldn't just sit down and allow life to pass me by. The girls needed a father who could provide a stable home and an atmosphere of hope. These things can't be accomplished while living in the past. Each day, I focused on doing the little things that needed to be done to make sure my daughters were taken care of properly. The more I focused on getting these little things accomplished, the more I returned to the land of the living. The anchor had been attached to my ankle and had been pulling me under. My daughters were the lifeboat that offered me the opportunity to live on and travel to another place. As I battled on to reach the lifeboat, I found that my struggle became less and less. The anchor was shrinking as I got closer to my goal. Today, my anchor is pocket sized. My life is once again moving forward. I enjoy helping my daughters to learn and to grow and new horizons surround me. In the end, no one's journey through life needs an anchor. It is very hard to move ahead when you have an anchor set. Instead, Instead, we need a compass. An underlying belief that will help us to make decisions about where we are going with our lives. No one's life should be without direction. My wife used to say she liked to "go with the flow". Life is a gigantic ocean, but sometimes setting yourself adrift with the currents will still crash you on the rocks. It did that with my wife's journey. No going with the flow for me! I've used my moral compass to set my goals and while my life ship will occasionally approach the rocks, I have so far been successful in eventually turning my ship away from the danger. An emotional anchor, or a moral compass...which would you rather have? For me, I'll take the compass any day. Who might change your life? You never know. You never know, even when you think you know. Did you ever meet someone for the first time and make a bad impression? Or maybe think that you made a bad impression? Yep, me too. But you know, no one knows what the future brings, and even that person may be the one that changes your life.
To prove my point, here is another story about my wife and I. You see, even though my wife and I's first date happened after I grabbed her hand walking on the beach all those years ago, I had known her before that night... and after our first meeting you would have thought that I was a guy that she was never going to date! We met while I was an analyst at Merrill Lynch. Sharon was the girl who dropped off the faxes at everyone's office each morning. She had other duties too, but that is how I knew her (back then, faxes were common ways to get info from companies and I would get about 30 a day). While I would say hello when she dropped them off, we never really had a conversation. Then one day while I was walking to my boss' office, I saw her sitting in a cubicle out near his office. Given he was on the phone, and she was very pretty, I decided to stop by and chit chat with her a bit while I waited for him to get off the phone. The conversation started off okay, with me saying something like "Hi, so this is where you sit!" even though I knew that she didn't sit where she was regularly. She said: "No, not usually, but this is where she was assigned today." We started to talk a bit and I pointed out her accent and she said she was from England and that she had come over as a nanny, and that she was 22 years old. I said "Really, there aren't a lot of babies at Merrill Lynch" and she smiled and said she was no longer a nanny and that she was working as a temp and that her husband worked in another section. I was totally shocked that she was married. She looked so young and beautiful... and I really dug her accent. And so, I did what I normally did when I spoke to a pretty girl and was thrown a curve ball...I opened my mouth and stuck my foot in it! I said: " You're married already? Wow, you're so young! I guess that's a good way to stay in the country!" Well, that went off about as good as you'd expect. While she gave a smile, she got a weird look on her face and me realizing what I said, and also noting that she was married, made a hasty retreat! At that moment, I never would have guessed that Sharon would go on to be my wife and change my life forever. It just goes to show that you never know who is going to be a big part of your life. That is why you should make it a habit of being kind to everybody... Which brings up the second part of my story. You see, after that poor beginning I continued to say hello to Sharon. Never hitting on her... she was married you know... but just being friendly. I was always taught to treat people as you also wanted to be treated. So that is what I do now and did then. I like when someone I recognize says hello to me and tries to make me smile. So I, in turn, try to do the same with the people I meet. One day, a group of us (four analysts) were walking into Merrill Lynch after going to lunch. Right near the door was Sharon and her husband. Instead of pretending that I didn't know her, as the other guys seemed to be doing, I waved and said hello. Years later, Sharon told me that that was when she knew I was different and a good person. You see, as we walked up, Sharon had seen us and had pointed us out to her husband as coworkers. As we walked up, she said all of the others started looking away, pretending that they didn't see her. I on the other hand, waved and said hello, which forced the others to also acknowledge her and say hello. She said, the greeting I gave her made her feel less uncomfortable because she didn't want to be snubbed in front of her husband after she had told him we were all coworkers. She had never forgotten that. A small meaningless moment, that happened to mean a lot to her. Another act of kindness finally brought us together. While I was working at Merrill Lynch, a number of us used to go out after work on Fridays. Usually, many of the younger secretaries would also join us. In July of 1999, a number of the guys rented a beach house in Long Branch on the Jersey shore. I didn't join in on the house since I already lived about 10 minutes from there anyway. Even so, I hung out with them every day on the weekends anyway since it was in my usual stomping grounds anyway. One weekend, we were going to have a party at the house and most of the younger people in the office were going. Sharon hadn't been invited since she never came out with us. Still, most of the floor was going and I believed that she must have heard about it. While talking with her, I told her that she should come to the party and bring whoever she wanted. By that I meant bring your husband. I gave her the address and told her what time it was starting up. I really didn't expect her to show up, but I wanted her to feel part of the group and so I invited her. I still believed she was married, so there was no secondary motive there for me. Well, she showed up around 9:00 that night with an Indian guy and Leora, an 18 year old intern who also worked at Merrill Lynch. When the guy had gone to get them beers, I said to Sharon, "Oh I didn't know your husband was an Indian." and she said he wasn't her husband, her husband had died a few months before. I had never known. To make a long story short, we hung out together all evening at the party. We had a great time, went for a walk on the beach later that evening, and started dating. Treat others as you yourself would like to be treated? It works for me! No one knows who is destined to be a special person in their lives. Oftentimes, people are different than they first appear. Remember, never judge a book by its cover! You never know who might change your life. If you don't take those initial steps to get to know someone, you may be shutting yourself out of the life you were meant to live. As my wife used to say, "Everything happens for a reason!" That is so true! Rest in peace Babe. There are three "C"s in happiness. No, not when you spell it...I mean when you achieve it! The three "C"s are special. They are special because while everyone has an infinite number of the first "C", they walk around and complain that they have none. Meanwhile, there is usually a second "C" for almost anything realistic, yet most people walk around as if there is absolutely no "C" for almost anything that they really want. Finally, while everyone wants the third "C", most people only accept it when it is forced on them.
So what are the three "C"s? Choice, Chance, and Change. Let me explain, and show you how the three "C"s work together to get you almost anything you want or need. I will keep my example simple, although the idea works for more complicated situations as well. The really simple formula for getting what you want is that: You need to make a CHOICE to take a CHANCE or your life will never CHANGE. It's simple really and so true. Your choices could be stopping you from living the life that you desire. When you consciously choose not to take a chance, you are limiting your life to change that is random. The only constant in life is change. You can choose some of the changes that occur in your life, and hopefully help to make your life better. Or you can choose to have the changes in your life be random...in other words, by chance. I don't know about you, but I'd rather choose to take a chance on a good outcome. Think about it. When you choose, you are going to choose something that will ultimately benefit you. Therefore, the odds of something good happening are higher. If you choose not to choose, then randomness takes over. With randomness you have a 50/50 chance that whatever happens is going to be good. I don't know about you, but I like better odds than that. Here is an example of how choosing to take a chance worked out in my life. I wrote about this in the past, but I can't stress enough how my decision to choose to take a chance, made a major change in my life. Of course, I am talking about how I started dating my wife. That night, four of us set out to walk on the beach, two guys and two girls. None of us were paired up at the time, but I had a feeling the other girl with us liked me. This was a problem, because I liked Sharon. If I did nothing, there was a chance that the other girl might of grabbed my hand or the other guy Sharon's. Neither outcome would have been to my liking. Meanwhile, if I grabbed Sharon's hand, she would either accept that I had feelings for her and walked with me, or she would have pulled her hand away and I would have been no worse off than I would have been otherwise. That was the situation that was in front of my choice, but there was more to it than that. There is the head games that we all have at one time or another. That little voice in your head that says DON'T DO IT!!!!! Yeah, I had THAT big time. "Don't do it!" my head screamed. "She is so beautiful and you are only ordinary at best. You are ten years older than her...her husband died only a few months ago." All of these thoughts were surging through my head. And yet, we were having fun at the party. The other girl was even younger than Sharon and she seemed to like me. It was a beautiful night, and the other girl was under age and couldn't get into the bar we were at anyway. Although all of my insecurities were screaming not to do it, I decided to do it anyway. I decided to take the path less traveled, and like in Robert Frost's poem, it made all the difference! Make a choice, people. Right now, choose to take a calculated chance the next time it is presented to you. The change it makes may just put you on the road to happiness. Make a choice to take a chance, and see if the change it brings about will take you a step closer to happiness. It did for me once so long ago. And it will again in the future...when I choose to take a chance for a change. "Don't complain about things you're not willing to change." This quote says a lot! So many people go through life complaining about things that they have total control over as if they have no choice in the matter. Here are a couple of examples:
"I hate my job!" Okay, so you hate your job...then change it! There are a lot of things you can do other than make yourself miserable every day by going where you don't want to go. When you point this out to people, they usually look at you and say "well, I have been there so long I won't get the same money elsewhere." This might be true if you stay in the same field. But nothing says you have to stay in the same field. If you hate what you are doing, just changing your location likely won't make you any happier. Get off your fat ass and go back to school, or a trade school and get new training...hopefully in a field where you can make more money. If you are not willing to take steps to make changes, then don't complain to me about it because, frankly, I have better things to do than listen to you complain! Another one I hear a lot is "I hate this area. I would move in a heart beat!" Oh yeah, then why don't you move? "Well, I wouldn't have a job." or "Well, my whole family lives around here." If that is the case, then why do you hate this area? And you're right, there are no $10 an hour jobs anywhere else in the United States...or the world for that matter, so you better stay here where you "hate" it. Others I hear include: "I have no friends." (then why are you talking to me), "I am in debt." (as they sit sipping a $5 drink from Starbucks), "No one understands me." (As they sit there sullenly). Ask any of these people "Why?" and they will tell you "I don't know." But really they do know. They don't want to tell you, but they do know what the basis of all of their troubles are. It is a great resistance to change. They want others to change for them. Amuse me! They don't want to take the steps necessary to change their own situations. Think people! If you have a problem, it CAN be solved. You just have to think about what the answer would be for you, and then take the steps to implement the changes. Some people feel overwhelmed because to get to the life they want, they would have to make tremendous changes. Well, nothing comes for free baby... and a journey of a thousand miles always starts with a single step! If you are one of those people who need lots of changes to live the life you want, then start today. Map out what you want, and then plan a number of little steps that will get you closer to your goal. Then each day, take one of those little steps. Your life can change for the better! You just need to know how you want to change it. Then set a plan...and finally, the most important part, takes steps to follow through on the plan! Complaining wastes your time and mine. Do something with your life. Start the changes today. If you are not willing to do that...Then at least shut up so that we all don't have to listen to how miserable you are. Every day is a second chance. Yep that sounds great, but it isn't necessarily true. One day, for each of us will not be a second chance because we will never wake up. I think a better quote is "never put off to tomorrow what you can do today".
Whenever I read a quote like the one above I think of my wife. We started dating in July 1999. After dating for a couple of weeks, Sharon opened up to me and told me she was an alcoholic and asked me to help her to quit. It was a good sentiment, but one that she never followed through on. At one point, after we started living together we decided to start diaries. Once she passed away, I read through her diary and kept mine handy for the same time period to see how our outlooks matched up. A lot of her diary at around that time was about lying to me about her drinking and how she didn't "feel" like stopping just yet. I would write about how I thought she was drinking and lying about it on some days, and on how she seemed to be making progress on others. Meanwhile, hers would be about how she snuck out from work to buy a bottle and where she was hiding it. She would mention when she was grabbing a drink etc. etc. She believed she had lots of time to stop her drinking. Well, for her, a second chance was always around the corner, right up until her drinking killed her. My wife had an addiction. She realized this, wanted to stop, but never took sustainable action. It ended up killing her. It's easy to point at my wife and say "well yeah, but that was an extreme case!" But was it really? How many people do you know who are obese and yet do not change their diets or their exercise regiments to get in better shape? How many people do you know who go out most weekends and tie one on? How many people do you know who smoke regularly? All of these are addictions too. And they are very hard to break. Oftentimes, people give up one addiction only to bring another into their life. I will give you a personal example. When I was younger, I drank very heavily. I gave it up to help Sharon stop drinking. Back in college I had given up drinking, but went back to it after a while, because I felt not drinking was hurting my social life (this wasn't necessarily true). By the time I met Sharon, I was drinking out of boredom, and was looking for a reason to quit, since I believed it was a problem for me as well. Right after giving up drinking, I gained a lot of weight. When I started dieting, I noticed that my cigar smoking went from a casual habit of one or two a week to a daily habit. Similar to other "addicts" I was changing from one addictive habit to another. It has taken me years to realize this though. In fact, I just realized this the other day after reading an article about poor eating habits and their similarities to other addictive behaviors. So what are my addictive behaviors now? I am still battling with maintaining a low-carb diet. At the same time, I have added positive behaviors such as working out and push ups to the mix. Working long hours also seems to be a vice that I am driven to do. While working out is positive, I truly believe that I use it as a distraction to help get my dopamine high similar to how drinking, eating, or cigars gave me that high in the past. I notice that others also have their own little addictions going on...whether they want to admit to them or not. In the end, I find that I am always striving to better myself. I find it is best not to put off to tomorrow what I can be doing today. When I fail to keep up with something I am struggling with, I try not to look at it as tomorrow is another chance. That is such whiny bullshit. Instead, I look at it as a chance to better improve on the work I tried to accomplish yesterday. Beating addictions is hard. In my life, I have now beaten two. I have not had a drink since 1999, and I gave up cigars in 2003. To this day, I still get an occasional urge to smoke a cigar! Talk about the power of habit! I am still struggling to cut carbs out of my life. Diabetes runs in my family (as does alcoholism) and the carbs turn to sugar in your bloodstream. Pretzels and coffee rolls seem to be my major downfalls. As for working out and work in general, I will continue to try and work out daily. Meanwhile, it's hard to say how much of my day is work and how much is life. My work day is long, but broken down into many moments. I also home school my daughters during the day and take time to talk and play with them. I also do a lot of extra reading during the day that is only loosely tied to my stocks. I actually enjoy reading about the industries that I cover, so its hard to say how much of the extra reading is directly tied to the stocks I cover specifically. When I cover an industry, I try to become an expert in that industry. So there is a fine line between work and pleasure for me. I have rambled on long enough here. Please note, though, that I don't believe tomorrow is a second chance. Today is what you have, and there is no time better to make a positive change than right now. Because in the end, there will come a day for all of us when tomorrow will never come. Or a day when changing will be too late. Regrets suck. Even so, I think they must suck worse as you give yourself a shot of insulin or while you are relearning to walk after having some of your toes amputated. Or while you lie dying in a coma. Some regrets you have to live with. Some you don't. Try to have the wisdom to know the difference. Did you ever force yourself to do something very difficult because you knew that ultimately, it was the right thing to do? I have. I won't say what it was I did, but I will tell you that right after you do it you get the feeling that you have bit off more than you can chew, and you scramble to make more changes to make your original act work.
From experience, I'll tell you that the complexity of doing the right thing, grows in proportion to the time you have spent doing the wrong thing. I can think of a few simple examples that don't pertain to what is bothering me this morning, but that will allow you to see what I am angling at. Think of the last time you got lost. There comes a point in the trip where you realize that you made a mistake. At that point, did you turn around until you reached the place where you actually made the mistake? Or did you just plow ahead, figuring you would make a new short cut? Well, I just did this one! I was heading to Nashua following directions from Map Quest. I was looking for a specific road and as I was driving, a sign at the side of the road said junction 113 next left. Well, I made the next left and the road looked like an old farm road. My daughter and I both recognized that it didn't seem right, yet I kept plowing along anyway, figuring that I would hit a cross street that would link up with the road I wanted to be on. I mean, come on, the road was supposedly running parallel with where I wanted to go anyway! To make a long story short, the road took me nearly all the way back to where I started from. I ended up adding thirty minutes to my trip going back to the way I usually went to Nashua. The short cut Map Quest promised, actually made my trip longer! There are two ways to look at my mistake. 1. My mistake was looking for a shorter way to go, when I already knew a route that would accomplish my goal. This is the wrong way of looking at it. Man is always looking for short cuts to make his life simpler and save time. Think about the time we save by using cars versus walking? The second way is the correct way to look at my mistake. 2. My mistake was that after realizing that I made a mistake (withing the first 45 seconds of being on the road), I didn't turn around right away and correct it. If I had turned around and looked for the proper turn, I likely would have found it and saved myself 30 minutes. Did I get to my destination? Yes. Did it take me longer than it would have if I had turned around? Yes. The moral here is that pride goeth before a fall. Okay, that was a simple example of what I was talking about. The more I refused to deal with the error I made, the longer it took me to actually get where I wanted to go. This example is not as life altering as what is actually bothering me, though. Here is a better example, yet also not the "thing" I am speaking of. For years I lived an unhealthy life style. I drank heavily, overate and smoked cigars. Deep down, I knew these "choices" were unhealthy, and yet I kept doing them anyway. At one point, I weighed nearly 300 pounds. I gave up drinking in 1999 and smoking cigars in 2003. I started working out in 2006 and watching what I eat in 2010. My weight is now back to the mid 240's, but my goal is 200 pounds, about what I weighed in high school. The sad part is that I realized I was making bad decisions when I was back in college, and yet my response was a half-hearted vow to improve when I was older. The truth of the matter is that the struggle to get back into shape seems to be in direct proportion to the amount of time that I was making bad choices. I drank for a little over twenty years before giving it up. Sixteen years later, I still have a "beer" gut. Sadly (in one sense anyway), I realize now as I near fifty that I am in better shape now, than I was when I was in my early twenties. While that is a good thing, it also points to how far astray I was from a healthy lifestyle back then. Was it hard getting back into shape in my mid 40's? Yes, but it is also rewarding.When you do a hard thing, and it is also the right thing, good things cascade from your decision. My decision to start taking karate with my daughter (which I did for a reason other than to get back into shape) has been a life changer for me. I am in better shape, I have started to make healthier choices in regards to what I eat, it is great stress relief, and I have made a number of very good friends. Sometimes, the hardest thing IS the right thing! My advice: If you have something in front of you that you know is right, but you are afraid to start it because it is hard...start it anyway. I am not moralizing here. I just know from experience that problems just don't go away on their own. In fact, they grow in direct proportion to the amount of time that you ignore them. What is hard for you today, will be harder for you tomorrow after the problem gets larger. Make a habit of doing the right thing now, and you will find that doing the right thing always will be easier for you tomorrow. Today, I listened to the song "Never Too Late" by Three Days Grace... I believe my Dad has blogged about this before, but I wanted to just put in my two cents on this song AND the topic it discusses. The song in and of itself revolves around trying to talk someone out of suicide, if you listen to the lyrics properly. I find it strange, to be honest... once someone has committed suicide... it is too late. That's it. They've chosen to end their life, and it is over. I'm not trying to be pessimistic.. but it's the truth. There is no good way to look upon something like that.
Yes, you may have memories of the person and items that belonged to them, but you do not have the person and it is not the same. When the person makes that choice... it is too late. For them, at least. However, it is NOT too late for you. Some people get devastated over the death of a loved one... and I realize that it is tough to get over or understand at first. This happens to everyone; sadly, some of us let the death of another infect our own lives. I have friends on one end of the scale who say they could give a shit if ANYONE died and that they wouldn't care either way, and other friends who get so traumatized by death that they turn to depression and even suicidal thoughts of their own to cope. The point of this post is that we are all caught up in the great circle of life- we are born, we live our allotted amount of time out, and we die. It happens to everyone inevitably, one way or another. Some of us may feel that people are given too little time on Earth... but we all have an unset timer. When we die, we die. Yes, poor decisions may force that timer to run out faster, but we all die anyway. The younger the person, the more tragic the death may seem because it will seem unfair that they did not have as long a life as they should have, and it is even more tragic if the death is due to an illness that is uncontrollable. However: you should not let the death of another.. no matter how close to you... affect your life to the point that you yourself want to die. Nothing should cause that... ever. Yes, mourn their loss and grieve... but don't take death too hard. It happens to everyone, and it will continue to happen. At the end of your life, most of the people you knew and loved will have died too; and then you will die. The best thing you can do is pick your head up, shake off the bad feelings, and continue to live your life... just like everyone else. Maddie |
Archives
September 2021
Categories
All
|