Breaking Up With Yellow

     I'm not much for sentimentality.  I don't have a problem letting go of inanimate objects just because they're attached to a particular memory or feeling.  I'm a pack rat in reverse.  I throw things away I might desperately need at a later date.  Thinking that I might need something two years from now is simply not enough reason for me to retain it.

     I like clean lines, clutter-free, knick knack free countertops and tables.  My home is not a retail oddity shop.  You cannot come to my house and peruse an eclectic mix of bizarre items from around the country.  Functional items often cross the boundary into decorative, and this might be okay to some people, but I'm not trying to inflict my own personality onto the items I own.  I don't buy things because they're "cute."  I buy things that I need.

     Maybe it's a function of testosterone, maybe it's a function of a fear of personal attachment, but for the most part, I can throw almost anything away.  I think people, as a general rule, don't consider themselves enough.  People don't often sit down, have some quiet time, and consider who they really are.  We're on the go.  We have things to do.  We lose our sense of self awareness in our daily grind.  Our personalities are there, buried in us.  The fight to get out, though, has been lost.  We stand by original convictions as if we still feel the same way.  Case in point:  when I was very young, I decided that yellow was my favorite color.  Many years have passed, now, and when someone asks me what my favorite color is, I blankly, and without much thought, tell them it's yellow.  I have never revisited this stance and I am comfortable with the color choice of my six year old self.  I'm so comfortable with it, that I have a hard time revisiting my original conviction and I'm not really open to change it.  It's been yellow for so long, I feel that I might lose a little piece of who I am if I just up and abandon poor yellow.  And then where would yellow be?  Out on the streets, tossed aside like a used diaper in the trash!  We've been through a lot together, me and yellow.  How could I ever abandon you?  This may be an extreme explanation, but it illustrates the attachments we feel towards things.  And that's not even a physical thing, it's a concept.  Sorry, yellow, it's time for you to get evaluated.  People change.  It's not you, it's me.  

     I'm not saying that I hold absolutely zero sentimentality.  I like to look at old pictures, I feel connections to things I've had for long periods of time, and I have certain books that I just can't simply give away or throw out.  What I'm saying is in those rare times when we make a decision to like something, when we evaluate how we feel about something and respond according to that decision, we very rarely look back and reevaluate.  Once the decision is made, we take for granted that we will always feel the same.  We take comfort in never having to analyze that feeling again and years pass as we blindly assume that once we like something, we'll always like it.

     Sometimes, I make a snap judgement to throw something away that I don't think I want to throw away.  And it's hard.  But once it's in the trash, I move on and rarely ever think of it again.  Just recently, I was cleaning out my garage.  In there, I found an old beat up lamp, with no shade, in the shap of a koala.  The koala on the base of the lamp was a stuffed animal sort of thing, fluffy, hair matted down.  The lamp was not mine, it was my wife's and she had had it for as long as I can remember, probably before we had even known each other.  But I was cleaning out the garage.  I couldn't remember the last time we even attempted to plug it in.  Into the trash!  I continued cleaning out the garage, but luckily (and as an act of sheer self preservation), I got into that rare mindset of reevaluating my initial feelings.  Who am I, I thought, to inflict my personal feelings about keeping sentimental things onto my wife?  I thought about it for a while before I pulled it back out of the trash can.  Who knows what kind of memories this item holds for her?  Who knows what memories she would forever lose because this lamp was not here to remind her of them?  It was not my place, and I overstepped the boundary of respect for her belongings, assuming that she could have the same sense of disconnect that I have.  

     All of this begs the question:  Are we the sum of our belongings?  In a way, the answer is yes.  We acquire things and we project memories onto them.  We see an item and are reminded of a certain time and place, a situation, a smell, a feeling.  If not for the item, the memory inspired by the item, while not completely lost, will dull with the inactivity of thought.  These items bring it back, remind us of the memory, and repetition always equals retention.  

     So what, exactly, am I advocating here?  It seems as though I'm contradicting myself.  Throw it away, keep it for the memory it reminds you of...

     I'm saying that we are human beings, with thoughts and feelings and personalities.  We are unique and diverse.  I'm saying use the power of thought.  Don't blindly accept something just because it always was.  Reevaluate.  Hold yourself to a higher standard of thought and self awareness.  Try to understand how and why you feel a certain way.  It's easy to forget it in the mundane course of everyday life, but one day you'll wake up, and years will have passed.  It is the difference between letting things happen to you and making things happen for you.

     And come back yellow, I miss you already!

     

   Check out by book here!

     

Airport Shenanigans (part one)

People are amazing.  Recently, I flew to Atlanta on a work related expedition for product training.  

JIA is a humble airport, with a spattering of terminals, resting serenely, almost with an air of nonchalance, as a nearly insignificant blip on an otherwise uneventful swath of land inside the rim of Jacksonville's northern extremity.  I suppose what I'm trying to convey here, is that Jacksonville has a wishful airport, big boy pants for a waist that's just too small...it's trying, though, and one day, maybe soon, the waistline will fit the pants.

With ticket in hand and bags checked, I confidently made my way toward my designated terminal.  I wouldn't, by any remote stretch of the imagination, call myself a frequent flyer, but over the last four or five years, I've flown to Atlanta twice, Oklahoma City, Indianapolis, and Richmond, Virginia.  While I I'm not a Lord of the Rings level traveler, I would at least consider myself comfortable with and accustomed to the act of flying--in a plane, in case you thought I had acquired the next level of human evolution or come up with an aviatory solution not otherwise already considered.  Because of my past experiences with this sort of thing, I elected to bring a Tom Robbins novel with me in an attempt to quell the boredom of the inevitable wait.  I already knew that waiting in a security checkpoint line, on the plane before takeoff and after landing, and then on the tram to the hotel, was imminent.  Plus, the book is wildly entertaining.

Everything was textbook as I boarded the plane; everything was standard airport monotony.  I can find entertainment almost anywhere and people-watching at an airport could be the Super Bowl of a lifetime of people-watching training.  There's much to digest, if observing people is your bag.  

A little off-topic, and as a simple example (I like supporting evidence), I hadn't been inside of JIA for ten minutes before I witnessed the first of many soon to come novelties a simple airport has to offer.  I was standing on an escalator, heading down.  The escalator to my left was on the upward rotation, creating a technological letter "X" in the form of metal steps.  I mind my own business for the most part, I don't seek out strangers to talk to, don't give them a reason to talk to me.  In fact, in public places, where there is an abundance of people, my goal is to be invisible.  I slither through the crowd, not making eye contact, not making a scene in any sense of anything.  I'm not sure if my ninja skills were honed just so precisely on this occasion, or if the woman on the up escalator just didn't care that I was there, because she suddenly turned to two men about twenty feet back on the escalator behind her and asked loudly, affronted, if they were talking about her, and that she could hear everything they had said.  I, as previously stated, was on the opposite escalator, moving in the opposite direction and so was not privy what the two men had said.  One of them looked at her square in the eyes and told her, yes, they were talking about her.  Then she released the Kracken on them and began to unleash some words in the English language that I had only heard tales about.  

The voice trailed off the deeper I rode the escalator down, as my thoughts moved from how homeland security could possibly have executed her right then and there for causing such a stir in the airport.  They would have been within the limits of proportionate reactions because the woman had lost a grip on her sanity and quite literally had become a threat.  I never got to hear the end of that argument, but it would end up being just a simple skirmish in the war of my day.  

So, my thoughts moved back to finding my terminal, which I did, and fast forwarding, I ended up on an aisle seat, sitting there, invisibility cloak wrapped tightly around me, Tom Robbins book in hand.  The book had been a gift, and I had just started reading it after I had situated myself in my seat.  I was on page one.

The seats were five across, with an aisle in the middle.  I was on the two seat side, close to the aisle.  I only describe this arrangement to facilitate the understanding that the window seat was currently open, the plane not fully boarded, but really it illustrates that when my aisle-mate would arrive, we'd be in intimate quarters, just the two of us with no third wheel buffer.  A third wheel buffer always keeps the invisibility cloak in tact.  Head down in a book keeps it in tact too, mostly, because most people just don't feel comfortable interrupting a person reading.  My aisle-mate arrived and I stood up to let him get to his window seat.  A break in my reading, and a break in keeping my head down not to have to converse with anyone occurred because of this movement.  Obviously, I had not properly planned this out.

We were forced to exchange cordialities.  He was in his mid to late fifties, a little overweight, gray hair, but still held on to a youthful vigor only discovered after he began talking.  

"What are you reading there?"  Dammit.  Here we go.

"Oh," I muster a deceptively fake air of outgoing charm.  "It's a book by Tom Robbins."

"Not very far into it, are ya?"  Dick. 

I rally.  "I just got it.  Brought it to read on the flight."  There.  Short, to the point.  Stated my intentions. Leave me alone.  He gets it.  And he really did seem to.  I continue reading.

The plane begins to take off in the late afternoon, early evening.  The sunlight is waning, but there's still enough that I can comfortable see the words on the pages.  The airline had taken measures to ensure a convenient experience.  I like to believe that the meeting went like this:

"Look, we can give them more leg space, bigger seats for comfort, or we can give them overhead lighting.  We can't give them both.  Cut backs causing strategic use of our funds dictates this.  We have some tough decisions to make, boys."  He probably slammed his fist down on the table for emphasis.  The members sitting at the boardroom table probably jumped a little at the unexpected punctuation.

"Lights."  They all agreed.  Except Smith, who always went against the grain.

"Fuck you, Smith, it's gonna be lights."

So there I am, legs curled up to my chin, thinking about how Smith needs to grow some balls and stand up for his convictions.  I reach up to turn on my overhead book light, since my side of the plane is angled away from the sun.  I push the button....and nothing happens.  Wow.  I lose.  I accept it quickly, and go back to reading in the dying light.  There's still enough to easily make out the words on the page.

"Ya have to hold the button in for a few seconds to turn it on."  My best friend next to me suddenly exclaims.  Apparently, my dilemma has not gone unnoticed.  I graciously say thank you and hold the button in.  I hold it in a little longer than what I deem necessary, but it's just so my helpful buddy sees and knows that I gave it a shot according to his directions.  No light.

"The flight is only 53 minutes.  How long are ya gonna hold it in?"  Holy shit man.  This guy just directed me to hold the button in and now he's ridiculing me for doing as instructed.  This guy!  I don't respond directly.

"Oh well." I say.  "No big deal."  Still using as little words as possible, no longer so I don't have to interact anymore, but because I've already decided that I don't like him.

He turns his light on and directs it toward me.  "Thanks," I manage.  Maybe he's okay after all.  I would never find out.  The plane touches down in Atlanta and I'm off the hook with him.  "Good luck in your travels," I tell him, and he, none the wiser that homeland security could very well have wrestled me to the ground if they had but known my thoughts as I exited the plane.  

There's more to the story, but my time to write is winding down.  Perhaps soon I'll revisit it and explain the rest.  Maybe, when its rainy outside, or the kids are at school and I'm alone in the house and with no idea what to write about, I'll create the second part.  Enjoy!

Don't Eat The Meatloaf

Somewhere, in the winding recesses of my brain, locked up tightly, and probably rightly so, is true, unadulterated honesty.  It's a promise of secrecy we often share with ourselves, careful to spill only a few drops out at a time for authenticity.  Honesty is a hard truth to tell, an array of a million judgmental telescopes, all pointed at the world around us.  We're victims of perception, slaves of an authoritarian device telling us what to make of things.  How we manifest those views into language, how we articulate the feelings to ourselves and others is the measure of how well others respond to it.  But, as the cliche goes, "the truth hurts," and so we elect to keep the pact of secrecy we've made with ourselves to spare someone's feelings.  It just might be a dangerous precedent.

Take, for example, my lack of desire to eat food that someone has made from home.  "Here's some ravioli," she says to me, eyes hopeful that I'll enjoy it, "I made it from scratch."  Declining the offer, undoubtedly, is offensive to the would-be chef and several questions immediately populate my cerebellum.  What does her kitchen look like?  Did she wash her hands? Did she taste a little of it and reuse the spoon afterwards, without washing it?  What do her pots and pans look like?  Have they been properly cleaned?  Has she made ravioli before?  Did she cook it at the proper temperature?  A slew of questions, which, in and of themselves would be offensive to ask before I gingerly accept the fact that I'm getting ready to put my life in someone else's hands.

I'm okay with the fact that this might be an absurd feeling to have.  I'm comfortable with it.  My comfort with the absurdity of it doesn't make it any less real for me, though, and I have opted for a tactic of preemption.  When I meet new people, it casually comes out that I have a propensity towards obsessiveness about not eating food from someone's home.  This happens when there is not yet even the idea of an offering.  Sure, it's a preemptive strike, hitting them while they are unaware to solidify the fact that I am not personally singling out your food.  It is a general irrational belief that all food from someone's home kitchen is somehow contaminated.  They dismiss it as an eccentricity and life goes on.  Three months down the road, when people at work somehow come to the conclusion that a potluck is in order, they are not offended when I tell them I will not be participating in the act of devouring roaches from their homes.  Obviously, I sugar-coat it to spare any residual offense they may take.  But the result is that people remember that initial conversation and connect, subconsciously in their minds, that its not personal, it's my 'eccentricity.'

Suppose, for a moment, that you selectively choose who's kitchen you think is clean enough to eat food from.  People see you try their food.  It's delicious.  You eat it up.  Then Violet, who might be one gene away from literally being a filthy pig, decides she will bring some food for others to try.  You've already eaten someone else's food.  She saw you eat it.  TROUBLE!  Now you really have to decline the offer, as meekly as possible.  "I'm full," you tell her.  Lie.  "That's okay," she says.  "Just try one bite and tell me what you think of it."  TROUBLE!  There's no way in hell you're eating her food.  You remember her telling you about her rat problem and how she caught one by stomping on it.  

When you premptively ban all food before there is an offer of food, it is essentially you saying, "It's not personal."  People cope well with it and all you might have to do is to remind them that you have an irrational mental hang up about food from people's homes.  They easily accept it because you've already set the stage.  But you HAVE to use the word "irrational."  People will not accept the notion if you try to defend it as something that makes sense.  It makes the concept a little more manageable for people to cope with, and though they don't understand it, well, they believe you don't understand it either, and that it just is.  

Back to honesty, back to the filter, back to the charity of sparing people's feelings.  We think offensive things about other people every day.  If we chose to unleash those thoughts on society, there would obviously be a retaliation strike and we don't want to deal with that.  I can certainly dish it out.  But I certainly don't want to take it, and not because I have a weak tolerance for meanness, because meanness is a false projection.  It's honesty.  I don't want to hear negative truths about myself.  I don't think any of us do.  The act of not being honest with negative thoughts and feelings about someone else is actually an act of self preservation.  There is no "high road" simply because you just want to spare someone else's feelings.  You are subconsciously quelling a retaliation blow to your ego.  

Believe it or not (though, how could one not at this point?), I think inwardly and assess situations mentally before I act.  But I move fast.  I suppose it means that I've had so much practice at it, I'm at a level of automation where people can't typically see the wheels turning.  I respond quickly to a million possibilities, choosing my perceived best option in nanoseconds.  I often wonder if everyone thinks this way, keeping that inner promise of negative honesty a secret, moving forward, compartmentalizing, cataloging perceptions, and choosing better options than instincts suggest.  

In the end, and I guess as a bottom line, please understand its not personal.  I do not want to eat your cockroach meatloaf.  Not today, not ever.

The State of the Union

I'm trying to decide what to write about today; feeling tired and its rainy out, so I'm just sort of coming off the cuff today with a few thoughts I've had lately.  An open mind is better than a closed mind.  I'm always open to possibilities beyond my comfort zone.  True or false, I dabble in the business of writing fiction, so any idea is always a good one to me.

I typically don't post on politics, and I plan to keep the status quo here, but right wing, left wing, it doesn't matter, aren't you people embarrassed by your leaders?  What has happened to government?

  Once upon a time, there were some people that wanted to be free from religious persecution.  They moved to a place where they could practice their religion without that fear.  And that fear was replaced by a new fear: hostile natives.  They did the best they could, built homes, created families, etc.  Then they decided that they wanted to control how their tax money would be spent and didn't like the government that had established itself as the leader of this new area.  So there were protests which eventually led to a war.  A lot of people died.  Strangely, the rebels won and were free to establish their own laws and taxes and overall to govern themselves in this new area.  The sun rose on a new nation and everyone was hopeful.  The people of that new area decided that there should never be one person in power, because they knew that one person in charge meant that they could be forced to abide by a whim.  The people wanted the people to be in charge.  This way, they could have a say in what new rules and laws would be enacted.  

They got the help of this one guy, who they knew was capable of writing well and asked him to write a set of rules that would forever keep the people in charge of themselves, so that no one person would ever be able to control everything and thus make the people that decided to live in this new area victims of someone else's tyranny.  Ultimately, this set of rules would prevent the situation they were trying to escape when they fled to the new area.  Again, everyone was hopeful.

Things went well.  The people began to multiply and it soon became obvious that the people, since their numbers were becoming so great, would have to decide upon an individual to be a spokesman for them.  Leaders emerged and the people decided that the spokesmen should be people that could represent their particular town or village.  The people knew that not everyone could easily agree on things so they decided that the best way to go would be to let the chosen leader of their town or village lean in a direction that appeased most of the people in that town or village.  Essentially, he would speak up on things that was important to most of the people in the town or village he represented.  The people of each of these regions patted themselves on the back.  They now had one voice.

The area grew.  Years passed.  People, with hard work and human ingenuity, could become a relevant member of society.  They found that despite humble beginnings they could achieve greatness if they made a meaningful contribution to society.  The shackles of status or class were not forever etched in their family's history.  The individual could now achieve more than he could ever imagine.  But, of course, hard work and the worth of that hard work played a significant role in a person's potential future.  Turning a profit was admired and respected by all.

At some point, the power of those chosen leaders of the villages and towns corrupted them and they quietly made back door deals against the will of the people that had chosen them as leaders.  The deals provided the chosen leaders with power or wealth and in most cases, both.  The leaders wanted to make sure that their families would be forever taken care of, but they did it at the expense of the people they represented's wishes.  Often the people didn't even know; they blindly trusted the leaders they chose.  The leaders began to manipulate the circumstances of the people's choices so that the leaders could stay in power.  Some people caught on, but they had a hard time convincing others to beleive it and if the majority didn't believe in the corruption, the corruption would inherently continue.  That, coupled with the compromised system of choosing representatives allowed the corruption to infest this new system of government.

More years passed.  The people that had originally moved to this new area to escape persecution and persue freedom were long gone, but their children's children were still there and a lot were desperately clinging onto the tradition and ideas that their ancestors fought so hard to achieve.  Unfortunately, most of their children's children didn't fully understand what they had sacrificed for freedom and became complacent.  They allowed their chosen leaders to power grab and amass so much wealth that they couldn't get out from under the oppression of the leader.  The leaders, however, knew the underpinning situation and continued to fool the people with empty promises.  The people didn't know the promises were empty, and frankly had stopped thinking for themselves, since the leaders had most of them convinced that the leaders themselves could think for everyone.

There was a shift in what was important to most people.  They were trying to make ends meet, to feed their families.  They didn't have time to concern themselves with the freedom their ancestors died for.  That battle, in their opinion, was already won.  

Quietly, a new battle had begun.  Like the militia who hid behind trees to hit their marks instead of lining up in formal battle.  The government was sneaking behind trees, firing, then quickly retreating back into a secret foxhole.  It was so quick, one could question if it ever happened at all.  The people's freedoms were quietly dropping away from them as they contended with their everyday struggles, oblivious that their leaders had stopped representing them and had begun an engagement of self preservation.  

More time passed.  Today, our elected officials break our trust and more than half the population is oblivious or supports it because they believe it's in the best interest of the nation.  Long gone are the days where we were accurately represented.  Re-zoning, vote tampering, law changing, and purchasing power of our elected leaders prevents the common voice from being heard.  Laws are now putting everyone in a choke hold so that achieving the American Dream has become more difficult than it ever has been.  Once upon a time, one could change their stars.  Government is taking away the ability to raise our station in life.  It is choking out the creativity and ingenuity that made us a giant in the first place.  

My fear is that the wheels are in motion, and the brake line is cut.

Choose

There are thirty people in a room.  There are explosives tied to these thirty people.  There is a madman,  in a remote location with his finger on the detonator, and he is waiting for you to make a decision.  You say the word, and he will push the button, annihilating those thirty people.  But also, in his other hand is another button that he is just as willing to push.  All you have to do is tell him which one.  This other button can remotely detonate a different location, on the other side of town.  This other room has a single person in it.  Which button do you tell him to push?  There are no other choices.  He is going to press one with or without you telling him which one.  If you do decide to tell him which one to push, he will comply with your wishes, but no matter what, he is going to push one.

We now arrive at a moral dilemma.  How could we possibly choose someone to die?  Who are we to play God?  Well, the obvious choice is to save the thirty people by losing the one, right?  Could you really tell this madman, "Yes, go ahead and kill the guy."  Congratulations, you just saved thirty people!  But, conversely, you will have to live with the fact that you are responsible for someone's death.  You may justify it to yourself because of the thirty you saved.  

Let's think about this again, but with a minor change.  Imagine the one person alone in room number two is a loved one.  A spouse, a child, mother, father, whatever.  Someone you love very deeply.  Now what?  Still save the thirty people?  

For a while, I thought about it and decided, "Nope!  I will not make the call.  I will let this lunatic with the two buttons decide which one to press and then I can live on, conscience clear of any wrong doing because it was not me who decided that someone should die.  Of course!," I said to myself.  "Well played.  I guessed the correct answer, ethics in tact."  But the more I thought about, the less sure I was.  What about this:  the madman will press both buttons if you don't come to a decision.  This puts a kink in the idea that not deciding is a morally sound choice.  More people die if you don't tell him which to press.

The point I guess I'm trying to make, albeit in a non-intuitive way, is that sometimes we are forced to choose the lesser of two evils.  When no choice is a good choice, at least maybe one could be a better choice.  We often meander through life in this way, making acceptable choices given a buffet of choices, some good, some bad.  Then, as in a game of chess, we sacrifice a good choice for a bad one, because sometimes the risk of a bad choice is acceptable.  Just like sacrificing a pawn to get in a position to take a better piece, a rook, perhaps.

Our goal, in life, is to make good choices more often than bad, and to delineate the lesser of two evils and choose that one, and to weigh the consequences of a bad choice and decide if it is worth making.  Most people, I would guess, make decent choices.  But I wonder, too, what makes a choice decent?  If I benefit from a choice, is it then a good choice?  Ideally, and I'm really only postulating since I just don't know what the right answer really is, or if there even IS one, a person should settle on a choice that benefits one's self while not infringing on someone else's ability to make good choices.

I would like to think of this as the meaning of life:  to be faced with a cavalcade of choices and always try to choose either the best ethical option or the lesser of evils.  Depending on your particular religious belief, if we are to be judged upon death, those choices become extremely important--in fact, it is what we are being judged against.  And even though it's a BIG no-no, let's face it, we judge the hell out of others too.  How people view you is wholly based on what choices you have made and how predictable you will be when you are confronted with a future decision.  When we feel that we can predict, with some level of accuracy, what someone else's choice in a given matter will be, we feel like we know them.  We are comfortable with them.  Our entire life is defined by the choices we make, is what I guess I'm saying.  And we choose to be close with people that would make similar choices.

When they are cornered and must make the best choice among bad options, it is then that we see a person's mettle, it is then that a leader can be born, or a will can be shattered.  Decisions can be tough sometimes, and hindsight can always force someone to second guess, no matter the choice.

So the clock is ticking.  Choose wisely.  Look at the big picture and never, under ANY circumstances, get into a situation where you must decide who gets blown up.

7 Reasons People Fail

Everyone fails. Sadly, everyone fails more often than they succeed. If success were easy, it wouldn't be a goal worthy of attainment. So, let's go! It's just around the corner! A little effort and you've got it! In this blog, I postulate that success isn't hard. I also postulate that when we fail, we fail most often because of inward influences. I postulate, (now I'm just using the word gratuitously) that there is a proven method of success for every endeavor you may wish to pursue. If it can be done, chances are, someone's already done it, right? I'm obviously not speaking absolutely, here! Gee whiz! Cut me some slack. There are things that have never been done....trying to beat world records and such. I mean generally speaking. Most things that you, or anyone, wish to do, have already been done by someone. So, no matter what your goal, no matter what the measure of your success may be, there are things that keep us from that goal. The list, however, contained herein, may not be a complete list. There may be other, personal influences keeping you from success, but it's likely that most or all of the obstacles you face are in this blog somewhere. So, without further narration, as I tend to be long winded....can writing be long winded?....maybe the term is long prose-ded....or expositionous? Now I'm just making up words. The point is...the list of reasons why I have surmised that most people fail:

1. Lack of ability. This is one of the few seemingly external reasons people fail. And even though, upon first glance, it seems like an external reason, it's still internal. Lack of ability. Is the lack of ability really a lack of ability? Or is it a lack of practice? A lack of research? A lack of understanding of what you are trying to succeed at? Have you devoured every scrap of information on the subject? Have you studied the people successful at this same thing and understand how they arrived at success? Success, at any endeavor, requires an understanding of the process it takes to be successful at it. That's why the beginning of this blog, I stated that there is a proven method of success for any endeavor. Obviously, someone has seen success in the same field in which you are striving for success. Learn their story. History can teach you about possible pitfalls, before you have to experience them. Lack of ability, to me, really boils down to lack of knowledge. Make no mistake, though, knowledge of the success of others doesn't mean instant success. There are other factors. Let's explore another one.

2. Lack of effort. You can have an amazing grasp of what it takes to be successful in whatever area you are trying to be successful in. But understanding and education are static. Now, you must act on them. Lack of effort is one of the strongest contributing factors of failure. You didn't try hard enough. You didn't put everything you had into it. Most of the rest of the reasons for failure explore the motive behind this lack of effort. There is no amount of research you can do on a topic that will cover for it. There is no amount of conditioning or practice that makes up for not being fully invested when it matters most.

3. Self defeatism. Just who do you think you are, trying to do this? You must have some nerve! You are a fake! You are a fraud! All your life you've been a nobody. All your life you have failed at everything you've tried. You should quit now, while you're ahead, so you don't have to experience another failure. We tell ourselves all the time what we cannot do. Eventually, we start to believe it. The clichéd phrase "a can-do attitude" is desirable because if someone has it, they are willing to at least give it a try. Are you willing to give it a try? Are you going to try it, but then convince yourself that it's beyond you? This is a mental battle and it's hard because you can't clearly see to opponents, two sides. This is why we believe ourselves. Surely our own subconscious has our best interests in mind? If you can't trust yourself, who can you trust? This requires a paradigm shift, and it's not simple to do. It is case by case. Don't let yourself fail before you've tried. A positive mental attitude can bring you to the finish line.

4. Fear. This is a tough one because it requires you to explore what it is, exactly, that you are afraid of. I mean, beyond just the failure. As an example, I will tell you what I fear the most when it comes to success. I fear that I will not have a lack of effort, that I will not self defeat, that I will try my hardest.....and still fail. Because of this fear, I often choose to save face, let people see that I didn't try my hardest. It's a fail safe. If I succeed, then great. If I fail, well, obviously, I wasn't trying as hard as I could have. And people know it. Once upon a time, I was an excellent basketball player. The people that knew me and my ability always picked me first for their team. Because of it, there was pressure to perform, to succeed in the role they believed that I could fulfill. Often, when I was not playing to what I thought was my best, I purposefully stopped exerting my usual effort. People knew that I wasn't trying my hardest, and I was content with them thinking that. My pride simply couldn't handle people thinking that I had played my best and still performed substandard. It was, at the time, a happy compromise. But, of course, a simple game of basketball is less important that the real success we try to achieve everyday in our personal and professional lives.

5. Importance level/Commitment. This almost should go without saying, but it's a point that, however apparent, must be stated. If the importance level of the success is not high, who cares? If your commitment to it is not high, then failure becomes an acceptable option. Why even try to begin with? If it isn't important, brush it off and move on to other endeavors that meet the requirement. Are you wasting time and energy on trying not to fail at something that is inconsequential? Are you draining time and energy from something that isn't inconsequential? This is a common misdirect. Focus on the things that matter. If you spend a lot of time cleaning your house and take pride in every pillow on the couch being in place, the curtains just right, everything organized and being in its place, what does all of that matter if ITS BURNING TO THE GROUND?! Grab a fire extinguisher, call the fire department! To hell with your bed being made! Focus on things that matter. Look at the big picture as often as you can remember to.

6. Complacency. After seeing the same thing for so long, as humans, we learn to accept it. That's why some of these reality TV shows are even in existence. They make over homes and people, rescue failing restaurants, teach parents how to discipline their kids, show people how to lose weight, etc. We get complacent. Don't feel too bad about it, though, it's human nature. We need an outside view, sometimes, to pull us out of our complacency. Imagine if we could look at our home, or business, or life with an outsider's eyes. Try it. It's tough. You really have to think about it. But it's possible. The point is, then, don't get complacent.

7. Refusal to change. If it's not working one way, try a different way. People have failed because of the simple inability to admit that the decision they made failed. Why continue to do something if its not working? It's not going to miraculously and suddenly start working. Change it. If you own a failing restaurant and you opened it as a steakhouse, but there are ten other steakhouses nearby, not only did you not follow rule number one, you are holding on to a failing decision. You need to switch your cuisine to something the market has a need for. Seems obvious, right? Your pride is in your way. It may also be a bit if rule number six-complacency, but the bottom line is: you need to make a change. Don't not change and continue to be unsuccessful. Take the leap. Change. The new decision may also fail, but at least you have eliminated another failing idea to get to the successful one.

Anyone who has been a success at anything has experienced multiple failures before the success, from Ernest Hemingway to Michael Jordan. It is how we respond to failures that will define us as successes and usually, when people succeed, we all reap the rewards of their successes.

Are You A Good Person? (Intention vs Action vs Perception vs Reality)

The thought has occurred to me on many occasions and it is just now that I have decided to consciously notate it here, quasi-indelibly. By it's very nature, I'm not sure that the word "indelible" can be prefixed with the word "quasi" but I use it loosely to begin with because by "quasi" I mean that this blog is only as permanent as allowed by its owners which, in every case, is not me and can therefore be rendered a death of which i cannot control. But I'm getting off topic here, so let me reign it back in...

The thought has occurred to me on many occasions: What makes a person good? I suppose first we must agree on an absolute definition of what we take for goodness. I don't typically deal in absolutes, because nothing, to me, is an absolute. Yet, to be fair and to stifle variables, to quell arguments of the definition of such a subjective idea, let us suppose that "good" in the most narrow scope as possible means morally and ethically sound according to the most popular consensus of what people understand it to be. The Christian bible is as good a place to start as any, because, though most people may not know it, this is the ultimate rule book that dictates what most of society considers right and good. It lays out an ethical code one should follow for righteousness. Religious or not, most of the world population can agree with many of the rules the book puts forth. In fact, I posit that we all know them so well, we could usually make an accurate guess at what choice, in an endless sea of choices, would be more ethically sound, given any number of scenarios. Then we come to that Einsteinian problem of relativity. From a different vantage point, a good choice could be a bad choice, and so the question then becomes "good for whom?" But for the moment, I will dispense of all relativistic issues, dispense of all subjective possibilities and throw out tedious interpretations of what good really means. Lets get basic.

So, really now, what makes a person good? Four possibilities. One. What if there were an intention of goodness, but the end result turned out bad? Two. What if there were an intention of goodness, everything worked out, and it turned out good? Three--the darker possibilities: What if there were an intention of evil, but things went wrong, and the end result is good? And finally, four, what if there were evil intentions, success, and the evil idea came to fruition? I contend that it is intention that makes a person good. Even if something turns out bad, it is the intention of the individual that really shows where their heart is. I'm talking true intention, here, not simply saying that good intentions were present. But then there's another problem, and funny how logic problems can turn a simple solution into a dilemma so quickly. We now have a problem of perception against reality.

Perception IS reality. What I perceive to be true and real, really is true and real--to me. If I perceive the ocean to be yellow and the sky to be red, these things are real to me. I'm sorry, but no amount of arguing will convince me otherwise. The rest of the world could see the ocean and sky as blue, and that would be their perception, their reality. But not mine. And so my point is that perception is reality and we all live in vastly different worlds of reality. It could be a tone of voice that changes a positive statement to a negative one. I hear the tone of voice and interpret it as sarcasm. You hear that same tone of voice but interpret it as emphasis. The interpretation can change our perception of reality. And whatever we perceive is real to us. To tie this all together, I'm basically saying that I can see a good action, despite the disposition of the intention and perceive someone as a good person. Their intention could have been negative in nature, but they failed and a good action came about. In my perceived reality, that is a good person despite the intention they had to do evil. So, then, can intention really matter at all in the scheme of things?

I think there is no accurate way to decide if someone is good. We can only judge by a person's actions, never by their intentions. We are in a best guess scenario when it comes to judging others. If we see that most of an individual's actions are good in nature, we might be able to correctly assume that their intentions align with those actions. But that's all it ever is: an assumption.

The only thing we can truthfully decide upon is whether or not we are good people. It is a self assessment. We know our own intentions. We understand our own motives. But we are in a brilliant world, a world congested with competing personalities, all trying to assess one another.

This all comes down to a skill most of us have adeptly refined. It's one that I believe holds a negative impact on one's righteousness. And that skill is perception manipulation. We constantly try to force other people's perceptions. We want people to see us a certain way. We want to inflict an impression of ourselves onto someone else. So we weave a reality from the fabric of perception. The intention here is to control the environment, to hold the power of how people perceive reality. We want to be the puppet masters controlling the show and we try, with all of our might to force the view. Again, I feel that this is negative behavior. We all want to be good. We all want to be liked. The power is truly in the hands of those who release the attempt to control perception. Live life. Create your own reality. Let others perceive their own reality without interference. It is then, perhaps, that you have become a good person.