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?
Sunday, November 30, 2008
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!
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