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Blowing It Scenario #77-Believing Change Doesn’t Require Massive Amounts Of Force And Action.

Don’t Be An Action Faker Either.

Someone said to me the other day, that when I was trying to make positive changes in life, that those actions felt so forced. Like that was a bad thing. And I thought to myself, “you’re damn right it felt forced, it was forced.” No changes come without a certain amount of effort. How do you move any stationary object? You apply force to it, the more resistant the object is, the more force is needed. And if you yourself are working on years of poor habitual activities. Your actions will require that much more force to counteract that. You are not, and will not be the same person at the end of the process. You will have to be completely forceful with your new actions day in and day out and it will rub some people the wrong way. But you will be better than before and once you begin the process it will push away those who grew accustomed to your earlier laissez faire attitude.

The most important thing we can do with our time is to take daily positive action towards internal and external improvement. It takes an internal belief it can be done. However that is the easy part. Belief will fade, sometimes as fast as you can dream it up. Belief is often just an action fake. We can’t simply read a great book than believe that we can accomplish anything, and just stop there. We need to make the external actions to our goals and beliefs repetitive. These actions must become our identity, and they must become our new habits. If your working on self improvement and you want to gain copious amounts of new muscle, belief will get you excited, but daily action is what is going to get you through the door and working. If your new identity is one of you being your own boss or an entrepreneur, you better wake up everyday and start working towards that goal first thing. Don’t even worry about trying to get motivated. Just take the necessary actions and your mind will follow.

The best habits we can develop are the ones that make those lives around us better. In Ayn Rand’s seminal book “Atlas Shrugged” she advocates individualism as what sets us apart, only selfish pursuits obtain you the riches you desire. I don’t completely believe this to be true. Their is no such thing as individualism, we don’t live in a vacuum where our actions don’t effect others. What most people gloss over in Ayn’s work is although her characters were selfish in the pursuit of wealth, they really weren’t, they needed to effect millions in order obtain their riches. Every business you ever came across helps someone in some way. That’s the positive daily action we need to strive for, to helps others. And in that “selfish” act of helping others, you help yourself.



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Blowing It Scenario #72-Cranks.

A Short Story By Blowing It.

Two young brothers are playing in a village one day when a old man approaches them. In his hands he carries two weathered and worn, slightly aged hand cranks. He tells the boys sealed in these hand cranks is power wisdom, release it and great riches can be yours. So the first boy, eager to receive such riches takes the old man’s offer. He runs home with one of the cranks. Excited to live his rich life he immediately finds a hammer and smashes the crank to pieces, to his utter dismay no such wisdom is released. He returns to the village and finds the old man, crank shards in hand and cries foul, “their is no wisdom locked in this worthless piece of machine, you lied to me.” The old man agrees with the boy and excepts his broken crank back.

The other brother just as eager to receive such wisdom, is more steadfast in his resolve, he takes his crank home and begins to turn the wheel. Day in and day out he toils over this crank. He starts to gain strength from the exertion on his muscles. He then begins to read and gain new knowledge to pass the time while turning this machine. He soon finds meaning and purpose in his menial task. For he will one day own powerful wisdom through this process. Before long people from towns far and wide hear of this boy and they come to see him. As the onlookers stop and marvel, he begins to use his new audience as a platform to teach all those willing to listen. He teaches them everything he can, he freely expels his new found knowledge. Knowledge he has gained over the years while laboring away. Soon the patrons begin to pay to hear what this young man has to say. He continues to share with the world the wisdom he has obtained while turning this crank. After quite awhile of teaching, he becomes very wealthy.

The old man returns to the village to come to see him again. The boy who is now a bit older, jumps up to hug the old man and thank him for such gifts he has bestowed upon him. The old man gracious in his praise reveals to the boy he did absolutely nothing to deserve such praise. For the cranks he gave to the boys were nothing more than a pile of junk. That the boy himself through his very own hard work and effort developed the powerful wisdom that he sought, and the riches that followed. It was always within him and only him. No material thing can give you such power, it’s all what you do with it and your belief in yourself. He tells the boy as you can see from your brother, instant gratification, although thrilling to begin with, usually leaves you very disappointed with your results in the end. Only effort gets you what you truly want. We are the only people who can control our meaning, we give the things around us that meaning. The crank was junk but held incredible meaning within you, and it was only you who used that meaning to channel your purpose towards gaining the wisdom and subsequent riches. I have done nothing but pass along an opportunity. The young man blown away by the old mans confession greeted him a loving smile. He tells the old man thank you again, for he discovered this fact on his own long ago.



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Blowing It Scenario #70-Fear Mongering.

Main Stream News Not Only Sensationalizes The News It Reports, It Creates A Sense Of Fear.

Every single article I came across this morning in the news had an ostentatious sense of fear surrounding it. Let me walk you through a few world ending head lines. West planning on bombing Syria. Fox news reporting the world may end April 23 when planet X passes by. Another article ask the question what if earth climate controlling conveyor belt came to a halt. The list goes on and on. Really almost all news could fall under blowing it. It’s hard to even read the news without getting some form of depressing thoughts bubbling up to the surface, or outright fear.

So often we’ll fall prey to this trap, we’ll develop anger and resentment and we’ll want the powers that be to do something about our new found anger the news has in sighted. Or more often then not, we’ll sit with our misery, only to take it out one the first unsuspecting friend or family member that is willing to engage in the topics. Usually these are topics most of us have very little or absolutely no control over what so ever. What are you going to do about stopping bombs in Syria or halting that fictitious planet from reaching earth? I’ll tell you this much anger isn’t going to help.

Honestly if you don’t read the news to use it for current events, I would recommend steer clear of it all together. We must stand guard at the gateway of our minds and one the best possible way to do that is to is to avoid such negativity, especially early in the morning. Often it can set the tone for the entire day. Avoid it like the plague. I’ve gone through multiple stints where I completely cut out news and I was all the more happier for it. However if you must read the news, I recommend an RSS feed news app that filters out only the news you want to read. Then only put positive filters on that app. Encouraging articles, improvement articles, helpful articles. That way the news you receive will be that of benefit and not purely of misery.



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Blowing It Scenario #69-Our Throw Away Culture.

A Failure Of Happiness, Love, Relationships, You Name It, We Throw It Out.

I seriously can’t believe how much we throw out and we do it at such a velocity with so much ease. I’m not talking about just the weekly garbage pick up either, although we do throw out a lot there too. I’m talking about life in general. We are consistently trained through media, entertainment, and through our friends, and family. The message is constantly bombarded on us through our phones and tablets, that your life might suck and it can be so much better if you just buy this or invest in that. We’re like Pavlov’s dogs trained to salivate at the promise of greener pastures just over the horizon. All the while we fail to truly appreciate what we have.

We tend to love what we have for a brief moment in time and once that moment has faded, we eagerly jump to the next thing that will arouse our fleeting desires. We love our home’s for a few years than we become discontent with it, the floor plan sucks, the bathroom isn’t big enough, we need to redo the kitchen, and after all that’s done, it’s still not enough. So we’ll throw it out and hope to get something better. We’ll find what we think to be the love of our lives and when things don’t go our way, instead of working on it, we’ll throw that relationship out. It’s no wonder we have over a 50% divorce rate. I believe that will continue to increase, like I said we are trained to want more every day. We go on dates and if it’s not absolutely perfect, we’ll throw that potential suitor out. On dating apps you literally practice throwing away real people, in real time. It may not feel that way, you’re just swiping at photo’s, but you are the judge, jury, and executioner and you do it all by judging that book by it’s cover, or in this case a persons face and body. And yet we can’t figure out why these relationships hardly ever work out. Well it’s because before the date has even taken place, you’ve already treated everyone else like garbage people. Casting them out before ever even knowing them. The phones we buy purposeful burn out there own batteries after two years of use. Just so you have to throw that one out and buy a new fancier higher priced one. A tool breaks or an appliance stops working we throw it out with no attempt to repair. We’ll order too much food at dinner and when we’re unable to finish, those extras will find their way to the trash heap. Our clothes get worn or dated, so it’s on to a new wardrobe. Everything has become so easily expendable. It’s obvious why some people are disengaged, dissatisfied and fed up.

There is a lesson on happiness in stoic philosophy that says if you want to be happier, than you simply have to lower your expectations. I believe that to be true in the material world and when relying on others, because others fall outside of our realm of control. I’m not advocating giving up either. In “Flow”the famous work by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi he states that happiness lies in progress, something we fully control within ourselves, too much too fast is not always good from a happiness prospective. It’s much higher stress. You can be a Steve Jobs or a Elon Musk but you’ll have to sacrifice an insane amount to achieve those results, including some happiness. Mihaly says the sweet spot of progress and happiness is getting 4% better and any given productive task. It’s the reason some can stay up all night playing games with others or when building something new and in doing so, you completely lose track of time. It’s because you’re in a state of flow, you are making incrementally improved progress. Challenging yourself to deliberately get a little better each time out. And the rewards are often amazing. It’s the similar to the Kaizen principles where you try to achieve 1% growth with each practice. So continually try to improve yourself and you’re life will automatically improve around you. Just be content with what you have in the process. Life is good, be thankful.



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Blowing It Scenario #67-Bill Cosby, 40 Plus Years Of Blowing It.

40 Plus Years An Alleged Rapist Has Walked Free.

All the while hiding behind the veil of good wholesome family man and comedian. Ridiculing and deriding other comedians that used dirty language in their act. This is the worst kind of predator. The most unassuming, and easy to trust. We were all sold the lie, and maybe that was his own carefully crafted image that made us buy into that facade. Making himself untouchable in the process and it’s those untouchables that get away with murder. Or in this case decades of sexual abuse, using drugs to rape victims. We didn’t want to believe it, how could the jello pudding pop guy, the guy who never utters a bad word, Doctor Huckstable himself, how could he be a sexual predator?

Today begins day 1 of his retrial, the fact that it has made it to retrial is somewhat baffling. However I do respect the court process and they are only trying one of the alleged victims case, so they have to completely disregard the numerous other women he attacked in years prior. And statute of limitations apply. All because he hasn’t raped anyone since his sixties. But did we only reach this statute because when original victims came forward their pleas for this sexual predator to be reprimanded fell on deaf ears? Were those in charge of the criminal process also so blinded to the fact it was thee Bill Cosby? I assume it’s very hard to charge a rape case. In most instances it’s one persons word against another and there needs to be evidence a criminal act occurred. However when there are multiple women coming forward with the same allegations it becomes time to act. Time to believe the victims, time to punish the accused.

In this type of situation I believe some flexibility in a statute of limitations should be allowed. If an accuser came forward many years ago and it’s on record but was completely dismissed or thrown out at the time because of the accused status. Than that should not be considered part of the statute, that should be considered poor investigating or poor judgement. Those allegations should now still be relevant, and admissible in court, and it shouldn’t matter how far back they go. Either way Bill Is 80 years old and has already gotten away with all this. We need this to be an example to future generations that it doesn’t matter the stature of the predator let’s go after them and fight them tooth and nail till the end. Till justice is served.



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Blowing It Scenario #66-Set Values And Fixed Mindsets.

Is it egotistical or self righteousness to have standards that are too high for anyone to meet?

Even if it is, we never the less should own it, if that is where we place our values. Don’t compromise if you don’t have too. Just know in doing so you’ll be alienating half the people around you, and half the world around you. Values are our life’s compass, our continuous guide lines. Stay within the lines and we eventually get what we want. Go outside of it and a whole new world is opened up for us right before our eyes.

This is not an argument to take one approach over the other.  We don’t need to settle for anything less than that of our highest standards but think of all the possibilities and life changing outcomes if we just open ourselves up to them. Imagine how cool life could be if we were in steady pursuit of our goals yet open to the possibilities that came along throughout that noble pursuit. Not a set or fixed mindset but a growth mindset. Keep continuously growing in all your endeavors, stay true to your compass.  Set the highest standards, have the most unattainable goals and values. Just be open along the journey to them.



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Blowing It Scenario #65-Our Failure To Value Our Time Properly.

Time Is Our Most Valuable Resource We Control.

Yet we squander it as if there is a never ending abundance of it. We’ll take on unfulfilling jobs that pay us barely enough to get by and in doing so, we let someone else put a price tag on our time. We’ll think we’re making money if we sell something online yet often times when we do, those that want to purchase want our time as well. It takes time to meet them, it takes time to make that transaction. Time we don’t account for but never the less time we lose. We wait on others often to attend events. I believe one of the most disrespectful things you can do is to not be on time. When you make others wait for you you are basically telling them your time is more valuable than theirs.

683,280 hours that’s how many hours you have if you live to be the average age of 78. Take out the more unproductive years of your youth and you only have three quarters of that time left. If we valued our time appropriately we’d probably charge far more for work and other menial task then we currently do. Markets tend to dictate price but people tend to dictate markets. We need to make them work for us without the barriers of our time.

We shouldn’t go out of our way just to save a buck when we know it cost 10 times that in time wasted. Just understand time is our most valuable resource. However you wish to spend your time, that’s truly up to you. If it’s spent only chasing what makes you happy, or if it’s spent in pursuit of getting ahead, or both. Just make sure it’s highly valued by yourself and those around you.



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Blowing It Scenario #64-Believing Your Own Hype.

Don’t Believe The Hype.

In the age where everything is posted on the internet, we can find information on just about every subject matter that will either fully support our beliefs or fully disprove them. Yet we buy into these beliefs so fervently that we sometimes refuse to see other people’s truths. Doesn’t matter what it is, you could believe the world is flat and aliens live among us. And you could find “facts” and data to support this hypothesis. It’s just how we interpret the world that tells us that’s right or wrong. But don’t allow yourself to get so polarized in your views that you create a prison of belief around you.

Beliefs are good to have, stay strong in them, but also be pliable in your belief systems. I had a professor in college once demonstrate the power of polarizing beliefs in class one day. Without any of us knowing, not even the poor girl who became the test subject that day. He began engaging her in a topic most get very polarized in, religion. It started out nice and seemed well intended at first, asking niceties about her religious background but as he began to disagree with her beliefs and started to break them down. Cracks began to show, dissension arose and a full out screaming match developed in front of us (the teacher never rose his voice) her relationship with that teacher became forever fractured, never to recover. That was the last day we ever saw that girl in class, she dropped it the next day. But if she could have stayed open and excepting to others beliefs even though he doesn’t share the same views. She could have learned one of the most valuable lessons in interacting with others. That we can never change another person’s beliefs until we can see it from their perspective. When we accept that their truth is also just as valid. We than, and only then can begin to suggest other possible truths.

We don’t always have all the answers. I especially don’t, I write everyday about beliefs but I want these beliefs to be challenged. We need to simply be students of the world, learning as much as we possibly can from better educated then ourselves and passing on the knowledge we have gained. Right or wrong I stay flexible and if better information comes along I had previously missed. I’m surely going to listen and develop my own new conclusions. Just please stay open to all possibilities, poor world views along with opposing views can start wars between friends and family and world leaders. Some that may never heal. Try not to simply just believe your own hype, take others into account too.



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Blowing It Scenario #63-Chastising Tattle Tales.

We Should Encourage Children To Tattle More.

We have all heard it so many times, parents will tell their children don’t be a tattle tale. No one likes a tattle tale. Or we’ll have fun colloquial phrases like, “snitches get stitches,” or “don’t be rat.” These ideas are reinforced in our mind through movies and television. Snitches really do get hurt and rats are killed every time you watch any gangster movie. So if you are raising your child to be successful in criminal activity or a gangster, definitely teach them to not to say something when they think another is doing wrong.

Children have an innate sense of right and wrong often better than that of the adult who cares for them and protects them. We should nurture their desire to share even if it means they sometimes won’t win approval, or they have to alienate another. And I get it kids will have absolutely annoying and pointless grips from time to time, but if we leave those unacknowledged or tell them to not tell on another. There just might come a time when major stuff happens to them, or around them, that they will be too afraid to come forward with. And they will avoid coming to the person they are supposed to trust most with these secrets. They’ll then begin to harbor these things in quiet solitude. Confined to the prison of their thoughts. And once in that state, there might begin a whole different slew of poor ways these secrets might manifest themselves throughout the rest of their lives. They could become reclusive, spiteful, hateful, addictive, abusive towards themselves and others, self destructive. The list goes on and on. All because they were too afraid confide in another. Because we built up barriers in their younger years by telling them falsehoods about sharing information. And those barriers became too insurmountable and it made them too afraid to speak out.

I’m not saying this is always the case and bad things don’t always happen to good kids that choose not to tell on another. But wouldn’t you rather have an open line of communication that knows no bounds? A relationship where trust is paramount and those kids know they can come to you with anything and you will listen? Kids are always going to tattle, listen and be rewarded. Close them off and they’ll begin to learn withholding is the best answer to their problems.



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Blowing It Scenario #62-Devil’s Advocating.

Or As I Like To Call It, Just Being An Asshole.

First off why would you want to advocate for the Devil? In mythological terms the Devil is the personification of pure evil. And to advocate is to publicly recommend or support actions. So in playing devil’s advocate you are publicly recommending and or supporting acts of pure evil. I know that’s not the intention when friends tell you they are simply playing devil’s advocate, but no matter how you write it off, you often times seem like a complete asshole.

We all have the friend that love’s to play the “what if” game. Or they love to run through worst case scenarios with you, till they’re blue in the face. You tell them your goals and dreams and they’ll begin to crap all over them. What if you fail? What if you fall flat on your face? What if you lose everything? They will then follow it up with a laundry list of all the potentialities of failure and risk. Everything negative standing in your way of success. My answer to them is so what. Yes bad things can happen and they probably will, at least we’re continually working towards a better future. Can they say the same? These people, who often times you want to remove from your life, are sometimes some of the most valuable contributors. They are usually the first test and the first barrier you have to break through in making your dreams a reality. Hopefully making you and your convictions stronger in the process. Get through these naysayers and you’ll be all the better for it. Give up and the devil has won.

If they are truly negative people all the time, completely remove them from your life. Otherwise your journey will be like that of Sisyphus, constantly rolling a large bolder up hill, only to watch it fall down to the ground when you near the top. Imagine repeating that day in and day out for the rest of your life. Remove negativity. It’s important to know the road to success is paved with obstacles and challenges all through out. Devils advocates are just a few trolls along the path, taking their toll. Pay it and move on. For they are the misfortune ones who gave up on their dreams long ago.



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