"I" Not "You"

               Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use. - Earl Nightingale

                Today is about “I” and not “you." This is a central idea involving the mistakes people make with friends, family, and in business relationships. Sometimes it's hard to accept others decisions, views, or ways of dealing with things. From our perspective they are clearly going down a wrong path. What can we do? Well, the best answer ……leave them alone.


                “Leave them alone?”  Yeah, that’s right, leave them alone. The most you can do for anyone is to believe in them. Persuading someone into doing anything they don’t like or want to do will most likely be a failed attempt. Most people don’t like to hear that, they want to believe they have the answer, but it’s the truth. The best you can do is for someone you feel is going down the “wrong” path is to listen and understand. Remember, no matter how “right” or “wrong” you think something is, it’s still your opinion. Let them live their own lives, experience their own pains, learn their own lessons. People learn and understand through experience, not lecture. Once they learn that they’ve gained your trust, they will begin to respect you more. Greater respect will make them more likely to communicate. Only give them advice if they ask and share ideas starting with “I.” Use sentences like “this is what I think…” or “I feel….” or “In my opinion….”. Avoid projecting your views onto someone else.

                 The best way to get someone to understand your view is to first understand theirs.  Respect starts within. You cannot get respect from someone else. Only YOU can feel respected and only YOU can feel disrespected. Those are YOUR feelings that you bring out based on the assessment of the situation. There is no way you can blame another for the way you react. Truly and genuinely sit and REALLY get to know their deepest concerns, what hurts them, what troubles them and what they are looking for. Your own insecurities will go away and you begin to gain respect from the one you care for. The only way to get someone to listen to your advice and understand you is to set an example. Example, if you force a child to eat a certain food, he will resent you for it. When you’re not there, he won’t eat it. Controlling someone with fear, guilt, and/or threats is not sustainable. It will prove ineffective and result in negative effects for both parties mental and physical health. Believing, understanding and trusting someone, will gain a lot more trust and respect than attacking them and making them feel guilty about their decisions.

              Intelligence is gained by experiences. This is an empty definition, it explains nothing. Experience is extremely situation specific. You may have heard people say,“I went to this school so I know more” or “I am older than you so I know more”. These are blanket statements. Let’s say you’re a 80 -year-old tailor and you meet a 20-year-old cook. It won’t be wise to say you are more knowledgeable about cooking or for him to say he is more knowledgeable about tailoring. Another example, someone hasn’t drove, a car, but read about it in books. Technically, he isn’t knowledgeable in the subject, he is just knowledgeable in the “theory” of driving.

              Morals are opinions. Principles  are natural laws. Projecting one’s morals onto another is like someone trying to force you to be gay (or if you’re gay, to be straight). Now think about that a second. Everyone, no matter how identically they are, will always have unique experiences in life, which will shape their morals. These subtle experiences may shape a different paradigm for them. Trying to force someone to think or see what you’re seeing is like giving someone in New York a map of Colorado and telling them to navigate through the city. Unless they are in Colorado, that map is useless to them. Same here, you can’t give someone your life map (paradigm) and expect them to navigate with it. if they don’t share your experiences.

              You cannot project what you feel is right and wrong  onto a population. Saying “everyone knows this” and “I bet more people would agree that this is wrong” means absolutely nothing. At the end of the day, it is STILL your opinion. If someone likes wars and violence and you don’t like it, it’s incorrect to say “that person is evil.” Instead, “to me, that’s evil” or “I am mortified by his/her actions” would becorrect. Labeling them is an opinion. People dislike feeling confused so they like to think their way of life is “correct." Really, it's just a sign of insecurity.


               Trying to understand someone’s pain is very hard to do. You can think you know how someone feels, you can understand them, but you can never truly feel their pain. Even if you were in a similar situation before you cannot feel their pain. You were not feeling it at the same exact time, with the same exact experience, and the same exact situation.

                Mental pain is much more devastating than physical pain. Mental pain is long term. It carries into our other activities and can even lead to physical pain. If someone gets their finger cut off, you know it hurts, but can you truly know how much it hurts? Can you feel what they’re feeling? Even if you got your finger cut off in the past, can you really feel exactly what they’re feeling at the moment? Can you recall what it felt like for you and feel it all over again as they’re experiencing it? Of course you can’t. Which is why understanding someone is so hard to do. It’s easy to guess and speculate how certain things feel, but it’s all speculation. Sometimes the best course of action is to just let people be and let them know you’ll be there for them.

                  Everyone is entitled to their decisions……lets not be insecure and judge them based on our own morals and ideals. Live confident, set a good example, and let people be.

Never EVER Give Up!

Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.-Winston Churchill

I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.-Michael Jordan

If you're going through hell, keep going.-Winston Churchill

A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes. -Mahatma Gandhi

          There’s no such thing as failure. The only time someone can fail is when they stop trying. No matter how many times you can’t do something, there is no failure until you quit. Sometimes we lose motivation and stop pursuing an activity, that’s normal. The negativity starts when we want something so bad, but no matter how much we try, we just can’t obtain it. I’m here to tell you that you can.

          As children when we don’t get something “right,” we are conditioned to feel ashamed or less than others. This is the furthest from the truth. All of us grow up with different experiences and are exposed to different environments. Some of us spent time planting crops and painting; others have been playing sports and building car engines. The skills focused in our youth will give each of us an advantage in different areas. A person’s development in a specific area or skill is dependent on many variables. It would be simply insane to rate someone on how fast they ‘learn’ something new.

          A common case of this thinking is the belief women aren’t as good as men at sports.  This is a false observational study. The only scientific difference is men, on average, are 15 percent stronger than women. This is completely irrelevant to motor skills. Girls are typically taught to play with dolls, set up tea parties, etc. Boys are pushed to do sports. What are the results? The girls develop better organizational/multitasking skills and boys develop better motor skills. These types of experiences are what shape how someone develops in certain areas, even emotions.

          Everyone who is new at something will not be an expert in the beginning. Those who pick up things faster do so because of similar previous experiences.  They already have the learned intelligence to apply to the new task. Everyone can learn anything, in their own way and at their own pace.  Patience, perseverance, and a strong will always bring results. Even something like a strong will can be learned. No one is “born” with anything implanted in their mind. Everything is possible to develop, at any age, if you work hard enough for it.

          I always use this example when I’m explaining the process of learning and growing. Recently, I began trying to do the flag. The flag is an exercise where you hold yourself up on a pole sideways with only your arms. At first, I had no idea how to do it, what muscles I was going use or even where to begin. I only knew I had to try it. I attempted and failed miserably.  I kept changing arm positions, asking friends, everything, but it seemed like it wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t give up; I kept trying with absolutely NO sign of improvement. Finally, one day I jumped and somehow held myself up for half a millisecond. It probably didn’t look like it from the outside, but I felt it. It was amazing, I felt everything I had to feel. I felt the muscles that were being used, how to hold out my legs, how far apart to place my arms, it finally came to me. I finally understood. All the time I was trying seemed futile and JUST when I was about to give up, I felt it. Without realizing, all that practice and effort I put into it before was helping. This has happened to me time and time again. The same thing happened when I was trying to learn muscle ups, and when I started boxing. Now I am confident no matter how hopeless something seems or how much time something is taking, to keep trying. You will NEVER lose until you give up, and even if you do give up, you can always pick it up and try again.  Often times I see people trying and trying and trying and they give up RIGHT when they have one foot in the door, RIGHT when the effective change starts kicking in and it’s such a shame.

          There’s always a way to grow, there is no such thing as being “bad” at something or “it’s impossible” to learn something. Be patient and dedicated. If you believe in yourself, you can do it. If you don’t believe in yourself, learn how.

Get Happy=Feel Optimistic=Get Stronger=Be Confident=Do Great Things=Get Happy

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

 Winston Churchill

“Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more, and all good things will be yours”

 Swedish Proverb

“The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”

It’s a gift to see when good comes along. Living a life of optimism is the only way that makes sense. It’s all about short term versus long term, which can bring about challenging, negative consequences. The short term consequences will be: being disappointed, underestimating certain situations, etc. The long term benefits of being optimistic far outweigh the negatives.  Optimism will make you gain respect in yourself and others, confidence, trust, understanding, energy, enthusiasm, creativity, open mindedness, the list is endless. This benefits not only you but everyone around you. You will be positively impacting your personal and global worlds.

Of course, you will always encounter those bitter souls that argue optimism isn’t beneficial. These people don’t strive to be optimistic, they can’t see outside their prior experiences.  The trick to get past these hindering experiences is to emulate a positive environment and constantly seek this environment. You have to break away from the negative influences. Let’s say something is negatively influencing my life and distracting me from my goals. With some discipline, I’ll actively prevent that negative influence from being accessible. To complement this, I would keep what brings joy and happiness into my life around and fully accessible.

Happiness is optimism, which makes you feel strong and confident. When negative situations strike, you’ll be so positive, nothing will faze you. You can you can triumph or help a loved one triumph with just your positive energy. It’s a strong, contagious phenomenon that is severely underestimated.

Get happy, feel optimistic, get stronger, be confident, do great things……In that order…then keep the cycle going……Stay happy out there friends!!!

Pain

“If we're growing, we're always going to be out of our comfort zone.” John Maxwell

                This week I’m going to talk about pain. Yeah, pain comes in different forms. I’m use to the physical form of pain and this year I’ve been exposed to the other form of it, mental pain. Throughout our lives, we begin to make decisions based on prior experiences and create our own reality based on those earlier experiences. The experiences that affect us the most are the painful ones. The easiest way to deal with these pains are to act like they never happened and shield yourself from things that remind you of them and all future ways to get hurt the same way again. The problem is that isn’t the most effective way and you will never get rid of them that way. All you will be doing is reinforcing a vicious cycle of hate and fear. The cycle becomes a spiral and now you have your world and this is really hard to change. You’ve emerged with a new paradigm.  In essence, you’ve created your own world, your own reality that is based on past experiences and you’ve let that control the entire future of your life (sometimes only in a specific area). 

                Most of all the good things we’ve got have come through risks. Unfortunately, a lot of bad things that have come to us have also been through risks. Now this is a problem and most people will begin to take less and less risks as time goes by as a result of their previous pain. The problem with this is that you end up reducing your quality of life. The best plan would be to find ways to take risks properly. Learn from the last and try even harder next time. Because chances are, whatever risk you did take was for a reason, you wanted something out of it and it didn’t work out the way planned. Granted, there are some risks that aren’t worth it, but very few, because we usually take risks (big ones) that are. Emotions aren’t bad, but they are when we don’t understand them. 

                Get strong and live stronger. We can’t erase our pain. The best thing we can do is not let it manifest fear and control our lives. We can make our lives so much better that we can overcome that pain and instead of running away from it. We can show ourselves what we’re capable of and not let our lives be dictated by something negative. We have to continue to look for the positive and make that a habit. Any habit is hard to break. So if we’re stuck in a habit of negative thinking, then we MUST do the best we can to break it. That comes by constantly being around, people, things, places, and anything that makes us happy. Once we begin to feel happy, we begin to feel confident, we begin to feel good about ourselves with clear minds to pursue more happiness and before you know it, the world will be a better place. Now we are positive and that becomes a habit. The only way that habit will break is consistent negativity, but that’s where we stay strong and remember that it’s only a habit and we CAN change it.

                We’ll be able to deal with pain better as we go along. I’ve mentioned this in one of my old blogs and I’ll mention it again here. We cannot control our emotions; we can only control our actions as a result of them. You cannot choose to be happy or sad, you can only choose to take action to stay that way or get out of that way. Practice positivity by practicing whatever makes you happy and take risk towards whatever you feel will make you happier, no boundaries! Feeling the same pain as someone else is the only way to truly understand another. With that said,.I’ve learned a lot over the past few months and I’m happy I had those experiences because I can now improve the quality of my life and the relationships I have in it. Since we’re on this topic, I would love to use this opportunity to thank everyone in my life the close ones and the ones I have just crossed paths with.

We are nothing.........only us, only me, only you, only them

 "Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against."
Bruce Lee

Religion, health, sports, culture, games, fashion, language, etc.  We all hold onto our ideals very dearly. Of course, we live by them and we are dedicated to continue living by them because they are a map, an idea of a clear cut goal or prize to live our lives comfortably. Or at least that’s a habit we get into. With this entry, I’ll stem back to the idea of the earlier posting regarding habits and habit forming.  

At a young age, we all pick up habits and hone them over the years. This is a good skill to have and will help us greatly in the future, but there is a chance we will develop bad habits. The only thing to get us back on track is to recognize those bad habits and step out of our comfort zone to break them and form better ones.  A major reason that always hold people back is feeling lost, confused, and wrong.  People usually tend to become defensive and begin to defend their ideals, their morals, their way of life in whatever area it must be. This isn’t a natural state in human behavior.  In fact, there is NO natural state in human behavior.  Everything is picked up from our environment one way or anything.  With that said, now there’s a possibility for solution.  If we developed these habits and picked them up through our environment, let’s see if we can manually influence them. 

Your identity isn’t you, you are free from everything. Don’t ignorantly let an idea or sub culture define you. You’ll end up defending it for the sake of your own insecurities, with a complete disregard for logic.  Let me make this clear.  Whether it is defending a moral belief or a scientific belief, progress cannot be made unless we recognize there is no right or wrong in this world. In science, there is valid and invalid based on probability and consistent data. This data can never be right or wrong either. It has to constantly be put to the test and at the end of the day, it can only be “accurate”.  If we being to let an idea, culture, religion, or any of the likes ever blindly dictate our way of life, then we have fell victim to one of the worst habits of ignorance ever.  We grew attached to these ideas and have now become dependent on them. We cannot grow unless the idea that we have attached ourselves to grows. 

The worse part of this all is that people will go through great lengths to get their point across ONLY for self validation and those great lengths are limitless, not excluding violence.  Once we begin to hold on to ANY idea with come disregards and disrespect to science and the world around us, we begin to become detached from the world and all of the people. This self-separation is very destructive in the long run. The Earth is a whole organism.  How can an organism be in conflict with itself? How can an organism not understand and truly feel itself? We must be humble and understanding to the world around us. Flexibility will get us far.


This weeks challenge: If you drive. Stop at a light in a busy intersection for three light cycles. Lets see how you can handle the pressure of others........Good luck out there!! :)

THE ART OF BEING HUMAN - science vs humanism

 Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.
Leonardo da Vinci

So as humans, what do we rely on? Science or the humanistic feels of love, passion, and general feelings/emotions? Well the answer isn’t one or the other. We live in a world where hardly anything exists in isolation. Separation and isolation are unnatural in nature so always being black and white about what we see in front of us won’t really give an accurate picture. One thing I will point out in the beginning is that it is impossible for a single human to be completely objective. No matter whom you are. No scientist, no politician, no leader, no hero, no one can be completely objective. Everyone is subject to error and our powerful subconscious loves to play with our emotions and urge us to act upon them, sometimes on a whim.

What does being human mean? Whether you answer this question from a scientific point of view or a humanistic point of view, the answer will almost always consist of both sides of the spectrum. There’s the scientific side and the philosophical side. Without the passion and desire to spread our ideas and the joy of fulfilling a legacy, science would be lacking considerably around the world. We can owe that to the humanistic side of the spectrum. Without science, we would not have the world we have today, the accomplishments and progress we see all over the world, from medicine to technology, would be greatly hindered. There is no clear cut answer. Both go hand in hand. Looking for a black or white answer is coming from fear. We humans dislike feeling confused, and sometimes we like to go with clear answers to avoid that confusion and feel comfortable. That’s a big mistake because as you can see here, there is no clear answer and when we set answers in stone, now we have hardened like the stone, losing our flexibility and never changing.

There is many times where people choose the irrational path in life. Kill a million just to save one person. Make others suffer just so they can get some pleasure or money. Make themselves suffer, just so someone can be happy. So many times we may look from the outside and think to ourselves, “what’s a matter with this person? How can they do such a thing?” What we’re forgetting is that they are feeling something that can’t be described by words and only expressed by action. That “something” can’t be explained or defined by witnessing the action. That unique feeling can only be felt. Unless you are feeling what another is feeling, it is impossible to understand them or their actions, no matter how much you think you do. Their lives, their passions, their experiences are unique to yours so their reaction to every little thing, the sensation they get is also unique to yours, no matter how similar you feel you are to another.  We live in a society that punishes instead of trying to understand. Unfortunately, as systematic as we try to make this society, “morals” still dictate our global societies and cultures. Morals aren’t scientific; they’re all based on opinions of a few. Think about that. Who has the right to punish another for these universal morals? No one stops and really tries to get into another’s shoe. Empathy is overrated and many who believe they are sensitive to empathy, usually aren’t.  

Without the factors that make us human, science wouldn’t exist and wouldn’t have any room to grow. We have to embrace both logic and emotions together. They both work together. It’s unnatural to separate the two. Will, determination, ambition………These are all human traits that influence the development of science.  There was a wonderful time in history when both science and humanism were in harmony. It was an age of great development and rapid progression in technology and society as a whole. The Renaissance bought the creativity and philosophy of the abstract human mind together with logic, science, mathematics, physics, and shook the world completely. Why? There was no discrimination, minimal resistance and no social reinforcement. Ideas were roaming freely with little to no restrictions and people began to look at the world around them and mold it to whatever their mind desired. They began to feel each other. There was no disconnect from one another. 

So here we are today. Confined to mainstream society, stuck in our shell of “do’s” & “don’ts” and fearing anything that isn’t 100% or isn’t technical. Our judgment has gone out the window and we’ve become guardians of our own mental jail cell.  The world isn’t black and white. Things don’t have to be one way or the other, they can be both and they can work together. Science has bought us so many good things, but also so many horrible things. Both are generated from human emotions. One can get mad and develop a weapon, but one can also love and create new energy sources for the entire plant. Do we blame science and logic or human error?..........Remember, they aren’t separable.

This Week’s Challenge:  Try to use ONLY your non dominant arm for a whole week. Don't cheat, try to go a whole week. If you mess up, start over. This is going to be interesting folks. Feel free to comment below.

The Complex Plan

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."

                         -Charles Darwin

We’re all human.  There are many times where we make plans and they fail miserably.  Not go wrong, but FAIL miserably.  Sometimes we know for sure that our plan will go a certain way.  We even work so hard at it and go through all the scenarios.  We work on it very intricately.  At the end of the day, why is there such a high chance that it will still go horribly wrong?

I won’t give too much of a run around here, but let me first explain that a plan is like a hypothesis.  It’s only a guess.  Until we have been in a certain scenario, we can’t get an accurate prediction from and for our actions towards the outcome.  If we do have experience in that certain situation, what happens? Our plans aren’t as thought out as they would be otherwise and we already know what to expect.  I’ll start off by giving a simple quote that most of you have probably heard of.  “Paralysis in analysis”.   Chances are, most of you have heard this term before.  The answer is simple if you just consider this rule of thumb when it comes to planning.  The more simple and direct a plan is, the less room there is for error; the more complex a plan is, the MORE room there is for error.  One thing to note is that there are way too many variables to account for when we make a general, detailed plan.  The more complex the plan is, the more unknown variables that are unaccounted for  enter the picture. 

I’ll give an example of this.  Say you’re going to do stand up for the first time.  Okay, you got your jokes down, this is your first time ever on stage………what to do………what to do…..Here’s a though process and a formation of a plan…. “I’ll get up on stage. I’ll go up from the right side and I’ll run up with a smile on my face” Now this is going smoothly in your imagination. “Next, I’ll make sure to comment on how shitty this place is and I’ll start off with the joke about the old lady crossing the street”.  Okay, this seems like a simple plan, right?  Well, let me throw in some unexpected variables.  You get up to go on stage and there is no right side, so you go up the left really awkwardly.  Then as you are going up, you get really nervous and tense up.  When you get to the top, the mic isn’t working so it takes a few minutes to get it running. Now it’s up and you awkwardly go right into your “old lady” joke.  

Let’s take a look at how much more smoothly a simpler plan would work.  “I’ll run out there, feel the audience and kill the show!” Now what do we have here?  We’re flexible.  Being fluid and non systematic gives you an opportunity to adapt and make best of whatever comes your way.  So you go out there, and seize the opportunity as it comes.  That way there isn’t room for error and it won’t throw you off balance.  So you fun up the left side of the stage, pick up the mic, it doesn’t work, you wait a minute and it comes on and now you make a joke about how poor their electrical work is and you’ll kick off the evening smoothly.

Go with the flow.  That’s the most important thing to remember here because when you do, you are the most flexible and adaptable.  If you come up with a complex plan and something goes wrong, it will hinder the rest of your plan.  Plans should be simple ideas, not intricate blue prints.  A plan is nothing more than a hypothesis.  Sometimes it works out, but just remember this rule of thumb.  Have a simple  plan, a general idea of what to do and just allow the details to fall into place as you move along with the plan.  You want to be fluid and adaptable, not stiff and robotic.  The most important thing is to be effective and being able to adapt to a situation is a really good quality to have when it comes to effectiveness.  “Expect the unexpected”? I say no…….Adapt to the unexpected.

This week’s challenge:  Call someone who you haven’t talked to in a really, really long time and make an effort to hang out with them.  It doesn’t sound too crazy of a challenge, but it is when it comes to comfort.

STOP GUESSING!

"The only source of knowledge is experience "
- Albert Einstein

 

It’s a new week so that means a new challenge for everyone.  Let’s talk a little bit about a very popular habit that people usually acquire easily and at a young age.  It’s all around us and we hardly notice, but it comes back to bite us in ways we wouldn’t expect.  It’s guessing.  Yes, that’s right. Guessing you say?  Well, let me explain by using a simple analogy.  It’s called the bike shed effect.  To put it simply, if you ask someone how to build a nuclear reactor, they'll tell you they don't know anything about it, but if you ask them how to build a bike shed, suddenly everyone is an expert.  Since it sounds simple enough, they just guess they know how to build one, even if they have no experience with it and never tried it.  The hardest thing for someone to say is “I don’t know”.  What ends up happening is that there is a lot of inaccurate information and false projections. 

The same reason that people have to avoid saying “I don’t know” is also the same reason they get upset when you don’t believe them or tell them they’re wrong.  Ego becomes involved and some people begin to believe what they say, even if there is solid evidence saying otherwise.  Sometimes it even ends up becoming a moral issue, where the belief becomes as strong as a religious belief.  Sometimes we have to be humble and say “I don’t know” when we don’t, even if it sounds like we do.  Sometimes we hear things and believe them without checking evidence or trying them out for ourselves.  This is just as bad as guessing.  It’s best to say something like “I heard _____ but I don’t know for sure, I recommend you look it up or ask an expert”, but most people just end up believing it.  Guessing isn’t always bad; it basically means you’re making a hypothesis, an “educated” guess, but what scientist do when they make an educated guess?  That’s right. They do experiments and a lot of research to come to a conclusion.  We should think like scientists when it comes to information.      

Let’s face it, there are a bunch of times where we were watching TV or reading a story in the news and said to ourselves “I would have done this or I would have done that!”.  This brings me to my next point about guessing, something I had to learn the hard way.  One thing people tend to neglect is the effects of emotions.  I myself have been guilty of this very recently and had to learn the hard way to never guess again.  You can tell yourself “I would have helped” or “how can he let her walk all over him?” or even “what would make him do something that stupid, I would never….” You have to stop and tell yourself something I should have told myself before it was too late….We can’t predict our emotional state.  It’s best to say “I don’t know what I would have done, the best I can do is guess”.  See, the thing is we may think we know and we may believe really deeply that we would act a certain way or do a certain thing, but we can only speculate because we can’t know for sure unless we are in that situation.  The only way to prepare yourself for a situation is to be in it, it’s that simple.  Experience is the only way to comprehend an action or a scenario you have never been in before, no matter how simple it is.  

Logic and emotions….Apples and oranges?

I am always an optimistic, proactive guy and up until recently, I believed that we have total control of our emotions, that if we are strong enough mentally, we can change our emotions no matter what the situation is.  I was wrong…….I ended up so confused and so disoriented that I began to question myself and reorient everything I once came to know.  What I concluded through my experience was that being proactive didn’t mean controlling our emotions.  We cannot control our emotions.  Emotional responses are quick, random, and come at the most unexpected times in our lives making us do or say things outside of logic just for relief, gratitude, or satisfaction.  They are uncontrollable, but preventable.  Preventable only if we’ve experienced them because how can you know a cure before being diagnosed?  The best you can do is delay the inevitable.  Now what we can control is our actions.  Our response to our emotions is what we can control. 

Logic is very dangerous because most of the time it is an over simplification of critical thinking about absent of emotions.  To put this simple, most people make logical conclusions based on comparison, which leads to guessing if they aren’t careful enough.  The problem with comparing experiences is that most of the time, a certain experience is very specific and completely hypothetical outside of its original context.  For example, it’s impossible to discuss the difference or definition of logic and emotion because humans use them synergistically and at no point in our lives do we use them separately, therefore we do not know the effects of them separately.  Making guesses is okay, unless we start making a realistic bases around them and believing them.  That’s exactly how myth’s are born and you’d be surprised at how many myths are out there and how many of them are popular/main stream, from weight loss, to oral hygiene.  Do your research people and stop guessing!!

This Week’s Challenge:  Sing out loud in a crowded public place like a subway or a supermarket or even a busy street corner.  Good luck out there!