The Wall Street Journal started a new series of articles, "The Fallen: The declining fortunes of leading business figures." William H. Miller is one of the featured characters. Mr. Miller spent almost twenty years building a reputation as the era's greatest mutual-fund manager. During the last year he destroyed it.
Bill Miller is not a swindler, like Bernie Madoff, just a business man who made lucky decisions for nearly two decades. We love to call that 'success.' A succession of bad moves during the recent twelve months brought his business to its knees. Bad luck.
We are tempted to ascribe a series of consecutive decisions to business acumen when they turn out to be profitable. Luck would be too insulting a label for such a person's skill and foresight, wouldn't it?
And yet, the same man's inability to keep his success on a steady level or to increase it indefinitely shows that he has never been in control of his destiny. It just looked like that for a relatively long time. Bad luck during the past year proves that his twenty years of profit were to a certain degree subject to luck as well.
Now, I am not a friend of the term luck. People's successes are random, and so are their failures. Our endeavors are subject to probability, and it is incredibly dumb to believe that one of us can master it and find a system to succeed all the time and forever.
It's not in the cards, baby! You cannot control the markets, or why do you think a 160-year-old company like Siemens paid bribes of $1.4 billion between 2001 and 2007 (according to the SEC) to round up clients, or General Motors and Ford combined make less money than you do?
Not even banks can handle the markets and manage money: banksters have destroyed tens of trillions of dollars within the past nine years before they begged you and me--the tax payers--to save their worthless asses from the abyss.
The same reprehensible leeches who expect your children's children to assume financial responsibility for the grandest fraud and recklessness economic history has seen, will doubtlessly call the police when a beggar asks for a nickel at their doorstep. I have a thousand times more respect for the dirtiest beggar than for the bank and investment scumbags who called their old buddy Henry Paulson to keep them afloat.
Yeah, I know. I will stop ranting, but you better realize how utterly SCARED our society--liberals and conservatives alike--truly is of a free market. Economic freedom? God forbid! Capitalism, my arse. The last couple of months have shown that hardly anyone wants a free market or capitalism. People want to be saved, powdered, and pampered. We talk a great deal of freedom. Do YOU want it? Are you sure? That would make you a rather exotic animal nowadays.
I am serious: belief in perpetual control of anything is utter nonsense. Success is temporary, and so is failure. One of the most difficult lesson to understand for someone who has never been wildly successful--or lucky--is the fact that there is life after success. Failure can follow success just as easily as a new success may occur after previous success. Freedom has no guarantees, no safety net, and it will never be reliable.
Success is not the end. It is not likely to last. Success will not end your worries. Success makes for an exciting moment, a great day perhaps, and a fun celebration. But success is not a permanent form of life. "Oh, I will get rich one day and then I'll let my money make more money." Too often I have heard that sentence, and I usually assume some kind of brain damage is its cause. Reality works differently.
Even a so-called breakthrough is an isolated event. There is no "other side." Breakthroughs must be repeated if you want them to "last." Your first breakthrough will be one of many to follow, or it was something else. Roll a die, and the probability to get a six will remain identical with each new attempt. Same with success: after each success, you will start over almost at square one.
Here is the crazy part. Someone who has never tasted success is in a similar position as the person who experienced incredible success yesterday!
We have heard it all: 'Nothing breeds success like success,' for instance. And throughout past decades we have endured hoards of seminar quacks selling us that fire walking, bungee jumping, and other exotic nonsense helps to prepare us for business related fear and risk factors. Because "everything is connected with everything else," supposedly.
And if you walk over glowing coals, you will be able to go through tricky business transactions as well. Rubbish! Good grief, every dork can walk through fire without getting burned: just take your stinky socks off and don't hesitate until you are on the other side. Mental preparation? That's only a sales argument to lure you into the seminar. Not more, not less.
Shock of shocks: not even success prepares you for the next success. You need to bring your keister in the right position for upcoming events, similar to a goalie who needs to get back in position after each catch. Getting in position can increase the probability of success, but it won't be any easier the next time. The success after success demands all of you, and possibly MORE of you than the previous winning experience.
But, what about the techniques we have learned? Writing down goals, time management, or new age inspired pseudo-therapy in the name of corporate productivity? Motivational mood elevators, The Secret, communication training, strategic games, or sales boot camps?
PLACEBO effect, baby!
All theories and techniques that you and I have invested too much time and money into, don't have the slightest influence over your next success. Like a placebo, details of your education may "work" in your favor in spite of their existence. Our minds like to identify reasons for successes as well as for our failures. We deny the fact that life is not as linear as we would like for it to be.
What if success is not a succession of events that you can mentally line up in a row, like ducks? We are indeed free to fail after each success. We may be dead five minutes from now.
Depressing ideas? On the contrary: a person who believes to be the greatest failure the world has ever seen is not further away from future success than someone who believes to be on top of the world this minute!
Both got work to do. They are free to go in the direction of their choice. Neither of the two controls the outcome. Everybody else is in charge and equally free to vote with their pocket books.
And believe me, they will!
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Have you bought a copy of my book yet? 'How to Better Hate Your Job' is likely to turn your stomach inside out, and maybe it has some positive effects on your future endeavors as well. Who knows?
Monday, December 15, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
hope and love
Holy cows!
That's what hope and love are, holy cows begging to meet a cruel butcher. A German friend of mine recently subjected me to a lengthy lecture to show me his utter contempt for my crude opinion that hope and love are not only useless in many instances, but outright dangerous. My friend is a sweetheart of a man, but I still refuse to trust love and hope blindly. It is more relaxing to trust the intentions of someone who hates me.
No, I am not talking about your messed up love life: you will have to sort that one out all by yourself, if you can. But even there, love may be in the way of excessive enjoyment. You can tell, moderation is a four-letter-word in my vocabulary.
Think stocks. You own shares of a particular company, and your love for that company overrides your exit strategy. You are holding on to those shares all the thorny way down, instead of pushing the 'Eject' button with a cool head. Emotional attachment is a hindrance to making--or keeping--money when the market signals you to hit 'Sell.'
Remember the fatal relationship Enron employees had with their Enron shares? The financial mob blamed Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling--and rightfully so--but that did not repay the devastating losses suffered by employees and investors. We don't learn anything by blaming people. Usually we don't recover our monetary losses by taking responsibility either, but realizing our responsibility permits us to actively rejoin the game and the markets. Assuming responsibility provides us with the only chance to participate in the future.
Do you know the most painful forms of responsibility? Being responsible for screwing up is easy. Making a dumb mistake may not be our favorite thing to admit, but we have learned to manage it. The mistake of trusting too much, however, of dogged loyalty, or the realization how 'the power of love' in our peaceful hands can lead to (self)-annihilation is of a different quality. Taking responsibility for doing the right thing at the wrong time can easily shatter our belief in ourselves for a couple of years or decades.
We prefer to swallow some strong substances before we are willing to face the sobering fact that everything we collectively consider as good, may turn into an evil force the next time we touch it. Good natured German folks had to learn that devoted love for their country included the modus operandi for killing tens of millions of individuals and to burn extended parts of the world to the ground.
Good God, how could I get so distracted?!
Anyway, I am confident you understand the idea that your undying love for the shares of a publicly traded company can prove to be a bitter pill that your wallet refuses to swallow joyfully. U.S. Steel used to be synonymous with corporate success, but their steel production today is hardly above their output from 1902. I doubt U.S. Steel executives, their board of directors, and their investors expected a century of stagnation 100 years ago. They expected aggressive growth. But blue chip stocks don't come with the guarantee to remain blue chips.
"If you play enough, accept that from time to time you are going to go bust, because from time to time, everyone, even the best of the best, does. Every professional eventually is faced with having to hardnose the highway." --Doc Holliday, as quoted in Bruce Old's 'Bucking the Tiger'
The professional investor knows that love for a company is costly, sooner or later, and the dumbest thing you can do. And when the love for a stock turns into loss? Yeah, what happens? Right: dear old hope kicks in. Hope, that the market will turn around and your losses will be recovered. Need I mention tulip mania in the 17th century? The tech bubble of the nineties, or the unbelievable banking fraud--fraud is the true name for it, is it not?--that is currently destroying literally trillions of investors' and tax payers' dollars? Yes, hope and pray, and it will all be good really soon.
Now, if it can be a bad move to love a company whose shares you happen to own temporarily, can it not be equally dangerous to love a company you have founded and built yourself?
That depends.
We desire "to do what we love to do." That's awfully sweet! But I am afraid, love for the stuff you do will cut into your profits as well as into your happiness. I am just playing advocatus diaboli once again, and I don't really mean what I say? Wrong! I am serious.
As an example, assume a person who is establishing a business based on one particular product idea she has fallen in love with. It will fail on the marketplace entirely, it will lead to mediocre sales, or it will turn into a roaring success. You tell me, what is the probability for either of these three simplified options?
Exactly. And in the probable case of her beloved product ailing or failing, she will throw good money after bad in the "hope" that it will get better eventually. God, that is so painful to watch! The theory that you should do what you love is the most crappy leftover of the disgustingly pitiful baby boomer generation. It's like Deepak Chopra and Janis Joplin having a baby, or Oprah Winfrey and John Lennon, the most loved fascist of the flower power movement (when everybody agrees with me, there will be peace; brilliant!). Same thing.
Apropos, one thing the poverty versus prosperity thinkers of the 1970s and 80s promoted was abundance. Remember? That is not completely useless if you apply abundance to your ideas and activities. One idea or pet project is likely to fail. A bunch of practically realized ideas are more likely to include a winner. Introduce new products or services to the markets continually, and probability is on your side: at some point it is likely to work for you financially, if you live long enough or cough up new stuff quickly and frequently enough.
You cannot control which one of your products will make money or lose. Falling in love with one of your brain children is threatening your well-being and the likelihood to discover what works for you. Your emotional attachment to that one bloody sacred thing you want to do means almost certain financial doom, followed by hope that will cause you to survive until you are destroyed for good.
Doing what we love or not is not the issue. It's ultimately meaningless. Do whatever you do--no matter whether you love or hate the activity, the project, the product--with excessive attention, the utmost skill you can muster and hell, with your damn love if you must.
That will lead to a steady level of satisfaction you will never reach with addictive dependency on doing only what you love to do. Hope and love work against the ecstasy you expect to gain from them. Screw your imbecilic idea of doing what you love.
Instead, love what you hate to do.
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Have you purchased my book yet? 'How to Better Hate Your Job.' Grrr ... what are you hoping for? Better times, perhaps?
That's what hope and love are, holy cows begging to meet a cruel butcher. A German friend of mine recently subjected me to a lengthy lecture to show me his utter contempt for my crude opinion that hope and love are not only useless in many instances, but outright dangerous. My friend is a sweetheart of a man, but I still refuse to trust love and hope blindly. It is more relaxing to trust the intentions of someone who hates me.
No, I am not talking about your messed up love life: you will have to sort that one out all by yourself, if you can. But even there, love may be in the way of excessive enjoyment. You can tell, moderation is a four-letter-word in my vocabulary.
Think stocks. You own shares of a particular company, and your love for that company overrides your exit strategy. You are holding on to those shares all the thorny way down, instead of pushing the 'Eject' button with a cool head. Emotional attachment is a hindrance to making--or keeping--money when the market signals you to hit 'Sell.'
Remember the fatal relationship Enron employees had with their Enron shares? The financial mob blamed Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling--and rightfully so--but that did not repay the devastating losses suffered by employees and investors. We don't learn anything by blaming people. Usually we don't recover our monetary losses by taking responsibility either, but realizing our responsibility permits us to actively rejoin the game and the markets. Assuming responsibility provides us with the only chance to participate in the future.
Do you know the most painful forms of responsibility? Being responsible for screwing up is easy. Making a dumb mistake may not be our favorite thing to admit, but we have learned to manage it. The mistake of trusting too much, however, of dogged loyalty, or the realization how 'the power of love' in our peaceful hands can lead to (self)-annihilation is of a different quality. Taking responsibility for doing the right thing at the wrong time can easily shatter our belief in ourselves for a couple of years or decades.
We prefer to swallow some strong substances before we are willing to face the sobering fact that everything we collectively consider as good, may turn into an evil force the next time we touch it. Good natured German folks had to learn that devoted love for their country included the modus operandi for killing tens of millions of individuals and to burn extended parts of the world to the ground.
Good God, how could I get so distracted?!
Anyway, I am confident you understand the idea that your undying love for the shares of a publicly traded company can prove to be a bitter pill that your wallet refuses to swallow joyfully. U.S. Steel used to be synonymous with corporate success, but their steel production today is hardly above their output from 1902. I doubt U.S. Steel executives, their board of directors, and their investors expected a century of stagnation 100 years ago. They expected aggressive growth. But blue chip stocks don't come with the guarantee to remain blue chips.
"If you play enough, accept that from time to time you are going to go bust, because from time to time, everyone, even the best of the best, does. Every professional eventually is faced with having to hardnose the highway." --Doc Holliday, as quoted in Bruce Old's 'Bucking the Tiger'
The professional investor knows that love for a company is costly, sooner or later, and the dumbest thing you can do. And when the love for a stock turns into loss? Yeah, what happens? Right: dear old hope kicks in. Hope, that the market will turn around and your losses will be recovered. Need I mention tulip mania in the 17th century? The tech bubble of the nineties, or the unbelievable banking fraud--fraud is the true name for it, is it not?--that is currently destroying literally trillions of investors' and tax payers' dollars? Yes, hope and pray, and it will all be good really soon.
Now, if it can be a bad move to love a company whose shares you happen to own temporarily, can it not be equally dangerous to love a company you have founded and built yourself?
That depends.
We desire "to do what we love to do." That's awfully sweet! But I am afraid, love for the stuff you do will cut into your profits as well as into your happiness. I am just playing advocatus diaboli once again, and I don't really mean what I say? Wrong! I am serious.
As an example, assume a person who is establishing a business based on one particular product idea she has fallen in love with. It will fail on the marketplace entirely, it will lead to mediocre sales, or it will turn into a roaring success. You tell me, what is the probability for either of these three simplified options?
Exactly. And in the probable case of her beloved product ailing or failing, she will throw good money after bad in the "hope" that it will get better eventually. God, that is so painful to watch! The theory that you should do what you love is the most crappy leftover of the disgustingly pitiful baby boomer generation. It's like Deepak Chopra and Janis Joplin having a baby, or Oprah Winfrey and John Lennon, the most loved fascist of the flower power movement (when everybody agrees with me, there will be peace; brilliant!). Same thing.
Apropos, one thing the poverty versus prosperity thinkers of the 1970s and 80s promoted was abundance. Remember? That is not completely useless if you apply abundance to your ideas and activities. One idea or pet project is likely to fail. A bunch of practically realized ideas are more likely to include a winner. Introduce new products or services to the markets continually, and probability is on your side: at some point it is likely to work for you financially, if you live long enough or cough up new stuff quickly and frequently enough.
You cannot control which one of your products will make money or lose. Falling in love with one of your brain children is threatening your well-being and the likelihood to discover what works for you. Your emotional attachment to that one bloody sacred thing you want to do means almost certain financial doom, followed by hope that will cause you to survive until you are destroyed for good.
Doing what we love or not is not the issue. It's ultimately meaningless. Do whatever you do--no matter whether you love or hate the activity, the project, the product--with excessive attention, the utmost skill you can muster and hell, with your damn love if you must.
That will lead to a steady level of satisfaction you will never reach with addictive dependency on doing only what you love to do. Hope and love work against the ecstasy you expect to gain from them. Screw your imbecilic idea of doing what you love.
Instead, love what you hate to do.
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Have you purchased my book yet? 'How to Better Hate Your Job.' Grrr ... what are you hoping for? Better times, perhaps?
Sunday, November 30, 2008
bank blank
You are an excellent performer? A perfectionist, perhaps?
That's what is wrong with you! If you care to shovel real dough into your coffers, you might do well if you are dumb enough and an enormous loser.
Robert Rubin, former Treasury secretary and former Goldman-Sachs co-chairman, makes a living as a senior counselor and director at Citigroup Inc. these days. While Citigroup's stock has lost 70% in value, good ol' uncle Bob cashed in measly $115 million in pay--excluding stock options--since 1999. Over the past 12 months you, the tax payer, stuffed more than $45 billion dollars up his hapless employer's bottom, and I think that's awfully nice of you.
According to The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 29th, 2008), Rubin claims his role was "peripheral to the bank's main operations." Peripheral to the bank's main operations means he is kinda like selling cigars in the men's room and that's why he is one of the highest paid officials on the street. Rubin didn't want to run any of Citigroup's businesses, and he told colleagues he wanted "more time for activities such as fly fishing." What has he accomplished in his opinion? "It's a funny way to think about it. I think I've been a very constructive part of the Citigroup environment. I have been very involved."
How about you?
Are you involved and a constructive part of your company's environment? Are you blind, deaf, and mute enough to not know what's going on around you? Do you need more time for fly fishing? Can you lie sufficiently to deny responsibility for decisions you have made? Have you actively helped destroy 70% of your employer's assets? Grandpa Robert, for example, was indeed involved in a decision in late 2004 and early 2005 to grow Citigroup's CDO holdings (Collateral Debt Obligations), while the mortgage market was clearly heading South.
See, unlike most of my fellow citizens, I love people like Robert Rubin! I do not begrudge him the $245,000 he made per week for 9 years straight while pissing away his shareholder's savings as sufficiently as he could. And you ought to celebrate this man, as well.
Why?
Because he is living proof that life is unfair. And how is that a good thing? Freedom, Baby, freedom. Freedom EXCLUDES fairness. You can have one or the other, but you cannot have both simultaneously.
The miserable existence of a professional bungler and dumbass like Bob Rubin is an expression of YOUR freedom: the freedom from being equal and from having to share your candy bar with everybody else. Your freedom to earn more money than your neighbor and by Zeus, you do not need to feel guilty about it.
Putz Rubin shows you dollar for dollar that nobody gets paid according to his performance. At least real money has absolutely zero correlation with the quantity or the quality of your output. In other words, you are not only free TO succeed, you are also free FROM succeeding. You may mess up things royally and you still have a chance to end up in the money. Plenty of it, as in Bobby's case.
I don't suggest for you to become an old snake and a quack like Citi-Bob. Maybe you don't find it appealing to lie a lot and to dumb yourself down to shitty Bob's gutter standards. But before you are getting worked up over the Robert Rubins in the world and the sizable chunks of money that is foisted upon these poor guys apparently undeservedly, think again: we don't get in life what we deserve.
You do have options. You may be angry at some people over their salaries or ball your eyes out in mommy's lap and wallow in sadness that you don't have that many chips to play with. Or, you understand Robert Rubin as an inspiration and learn from him that the verb 'to deserve' deserves to be scratched out of your dillweed new age vocabulary. There are individuals who deserve to get knighted by the Queen, but they get gout instead. Huh, well.
I won't have people like Robert Rubin as my friends, and he would never choose to be near me. But his salary and the pathetic ways he "earned" it cannot enrage me. Not at all!
On the contrary, I am ecstatic that money works sort of like God--in mysterious ways--and defies all logic, rational thought, and meticulous calculation. We are addicted to discover the rules and laws our monetary affairs may be based upon, and then Robert-I-screw-you-and-Rub-it-in grins at us from the front page of our favorite rag. Jerks like Rubin are not role models your brats should adore as heroes and yet, they point into the right direction.
If money followed reliable patterns or universal laws, your freedom to make it would be limited. As scary as it doubtlessly is for you and me: we are free to try new things, and the new things are free to develop both ways.
Where there is no guarantee, there is freedom. A whole shitload of it!
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Now go in peace and buy my damn book already: 'How to Better Hate Your Job.' What the hell are you waiting for?
That's what is wrong with you! If you care to shovel real dough into your coffers, you might do well if you are dumb enough and an enormous loser.
Robert Rubin, former Treasury secretary and former Goldman-Sachs co-chairman, makes a living as a senior counselor and director at Citigroup Inc. these days. While Citigroup's stock has lost 70% in value, good ol' uncle Bob cashed in measly $115 million in pay--excluding stock options--since 1999. Over the past 12 months you, the tax payer, stuffed more than $45 billion dollars up his hapless employer's bottom, and I think that's awfully nice of you.
According to The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 29th, 2008), Rubin claims his role was "peripheral to the bank's main operations." Peripheral to the bank's main operations means he is kinda like selling cigars in the men's room and that's why he is one of the highest paid officials on the street. Rubin didn't want to run any of Citigroup's businesses, and he told colleagues he wanted "more time for activities such as fly fishing." What has he accomplished in his opinion? "It's a funny way to think about it. I think I've been a very constructive part of the Citigroup environment. I have been very involved."
How about you?
Are you involved and a constructive part of your company's environment? Are you blind, deaf, and mute enough to not know what's going on around you? Do you need more time for fly fishing? Can you lie sufficiently to deny responsibility for decisions you have made? Have you actively helped destroy 70% of your employer's assets? Grandpa Robert, for example, was indeed involved in a decision in late 2004 and early 2005 to grow Citigroup's CDO holdings (Collateral Debt Obligations), while the mortgage market was clearly heading South.
See, unlike most of my fellow citizens, I love people like Robert Rubin! I do not begrudge him the $245,000 he made per week for 9 years straight while pissing away his shareholder's savings as sufficiently as he could. And you ought to celebrate this man, as well.
Why?
Because he is living proof that life is unfair. And how is that a good thing? Freedom, Baby, freedom. Freedom EXCLUDES fairness. You can have one or the other, but you cannot have both simultaneously.
The miserable existence of a professional bungler and dumbass like Bob Rubin is an expression of YOUR freedom: the freedom from being equal and from having to share your candy bar with everybody else. Your freedom to earn more money than your neighbor and by Zeus, you do not need to feel guilty about it.
Putz Rubin shows you dollar for dollar that nobody gets paid according to his performance. At least real money has absolutely zero correlation with the quantity or the quality of your output. In other words, you are not only free TO succeed, you are also free FROM succeeding. You may mess up things royally and you still have a chance to end up in the money. Plenty of it, as in Bobby's case.
I don't suggest for you to become an old snake and a quack like Citi-Bob. Maybe you don't find it appealing to lie a lot and to dumb yourself down to shitty Bob's gutter standards. But before you are getting worked up over the Robert Rubins in the world and the sizable chunks of money that is foisted upon these poor guys apparently undeservedly, think again: we don't get in life what we deserve.
You do have options. You may be angry at some people over their salaries or ball your eyes out in mommy's lap and wallow in sadness that you don't have that many chips to play with. Or, you understand Robert Rubin as an inspiration and learn from him that the verb 'to deserve' deserves to be scratched out of your dillweed new age vocabulary. There are individuals who deserve to get knighted by the Queen, but they get gout instead. Huh, well.
I won't have people like Robert Rubin as my friends, and he would never choose to be near me. But his salary and the pathetic ways he "earned" it cannot enrage me. Not at all!
On the contrary, I am ecstatic that money works sort of like God--in mysterious ways--and defies all logic, rational thought, and meticulous calculation. We are addicted to discover the rules and laws our monetary affairs may be based upon, and then Robert-I-screw-you-and-Rub-it-in grins at us from the front page of our favorite rag. Jerks like Rubin are not role models your brats should adore as heroes and yet, they point into the right direction.
If money followed reliable patterns or universal laws, your freedom to make it would be limited. As scary as it doubtlessly is for you and me: we are free to try new things, and the new things are free to develop both ways.
Where there is no guarantee, there is freedom. A whole shitload of it!
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Now go in peace and buy my damn book already: 'How to Better Hate Your Job.' What the hell are you waiting for?
Sunday, November 16, 2008
do be do be do
"Diego [Rivera] provided the money; Frida [Kahlo] managed it. Rivera took no interest in finances, leaving large checks in payment to him in unopened letters for years. When reprimanded, he would counter, 'Demasiado molestia' (too much to bother)." --Hayden Herrera, 'Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo'
Do you need to have financial goals in order to earn decent money? Of course not. Dame Anita Roddick did not write down her goals first before founding the Body Shop. Neither did Diego Rivera imagine how much money he intended to make before painting another mural. I don't believe he had any frame of reference to store such a nutty idea in his brain. To Señor Rivera, sex and communism were more important issues to ponder, besides painting, than what he could buy with the fruits of his labor.
Professional pimps and whores should write down their goals but miraculously, even their business ventures have functioned nicely throughout the millennia without insipid new age advice. Infallible baby boomers, sort of eternal teenagers, raised modern generations of bungling prostitutes. And I am afraid that might include you and me. Here goes the theory: 'This is where I want to end up.' 'What do I need to do to get there?'
Doing X in order to acquire Y equals a certain form of prostitution. No?
I admit, I am wrong. I'm exaggerating shamelessly, and I have rudely offended you. I am sorry, so sorry. I'm trying to make obvious that it is not only possible to achieve success without previous goal setting, but it may be easier to make money when you are not chasing the poor buck as if you were hunting down a sick, exhausted rabbit. We don't literally think "I hope money gives up and croaks before I do," but often we live our lives steered by a similar philosophy. Not a promising guarantee for contentment or happiness.
Does that imply we don't need to work to get what we want? Yes and no. Yes, because you really don't NEED to work. And No, it's not work I am ranting against. Phenomenal psychic that I am, I do see work in your future and lots of it.
You are permitted to work as much as you want! To my limited knowledge, there is no law that forces you to work: you have the RIGHT to work. You don't have to. You don't need to. You may and you can work.
The ongoing compromise makes us hate work. It's not work itself. Jobs are not the problem. Between you and your miserable job, you are what's miserable. The job is fine, just like any other job. The mindset 'I NEED to work' is counter productive to achieving anything you want, because whatever you do to get there is not what you really want. The NEED to work, the idea that turns your job or your business into an involuntary activity, royally screws up your life.
Yeah, but I must work to pay bills and to buy groceries for my damn family! How can I make money if I don't work? There we go again, I did not say you should NOT work. Did I suggest you sit on the sofa, watch The Simpsons, and rent or mortgage payments accumulate in your bank account automatically? Not that I recall!
Let us take a step back. To make one crucial thing crystal clear: I love Homer Simpson and I will not badmouth my heroes. Having said that, I know individuals--some of them loaded with dough, others poorer than Diogenes--who sit and wait. And they wait. Neither I nor they know what they are waiting for. They wait staring at their TV set. They wait while polluting perfectly fine beaches with their useless arses. And they wait ON THEIR JOBS for better times and for better jobs.
Holding down (sic!) a job does not mean one works productively. Just describes a hog occupying the space of another. Unions have made a sweet living out of nudging workers to lofty levels of insufficiency. Work does not mean something useful or marketable will come out the other end.
Bunches of people successfully hide their lazy buttocks behind work. Looking busy doesn't substitute sufficiency, and going to work every day is no proof that work will be done once you get there. Jobs are perfect to spend decades of your life in a waiting pattern. Cubicles were practically invented to keep couch potatoes out of each other's sight. WORK is one of the most misunderstood terms in our times. As a four-letter-word it is considered intrinsically dirty, but is it?
On Monday, November 10th, 2008, USA TODAY printed an article about a Philip Morris owned turkey-processing plant in California that laid of 1,450 workers in 1992. USA TODAY has been tracking 15 former plant managers throughout the past 16 years. As common as it is to despise what we do, it was natural for those fired workers to hate being deprived of their jobs. We hate jobs AND we hate losing them!
"While devastating at the time, the turkey plant closing 'was a good thing that happened,' says Pablo Martinez, 55, and now the owner of two busy Mexican restaurants that employ 24." Two of the 15 guys died meanwhile (and not of joblessness). Thirteen of the 15 former employees "indicate, anecdotally, that those who lose jobs in recessions can land on their feet, and even thrive. They say being jobless can steel and motivate people to work long and hard hours, teach them to be self-reliant and to distrust safety nets, and spur them into fields they are passionate about."
One gentleman went on to restore collectible cars, employing 10 people today. Another became a lawyer specializing in creditor's rights. All 13 agree overall, that "losing their jobs was gut wrenching but a BLESSING."
Do they work less? I don't think so. Most of these guys had to work MORE during the past 16 years than ever before during their lives as employees. It is not the actual work people hate: it is the element of prostitution and slavery we abhor. I have to do what I don't want to do in order to get what I want. Gruesome!
Goal setting can lead to doing more of the things you hate to do. I know individuals who are paid so well for jobs they despise that they don't dare to quit, because wife and brood would be quite upset if they had to cut down on their spending standards. It is utter nonsense to believe that better pay will turn a nasty job into something you can enjoy in the future. You got to be an empty dumbass to fall for a mind trick like that, but let's not talk about multi-level marketing here.
The more emotionally attached we become to achieving a particular goal, the more we may hate our work. The more we want something, the more we hate what we do to get there--potentially.
A paradox? Absolutely, but you have experienced it, haven't you? The more you want something, the higher the price. The higher the price, the more desirable a certain target becomes. Eagerly trying to get it--or him, or her--INCREASES the difficulty to succeed. The grittier the challenge, the more worthwhile appears the pursuit. We are suckers for pain. The highest value we project into things we shall never call our own. The lowest value is represented by the stuff that clutters our home.
It doesn't have to be that difficult. What does it cost you to abandon what everybody else wants, that stuff with a price tag so high that it is improbable for you to ever possess it? Exactly: nothing. You could access a tremendous amount of additional energy by withdrawing it from exorbitant goals.
Why don't you want what nobody else wants?
Goals need to be written down for acquisitions so expensive, that whatever you'll have to do to reach your goals is likely to be work you will hate. It is not a law, but it is "likely," I said. Do we hate our jobs to create a balance between things we want and those we do not? Doomed logic! A form of slavery where slave and slave driver are the same person. There is no significant difference between employees and the self-employed, other than that the self-employed are somewhat more aware of their active role in this dilemma. The self-employed CHOOSE their status quo while the typical employee resorts to pointing fingers.
Within less than one minute, every employee could CHOOSE to do what she believes she is forced to do by circumstance. As addicted to pain as most of us are, it is unlikely that employees will flip the switch soon between misery and fun. The freedom to do so, however, is available without changing one damn thing in our lives. Perhaps self-torture is too cool to give up.
We hate to do what we do in order to have what we crave to have. NOT because we hate doing what we do: rather, we hate THAT we have to what we do. I have bad news for you. This irritating fact is not going to change when you hop jobs a thousand times.
Oh, I just want to do what I love to do!
Yeah right, how could I forget. May I ask you seriously: how many individuals do you know personally who do what they love to do, and I mean ALL DAY? And I am certain they all thrive financially, don't they? Now? I am waiting ..... how many?
I don't know ANY.
What does that mean? Just as it is pure idiocy to expect that children will guarantee your happiness--and what an impertinent, reckless idea to unload that responsibility on the small shoulders of your kids--work WILL NEVER MAKE YOU HAPPY. The job you currently hate won't make you happy and, write this down instead of your stupid goals, work you think you might love will never make you happy, either!
You have the grand freedom to EXPRESS YOUR HAPPINESS on your job, while playing with your brats, or when you are founding and building your own business. Doing 'what you love' as a recipe for happiness must disappoint you eventually, as it will drown you in depression if you try to gain happiness from finding and being with a person you love. Love is so incredibly overrated, it's not even funny anymore. You long to establish a business by doing what you love? Good God, I feel for you!
You hate your job or you love your work: what's the difference? Is that so important to you how you 'feel?' One dude hates to repair cars for a living and the other can't wait to get home from work, so that he can repair his vintage Jaguar all night long. Duh!
If you are still sorting out what you like and what you dislike in life, I recommend you grow up. I may sound like a condescending ass once again--and you are correct, that is me--but please quit wasting your time on things that are of secondary importance. When you watch a newborn baby, you will realize that the emotions this little bundle goes through change every couple of seconds WITHOUT any change in the environment.
Human beings feel stuff. All kinds of stuff. Sadness, thrill, lust, angst, joy, worry, love, stress, happiness, comfort, boredom, compassion, or an itch. If you think there must be a reason for all this, you are doomed. A vast variety of feelings makes you originally you, in connection with thoughts you have parallel to the adventure to feel. Picking one single experience, 'love' in this case or the love for what you do, is equally blockheaded as it is to choose 'being bored' forever. It won't work because it can't work, and your own life is proof that you are incapable of holding one preferred feeling for years to come.
You can't even maintain one feeling--like worry--for an entire day. Try it. You'll crack up laughing about this silly idea pretty soon. No, you cannot do what you love for a living. It's nonsense and it can't be done. WHAT you do and how you feel about it is unimportant. What you are willing to put into it is what truly counts. That turns you from being a consumer into a producer.
Happiness can't be bought or worked for. Or love, for that matter. Any attempt in that direction will be frustrated, leaving you devastated and floored. You can't do what you hate and hope to be happy once your stupid ship will come in. Neither can you do what you love and expect happiness any time soon. Both ideas are futile.
It only works the other way around. You can be happy first. When? That's up to you to decide. Then do whatever the hell it is you choose to do, things you enjoy and activities you can't stand. Hey, feel free to do what you hate and still: nothing you do can take away your happiness! Not even your blasted job.
Your choices: reaching your goals no matter what, or being happy no matter what.
What is more appealing to you? I am in no position to give you advice. But if you asked me what I choose, I'd tell you it is the latter. Being happy through sadness, worry, love, hate, joy, and--God forbid, lust--gently breaks through limitations that alternatives fail to challenge.
Good luck to you,
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Hey, even if you feel a slight temptation: DO NOT buy my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job.' I'll cost you!
Do you need to have financial goals in order to earn decent money? Of course not. Dame Anita Roddick did not write down her goals first before founding the Body Shop. Neither did Diego Rivera imagine how much money he intended to make before painting another mural. I don't believe he had any frame of reference to store such a nutty idea in his brain. To Señor Rivera, sex and communism were more important issues to ponder, besides painting, than what he could buy with the fruits of his labor.
Professional pimps and whores should write down their goals but miraculously, even their business ventures have functioned nicely throughout the millennia without insipid new age advice. Infallible baby boomers, sort of eternal teenagers, raised modern generations of bungling prostitutes. And I am afraid that might include you and me. Here goes the theory: 'This is where I want to end up.' 'What do I need to do to get there?'
Doing X in order to acquire Y equals a certain form of prostitution. No?
I admit, I am wrong. I'm exaggerating shamelessly, and I have rudely offended you. I am sorry, so sorry. I'm trying to make obvious that it is not only possible to achieve success without previous goal setting, but it may be easier to make money when you are not chasing the poor buck as if you were hunting down a sick, exhausted rabbit. We don't literally think "I hope money gives up and croaks before I do," but often we live our lives steered by a similar philosophy. Not a promising guarantee for contentment or happiness.
Does that imply we don't need to work to get what we want? Yes and no. Yes, because you really don't NEED to work. And No, it's not work I am ranting against. Phenomenal psychic that I am, I do see work in your future and lots of it.
You are permitted to work as much as you want! To my limited knowledge, there is no law that forces you to work: you have the RIGHT to work. You don't have to. You don't need to. You may and you can work.
The ongoing compromise makes us hate work. It's not work itself. Jobs are not the problem. Between you and your miserable job, you are what's miserable. The job is fine, just like any other job. The mindset 'I NEED to work' is counter productive to achieving anything you want, because whatever you do to get there is not what you really want. The NEED to work, the idea that turns your job or your business into an involuntary activity, royally screws up your life.
Yeah, but I must work to pay bills and to buy groceries for my damn family! How can I make money if I don't work? There we go again, I did not say you should NOT work. Did I suggest you sit on the sofa, watch The Simpsons, and rent or mortgage payments accumulate in your bank account automatically? Not that I recall!
Let us take a step back. To make one crucial thing crystal clear: I love Homer Simpson and I will not badmouth my heroes. Having said that, I know individuals--some of them loaded with dough, others poorer than Diogenes--who sit and wait. And they wait. Neither I nor they know what they are waiting for. They wait staring at their TV set. They wait while polluting perfectly fine beaches with their useless arses. And they wait ON THEIR JOBS for better times and for better jobs.
Holding down (sic!) a job does not mean one works productively. Just describes a hog occupying the space of another. Unions have made a sweet living out of nudging workers to lofty levels of insufficiency. Work does not mean something useful or marketable will come out the other end.
Bunches of people successfully hide their lazy buttocks behind work. Looking busy doesn't substitute sufficiency, and going to work every day is no proof that work will be done once you get there. Jobs are perfect to spend decades of your life in a waiting pattern. Cubicles were practically invented to keep couch potatoes out of each other's sight. WORK is one of the most misunderstood terms in our times. As a four-letter-word it is considered intrinsically dirty, but is it?
On Monday, November 10th, 2008, USA TODAY printed an article about a Philip Morris owned turkey-processing plant in California that laid of 1,450 workers in 1992. USA TODAY has been tracking 15 former plant managers throughout the past 16 years. As common as it is to despise what we do, it was natural for those fired workers to hate being deprived of their jobs. We hate jobs AND we hate losing them!
"While devastating at the time, the turkey plant closing 'was a good thing that happened,' says Pablo Martinez, 55, and now the owner of two busy Mexican restaurants that employ 24." Two of the 15 guys died meanwhile (and not of joblessness). Thirteen of the 15 former employees "indicate, anecdotally, that those who lose jobs in recessions can land on their feet, and even thrive. They say being jobless can steel and motivate people to work long and hard hours, teach them to be self-reliant and to distrust safety nets, and spur them into fields they are passionate about."
One gentleman went on to restore collectible cars, employing 10 people today. Another became a lawyer specializing in creditor's rights. All 13 agree overall, that "losing their jobs was gut wrenching but a BLESSING."
Do they work less? I don't think so. Most of these guys had to work MORE during the past 16 years than ever before during their lives as employees. It is not the actual work people hate: it is the element of prostitution and slavery we abhor. I have to do what I don't want to do in order to get what I want. Gruesome!
Goal setting can lead to doing more of the things you hate to do. I know individuals who are paid so well for jobs they despise that they don't dare to quit, because wife and brood would be quite upset if they had to cut down on their spending standards. It is utter nonsense to believe that better pay will turn a nasty job into something you can enjoy in the future. You got to be an empty dumbass to fall for a mind trick like that, but let's not talk about multi-level marketing here.
The more emotionally attached we become to achieving a particular goal, the more we may hate our work. The more we want something, the more we hate what we do to get there--potentially.
A paradox? Absolutely, but you have experienced it, haven't you? The more you want something, the higher the price. The higher the price, the more desirable a certain target becomes. Eagerly trying to get it--or him, or her--INCREASES the difficulty to succeed. The grittier the challenge, the more worthwhile appears the pursuit. We are suckers for pain. The highest value we project into things we shall never call our own. The lowest value is represented by the stuff that clutters our home.
It doesn't have to be that difficult. What does it cost you to abandon what everybody else wants, that stuff with a price tag so high that it is improbable for you to ever possess it? Exactly: nothing. You could access a tremendous amount of additional energy by withdrawing it from exorbitant goals.
Why don't you want what nobody else wants?
Goals need to be written down for acquisitions so expensive, that whatever you'll have to do to reach your goals is likely to be work you will hate. It is not a law, but it is "likely," I said. Do we hate our jobs to create a balance between things we want and those we do not? Doomed logic! A form of slavery where slave and slave driver are the same person. There is no significant difference between employees and the self-employed, other than that the self-employed are somewhat more aware of their active role in this dilemma. The self-employed CHOOSE their status quo while the typical employee resorts to pointing fingers.
Within less than one minute, every employee could CHOOSE to do what she believes she is forced to do by circumstance. As addicted to pain as most of us are, it is unlikely that employees will flip the switch soon between misery and fun. The freedom to do so, however, is available without changing one damn thing in our lives. Perhaps self-torture is too cool to give up.
We hate to do what we do in order to have what we crave to have. NOT because we hate doing what we do: rather, we hate THAT we have to what we do. I have bad news for you. This irritating fact is not going to change when you hop jobs a thousand times.
Oh, I just want to do what I love to do!
Yeah right, how could I forget. May I ask you seriously: how many individuals do you know personally who do what they love to do, and I mean ALL DAY? And I am certain they all thrive financially, don't they? Now? I am waiting ..... how many?
I don't know ANY.
What does that mean? Just as it is pure idiocy to expect that children will guarantee your happiness--and what an impertinent, reckless idea to unload that responsibility on the small shoulders of your kids--work WILL NEVER MAKE YOU HAPPY. The job you currently hate won't make you happy and, write this down instead of your stupid goals, work you think you might love will never make you happy, either!
You have the grand freedom to EXPRESS YOUR HAPPINESS on your job, while playing with your brats, or when you are founding and building your own business. Doing 'what you love' as a recipe for happiness must disappoint you eventually, as it will drown you in depression if you try to gain happiness from finding and being with a person you love. Love is so incredibly overrated, it's not even funny anymore. You long to establish a business by doing what you love? Good God, I feel for you!
You hate your job or you love your work: what's the difference? Is that so important to you how you 'feel?' One dude hates to repair cars for a living and the other can't wait to get home from work, so that he can repair his vintage Jaguar all night long. Duh!
If you are still sorting out what you like and what you dislike in life, I recommend you grow up. I may sound like a condescending ass once again--and you are correct, that is me--but please quit wasting your time on things that are of secondary importance. When you watch a newborn baby, you will realize that the emotions this little bundle goes through change every couple of seconds WITHOUT any change in the environment.
Human beings feel stuff. All kinds of stuff. Sadness, thrill, lust, angst, joy, worry, love, stress, happiness, comfort, boredom, compassion, or an itch. If you think there must be a reason for all this, you are doomed. A vast variety of feelings makes you originally you, in connection with thoughts you have parallel to the adventure to feel. Picking one single experience, 'love' in this case or the love for what you do, is equally blockheaded as it is to choose 'being bored' forever. It won't work because it can't work, and your own life is proof that you are incapable of holding one preferred feeling for years to come.
You can't even maintain one feeling--like worry--for an entire day. Try it. You'll crack up laughing about this silly idea pretty soon. No, you cannot do what you love for a living. It's nonsense and it can't be done. WHAT you do and how you feel about it is unimportant. What you are willing to put into it is what truly counts. That turns you from being a consumer into a producer.
Happiness can't be bought or worked for. Or love, for that matter. Any attempt in that direction will be frustrated, leaving you devastated and floored. You can't do what you hate and hope to be happy once your stupid ship will come in. Neither can you do what you love and expect happiness any time soon. Both ideas are futile.
It only works the other way around. You can be happy first. When? That's up to you to decide. Then do whatever the hell it is you choose to do, things you enjoy and activities you can't stand. Hey, feel free to do what you hate and still: nothing you do can take away your happiness! Not even your blasted job.
Your choices: reaching your goals no matter what, or being happy no matter what.
What is more appealing to you? I am in no position to give you advice. But if you asked me what I choose, I'd tell you it is the latter. Being happy through sadness, worry, love, hate, joy, and--God forbid, lust--gently breaks through limitations that alternatives fail to challenge.
Good luck to you,
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: Hey, even if you feel a slight temptation: DO NOT buy my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job.' I'll cost you!
Sunday, October 5, 2008
pleasure of pain
"People love to suffer fear and pain--think of all the recreational activities based on experiencing these things--from horror movies to roller coaster rides, and from aerobics classes to dieting. People will even pay good money to suffer fear and pain. They need it, they have to have it, they won't be happy without it." --Crystal Dawn and Stephen Flowers, Carnal Alchemy
Pain is the new pleasure. Well, it's not really new. The motto "No pain, no gain!" has been gathering friends and believers for centuries. Flagellating monks in the dark ages knew how to beat the exciting side of physical, emotional, and spiritual pain into the open. Hardworking men and women of the 21st millennium are facing fresh new sets of painful challenges. Yet they adapt quickly to exploit even gloomy areas of their reality for the purpose of extracting pure fun.
The fact that 87% of employees hate what they do can mean two different things: they are either too stupid to do what they love to do, or hating what they do IS EXACTLY what they love to be doing. Yes Ma'am, hating what they do is BETTER than doing what they love, because what they love to do is depising a lousy job. Isn't that obvious?
People aren't dumb! Give individuals some credit and yep, that includes yourself. We are making mistakes and we run into dead ends, once in awhile--that's how evolution works--but we do know what we want to do and where we'd like to go. We don't need ninny nannies and safety Nazis who are eager to protect us from ourselves, but who see us capable of paying for their exorbitant bills.
You want equality or freedom? You can't have both. They are mutually exclusive. If you value equality over freedom, you see your fellow human beings as weak or certifiably irresponsible idiots, incompetent to do what it takes to live their lives. It doesn't matter whether you want to destroy or protect people who appear to be somewhat subhuman from your perspective. I am sorry, but identifying a "lesser" class of people who desperately needs your patronizing help differs not from stigmatizing a defined group you plan to harass and hate.
You will hate me for saying this: movements for equality have fascist roots, one group trying to dominate the other. What's so bad about freedom, other than the fact that it scares the bejeezus out of us? Freedom respects your choices as an individual, assumes your capability, and expresses trust that you know better what's good for you than anybody else does. Cries for equality murder individuality in its slumber. Yours!
Hating a job means dealing with controllable portions of pain. Both, unemployment and self-employment, come with a high probability of going beyond the threshold into spheres of unpredictable and unbearable pain levels. Doing what you love and turning it into a business has the potential of lifelong torture and total self-destruction built in to it. Am I joking? I wish! No, risks and possibilities of self-employment and entrepreneurship are not limited to financial ups and downs. The chance that you will always love what you say you love is slim. You won't. It is more realistic to expect that you will hit moments when you hate the day you were born, during your career as a self-employed business person.
Thus is the price of freedom and I am willing to pay it. You don't have to be self-employed, and you continue to have my undivided respect if you don't. Being employed is still an expression of that same freedom and hating what one does is the price the majority of employees pays. There is no right or wrong here. But don't let the surface fool you:
Those who hate what they are doing, are doing what they love!
Egbert Sukop
Pain is the new pleasure. Well, it's not really new. The motto "No pain, no gain!" has been gathering friends and believers for centuries. Flagellating monks in the dark ages knew how to beat the exciting side of physical, emotional, and spiritual pain into the open. Hardworking men and women of the 21st millennium are facing fresh new sets of painful challenges. Yet they adapt quickly to exploit even gloomy areas of their reality for the purpose of extracting pure fun.
The fact that 87% of employees hate what they do can mean two different things: they are either too stupid to do what they love to do, or hating what they do IS EXACTLY what they love to be doing. Yes Ma'am, hating what they do is BETTER than doing what they love, because what they love to do is depising a lousy job. Isn't that obvious?
People aren't dumb! Give individuals some credit and yep, that includes yourself. We are making mistakes and we run into dead ends, once in awhile--that's how evolution works--but we do know what we want to do and where we'd like to go. We don't need ninny nannies and safety Nazis who are eager to protect us from ourselves, but who see us capable of paying for their exorbitant bills.
You want equality or freedom? You can't have both. They are mutually exclusive. If you value equality over freedom, you see your fellow human beings as weak or certifiably irresponsible idiots, incompetent to do what it takes to live their lives. It doesn't matter whether you want to destroy or protect people who appear to be somewhat subhuman from your perspective. I am sorry, but identifying a "lesser" class of people who desperately needs your patronizing help differs not from stigmatizing a defined group you plan to harass and hate.
You will hate me for saying this: movements for equality have fascist roots, one group trying to dominate the other. What's so bad about freedom, other than the fact that it scares the bejeezus out of us? Freedom respects your choices as an individual, assumes your capability, and expresses trust that you know better what's good for you than anybody else does. Cries for equality murder individuality in its slumber. Yours!
Hating a job means dealing with controllable portions of pain. Both, unemployment and self-employment, come with a high probability of going beyond the threshold into spheres of unpredictable and unbearable pain levels. Doing what you love and turning it into a business has the potential of lifelong torture and total self-destruction built in to it. Am I joking? I wish! No, risks and possibilities of self-employment and entrepreneurship are not limited to financial ups and downs. The chance that you will always love what you say you love is slim. You won't. It is more realistic to expect that you will hit moments when you hate the day you were born, during your career as a self-employed business person.
Thus is the price of freedom and I am willing to pay it. You don't have to be self-employed, and you continue to have my undivided respect if you don't. Being employed is still an expression of that same freedom and hating what one does is the price the majority of employees pays. There is no right or wrong here. But don't let the surface fool you:
Those who hate what they are doing, are doing what they love!
Egbert Sukop
Sunday, September 21, 2008
advocatus diaboli
I upset people. That's what I do. Some of my best friends think of me as an irritating bastard and still, that won't keep them from inviting me to the next Thanksgiving dinner. Sweet people, but how much worse must be your perception of me? You, who don't know me personally, don't have many options between hating my guts and loving me "anyway." But wait, perhaps there is something else to be considered:
My evil ways are the fault of my rotten star sign, of course. Hence it's useless for me to issue a public apology.
People crave advice. How do I know that? The revenue of the how-to industry, self-help books, and the self-improvement movement are proof how much we desire for others to tell us what to do. First we need to know how valuable a person's opinion might be: we are obsessed with credentials.
Once you can prove to me you're good, I'm willing to believe your opinion is worth listening to. Recently, I read a guy's book who spend some 55 pages--and I kid you not--on building up his readers' belief in his, this authors, abilities. Incredible! Of course, "past performance is no guarantee for future results," but apparently those using their credentials as bait have unshakable faith in the stupidity of their audience.
We believe someone's credentials, we trust her advice ... but we still WON'T do what she suggests. All of us have had brilliant advice throughout our entire lives. Our parents and grandparents have told us for decades not to spend more money than what we are making. It doesn't get simpler than that. And, did you listen?
Some of us, if not most of us, had to painfully learn it again while paying exorbitant prices for this simple lesson that a first grader can understand intellectually. We don't care about advice, no matter how true and down-to-earth it may me. Honestly, we don't give a rat's pink behind about anybody's credentials. We want to do what we want ... but that can be the most difficult thing to figure out.
I have said it before and I shall do so again: I will never tell you what to do. Neither will I bore you with advice about things you "should not" do. I am giving you EXTREME ideas to ponder. I don't care whether you "like" what I say or not. You happen to agree? So what? You disagree and you feel offended? So?
This is not about an argument one of us can win. It's a waste of time to find common ground by working towards a congruent opinion. I don't care what you think, and I hardly care about my own thoughts. The devil's advocate was invented by the Catholic Church--by Pope Sixtus V., to be exact--in anno domini 1587 to deal with cases of beatification and canonization. The Promotor of the Faith or Promotor Fidei, as his title was called officially, had the purpose to get to the bottom of each case, to find the truth (Saint or no Saint).
Often I playfully take the position of the devil's advocate not to unveil an absolute or "objective" truth, but to enable YOU to discover simply what you want to think and what you really want to do. I don't know what you should think, and I don't have the slightest idea what you should do. The devil's advocate may believe what she claims or she may not believe it herself. That is immaterial. What YOU believe is important, or at least I hope it is of importance to you.
When I see individuals being pissed off about me assuming the role of the devil's advocate, I know I hit the bull's eye: they are completely lost! They are also upset with me because I don't give them the advice they would then REJECT. As upset as they are, I know for a fact that they would indeed reject ANY advice I could give them ("I don't feel so good, but at least I am better than you are.").
Devils' advocates remind us of our own painful moments of confusion. We don't like to be confused. We don't like to be seen by others as indecisive, hesitant, and insecure. Confusion equals weakness for many. I don't believe it used to be easy to land a job at Lehman Brothers, high up the food chain, for indecisive and insecure applicants. That must have really helped the company.
Confusion is good!
When you are at a crossroads and you literally do not know: THEN you get a taste of freedom. I won't deny that the experience of raw freedom is often painful, but it will be your very own truth that sets you free. It's not someone's truth somewhere that you need to hunt down.
I may tell you once-in-awhile that I argue the perspective of "advocatus diaboli." I am sorry if you don't enjoy that! Seriously, I am. I feel sorry for you because it might be in your best interest to treat any type of advice as if it was given by a fraud and a quack like me. The next street bum you see may have wisdom that's potentially more valuable to you than the combined knowledge of a hundred assorted lawyers from Merrill Lynch, AIG, and Lehman. Credentials are cheap these days. No, scratch that: credentials have always been worthless.
Confusion is good for ya, emotional upheaval included. Confusion means instant freedom.
Egbert Sukop
My evil ways are the fault of my rotten star sign, of course. Hence it's useless for me to issue a public apology.
People crave advice. How do I know that? The revenue of the how-to industry, self-help books, and the self-improvement movement are proof how much we desire for others to tell us what to do. First we need to know how valuable a person's opinion might be: we are obsessed with credentials.
Once you can prove to me you're good, I'm willing to believe your opinion is worth listening to. Recently, I read a guy's book who spend some 55 pages--and I kid you not--on building up his readers' belief in his, this authors, abilities. Incredible! Of course, "past performance is no guarantee for future results," but apparently those using their credentials as bait have unshakable faith in the stupidity of their audience.
We believe someone's credentials, we trust her advice ... but we still WON'T do what she suggests. All of us have had brilliant advice throughout our entire lives. Our parents and grandparents have told us for decades not to spend more money than what we are making. It doesn't get simpler than that. And, did you listen?
Some of us, if not most of us, had to painfully learn it again while paying exorbitant prices for this simple lesson that a first grader can understand intellectually. We don't care about advice, no matter how true and down-to-earth it may me. Honestly, we don't give a rat's pink behind about anybody's credentials. We want to do what we want ... but that can be the most difficult thing to figure out.
I have said it before and I shall do so again: I will never tell you what to do. Neither will I bore you with advice about things you "should not" do. I am giving you EXTREME ideas to ponder. I don't care whether you "like" what I say or not. You happen to agree? So what? You disagree and you feel offended? So?
This is not about an argument one of us can win. It's a waste of time to find common ground by working towards a congruent opinion. I don't care what you think, and I hardly care about my own thoughts. The devil's advocate was invented by the Catholic Church--by Pope Sixtus V., to be exact--in anno domini 1587 to deal with cases of beatification and canonization. The Promotor of the Faith or Promotor Fidei, as his title was called officially, had the purpose to get to the bottom of each case, to find the truth (Saint or no Saint).
Often I playfully take the position of the devil's advocate not to unveil an absolute or "objective" truth, but to enable YOU to discover simply what you want to think and what you really want to do. I don't know what you should think, and I don't have the slightest idea what you should do. The devil's advocate may believe what she claims or she may not believe it herself. That is immaterial. What YOU believe is important, or at least I hope it is of importance to you.
When I see individuals being pissed off about me assuming the role of the devil's advocate, I know I hit the bull's eye: they are completely lost! They are also upset with me because I don't give them the advice they would then REJECT. As upset as they are, I know for a fact that they would indeed reject ANY advice I could give them ("I don't feel so good, but at least I am better than you are.").
Devils' advocates remind us of our own painful moments of confusion. We don't like to be confused. We don't like to be seen by others as indecisive, hesitant, and insecure. Confusion equals weakness for many. I don't believe it used to be easy to land a job at Lehman Brothers, high up the food chain, for indecisive and insecure applicants. That must have really helped the company.
Confusion is good!
When you are at a crossroads and you literally do not know: THEN you get a taste of freedom. I won't deny that the experience of raw freedom is often painful, but it will be your very own truth that sets you free. It's not someone's truth somewhere that you need to hunt down.
I may tell you once-in-awhile that I argue the perspective of "advocatus diaboli." I am sorry if you don't enjoy that! Seriously, I am. I feel sorry for you because it might be in your best interest to treat any type of advice as if it was given by a fraud and a quack like me. The next street bum you see may have wisdom that's potentially more valuable to you than the combined knowledge of a hundred assorted lawyers from Merrill Lynch, AIG, and Lehman. Credentials are cheap these days. No, scratch that: credentials have always been worthless.
Confusion is good for ya, emotional upheaval included. Confusion means instant freedom.
Egbert Sukop
Sunday, September 14, 2008
loving idiocy
"Triple your income and enjoy life!" promised the business card I discovered on top of a urinal in a restaurant. Network sharketing at its best. I did not touch that card. Hell no! Somehow I had a problem computing my idea of enjoyment as a direct function of literally inviting others to piss on my name. Besides, it's kinda sexist and discriminating to exclude women as potential business associates even if your business is of such crappy nature.
Understandably, armies of job-hating employees prefer to suffer through the decades until retirement puts them out of misery. Or a heart attack. Or a quasi retirement, diversified by having fun as a friendly greeter at Walmart, part time.
Employees are bright people in general! Choosing despicable jobs for a lifetime does not mean an individual is too blockheaded to leave appalling work situations behind in exchange for freedom, riches, and the joy of doing what she loves to do. Not necessarily. At least subconsciously, most employees are aware that hating a job may not be the worst of all available alternatives.
We aren't fighting anymore for survival in an environment of sabertoothed tigers, poisonous snakes, and war parties of belligerent tribes. Well, in a transferred sense we are, and it continues to be a desperate act of survival for many of us. You don't need to be an anthropologist to recognize dynamics that were typical for stone age societies beautifully preserved in any bureaucracy. Groups of people, for that matter, tend to re-enact reprehensible forms of "togetherness" we thought we had overcome by now.
We haven't. Laziness is not as bad as its reputation and as we see, even evolution is not exactly forging ahead with a type "A" personality. Hostile work environments--infested with backstabbers, freeloaders, and other lowlife entities--benefit us. Imminent danger to get screwed keeps our senses and pencils sharp. Imagine that: everything you hate about your job is actually good for you!
The fact that we won't look too pretty after a week alone in the jungle often obscures the truth that our reptilian brain is still fully functional. We do know how to suspend judgment, bypass the neocortex, and knock on the old lizard's bedroom door. SNAP! And this hundred million year trained fight-or-flight machine rips a chunk out of anything and is ready for a second helping ... unless you start thinking first and fast. You may not believe in dragons anymore, the guardians of your sixth sense. I do: I have seen them fly.
Hating your job feeds the dragon, sharpens its claws, and keeps the old freak loyal to you and to your purposes.
Yet dragons love to take long naps and interruptions displease them. You know what that means, don't you? Eh? C'mon. You guessed it: our instincts are sufficiently developed to know that hating miserable jobs for forty years is BETTER and infinitely safer than unpredictable environments of entrepreneurship. Employees know that hating a job, as awful as it may be, still allows them to go home at a certain time, play with their kids on the weekend and pick up a paycheck in predictable intervals.
Employees know that self-employment can mean years of hell, physical and emotional hardship, sleep deprivation, having to see their family under constant existential threat, and worse: living with the pain and the guilt of not spending enough time with their loved ones.
It is utterly irresponsible to promise employees a better world when they enter self-employment. If you have a job today, heed my advice and keep your damn job! Each of the alternatives may not only be significantly worse than what you are hating today. Anything besides the things you hate doing today could easily be classified as torture by you and by independent judges.
Yes, you got that right. What you hate doing is rather foreplay than torture. The things you say you'd love to be doing may turn into brutal and violent (self)-destruction once you realize there is no way back and you will be forced to do it to the very end, until you die. I am not kidding!
My father--a farmer--ridiculed employees who made twice the money he did and who could afford to go on three-week vacations year after year. He mocked government employees who could not get fired, were basically exempt from paying income taxes, and had generous pensions waiting for them at retirement age (no, of course he didn't make fun of employees to their face).
My dad didn't have a safe paycheck nor a secured pension. He did not expect to retire, ever. When the weather demanded it, he would work every day for months. Sometimes he had a bad year, financially. I saw him--and us--going through several meager years in a row. Vacations? Yep, he enjoyed about half a dozen vacations, 3 - 5 days long in his late sixties, totaling a month of goofing off during his lifetime perhaps.
My old man worked for more than fifty years on a "job" he did not initially choose. He felt he had to take over this 800-year-old family business when his older brother got killed in WWI. Most individuals in our society would easily label my father's life as 50 years of "Labor Camp." Yet, I never heard him complain. He whistled at work. He was a happy man. He never said it explicitly, but I do know he absolutely LOVED his life and his vocation. He CHOSE to work every day.
I have met hundreds and hundreds of self-employed men and women, entrepreneurs, selfmade individuals in all sorts of industries, in different countries on several continents. My father's story does NOT stick out as special. On the contrary, as far as self-employment goes, he was quite normal. It matters not that my dad lived in Germany all his life. What I have learned and what I continue to admire is that America and the greatness of the U.S. have been build by such "normal" individuals.
Ingenious tinkerers willing to go through hell for the people and for the work they love. Reckless idiots in the eyes of outsiders, like the Wright brothers. No, those who hate what they do won't risk braking limbs and necks without a reflection of that risk in a pay raise. Only people who love what they do are willing to destroy marriage, friendships, and their own health over their "love."
Do you really love what you want to do? Enough to die for it? Oh, that is just my negative programming? Yeah sure, you new age dork! Agreed, there is an off-chance that you are lucky. Maybe you will coast through self-employment with ease, wade through truck loads of cash, and all that's good will only get better throughout eternity. And boy, I wish that's true for you. But if you expect that to happen, oh baby, I'm afraid you are a doomed freaking wretch.
Choice can turn one man's (and woman's, naturally) torture into another man's paradise. It is pure idiocy to assume doing what you love will make you happy. You are the one who has to modify everything you do, the stuff you hate doing and the things you say you love. You have to breathe happiness into every single one of your endeavors. If you don't, the stuff you love today will taste like yesterday's stale beer tomorrow and turn into a heavy burden.
It is dumb to believe doing what you love will get you anywhere. "It" won't. YOU may and you may not ... if and when you are ready for it. Asking you to quit employment and to do "what you love" is the equivalent of asking you to jump into a volcano and to fight with dragons to your last breath. If you happen to love THAT, then by all means do it! If you don't, I don't want to be held responsible for talking you into it. Nope.
And yeah, if you are aware of the risks--in addition to the risks you will never be aware of in advance--you will probably enjoy it. At any rate, I beg you (on my knees): start a business but do it parallel to your sleeping-dragon employment. You'll thank me soon.
In short, job-hating is an insurance policy against possibly traumatizing and maybe fatal self-employment. I urge you to love the job-hating if you lack the balls to subject yourself to the fate of going down or up in flames by doing what you "love." Whether it'll be "up" or "down" is not for you to decide: whether you like it or not, the market always has the last word.
Love thy dragon as thyself,
Egbert Sukop
Understandably, armies of job-hating employees prefer to suffer through the decades until retirement puts them out of misery. Or a heart attack. Or a quasi retirement, diversified by having fun as a friendly greeter at Walmart, part time.
Employees are bright people in general! Choosing despicable jobs for a lifetime does not mean an individual is too blockheaded to leave appalling work situations behind in exchange for freedom, riches, and the joy of doing what she loves to do. Not necessarily. At least subconsciously, most employees are aware that hating a job may not be the worst of all available alternatives.
We aren't fighting anymore for survival in an environment of sabertoothed tigers, poisonous snakes, and war parties of belligerent tribes. Well, in a transferred sense we are, and it continues to be a desperate act of survival for many of us. You don't need to be an anthropologist to recognize dynamics that were typical for stone age societies beautifully preserved in any bureaucracy. Groups of people, for that matter, tend to re-enact reprehensible forms of "togetherness" we thought we had overcome by now.
We haven't. Laziness is not as bad as its reputation and as we see, even evolution is not exactly forging ahead with a type "A" personality. Hostile work environments--infested with backstabbers, freeloaders, and other lowlife entities--benefit us. Imminent danger to get screwed keeps our senses and pencils sharp. Imagine that: everything you hate about your job is actually good for you!
The fact that we won't look too pretty after a week alone in the jungle often obscures the truth that our reptilian brain is still fully functional. We do know how to suspend judgment, bypass the neocortex, and knock on the old lizard's bedroom door. SNAP! And this hundred million year trained fight-or-flight machine rips a chunk out of anything and is ready for a second helping ... unless you start thinking first and fast. You may not believe in dragons anymore, the guardians of your sixth sense. I do: I have seen them fly.
Hating your job feeds the dragon, sharpens its claws, and keeps the old freak loyal to you and to your purposes.
Yet dragons love to take long naps and interruptions displease them. You know what that means, don't you? Eh? C'mon. You guessed it: our instincts are sufficiently developed to know that hating miserable jobs for forty years is BETTER and infinitely safer than unpredictable environments of entrepreneurship. Employees know that hating a job, as awful as it may be, still allows them to go home at a certain time, play with their kids on the weekend and pick up a paycheck in predictable intervals.
Employees know that self-employment can mean years of hell, physical and emotional hardship, sleep deprivation, having to see their family under constant existential threat, and worse: living with the pain and the guilt of not spending enough time with their loved ones.
It is utterly irresponsible to promise employees a better world when they enter self-employment. If you have a job today, heed my advice and keep your damn job! Each of the alternatives may not only be significantly worse than what you are hating today. Anything besides the things you hate doing today could easily be classified as torture by you and by independent judges.
Yes, you got that right. What you hate doing is rather foreplay than torture. The things you say you'd love to be doing may turn into brutal and violent (self)-destruction once you realize there is no way back and you will be forced to do it to the very end, until you die. I am not kidding!
My father--a farmer--ridiculed employees who made twice the money he did and who could afford to go on three-week vacations year after year. He mocked government employees who could not get fired, were basically exempt from paying income taxes, and had generous pensions waiting for them at retirement age (no, of course he didn't make fun of employees to their face).
My dad didn't have a safe paycheck nor a secured pension. He did not expect to retire, ever. When the weather demanded it, he would work every day for months. Sometimes he had a bad year, financially. I saw him--and us--going through several meager years in a row. Vacations? Yep, he enjoyed about half a dozen vacations, 3 - 5 days long in his late sixties, totaling a month of goofing off during his lifetime perhaps.
My old man worked for more than fifty years on a "job" he did not initially choose. He felt he had to take over this 800-year-old family business when his older brother got killed in WWI. Most individuals in our society would easily label my father's life as 50 years of "Labor Camp." Yet, I never heard him complain. He whistled at work. He was a happy man. He never said it explicitly, but I do know he absolutely LOVED his life and his vocation. He CHOSE to work every day.
I have met hundreds and hundreds of self-employed men and women, entrepreneurs, selfmade individuals in all sorts of industries, in different countries on several continents. My father's story does NOT stick out as special. On the contrary, as far as self-employment goes, he was quite normal. It matters not that my dad lived in Germany all his life. What I have learned and what I continue to admire is that America and the greatness of the U.S. have been build by such "normal" individuals.
Ingenious tinkerers willing to go through hell for the people and for the work they love. Reckless idiots in the eyes of outsiders, like the Wright brothers. No, those who hate what they do won't risk braking limbs and necks without a reflection of that risk in a pay raise. Only people who love what they do are willing to destroy marriage, friendships, and their own health over their "love."
Do you really love what you want to do? Enough to die for it? Oh, that is just my negative programming? Yeah sure, you new age dork! Agreed, there is an off-chance that you are lucky. Maybe you will coast through self-employment with ease, wade through truck loads of cash, and all that's good will only get better throughout eternity. And boy, I wish that's true for you. But if you expect that to happen, oh baby, I'm afraid you are a doomed freaking wretch.
Choice can turn one man's (and woman's, naturally) torture into another man's paradise. It is pure idiocy to assume doing what you love will make you happy. You are the one who has to modify everything you do, the stuff you hate doing and the things you say you love. You have to breathe happiness into every single one of your endeavors. If you don't, the stuff you love today will taste like yesterday's stale beer tomorrow and turn into a heavy burden.
It is dumb to believe doing what you love will get you anywhere. "It" won't. YOU may and you may not ... if and when you are ready for it. Asking you to quit employment and to do "what you love" is the equivalent of asking you to jump into a volcano and to fight with dragons to your last breath. If you happen to love THAT, then by all means do it! If you don't, I don't want to be held responsible for talking you into it. Nope.
And yeah, if you are aware of the risks--in addition to the risks you will never be aware of in advance--you will probably enjoy it. At any rate, I beg you (on my knees): start a business but do it parallel to your sleeping-dragon employment. You'll thank me soon.
In short, job-hating is an insurance policy against possibly traumatizing and maybe fatal self-employment. I urge you to love the job-hating if you lack the balls to subject yourself to the fate of going down or up in flames by doing what you "love." Whether it'll be "up" or "down" is not for you to decide: whether you like it or not, the market always has the last word.
Love thy dragon as thyself,
Egbert Sukop
Sunday, September 7, 2008
frontal attack
"If you have a job without any aggravations, you don't have a job." --Malcolm Forbes
In other words, "loving your job" is not the equivalent of enjoying every damn thing that's part of your job. Every job has elements you won't like at all. Loving your children doesn't mean that they are sweet, well-behaved creatures all day, and just the way they "should" be. On the contrary, if our love for somebody or something doesn't absorb a good portion of adversity, love ain't love.
The quest to find something you love to do for a living is often carried out as a "frontal attack" of the problem. What do I enjoy doing? What am I good at? Where are my strengths? Not even a mad bull would expect to win with such a doomed strategy. It's not likely to work well for you either.
Jobs per se are not our last inhumane bastion of self-hatred, but certainly one of vast proportions. Most jobs are an expression of self-neglect and certainly the lack of self-respect. You think your individuality is a liability, your creativity is worthless, and you aren't worthy of freedom? Get a job. Any job will do, in fact.
Jobs are time machines transporting you into the dark ages of socialism. You don't matter. The stuff you do doesn't matter. And your paycheck is rather immaterial. You are doing it mostly "for the benefits." You really believe you can improve on a pitiful situation like that? Well, fetch my free ebook 'How to Better Hate Your Job', pray hard, and I wish you the best of luck.
Forgive me! I got side-tracked. Apropos, that's what jobs are in general: detours of life. Jobs distract you from doing something worth your while. Jobs divert you from being yourself and from the development of your individual genius. Jobs are coffins of individuality (and so is multi-level garbaging), but hey babe: Don't quit if you have a job right now! I am serious. Build a business parallel to this bloody black hole of individuality. Start something on your own! And--as I hope you recall--it does NOT have to be based on activities you enjoy in order for you to love it.
Have you watched "Glory" with Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, and Matthew Broderick--when Denzel could still act (and wasn't just Denzel Washington in a new setting)--or "The Patriot" with Heath Ledger and Mel (Oh-God-teach-me-to-be-a-less-obvious-antisemitic-ass-while-drunk) Gibson? You'll remember battle scenes with two armies standing vis-a-vis slaughtering each other, showing the brutal stupidity of frontal attacks.
When you attack your life's problems head on, you are becoming canon fodder just like dead soldiers of previous centuries. "I think only positive," or "I want to do what I enjoy for a living," are frontal attacks on your intelligence, and they aren't blessed with better chances to succeed than bitter exchanges of musket salvos in the 18th century. In order to do what you love, you don't have to do what you love.
Come again? Yep, you heard me perfectly well the first time.
Human beings have the incredible ability to love what they don't like. We can even hate what we're doing, and we can hate it so much that we love the way we hate it. Following our feelings is immature. "Yeah, but what if it doesn't feel right?" Your feelings and emotions got you by the nose? Not good. It's part of growing up to learn how to do WHAT YOU WANT without getting distracted or slowed down by the way you may feel.
You seriously believe Lance Armstrong could have won the Tour de France seven times--and he's preparing for the Tour de France 2009 as we speak--had he listened to his feelings all the time? Sure he likes cycling, but do you realize the inhumane pain he puts himself through to do what he wants?
If and when you do what you want, it will NOT feel good all the time. On the contrary, when you do what you really want you will go through so much pain that others would call it torture if they were forced to do the same, involuntarily. Doing what you want may cause you MORE pain than the job you hate so much. Being obsessed with feeling good is good only for morons. It's the frontal attack of loving what you do ... and childish: I love you as long as I like you.
In case you really want to to what you love, you gotta learn to love it while you hate it. When you do what you want it may hardly feel good at all. I promise, doing what you love will put you through more pain, trouble, and challenges than enduring a job you hate. And you got to love it.
The only thing that matters is that it is what YOU want. Who cares how that feels?!
Egbert Sukop
In other words, "loving your job" is not the equivalent of enjoying every damn thing that's part of your job. Every job has elements you won't like at all. Loving your children doesn't mean that they are sweet, well-behaved creatures all day, and just the way they "should" be. On the contrary, if our love for somebody or something doesn't absorb a good portion of adversity, love ain't love.
The quest to find something you love to do for a living is often carried out as a "frontal attack" of the problem. What do I enjoy doing? What am I good at? Where are my strengths? Not even a mad bull would expect to win with such a doomed strategy. It's not likely to work well for you either.
Jobs per se are not our last inhumane bastion of self-hatred, but certainly one of vast proportions. Most jobs are an expression of self-neglect and certainly the lack of self-respect. You think your individuality is a liability, your creativity is worthless, and you aren't worthy of freedom? Get a job. Any job will do, in fact.
Jobs are time machines transporting you into the dark ages of socialism. You don't matter. The stuff you do doesn't matter. And your paycheck is rather immaterial. You are doing it mostly "for the benefits." You really believe you can improve on a pitiful situation like that? Well, fetch my free ebook 'How to Better Hate Your Job', pray hard, and I wish you the best of luck.
Forgive me! I got side-tracked. Apropos, that's what jobs are in general: detours of life. Jobs distract you from doing something worth your while. Jobs divert you from being yourself and from the development of your individual genius. Jobs are coffins of individuality (and so is multi-level garbaging), but hey babe: Don't quit if you have a job right now! I am serious. Build a business parallel to this bloody black hole of individuality. Start something on your own! And--as I hope you recall--it does NOT have to be based on activities you enjoy in order for you to love it.
Have you watched "Glory" with Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, and Matthew Broderick--when Denzel could still act (and wasn't just Denzel Washington in a new setting)--or "The Patriot" with Heath Ledger and Mel (Oh-God-teach-me-to-be-a-less-obvious-antisemitic-ass-while-drunk) Gibson? You'll remember battle scenes with two armies standing vis-a-vis slaughtering each other, showing the brutal stupidity of frontal attacks.
When you attack your life's problems head on, you are becoming canon fodder just like dead soldiers of previous centuries. "I think only positive," or "I want to do what I enjoy for a living," are frontal attacks on your intelligence, and they aren't blessed with better chances to succeed than bitter exchanges of musket salvos in the 18th century. In order to do what you love, you don't have to do what you love.
Come again? Yep, you heard me perfectly well the first time.
Human beings have the incredible ability to love what they don't like. We can even hate what we're doing, and we can hate it so much that we love the way we hate it. Following our feelings is immature. "Yeah, but what if it doesn't feel right?" Your feelings and emotions got you by the nose? Not good. It's part of growing up to learn how to do WHAT YOU WANT without getting distracted or slowed down by the way you may feel.
You seriously believe Lance Armstrong could have won the Tour de France seven times--and he's preparing for the Tour de France 2009 as we speak--had he listened to his feelings all the time? Sure he likes cycling, but do you realize the inhumane pain he puts himself through to do what he wants?
If and when you do what you want, it will NOT feel good all the time. On the contrary, when you do what you really want you will go through so much pain that others would call it torture if they were forced to do the same, involuntarily. Doing what you want may cause you MORE pain than the job you hate so much. Being obsessed with feeling good is good only for morons. It's the frontal attack of loving what you do ... and childish: I love you as long as I like you.
In case you really want to to what you love, you gotta learn to love it while you hate it. When you do what you want it may hardly feel good at all. I promise, doing what you love will put you through more pain, trouble, and challenges than enduring a job you hate. And you got to love it.
The only thing that matters is that it is what YOU want. Who cares how that feels?!
Egbert Sukop
Friday, August 22, 2008
parallel universe
Our realities differ: we don't live in the same world!
As a child, I could hardly suppress a gag reflex just hearing the word "asparagus." Today I find that stuff exquisite and delicious, as my parents had prophesied. We experience "soft" differences with other people--like a variety of opinions, theories, ideas, tastes--and "hard" ones, like two asparagus worlds defined by observable physical phenomena of a different nature. You may love strawberries while your boyfriend needs to be rushed to the next emergency room if he tries just one innocent strawberry. Parallel universes of the hard kind. No, it's non-negotiable. Some of us enjoy what may kill another.
For the time of the cold war, we witnessed socialist countries--member states of the Warsaw Pact, for instance--on one side of the fence and societies believing in a more or less free market on the other side. Fence? Not really: a wall, barbed wire, mine fields, and trigger-happy men guarded the line between those two worlds. People lost limbs and lives in the attempt to leave one universe and to enter the other. As a general rule, socialist governments and societies had a keen interest for their subjects not to mingle with the enemy, with evil capitalist pigs on the other and naturally greener side of the "fence." Negotiations were political charades, rituals bare of real meaning or purpose. Nobody expected to convince the other guy of anything.
Today, there are still--and again--socialist countries of one type or another. Charley Marx's legacy, as outdated and dusty as it truly is, continues to ail along through the 21st century. But that is not surprising. Interesting is what has happened under the surface. For Mr. Marx, religion was "the opium of the people." Over the course of some 150 years, socialism has become a new religion and the opium of the people. The tool of choice for thugs like Hugo Chávez and sick bastards like Kim Jong-il to oppress their helpless subjects. If socialist economies were ideal environments, you wouldn't need excessive violence to keep your people in your country, putting up with hearty tree bark for breakfast. On the contrary, the masses would be eager to enter your worker's paradise, but it looks as if North Korea is not today's immigrant country of choice. At least not yet.
What about religion, you ask? It has become irrelevant. Irrelevant not so much for believers, but as a dividing force it is significantly less important than it once was. The discussion of socialist ideas versus free market economy separates us more than differing religious denominations or the existence of religion per se.
Let's get to the fun part, shall we?
Socialism--employed here as a general term, including a garden variety of its ideological offspring--used to be at the root of revolutionary movements against establishment and capitalists. According to Forbes magazine, a nest egg worth $900 Million has successfully trickled into Fidel Castro's socialist lap, and Mr. Chávez can't wait to follow into his hero's footsteps. Not bad for a revolutionary and murderer to end up richer than the Queen of England. Who says that socialism doesn't pay? Not only does it pay, but it's the perfect setup for capitalist progress as well. Enter China: more millionaires pop up in China than anywhere else on Earth.
The ideal symbiosis. If you own a company, employ socialists. They will serve you well, and they will hate you more--as a good socialist should--if you don't allow them to benefit financially from your profits. The worse you treat them, the more loyal they will be to your company and to their musty beliefs. If you have socialist ideals on the other hand, seek employment at a capitalist firm who happily finances you and such luxury as your whimsical theories. As a bonus, you'll find plenty of ways to hate your--self-chosen!--"oppressor."
The fight against the outsourcing of jobs proves that today's socialists are not engaged in an uprising against the evil bourgeoisie. Hell no! Marx would drastically increase the rpm while rotating in his London grave could he see that employees, "the owners of labour," are begging to maintain their status quo. Benefit: it allows them to stay socialists a bit longer.
That's what has become of the good old "class struggle:" Capitalists need socialistic oriented employees, and socialists need capitalist employers if they don't want their theory to collapse.
As employers, we run our businesses following capitalist principles and nothing is wrong with that. Strange only that from the largest corporation down to the tiniest mom and pop operation at the corner, employers do NOT care to employ capitalists: employers feed socialist employees who receive a paycheck whether they work hard or hardly at all. Employees expect to get benefits and an occasional pay raise, but neither employer nor the employee's union will permit them to work as efficiently as they could and would. Employees who are eager to work overtime are often considered a burden. The last thing an employer wants is for paychecks to reflect true performance and real market value of the employee. Capitalist employers somehow believe that their profit relies on employees with socialist values.
As employees, we live in socialist work environments. How so? For the average employee, few things matter besides showing up for work. Individuality, character, initiative, and creativity are worthless assets. Even the influence of your performance on your income is negligible. You are "a unit," most decisions are made for you, your responsibilities are limited, your ideas and even high levels of competence can easily turn into liabilities. If you really love your job you are likely to be a sick, twisted individual who thrives on bureaucratic irrelevance, on promotions based on back stabbing more than on cold hard currency paid in exchange for the market value of your productivity.
Employees give up because the very elements that make capitalism exciting and adventurous are meticulously filtered out of their lives. No risk, no opportunity, no freedom. Small wonder employees are bored out of their minds, hate every minute of their unproductive and meaningless lives, while looking forward to retirement. Uh, at least we can blame evil corporations for depriving their poor wage slaves of well-deserved profit and freedom?
No, we can't! Most employees--naturally we must include government employees--despise and condemn profit taking. And nothing scares average people more than freedom. Freedom is the last thing they want.
Conclusion: employers grant their employees a favor by allowing them to live their socialist dream a couple of decades longer than they could realistically afford otherwise. 87% of Americans experience the luxury and the privilege of hating their jobs in monetary limitation, while the rest of us have to make do in freedom and happiness.
And what about the opium thing? Why is socialism the new religion and opium? 'Cause socialists insist to lie and to be lied to. They don't fight to get out. They fight to stay in their universe marked by struggle and limitation. They get teary eyes, for instance, when some prick promises higher minimum wages. Milton Friedman said, "There's a great deal of agreement among economists, contrary to what people may think. You won't find much difference of opinion on the proposition that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs." That was in June 1995. To this day you can gain political mileage out of selling opium to the masses, promising the blue out of the sky.
Nobody will convince a socialist to switch universes and to live happily ever after as a member of a free market economy. Neither will a capitalist eagerly leave freedom--and risk--behind and voluntarily clip her own wings of thought and action. Both appear to like where they are.
Just in case: if you catch yourself bitching about your lot, you gotta choice to make which universe you want to live in. No stupid "class struggle" or fight necessary. Your "oppressors" are imaginary!
Egbert
P.S.: If you are wondering how a bastardized Marx would sound today, substituting "socialism" for "religion:"
"Socialistic suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Socialism is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
As a child, I could hardly suppress a gag reflex just hearing the word "asparagus." Today I find that stuff exquisite and delicious, as my parents had prophesied. We experience "soft" differences with other people--like a variety of opinions, theories, ideas, tastes--and "hard" ones, like two asparagus worlds defined by observable physical phenomena of a different nature. You may love strawberries while your boyfriend needs to be rushed to the next emergency room if he tries just one innocent strawberry. Parallel universes of the hard kind. No, it's non-negotiable. Some of us enjoy what may kill another.
For the time of the cold war, we witnessed socialist countries--member states of the Warsaw Pact, for instance--on one side of the fence and societies believing in a more or less free market on the other side. Fence? Not really: a wall, barbed wire, mine fields, and trigger-happy men guarded the line between those two worlds. People lost limbs and lives in the attempt to leave one universe and to enter the other. As a general rule, socialist governments and societies had a keen interest for their subjects not to mingle with the enemy, with evil capitalist pigs on the other and naturally greener side of the "fence." Negotiations were political charades, rituals bare of real meaning or purpose. Nobody expected to convince the other guy of anything.
Today, there are still--and again--socialist countries of one type or another. Charley Marx's legacy, as outdated and dusty as it truly is, continues to ail along through the 21st century. But that is not surprising. Interesting is what has happened under the surface. For Mr. Marx, religion was "the opium of the people." Over the course of some 150 years, socialism has become a new religion and the opium of the people. The tool of choice for thugs like Hugo Chávez and sick bastards like Kim Jong-il to oppress their helpless subjects. If socialist economies were ideal environments, you wouldn't need excessive violence to keep your people in your country, putting up with hearty tree bark for breakfast. On the contrary, the masses would be eager to enter your worker's paradise, but it looks as if North Korea is not today's immigrant country of choice. At least not yet.
What about religion, you ask? It has become irrelevant. Irrelevant not so much for believers, but as a dividing force it is significantly less important than it once was. The discussion of socialist ideas versus free market economy separates us more than differing religious denominations or the existence of religion per se.
Let's get to the fun part, shall we?
Socialism--employed here as a general term, including a garden variety of its ideological offspring--used to be at the root of revolutionary movements against establishment and capitalists. According to Forbes magazine, a nest egg worth $900 Million has successfully trickled into Fidel Castro's socialist lap, and Mr. Chávez can't wait to follow into his hero's footsteps. Not bad for a revolutionary and murderer to end up richer than the Queen of England. Who says that socialism doesn't pay? Not only does it pay, but it's the perfect setup for capitalist progress as well. Enter China: more millionaires pop up in China than anywhere else on Earth.
The ideal symbiosis. If you own a company, employ socialists. They will serve you well, and they will hate you more--as a good socialist should--if you don't allow them to benefit financially from your profits. The worse you treat them, the more loyal they will be to your company and to their musty beliefs. If you have socialist ideals on the other hand, seek employment at a capitalist firm who happily finances you and such luxury as your whimsical theories. As a bonus, you'll find plenty of ways to hate your--self-chosen!--"oppressor."
The fight against the outsourcing of jobs proves that today's socialists are not engaged in an uprising against the evil bourgeoisie. Hell no! Marx would drastically increase the rpm while rotating in his London grave could he see that employees, "the owners of labour," are begging to maintain their status quo. Benefit: it allows them to stay socialists a bit longer.
That's what has become of the good old "class struggle:" Capitalists need socialistic oriented employees, and socialists need capitalist employers if they don't want their theory to collapse.
As employers, we run our businesses following capitalist principles and nothing is wrong with that. Strange only that from the largest corporation down to the tiniest mom and pop operation at the corner, employers do NOT care to employ capitalists: employers feed socialist employees who receive a paycheck whether they work hard or hardly at all. Employees expect to get benefits and an occasional pay raise, but neither employer nor the employee's union will permit them to work as efficiently as they could and would. Employees who are eager to work overtime are often considered a burden. The last thing an employer wants is for paychecks to reflect true performance and real market value of the employee. Capitalist employers somehow believe that their profit relies on employees with socialist values.
As employees, we live in socialist work environments. How so? For the average employee, few things matter besides showing up for work. Individuality, character, initiative, and creativity are worthless assets. Even the influence of your performance on your income is negligible. You are "a unit," most decisions are made for you, your responsibilities are limited, your ideas and even high levels of competence can easily turn into liabilities. If you really love your job you are likely to be a sick, twisted individual who thrives on bureaucratic irrelevance, on promotions based on back stabbing more than on cold hard currency paid in exchange for the market value of your productivity.
Employees give up because the very elements that make capitalism exciting and adventurous are meticulously filtered out of their lives. No risk, no opportunity, no freedom. Small wonder employees are bored out of their minds, hate every minute of their unproductive and meaningless lives, while looking forward to retirement. Uh, at least we can blame evil corporations for depriving their poor wage slaves of well-deserved profit and freedom?
No, we can't! Most employees--naturally we must include government employees--despise and condemn profit taking. And nothing scares average people more than freedom. Freedom is the last thing they want.
Conclusion: employers grant their employees a favor by allowing them to live their socialist dream a couple of decades longer than they could realistically afford otherwise. 87% of Americans experience the luxury and the privilege of hating their jobs in monetary limitation, while the rest of us have to make do in freedom and happiness.
And what about the opium thing? Why is socialism the new religion and opium? 'Cause socialists insist to lie and to be lied to. They don't fight to get out. They fight to stay in their universe marked by struggle and limitation. They get teary eyes, for instance, when some prick promises higher minimum wages. Milton Friedman said, "There's a great deal of agreement among economists, contrary to what people may think. You won't find much difference of opinion on the proposition that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs." That was in June 1995. To this day you can gain political mileage out of selling opium to the masses, promising the blue out of the sky.
Nobody will convince a socialist to switch universes and to live happily ever after as a member of a free market economy. Neither will a capitalist eagerly leave freedom--and risk--behind and voluntarily clip her own wings of thought and action. Both appear to like where they are.
Just in case: if you catch yourself bitching about your lot, you gotta choice to make which universe you want to live in. No stupid "class struggle" or fight necessary. Your "oppressors" are imaginary!
Egbert
P.S.: If you are wondering how a bastardized Marx would sound today, substituting "socialism" for "religion:"
"Socialistic suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Socialism is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
Saturday, July 12, 2008
chicks and eggs
Madonna's loving brother, Christopher Ciccone, barfs a new book on the market this upcoming week: "Life with My Sister Madonna." He reveals the incredible secret that his sister is a narcissist and the most important person in Madonna's life is ... oh-my-Gawd, nobody knew: Madonna!
Mr. Ciccone, the brotherly leech, has plenty of reasons to thank his sister for being who she is and how she is, because he wouldn't have written the book, neither would this tome sell so well--even before its publication date--without her. Madonna may not be perfect sister material, but I am quite happy not to have Christopher C. as my brother. Would you like to have your siblings publishing your family secrets? I thought so.
However, this story reminds me of a success related issue most people fail to consider when they dream and aim for wealth and fame. We want to "get" things and we are not aware that we must first become the one who can have that stuff:
When you were a child, I'm sure you heard this phrase ad nauseam in one form or another: "no, you can't have that yet. Once you are a little older (more responsible, 18, 21, etc.) we shall see." Our parents told us repeatedly we had to BE something FIRST before we were eligible to get the things we were after. They were not that wrong!
People, envious of Madonna's wealth and lifestyle, must know that they can't have all those goodies without BEING Madonna, and most people don't want to be her or like her. Not even her own brother wants to be like her. It's the same with success in other areas. A friend of mine, who is rather successful with MLM and who hates my rants against network marketing, refuses to see that in order to have a thriving network marketing business you need to BE that kind of person. No condescending judgment here: you must enjoy networking or you will fail (like over 90% of those who try).
Either you are a person who loves the MLM world already--the network marketing religion--or you must badly want to BECOME the type of person who feels home in that environment if you care to succeed. It is nonsense, a waste of time, and causing unnecessary pain trying to convince people that "the system", as the great equalizer and enabler, will turn everybody into a success story.
One of the greatest myths is that "money corrupts people." No, not even the largest amount of money can make you do what you absolutely don't want to do. It's kinda like the old hypnosis question, "will you jump off a building if the hypnotist asks you to?" You'd wake up out of the cash trance if someone asked you to do things that are against your nature.
Money operates like a looking glass and it shows you (and others) what you are made of. Huge piles of money make character traits publicly visible. Money brings out the good and the bad in you, but money is NOT responsible for you being the person you happen to be. If someone is corrupt, of course a nice chunk of money will help everyone else to see it. Most of us are so corrupt that we can be bought into doing something we don't want to do--lifelong--with puny wages, a couple of benefits, and worthless seniority babble at the water cooler. Similarly, piles of dough also show a compassionate and generous person clearer.
Again, it's not money first and then its owner changes mind, morals, and convictions: it happens the other way around. Who was first, the chick or the egg? When elderly people fall and break a hip, we know that's not how it happened: the hip broke first and then the person fell. Yet the falling is what we see as the obvious, first.
Usually we see first that someone must have oodles of money. We are not aware what led to that pile of dough. Blinded by good looks and money, people don't care about the details of development an individual had to endure to become who she is today. People judge other people as superficially as they possibly can.
And so it happens that many of us crave to punish the rich (a characterization based on nothing but a wild and ignorant guess), with an increase of capital gains tax, for instance. Since historical data show that a LOWER capital gains tax leads to HIGHER tax revenue, the call for raising that particular tax can only have the aim to punish people. Otherwise it makes no sense whatsoever.
We want to get rich (whatever we think that may be), but at the same time we want to hurt those who are "rich" already. Insane! Then, we think the amount of money one has alone--or his assets--are what got him where he is. Money is power, isn't it? "Money makes the world go 'round?" Claptrap. How much power means a bag with $100,000 under a little old lady's mattress?
In most cases it is the other way around. People have ideas, they act, and they move things. That creates money, and of course more money helps increasing the spreading of ideas, activities, etc. around the globe. But the people were first, NOT their money. An individual with tons of money was FIRST that individual person, with her particular ideas and her personal choices of how she wanted to live her life. Then she had a couple of lucky breaks or she didn't.
It is utterly dumb to believe, "I want money and then I can be who I want to be and do what I want to do." Childish, and still after being with his sister Madonna for almost half a century, Mr. Ciccone's foggy brain has not allowed him to see what's what. As a good, warm-hearted and caring sister, Madonna would have never been Madonna, and not worth writing a single paragraph about in the family scrapbook.
Be happy not to be Madonna! Be glad you are not David Beckham. Be grateful you don't have to be Rush Limbaugh. But stop this slimy envy, the vile bitterness of begrudging other people's money, or just the idiocy of comparison with individuals you don't care to be.
Now, I don't accuse you of doing such stupid things! But you and me, we participate almost daily in conversations where some airhead brings up that very issue. Set the records straight. To defend Mr. Limbaugh and Madonna? Good gawd, NO! To build an environment where YOU can live freely and unfold, privately and professionally, as you damn well please.
Freedom begins with you and it ends with the Ciccones. Everything you do is likely to be criticized by somebody some day, and possibly by your own children in a therapy session twenty years from now.
So what? Do what you want to do, today. Doing that and being you--the one and only original you--may earn you money down the road or not, lots of money or not so much. If you care for your happiness it's an easy choice to make.
Egbert
Mr. Ciccone, the brotherly leech, has plenty of reasons to thank his sister for being who she is and how she is, because he wouldn't have written the book, neither would this tome sell so well--even before its publication date--without her. Madonna may not be perfect sister material, but I am quite happy not to have Christopher C. as my brother. Would you like to have your siblings publishing your family secrets? I thought so.
However, this story reminds me of a success related issue most people fail to consider when they dream and aim for wealth and fame. We want to "get" things and we are not aware that we must first become the one who can have that stuff:
When you were a child, I'm sure you heard this phrase ad nauseam in one form or another: "no, you can't have that yet. Once you are a little older (more responsible, 18, 21, etc.) we shall see." Our parents told us repeatedly we had to BE something FIRST before we were eligible to get the things we were after. They were not that wrong!
People, envious of Madonna's wealth and lifestyle, must know that they can't have all those goodies without BEING Madonna, and most people don't want to be her or like her. Not even her own brother wants to be like her. It's the same with success in other areas. A friend of mine, who is rather successful with MLM and who hates my rants against network marketing, refuses to see that in order to have a thriving network marketing business you need to BE that kind of person. No condescending judgment here: you must enjoy networking or you will fail (like over 90% of those who try).
Either you are a person who loves the MLM world already--the network marketing religion--or you must badly want to BECOME the type of person who feels home in that environment if you care to succeed. It is nonsense, a waste of time, and causing unnecessary pain trying to convince people that "the system", as the great equalizer and enabler, will turn everybody into a success story.
One of the greatest myths is that "money corrupts people." No, not even the largest amount of money can make you do what you absolutely don't want to do. It's kinda like the old hypnosis question, "will you jump off a building if the hypnotist asks you to?" You'd wake up out of the cash trance if someone asked you to do things that are against your nature.
Money operates like a looking glass and it shows you (and others) what you are made of. Huge piles of money make character traits publicly visible. Money brings out the good and the bad in you, but money is NOT responsible for you being the person you happen to be. If someone is corrupt, of course a nice chunk of money will help everyone else to see it. Most of us are so corrupt that we can be bought into doing something we don't want to do--lifelong--with puny wages, a couple of benefits, and worthless seniority babble at the water cooler. Similarly, piles of dough also show a compassionate and generous person clearer.
Again, it's not money first and then its owner changes mind, morals, and convictions: it happens the other way around. Who was first, the chick or the egg? When elderly people fall and break a hip, we know that's not how it happened: the hip broke first and then the person fell. Yet the falling is what we see as the obvious, first.
Usually we see first that someone must have oodles of money. We are not aware what led to that pile of dough. Blinded by good looks and money, people don't care about the details of development an individual had to endure to become who she is today. People judge other people as superficially as they possibly can.
And so it happens that many of us crave to punish the rich (a characterization based on nothing but a wild and ignorant guess), with an increase of capital gains tax, for instance. Since historical data show that a LOWER capital gains tax leads to HIGHER tax revenue, the call for raising that particular tax can only have the aim to punish people. Otherwise it makes no sense whatsoever.
We want to get rich (whatever we think that may be), but at the same time we want to hurt those who are "rich" already. Insane! Then, we think the amount of money one has alone--or his assets--are what got him where he is. Money is power, isn't it? "Money makes the world go 'round?" Claptrap. How much power means a bag with $100,000 under a little old lady's mattress?
In most cases it is the other way around. People have ideas, they act, and they move things. That creates money, and of course more money helps increasing the spreading of ideas, activities, etc. around the globe. But the people were first, NOT their money. An individual with tons of money was FIRST that individual person, with her particular ideas and her personal choices of how she wanted to live her life. Then she had a couple of lucky breaks or she didn't.
It is utterly dumb to believe, "I want money and then I can be who I want to be and do what I want to do." Childish, and still after being with his sister Madonna for almost half a century, Mr. Ciccone's foggy brain has not allowed him to see what's what. As a good, warm-hearted and caring sister, Madonna would have never been Madonna, and not worth writing a single paragraph about in the family scrapbook.
Be happy not to be Madonna! Be glad you are not David Beckham. Be grateful you don't have to be Rush Limbaugh. But stop this slimy envy, the vile bitterness of begrudging other people's money, or just the idiocy of comparison with individuals you don't care to be.
Now, I don't accuse you of doing such stupid things! But you and me, we participate almost daily in conversations where some airhead brings up that very issue. Set the records straight. To defend Mr. Limbaugh and Madonna? Good gawd, NO! To build an environment where YOU can live freely and unfold, privately and professionally, as you damn well please.
Freedom begins with you and it ends with the Ciccones. Everything you do is likely to be criticized by somebody some day, and possibly by your own children in a therapy session twenty years from now.
So what? Do what you want to do, today. Doing that and being you--the one and only original you--may earn you money down the road or not, lots of money or not so much. If you care for your happiness it's an easy choice to make.
Egbert
Monday, July 7, 2008
mules and horses
Zig Ziglar once spoke about diet, and he said no sane person would feed her one million dollar race horse a single bite of the wrong food. If it's not conducive to the horse's purpose, it's not going to make it into the horse's stomach.
People, however, don't hesitate to eat all kinds of crap with full knowledge and zero regard for the consequences.
The average person thinks less of himself than we think of race horses. Our self-esteem matches more the value of an old and tired mule. We are neither sane, nor do we believe we're worth much. Hence we go out and buy another diet book. As if we didn't know what's good for us. And some of us have gone too far in our madness, so that we ended up "on the other side," as exercise and diet Nazis.
I don't care about the stuff you stuff yourself with! Eat, get fat, live large--that's none of my business.
But I like Zig's race horse analogy and bloody horse thief that I am, it's worth stealing it for my dark and evil purposes. Would you put your million dollar race horse before a dung cart? Of course not. And no breeder will purchase sperm of that particular horse because it's so damn cute. The horse has a potential that is difficult to measure in monetary terms.
How about your potential? Do you pamper yourself and care for your well-being as you would if you were a horse?
If your self-worth is not above the value of a million dollar horse, I do feel sorry for you. And we squeeze ourselves into the harness of a job, to make "some" money that will cover the wireless bill. We'd prefer a job that pays better, with better hours, and superior benefits. Potential? Potential my arse.
Jobs are supposedly the answer to poverty? Jobs ARE our poverty! Temporarily a job may help you to get through a rough patch in life, but a life in jobs? I ask you one more time: would you let your thoroughbred horse pull a wagon, so that you can make a quick buck helping someone move furniture?
Yes, jobs make some money but more so, they destroy people's potential. Jobs end the development of your individuality. Retirement is not the end of life. That has happened much earlier: getting a job is what's ending your life. Freedom to discover one's true potential and to live it expansively often finds its abrupt end in a job. People get finished on their jobs.
Jobs are the expression of helplessness in our society to treasure individuals. 87% of employees hate their jobs according to Forbes Magazine. Oh my God, that must mean all 87% do what they're meant to do with their lives! As long as they hate what they're doing, they are on the right track. Let's tell the unions to force politicians to create more jobs we can hate.
Are we that nuts? How many marbles do we have left to lose?
Asking for more jobs means we are intellectually and creatively bankrupt. We are at our wit's end. We don't know better than to use the finest potential we have for the most foolish purposes. As long as they are kept busy and don't have too much time to think. Hitler thought that also: let them build Autobahns. Keeps the unemployment rate low.
There is a certain idiocy operating behind the intent to create jobs no matter what. Devious and devilish is the effort to just provide people with sufficient jobs to keep them occupied.
What a waste of human beings! We mourn our dead. I mourn the murder of individuals on their jobs. People fill out a job application willing to waive the better part of their lives. Barbeque on the weekend, a boat, a house, the kids, a pooch. That's it? People show strangers proudly the pictures of their "beautiful" brats--mostly ugly, insecure teenagers--as if finding a cheating spouse and feeding your accidental brood were amazingly unique accomplishments.
What on Earth is YOUR true potential? Every rabbit can make babies. What can you do? And how will you get it out of yourself for everyone to see and to admire?
There is beauty in you, and your job is to pry it out of its closet.
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: The final version of my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job' is not in print yet. That should not stop you from picking up an "Advanced Reader's Copy" through my website (http://www.moneybymistake.com/). Paperback copy for $11 or it'll cost you $1 if you want to download the eBook edition. Yep, a single puny buck for the entire book! Tell me what you think of it: your "blurb," positive or scathingly negative, will be printed in the First Edition. Condition: your blurb must be offbeat. Boredom verboten!
People, however, don't hesitate to eat all kinds of crap with full knowledge and zero regard for the consequences.
The average person thinks less of himself than we think of race horses. Our self-esteem matches more the value of an old and tired mule. We are neither sane, nor do we believe we're worth much. Hence we go out and buy another diet book. As if we didn't know what's good for us. And some of us have gone too far in our madness, so that we ended up "on the other side," as exercise and diet Nazis.
I don't care about the stuff you stuff yourself with! Eat, get fat, live large--that's none of my business.
But I like Zig's race horse analogy and bloody horse thief that I am, it's worth stealing it for my dark and evil purposes. Would you put your million dollar race horse before a dung cart? Of course not. And no breeder will purchase sperm of that particular horse because it's so damn cute. The horse has a potential that is difficult to measure in monetary terms.
How about your potential? Do you pamper yourself and care for your well-being as you would if you were a horse?
If your self-worth is not above the value of a million dollar horse, I do feel sorry for you. And we squeeze ourselves into the harness of a job, to make "some" money that will cover the wireless bill. We'd prefer a job that pays better, with better hours, and superior benefits. Potential? Potential my arse.
Jobs are supposedly the answer to poverty? Jobs ARE our poverty! Temporarily a job may help you to get through a rough patch in life, but a life in jobs? I ask you one more time: would you let your thoroughbred horse pull a wagon, so that you can make a quick buck helping someone move furniture?
Yes, jobs make some money but more so, they destroy people's potential. Jobs end the development of your individuality. Retirement is not the end of life. That has happened much earlier: getting a job is what's ending your life. Freedom to discover one's true potential and to live it expansively often finds its abrupt end in a job. People get finished on their jobs.
Jobs are the expression of helplessness in our society to treasure individuals. 87% of employees hate their jobs according to Forbes Magazine. Oh my God, that must mean all 87% do what they're meant to do with their lives! As long as they hate what they're doing, they are on the right track. Let's tell the unions to force politicians to create more jobs we can hate.
Are we that nuts? How many marbles do we have left to lose?
Asking for more jobs means we are intellectually and creatively bankrupt. We are at our wit's end. We don't know better than to use the finest potential we have for the most foolish purposes. As long as they are kept busy and don't have too much time to think. Hitler thought that also: let them build Autobahns. Keeps the unemployment rate low.
There is a certain idiocy operating behind the intent to create jobs no matter what. Devious and devilish is the effort to just provide people with sufficient jobs to keep them occupied.
What a waste of human beings! We mourn our dead. I mourn the murder of individuals on their jobs. People fill out a job application willing to waive the better part of their lives. Barbeque on the weekend, a boat, a house, the kids, a pooch. That's it? People show strangers proudly the pictures of their "beautiful" brats--mostly ugly, insecure teenagers--as if finding a cheating spouse and feeding your accidental brood were amazingly unique accomplishments.
What on Earth is YOUR true potential? Every rabbit can make babies. What can you do? And how will you get it out of yourself for everyone to see and to admire?
There is beauty in you, and your job is to pry it out of its closet.
Egbert Sukop
P.S.: The final version of my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job' is not in print yet. That should not stop you from picking up an "Advanced Reader's Copy" through my website (http://www.moneybymistake.com/). Paperback copy for $11 or it'll cost you $1 if you want to download the eBook edition. Yep, a single puny buck for the entire book! Tell me what you think of it: your "blurb," positive or scathingly negative, will be printed in the First Edition. Condition: your blurb must be offbeat. Boredom verboten!
Sunday, July 6, 2008
independence: long shot
Search "employment" on Google, and you will find 309 million links.
"Unemployment" produces 35.4 million links.
"Self-employment" turns up a measly 4.8 million links.
Dare I say it seems to be more than 7 times as popular to be unemployed than to be self-employed? I can't do that, can I? Well, I just did, and you cannot deny that people prefer to be employed rather than working for themselves. According to an entire minute of my scientific research, I found 1.55% of our population is seriously interested in independence--workwise that is.
We don't care to be productive. The largest employer, the government, pays her people out of tax money. You tell me how many "products," manufactured by the government, are being sold successfully in a competitive market environment? How do you measure performance of a government employee, compared with someone who works at a conveyor belt and pops out a tangible product every twelve minutes or so? Hey, relax! I like having the police checking on bad guys. Parts of the government are indeed important. Government employees are quite alright, but the question got to be legitimate: what percentage of government employment is truly productive?
How about subsidized industries? From ethanol production to the ailing airline industry, or to call centers we hesitate to outsource: if tax dollars have to prop up jobs, they certainly lack productivity. Even good old Ted Turner gets paid handsomely--out of your and my pocket--to stop him from farming his land. I hope he at least is aware of how useless and unproductive he is.
As long as an employee gets a paycheck, she is not necessarily concerned whether she is part of something that generates real income or if she produces marketable services and products. If you are self-employed or an entrepreneur, you don't have such luxury. You have to come up with ideas someone somewhere is willing to give you money for. The government may bail out Bear Stearns' shiny behind, but they won't save your dry cleaning franchise from going belly up.
Independence is not attractive! School teachers won't prepare you for it. Unless your parents are entrepreneurs themselves, they will be scared when you tell them you're going into business for yourself. When John Drummond told his father-in-law he was planning to sell unicycles, he got the (understandable) response: "How many clowns do you know?" I believe John didn't know any clowns back then, and he still managed to take www.unicycle.com past a million dollars in annual sales, meanwhile.
Independence is scary and yet, America has been built on just that by notorious bunglers, inventors, and those who tried to do something without the slightest guarantee to succeed. Independence cannot be bought. You will never have enough assets to be independent, all of a sudden. Independence will always be fragile, uncertain, unprotected, threatened, lonely, unreasonable, and a fiercely individual commodity. You don't get independence as a group ticket. No one can bestow it upon you. And trust me on this one: if and when you take on the challenge to be independent, not one other person will be eager to get your kind of independence.
People will laugh about your silly form of independence, first. If that does not dishearten you, they will attack you. If they can't destroy your stupid independence with aggression, they will develop jealousy. Later on, they'll steal your ideas. They may want to copy your products at some point but they never want a part of the hardship you had to endure in the process. A new business needs care and protection like a newborn child, complete with frequent diaper changes and all.
Yet, that's the future: you being in business for yourself. Don't quit your job! Begin something parallel to your existing job (if you have one). People don't quit when they have a baby, either. Well, if they're smart, they don't. You still need to eat and having a roof over your head helps also. But sooner or later, within the next couple of decades, employment will shrink significantly and self-employment will grow. People hate their jobs for good reasons, and wage slavery will be abolished, step by step.
"With more than one million new businesses each year, America’s economy depends on small businesses for its vitality and growth. According to the 1997 report of the U.S. Census Bureau, the nation’s 17 million small, non-farm businesses constituted 99.7 per cent of all employers, employed 52 percent of private workforce and accounted for 51 percent of the nation’s sales. Small business-dominated industries provided 11.1 million new jobs between 1994 and 1998, virtually all of the new jobs created during that time period. Small businesses are most likely to generate jobs for young workers, older workers and women, provide 67 percent of first jobs and produce 55 percent of innovations.
"Thousands of people with disabilities have been successful as small business owners. The 1990 national census revealed that people with disabilities have a higher rate of self-employment and small business experience (12.2 percent) than people without disabilities (7.8 percent). The Disabled Businessman’s Association estimates that 40 percent of home-based businesses are operated by people with disabilities." (source: U.S. Dept. of Labor, http://www.dol.gov/odep/)
If self-employment required especially strong, well-to-do, and able people, there would be a lower rate of individuals with disabilities in business for themselves than of people who aren't suffering any disabilities. The average person still believes in her strengths as an income source. A growing number of those who had to learn to live with disabilities have discovered that you can exploit your weaknesses just as well as strengths, and possibly with greater success.
You don't need to learn the hard way through disabilities or pain: wherever you are currently in your career or financially, there are ways for you to gain independence, enjoyment, and additional income. Strength or obvious weakness, it is possible to exploit both for fun and profit.
That's what freedom is for.
Egbert
P.S.: Final version of my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job' is not in print yet, but you may pick up an "Advanced Reader's Copy" through my website (http://www.moneybymistake.com/). Paperback copy for $11 or it'll cost you $1 if you want to download the eBook edition. Yep, a single buck for the entire book!
"Unemployment" produces 35.4 million links.
"Self-employment" turns up a measly 4.8 million links.
Dare I say it seems to be more than 7 times as popular to be unemployed than to be self-employed? I can't do that, can I? Well, I just did, and you cannot deny that people prefer to be employed rather than working for themselves. According to an entire minute of my scientific research, I found 1.55% of our population is seriously interested in independence--workwise that is.
We don't care to be productive. The largest employer, the government, pays her people out of tax money. You tell me how many "products," manufactured by the government, are being sold successfully in a competitive market environment? How do you measure performance of a government employee, compared with someone who works at a conveyor belt and pops out a tangible product every twelve minutes or so? Hey, relax! I like having the police checking on bad guys. Parts of the government are indeed important. Government employees are quite alright, but the question got to be legitimate: what percentage of government employment is truly productive?
How about subsidized industries? From ethanol production to the ailing airline industry, or to call centers we hesitate to outsource: if tax dollars have to prop up jobs, they certainly lack productivity. Even good old Ted Turner gets paid handsomely--out of your and my pocket--to stop him from farming his land. I hope he at least is aware of how useless and unproductive he is.
As long as an employee gets a paycheck, she is not necessarily concerned whether she is part of something that generates real income or if she produces marketable services and products. If you are self-employed or an entrepreneur, you don't have such luxury. You have to come up with ideas someone somewhere is willing to give you money for. The government may bail out Bear Stearns' shiny behind, but they won't save your dry cleaning franchise from going belly up.
Independence is not attractive! School teachers won't prepare you for it. Unless your parents are entrepreneurs themselves, they will be scared when you tell them you're going into business for yourself. When John Drummond told his father-in-law he was planning to sell unicycles, he got the (understandable) response: "How many clowns do you know?" I believe John didn't know any clowns back then, and he still managed to take www.unicycle.com past a million dollars in annual sales, meanwhile.
Independence is scary and yet, America has been built on just that by notorious bunglers, inventors, and those who tried to do something without the slightest guarantee to succeed. Independence cannot be bought. You will never have enough assets to be independent, all of a sudden. Independence will always be fragile, uncertain, unprotected, threatened, lonely, unreasonable, and a fiercely individual commodity. You don't get independence as a group ticket. No one can bestow it upon you. And trust me on this one: if and when you take on the challenge to be independent, not one other person will be eager to get your kind of independence.
People will laugh about your silly form of independence, first. If that does not dishearten you, they will attack you. If they can't destroy your stupid independence with aggression, they will develop jealousy. Later on, they'll steal your ideas. They may want to copy your products at some point but they never want a part of the hardship you had to endure in the process. A new business needs care and protection like a newborn child, complete with frequent diaper changes and all.
Yet, that's the future: you being in business for yourself. Don't quit your job! Begin something parallel to your existing job (if you have one). People don't quit when they have a baby, either. Well, if they're smart, they don't. You still need to eat and having a roof over your head helps also. But sooner or later, within the next couple of decades, employment will shrink significantly and self-employment will grow. People hate their jobs for good reasons, and wage slavery will be abolished, step by step.
"With more than one million new businesses each year, America’s economy depends on small businesses for its vitality and growth. According to the 1997 report of the U.S. Census Bureau, the nation’s 17 million small, non-farm businesses constituted 99.7 per cent of all employers, employed 52 percent of private workforce and accounted for 51 percent of the nation’s sales. Small business-dominated industries provided 11.1 million new jobs between 1994 and 1998, virtually all of the new jobs created during that time period. Small businesses are most likely to generate jobs for young workers, older workers and women, provide 67 percent of first jobs and produce 55 percent of innovations.
"Thousands of people with disabilities have been successful as small business owners. The 1990 national census revealed that people with disabilities have a higher rate of self-employment and small business experience (12.2 percent) than people without disabilities (7.8 percent). The Disabled Businessman’s Association estimates that 40 percent of home-based businesses are operated by people with disabilities." (source: U.S. Dept. of Labor, http://www.dol.gov/odep/)
If self-employment required especially strong, well-to-do, and able people, there would be a lower rate of individuals with disabilities in business for themselves than of people who aren't suffering any disabilities. The average person still believes in her strengths as an income source. A growing number of those who had to learn to live with disabilities have discovered that you can exploit your weaknesses just as well as strengths, and possibly with greater success.
You don't need to learn the hard way through disabilities or pain: wherever you are currently in your career or financially, there are ways for you to gain independence, enjoyment, and additional income. Strength or obvious weakness, it is possible to exploit both for fun and profit.
That's what freedom is for.
Egbert
P.S.: Final version of my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job' is not in print yet, but you may pick up an "Advanced Reader's Copy" through my website (http://www.moneybymistake.com/). Paperback copy for $11 or it'll cost you $1 if you want to download the eBook edition. Yep, a single buck for the entire book!
Friday, July 4, 2008
independence: short cut
Pursuit of happiness is your right, I know. I do appreciate to live in the only country on earth that acknowledges and protects the individual's right to freedom and happiness. It's huge and not to be taken for granted!
Yet, your right to be happy is not enough if you care to be happy. No one can make you happy: your country can't, your spouse or lover can't, your children can't. Sure, there are people around us who make and bake children for their--the parents'--happiness or as a device to "heal" their broken marriage. What horror for a child to grow up with parents who cripple their kids from day one with the weight of such impossible responsibility! Child abuse of the highest order.
Don't try to misunderstand me: of course, children add to your happiness! AND they will add to your problems. Such is life. But those of us who desire children and have kids IN ORDER TO be happier in life ought to burn in the hell of their daily misery. Guilt is the end product of a doomed undertaking of this kind. Guilt ridden kids who realize they will never be able to satisfy their insatiable and whacko parents. Later on, the crooked parents will--hopefully--grow into lifelong felt guilt for having committed this crime.
There is no long route to your happiness. We could go on and on, to house vs. apartment, living in the mountains or at the beach, being financially well off or struggling: your circumstances, as ideal as they may look from someone else's perspective, are NOT guaranteed resources for your happiness. Not even doing something you love is better suited to make you happy than kvetching along for decades on a disliked job. Yeah, but more money in the bank would definitely make me feel better. Horse shit! We are more creative inventing reasons for our misery than we are willing to be happy.
Studies show that happy people are not wealthier than unhappy individuals. Happy people are not healthier, and they don't have less problems in life than their miserable friends. Regardless of their income, happy people seem to donate more money to charity--to religious and non-religious causes--they even donate more blood and time. The happy ones also appear to belong to religious communities of their choice.
All fine and dandy: it includes the answer but it isn't the answer of how to be happy. Here it is--well, if you can take it, that is:
You cannot become happy. You can only BE happy. Instant happiness kicks in when you ADMIT that you, in fact, are happy already no matter how your life's circumstances may present themselves currently.
It's a tough one, I do know, but you got to bypass the reasoning of your intellect every single time if you care about your happiness and about the happiness of those around you. Being happy is not a selfish act: being miserable is! And both are somewhat contagious. It's not easy to display how happy you are when your loved ones are emotionally down. Happy individuals may feel the need to subdue their true emotional make up in public and especially in the presence of a depressed family member. The one feeling the "emptiness of the big black hole" controls her human environment. No one dares to admit happiness around such a person.
Unhappy and miserable people are the greatest egotists you will find! Don't fall in love with them. Don't marry them ("oh, I will change him"). Stay the hell out of the way of moping people! Unhappy people are the scourge of the earth.
Admit to being happy, baby! Almost always, you'll have to do it in the face of adverse forces. Is it worth it? You decide.
Happy Independence Day!
Egbert
P.S.: Final version of my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job' is not in print yet, but you may pick up an "Advanced Reader's Copy" through my website (http://www.moneybymistake.com/). Paperback is $11 or it'll cost you $1 if you want to download a copy. Yep, a single buck for the entire book!
Yet, your right to be happy is not enough if you care to be happy. No one can make you happy: your country can't, your spouse or lover can't, your children can't. Sure, there are people around us who make and bake children for their--the parents'--happiness or as a device to "heal" their broken marriage. What horror for a child to grow up with parents who cripple their kids from day one with the weight of such impossible responsibility! Child abuse of the highest order.
Don't try to misunderstand me: of course, children add to your happiness! AND they will add to your problems. Such is life. But those of us who desire children and have kids IN ORDER TO be happier in life ought to burn in the hell of their daily misery. Guilt is the end product of a doomed undertaking of this kind. Guilt ridden kids who realize they will never be able to satisfy their insatiable and whacko parents. Later on, the crooked parents will--hopefully--grow into lifelong felt guilt for having committed this crime.
There is no long route to your happiness. We could go on and on, to house vs. apartment, living in the mountains or at the beach, being financially well off or struggling: your circumstances, as ideal as they may look from someone else's perspective, are NOT guaranteed resources for your happiness. Not even doing something you love is better suited to make you happy than kvetching along for decades on a disliked job. Yeah, but more money in the bank would definitely make me feel better. Horse shit! We are more creative inventing reasons for our misery than we are willing to be happy.
Studies show that happy people are not wealthier than unhappy individuals. Happy people are not healthier, and they don't have less problems in life than their miserable friends. Regardless of their income, happy people seem to donate more money to charity--to religious and non-religious causes--they even donate more blood and time. The happy ones also appear to belong to religious communities of their choice.
All fine and dandy: it includes the answer but it isn't the answer of how to be happy. Here it is--well, if you can take it, that is:
You cannot become happy. You can only BE happy. Instant happiness kicks in when you ADMIT that you, in fact, are happy already no matter how your life's circumstances may present themselves currently.
It's a tough one, I do know, but you got to bypass the reasoning of your intellect every single time if you care about your happiness and about the happiness of those around you. Being happy is not a selfish act: being miserable is! And both are somewhat contagious. It's not easy to display how happy you are when your loved ones are emotionally down. Happy individuals may feel the need to subdue their true emotional make up in public and especially in the presence of a depressed family member. The one feeling the "emptiness of the big black hole" controls her human environment. No one dares to admit happiness around such a person.
Unhappy and miserable people are the greatest egotists you will find! Don't fall in love with them. Don't marry them ("oh, I will change him"). Stay the hell out of the way of moping people! Unhappy people are the scourge of the earth.
Admit to being happy, baby! Almost always, you'll have to do it in the face of adverse forces. Is it worth it? You decide.
Happy Independence Day!
Egbert
P.S.: Final version of my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job' is not in print yet, but you may pick up an "Advanced Reader's Copy" through my website (http://www.moneybymistake.com/). Paperback is $11 or it'll cost you $1 if you want to download a copy. Yep, a single buck for the entire book!
Sunday, June 29, 2008
money tantra
Is there a connection between money and our sex life or not? My good friend and "inspirator", Tom Volkar (http://www.delightfulwork.com/) recently joked about me telling people in this blog to get laid. Another subscriber from half around the globe asked me to write about how sex and cash connect. Gawd, I feel so torn ...
Firstly, money is more intimate an issue for us than sex. You and I know individuals who can walk into a bar tonight, establish a casual connection with a stranger, and have sex with person X within hours. Exchange of bodily fluids with a stranger is quite normal for some of us--including the taking of risks: manufacturing children (couple of decades of child support can easily be costlier than today's bank balance permits), serious illness, death--but none of these people would feel as willing and comfortable to exchange credit cards or to share their bank accounts with that same random acquaintance. On average, we care about those last $500 in our bank accounts more than about our very lives! On average, our sanity isn't worth much, is it?
Yeah, but that separates sex and money. Where is the junction between the two? I thought you'd never ask. Bad sex is better than no sex, just like some money is better than no money. Sure, we'd love to have a lot of both and of supreme quality, naturally, but reality may have humbled some of us here and there. Both, too little cash flow or a lack of a decent sexlife often translate to desperation. Desperate individuals are nervous, can get pushy, they're prone to use emotional blackmail, and they are likely to develop typical stalker qualities. We can smell such creepy folks from a twenty feet distance, and in business or in relationships we better run from them as fast as we can!
Here's the kicker: I know guys who believe women have no interest in them because they don't earn enough money. Wrong! Women sense desperation--a lack of confidence--and they don't waste their time on figuring out where its roots may be. No money is no problem, no self-respect is the problem. No sex is no problem either but feeling low, incomplete, and stressed about it is a huge disadvantage. People may shy away from doing business with you, "knowing" something is out of balance with you. Sex, money, who cares what caused it? No money or no sex did not cause anything: YOU are the cause of anxiety and of other people's response to it. When you are needy in ANY department, it will come out of your pores and most people around you will know. Neediness affects all other areas in your life negatively and it is between hard and impossible to fight against it. It is an uphill battle if there ever was one.
That's what I have in mind when I suggest to people who struggle with money issues, men and women alike: hey, why don't you get laid. Even your wallet may thank you. If and when you feel desperation somewhere in your life, locate a different area--seemingly disconnected from the painful subject--that allows you to make immediate improvements easily and playfully. That will do more for the complicated departments in your life than feverishly trying to force yourself to succeed where you've been stuck for awhile. By the same token, individuals with messed up relationships turn into workaholics, because that's what appears to work when nothing else will. It's o.k., but only temporarily. Use this technique as a trigger and not as a solution, or it will quickly become a new trap.
La petit mort--the small death--is a common way to experience orgasm and possibly a period of melancholy right afterwards. Bunches of people can't wait to get there, and then they realize they have just lost what they were after. In other words, people use sex to make the feelings (they so cherish) GO AWAY. Has the idea ever crossed your mind to compare orgasm with goal achievement and success in general? For lottery players, winning large amounts can be the worst that can happen to them. Success can be devastating and even deadly. Example: Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears, and Co.
Nothing wrong with success or orgasm but if that's the only thing that counts: you are doomed, with or without the orgasm, with or without material success. Performance anxiety, fear of not being able to make it or to get the partner where we believe she or he "should" end up, works nicely as a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we are anxious to get there--whatever "there" may be for us at the time--we are royally screwed. There will be no enjoyment of the entire process. No surprise people hate their jobs. We work for the weekends, for our goals, for successes--and we have sold our ability to be happy the entire time. We are having sex with an eagle eye on orgasm, and sex turns out to be stressful, a fine reason for arguments--verbal and non-verbal--and maybe the reason for extended stretches of no sex. Nice!
Our very goals can become reasons for under achievement. Having to make or fake an orgasm is likely to prevent the real thing from happening, and if it happens it'll be too quick. A small death: so frustrating and tiresome an experience that the guy will want to roll over and forget about it. The girl will lie awake for awhile, disappointed. And that's with orgasm, mind you. People are having some sort of what they call a sex life and they end up being more desperate than when they had no sex at all.
Success in life, your damn orgasms, windfalls of cashola--that stuff is meaningless and next to worthless, unless you enjoy and savor as much as you can whatever you are doing right now. Quickies can be fun, I agree, and so can lottery jackpots be a cheap thrill. But those things are not satisfying longterm. Idiots want to get the money and run from their pitiful cubicle life, just as thousands of couples want to get to the goodies as fast as they can, to get it over with. Rat races are for rats, and I refuse to race anywhere.
Are sex and money connected? Duh. I watch individuals breathe, and I know how their money life looks in general. I hear people bitch about their relationship to their work, and I have a pretty clear idea what's happening--or not--in their bedrooms. I cannot and I will not teach you tantra. In fact, I categorically refuse to teach anything to anybody, but I suggest you stick your nose into a couple of tantra books (for example: Diana Richardson, The Heart of Tantric Sex, A unique guide to love and sexual fulfillment).
I don't care about your stupid sex life: it's none of my business! But translate any tantric idea you come across into your work environment, and your happiness will get a kick in the buttocks that your money can feel.
Apropos books: final version of my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job' is still not in print yet, but you may pick up an "Advanced Reader's Copy" through my website (http://www.moneybymistake.com/). Paperback is $11.00 for this "Uncorrected Proof," or it'll cost you a puny buck if you want to download a copy. One condition: I want your feedback, a brief "blurb" I can include in the first edition! I don't care if it's positive or scathingly negative, but your feedback must be offbeat. Don't even think about boring my readers with normal niceties.
I love you too ... oh yeah, and your money!
Egbert
P.S.: There is no long road to happiness, you know? Only a short cut: admitting happiness, no matter what the circumstances may be like.
Firstly, money is more intimate an issue for us than sex. You and I know individuals who can walk into a bar tonight, establish a casual connection with a stranger, and have sex with person X within hours. Exchange of bodily fluids with a stranger is quite normal for some of us--including the taking of risks: manufacturing children (couple of decades of child support can easily be costlier than today's bank balance permits), serious illness, death--but none of these people would feel as willing and comfortable to exchange credit cards or to share their bank accounts with that same random acquaintance. On average, we care about those last $500 in our bank accounts more than about our very lives! On average, our sanity isn't worth much, is it?
Yeah, but that separates sex and money. Where is the junction between the two? I thought you'd never ask. Bad sex is better than no sex, just like some money is better than no money. Sure, we'd love to have a lot of both and of supreme quality, naturally, but reality may have humbled some of us here and there. Both, too little cash flow or a lack of a decent sexlife often translate to desperation. Desperate individuals are nervous, can get pushy, they're prone to use emotional blackmail, and they are likely to develop typical stalker qualities. We can smell such creepy folks from a twenty feet distance, and in business or in relationships we better run from them as fast as we can!
Here's the kicker: I know guys who believe women have no interest in them because they don't earn enough money. Wrong! Women sense desperation--a lack of confidence--and they don't waste their time on figuring out where its roots may be. No money is no problem, no self-respect is the problem. No sex is no problem either but feeling low, incomplete, and stressed about it is a huge disadvantage. People may shy away from doing business with you, "knowing" something is out of balance with you. Sex, money, who cares what caused it? No money or no sex did not cause anything: YOU are the cause of anxiety and of other people's response to it. When you are needy in ANY department, it will come out of your pores and most people around you will know. Neediness affects all other areas in your life negatively and it is between hard and impossible to fight against it. It is an uphill battle if there ever was one.
That's what I have in mind when I suggest to people who struggle with money issues, men and women alike: hey, why don't you get laid. Even your wallet may thank you. If and when you feel desperation somewhere in your life, locate a different area--seemingly disconnected from the painful subject--that allows you to make immediate improvements easily and playfully. That will do more for the complicated departments in your life than feverishly trying to force yourself to succeed where you've been stuck for awhile. By the same token, individuals with messed up relationships turn into workaholics, because that's what appears to work when nothing else will. It's o.k., but only temporarily. Use this technique as a trigger and not as a solution, or it will quickly become a new trap.
La petit mort--the small death--is a common way to experience orgasm and possibly a period of melancholy right afterwards. Bunches of people can't wait to get there, and then they realize they have just lost what they were after. In other words, people use sex to make the feelings (they so cherish) GO AWAY. Has the idea ever crossed your mind to compare orgasm with goal achievement and success in general? For lottery players, winning large amounts can be the worst that can happen to them. Success can be devastating and even deadly. Example: Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears, and Co.
Nothing wrong with success or orgasm but if that's the only thing that counts: you are doomed, with or without the orgasm, with or without material success. Performance anxiety, fear of not being able to make it or to get the partner where we believe she or he "should" end up, works nicely as a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we are anxious to get there--whatever "there" may be for us at the time--we are royally screwed. There will be no enjoyment of the entire process. No surprise people hate their jobs. We work for the weekends, for our goals, for successes--and we have sold our ability to be happy the entire time. We are having sex with an eagle eye on orgasm, and sex turns out to be stressful, a fine reason for arguments--verbal and non-verbal--and maybe the reason for extended stretches of no sex. Nice!
Our very goals can become reasons for under achievement. Having to make or fake an orgasm is likely to prevent the real thing from happening, and if it happens it'll be too quick. A small death: so frustrating and tiresome an experience that the guy will want to roll over and forget about it. The girl will lie awake for awhile, disappointed. And that's with orgasm, mind you. People are having some sort of what they call a sex life and they end up being more desperate than when they had no sex at all.
Success in life, your damn orgasms, windfalls of cashola--that stuff is meaningless and next to worthless, unless you enjoy and savor as much as you can whatever you are doing right now. Quickies can be fun, I agree, and so can lottery jackpots be a cheap thrill. But those things are not satisfying longterm. Idiots want to get the money and run from their pitiful cubicle life, just as thousands of couples want to get to the goodies as fast as they can, to get it over with. Rat races are for rats, and I refuse to race anywhere.
Are sex and money connected? Duh. I watch individuals breathe, and I know how their money life looks in general. I hear people bitch about their relationship to their work, and I have a pretty clear idea what's happening--or not--in their bedrooms. I cannot and I will not teach you tantra. In fact, I categorically refuse to teach anything to anybody, but I suggest you stick your nose into a couple of tantra books (for example: Diana Richardson, The Heart of Tantric Sex, A unique guide to love and sexual fulfillment).
I don't care about your stupid sex life: it's none of my business! But translate any tantric idea you come across into your work environment, and your happiness will get a kick in the buttocks that your money can feel.
Apropos books: final version of my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job' is still not in print yet, but you may pick up an "Advanced Reader's Copy" through my website (http://www.moneybymistake.com/). Paperback is $11.00 for this "Uncorrected Proof," or it'll cost you a puny buck if you want to download a copy. One condition: I want your feedback, a brief "blurb" I can include in the first edition! I don't care if it's positive or scathingly negative, but your feedback must be offbeat. Don't even think about boring my readers with normal niceties.
I love you too ... oh yeah, and your money!
Egbert
P.S.: There is no long road to happiness, you know? Only a short cut: admitting happiness, no matter what the circumstances may be like.
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