What do you do when your car is snowed in?
Shovel the snow from beneath the wheels to make it easier to tow?
Nope.
This behavior is especially strange since at the 45 second mark in the video they almost rip the bumper off. You’d think they learned their lesson after that.
Nope.
Regards
-Simon
Taking responsibility for your own actions is a thing of the past. We are brainwashed from a very early age to believe that the bad things we do are a result of a failure of society to bring us up.
About a year ago I got into a heated debate with a few friends of mine. They argued that we didn’t truly have control over our actions, that free will didn’t truly exist.
I argued the opposite, that what we did was entirely our choice and that we should be held accountable for our actions, as well as take responsibility for the shitty situations we got ourselves into.
For example a fat man may decide to blame the abundance of harmful processed foods for his obesity. He reasons that, since it is so cheap and convenient to purchase this harmful food, that he is compelled forevermore to be overweight.
This notion is ridiculous as there is no shortage of decent and nutritious food out there. The food is cheap and convenient to buy and there is plenty of information on how to cook it.
Contrary to what I have just said, society does play a role in this inefficiency. It is however limited to making people feel justified in their foolish decisions.
The responsibility for a persons actions ultimately rests with themselves.
Regards
-Simon
Can men and women just be friends?
No.
Watch this video.
I made a post about this previously.
Notice in the video above how every woman says yes and every guy says no.
That’s a lot of guys being put into the ‘friends zone’ by a lot of girls. This should be made socially unacceptable (the whole ‘leading the guy on’). However it is a result of guys not making their intentions clear (guy’s fault).
Here we have a lot of girls who are either naive enough to think the guy isn’t interested in them, or selfish enough to string them along.
The guy expects a relationship out of the deal (most likely sexual). He gives the girls his friendship and emotional support. The girl accepts this emotional support (a benefit to her) but denies the guy what would be of benefit to him.
Judging by the reactions to the girls in the above video, it seems that they know exactly how the guy feels about them.
The guy isn’t innocent in this whole situation either. Instead of just coming out and making his intentions clear, he’s trying to take the ‘back door’ (so to speak) into a relationship with the girl.
Using a friendship as a tool to try spark a relationship with a girl is pretty low. These guys are rightly punished.
Now a moment of clarification and advice.
Firstly, there is nothing wrong with having female friends in the context of a group. The only problem is if it’s a ‘one on one’ type friendship.
So if there is a group with 5 guys and 5 girls, you can still be friends and there is no real manipulation going on (or ‘leading the guy on’).
However if it’s: ‘let’s go for coffee, just you and me’, then that is where the problems begin (unless it is in the ‘girlfriend-boyfriend’ dynamic).
The best advice would be to avoid these relationships all together.
In the words of one youtube commenter:
Regards
-Simon
This is how not to make a marriage proposal.
Watch this video.
This top comment sums it up best.
There is nothing more romantic about a proposal in public than there is about a proposal in private. The only difference being that one is manipulative (using pressure from a crowd to make the ‘target’ say ‘yes’).
We have to realise that the above video may be fake. It may be 2 actors. However you can find, on youtube and other video sharing sites, other public proposal fails.
Regards
-Simon
The desert island test is a simple tool to distinguish your preference between 2 alternatives.
Ask yourself: If you were stuck on a desert island, and you could only pick one of two alternatives, which would you pick?
So for example, if you are wondering whether or not you like watermelon or rock melon better… all you need is the desert island test.
So you are stuck with a choice between unlimited watermelons for the rest of your life on that desert island, or unlimited rock melons. That is all you can eat from now until the end of your life.
I personally would pick watermelons.
You may be different… that’s cool.
This test is brilliant as it takes out all external factors. You are stuck on a desert island so your decision is not altered by anything else.
BUT SIMON, THAT’S A HYPOTHETICAL… I DON’T DEAL WITH HYPOTHETICALS!
First thing, clam down.
Second, EVERYTHING is a hypothetical. Wondering what you’ll do tomorrow is purely a hypothetical as you could die of a heart attack in your sleep etc etc.
Every decision you make. So don’t use that b.s. excuse to avoid making a decision, or to consider what actions you may take in the future.
Regards
-Simon
The Secret To Success is the new autobiography by motivational speaker and youtube extraordinaire Eric Thomas.
Half autobiographical and half self-help book, this book takes the reader chronologically through certain events Eric Thomas’ (ET’s) life, all the while relating a particular success principle to that event.
Take a look at the trailer for the book here:
The book begins with ET running away from home at the age of 16. He made this decision based on emotion, something he would regret later on.
Running away from home was the culmination of his step father’s violent abuse towards him and his mothers’ lie about who his real father was. Eric runs away from his parents shouting ‘I hate you’ to his mother while the whole street was watching.
There was no going back. He knew nobody would bail him out this time.
The book then takes the reader through this 4 years of homelessness, how ET found God and the people he would meet who would have a positive influence on his life.
The success principles shared are explained in the context of ET’s struggle through homelessness. Here are some of them:
Principle 1: Don’t make a habbit out of choosing what feels good over what’s actually good for you.
What may feel good at the time isn’t necessarily what is ultimately good for you. When ET ran away from home, he did what felt good at the moment, to let his anger get the better of him. This would result in him spending 4 years without a home, sometimes in the freezing Detroit winter.
This is caused by allowing your emotions to dictate your actions. The more emotion you are feeling at the point of decision, the less your ability to reason is.
Principle 2: Avoid being your own worst enemy.
When ET found a place to stay after running away, he took it for granted. Part of the deal was that he would finish high school. He skipped classes.
Despite his friends hospitality, he never cleaned up after himself and left the house smelling when the owner (his friend) got home. Needless to say, he was kicked out and found himself homeless again.
This was a situation entirely brought upon ET by himself. He was his own worst enemy (which is often the case with most people).
Principle 3: You can change environments, but until you change yourself nothing else will ever change.
Once Eric ran away from home, he thought he would change automatically. This wasn’t the case at all. Change would come from within.
He found many of the bad habits were present until he made them go away.
There are more principles, but I will leave it at that and allow you to get the book and go through the rest. The principles and the context behind him learning them cannot be properly explained in this review.
The turning point for Eric was when one of his street friends told him to leave the streets and get his college education. Here is the excerpt:
I was so grateful when Lil B called my name that night…. “E, you still headed down south for school with De in the fall?” Lil B said like a concerned parent.
“No doubt,” I said with a being cocky but with a proud feeling. Lil B’s next words shocked me because I assumed he wanted to talk about how I got down that night.
“Then you need to get outta here. You are not like the rest of us, you got a chance so don’t mess it up. You have an opportunity the rest of us don’t have. Get out while you’re alive. I am proud of you boy, now go make the Twain proud”.
As I walked off the block for the last time, I turned to B and said, “I promise, college won’t change me homie”. I walked away from the Twain that day and I never looked back.
From there, the journey would lead ET through crisis and victory. He would do church work, community service work and establish a career as a public speaker. The second half of the book is just as inspirational as the first half.
His journey would eventually lead him to creating the ‘secret to success’ videos which would go viral and explode his profile not only in America but world wide.
(Here are the videos)
Rating
As you can tell, I liked this book. This book is short (about 200 pages) but packs a punch. It is almost always worth it to pay $20-$30 to gain the experience that someone spent a life time earning. This book isn’t short of lessons.
Overall I give this book a 9 out of 10. I enjoyed it a lot however it was devoid of detail as to how ET resolved his problems with his mother and father (which the acknowledgments make clear happened). That was one part of the book I was looking forward to.
However you must realise that this is a biased opinion. ET’s secret to success videos ended up having a profound effect on me and how I approached life. There’s more to come, no doubt about it.
Regards.
-Simon
This is a response to this blog post by a blogger named Sam Harris (which was suggested to me through Tim Ferris‘ fan page). It speaks of the forms books will take in the future. He compares paperbacks to E-books.
With E-books taking over more market share, Harris looks at the possible consequences we may face as a result.
However the demise of paper books has been greatly exaggerated (although it is funny that we now have to refer to ‘physical books’ these days). I remember in the 90′s when we were told that the post office would close down as letters were superseded by email. This is obviously laughable now (although I wouldn’t mind the post office closing down).
I believe it is the same with physical books. They will lose drastic market share but will still be around, at least for those who refuse to read e-books. The book store may go the way of the CD store.
Sure, there are some CD stores, but they are fewer and farther between than they were in the 90′s and early 00′s. Now everyone is downloading music from the internet.
I am not sure why e-books have suddenly become so big. I have been reading them for over 10 years now (back in the day when they were glorified PDFs). Now that the kindle has come on the market, they have become popular (who would have thought that an expensive e-book reader would make e-books popular when you could just read them on your computer).
The kindle probably succeeded because it was directly linked to the amazon market place. Suddenly there was a marketplace for the e-books, making creating them profitable.
I do not consider myself to be in any way technologically savvy. I am considered a laggard when it comes to adopting new technology, which is why I found it surprising that e-book readership spiked as late as 2011.
Regardless…
E-books allow an author to write a book of any size. An author can even sell collection of essays should he/she so wish. In the blog post mentioned above, Sam says it best (in regards to reading long books):
When shopping for books, I’ve suddenly become acutely sensitive to the opportunity costs of reading any one of them. If your book is 600 pages long, you are demanding more of my time than I feel free to give. And if I could accomplish the same change in my view of the world by reading a 60-page version of your argument, why didn’t you just publish a book this length instead?
The honest answer to this last question should disappoint everyone: Publishers can’t charge enough money for 60-page books to survive; thus, writers can’t make a living by writing them.
I am of the same mindset. You should make a book no longer than it has to be in order to convey your thoughts. It is now possible to do this.
A person can publish a book on create space (amazon’s self publishing site). They can do this with both e-books and physical books. You no longer need to kiss a publishers arse in order for them to take your book on.
All of this can be done relatively inexpensively (perhaps $100-$150).
It can also be done easily. You could record yourself speaking your mind, have the audio’s you’ve taken transcribed for a very cheap price (I think around $20, but don’t quote me on this) and then create an ‘essential rants’ book or something similar (should you so wish).
Since the perceived value of a book is directly related to its size (in most cases), publishing a physical book runs into problems if you don’t need many pages to say what you have to say.
In contrast I recently bought a kindle book from a youtuber I follow. It was a 40 page book (which I had no problem with) and it cost 99 cents. He was able to sell it so cheaply because he did not use a publisher (in today’s day and age he doesn’t need one). He probably made a nice profit on it (better than most physical books which do not turn a profit for publishers).
We really do live in a fantastic time.
Regards
-Simon
4 step formula For success:
1) Get In
2) Get It Done
3) Get It Done Right
4)And Get Out
The above 4 step formula was taken out of the book ‘Midas Touch‘ written by Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki. I have not finished the book yet (will be done soon) but am getting through it. Will post a review here when done.
That 4 step formula was outlined by Donald Trump. It was the formula used by his dad to become a successful business man (before Donald dwarfed his success).
This is in line with my observations of successful people (both reading books about them and observing their behavior in real life).
Successful people make decisions fast changes them slowly. They often are quite stubborn in sticking to them. The simple act of taking action often inspires these people to success. This goes both ways.
It involves not only seeing good decisions through but bad decisions also.
Why would you want to stick with a bad decision?
In an ideal world you wouldn’t have to, however we cannot make good decisions 100% of the time?
Okay, but why would you stick with the bad decisions? Surely you would stick with only the good decisions.
The one problem with that (and it is a big problem) is that you don’t know which decision is good until you have stuck with it for a period of time. Many people often get into the trap of changing their minds on a regular basis. They see that what they are doing hasn’t yet produced a result and so abandon the course they are taking.
It may very well be that they have abandoned the course that would have ultimately brought them results.
Successful people on the other hand will stick with what they do for much longer than most others. Sometimes this leads them to waste a lot of time (if they made a bad decision). Other times they will have made a good decision and stuck with it for long enough to reap the rewards.
Another trait often talked about regarding successful people is speed of implementation. Related to making decisions fast, however this involves having the faith to take the plunge. When you put yourself all in and leave no room to go back (similar to burning your bridges to inaction) people see this commitment and respect it. They will often treat you differently.
This is simply because they have seen you are committed and know there is no going back for you.
I believe this 4 step formula encapsulates both of the above traits of successful people. Which is why I believe it to be a good formula.
Regards
-Simon
Young people are often given advice that is similar to this statement:
You are young, you should only focus on having fun now as you will have to face the serious matters of life soon enough.
Youth is often provided as an excuse to mess about or partake in less than productive behavior. Youth is used as an excuse to partake in frivolous activity, obtaining instant gratification to the detriment of a persons long term well being. It could be the taking of drugs of abuse to the detriment of long term health. It could be going on an expensive holiday when the money could have been used to set that person up long term (often the money spent hasn’t even been earned).
The above statement (in red font) is based on a few fallacious assumptions. Let us outline the incorrect assumptions underlying this popular notion.
The first assumption is that there is no need for moderation. It is wrongly believed that the youth should seek pleasure without any regard for the future and to see it as much as possible. Under this assumption life is a non stop party, a party that gets boring the second the youth does something he or she is needed to do (something for the future). While the above statement does not specifically say it, it assumes that you should live in the now without any regard for the consequences.
The second assumption underlying this belief is that things that are meaningful to ones future are not enjoyable. In other words, it is assumed that having fun and doing something for your future are mutually exclusive. This is false as the world is not at all black and white. You can have fun working towards your future not just because the act itself may be fun but also because of the sense of accomplishment.
Next is the assumption that if you don’t have fun now you will never have fun. It’s now or never. As you grow up you’ll have to work, get married, have kids and then it’ll all be over… or so the narrative goes. Those things may be fun, you never know. Even if they aren’t, it doesn’t mean you wont have fun later on in life with other things. This assumption really is based on fear driven by a scarcity mindset.
This brings us to our final assumption. That to be wise and old, you must be young and stupid. Wisdom in your youth is seen as mutually exclusive with wisdom in the later years. This belief is perpetuated by losers.
Reckless people who do nothing with their youth have nothing as adults, they then want to drag the current day youth down (either consciously or unconsciously). Consequently they tell the youth to do nothing productive, instead have fun. This assumption is perpetuated by losers, who, if successful will create a whole new breed of losers.
You do not need to be stupid now in order to be smart in the future. You can carry out good productive work, have fun doing it and reap the rewards now and into the future. I have seen too many idiotic actions be justified by our limited youthful years (the best years of a persons life). Unfortunately I believe I will be seeing many more.
Regards
-Simon
“You can avoid reality but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”
-Ayn Rand
Welcome back. Been a while since my last post and so need to make up for lost time.
The above quote is from Ayn Rand. Author of ‘Atlas Shrugged’ which I hope to read and review here in good time (from what I have heard).
Imagine this…
A person proclaims that the sky is green.
You walk outside and look up at the sky. To your amazement (or not) you see that the sky is in fact blue.
You attempt to correct that person that told you the sky is green. They do not listen. In fact this person gets 9 other people, all of whom tell you that the sky is in fact green. Now you have 10 people telling you the sky is green.
Again you look outside and see that the sky is blue.
You tell them that the sky is blue and now you have 1000 people telling you that the sky is green.
The process repeats and you then have 1 million people telling you the sky is green.
You look outside and see that the sky is blue.
Ask yourself this question. At what point does the sky stop being blue and begin to turn green?
How many people have to tell you it’s green?
How loudly do they have to shout?
How many insults have to be sent your way before that sky turns green?
A truth remains a truth regardless of how few or how many believe in that truth.
Equally a reality exists regardless of your perception of it. You can ignore that reality, you can choose to perceive it in another way. But as the quote at the beginning of this posts states, you must deal with the consequences all the same.
Regards
-Simon