Risk is a four letter word. Risky driving is quite popular. People are yakking away at their cell phones without paying attention to anybody else's interest of simply staying alive. Today, a cop almost rammed me because he was so busy doing important work on his computer while swerving into my lane. Had he killed me, I'm sure it would have been my fault. Any idiot takes risks daily, powerful enough to cause the death of half a dozen people, but the majority of us is afraid, very afraid, to live as we please.
We risk our lives every day in traffic. We shun the risk to live a life that's worth living. No way we would risk to be happy. Benefits have corrupted our senses. We have settled for 40 years of time released suicide. As long as we can make ourselves believe that our jobs are safe, there's no problem murdering our potential for a life in mediocrity and misery. Now, that is true laziness.
Modern laziness doesn't equal couch potato. Modern laziness is an active lifestyle sheltered by an employer who does the dirty work for us. Dirty, as in being responsible for soliciting new business, negotiating prices, and making money. Employees, kept safe and innocent with wage or salary, mistake receiving a paycheck for making money. A job is the lazy person's way of “making” money. Somebody else is really making it and passing a small portion on to you. Of course, it'll never be as much as you'd like to see. Having a job is like wearing a rubber to protect ourselves from contact with real money: risk appears to be contained and naturally, your fun is limited also.
Change it! Make money yourself, for the time being PARALLEL to your current job. Take initiative and offer your service or product to other people. If you don't quit your job, it's not even such a risk—just an increase of fun and profit. Too much effort? Right. As I said: laziness.
The hardest working employee is too damn lazy to do something for herself. No wonder, employees are unhappy. Our priorities are messed up. Health and fitness? Oh my God, that comes first. Education is crucial. Good and warped parents we are, we teach our children how to hate life also, and then we pretend to be bewildered when we discover their developing drug habit. We save up money, so that our brats may go to better colleges, ending up on better jobs, hating them better than we ever did. We desire for our children to screw up their lives more comfortably, with a fatter nest egg. We want them to be neat and healthy idiots with nice husbands and good jobs. Insane.
Granted, it can be a difficult task to discover and establish a business, sufficient and stable enough to replace your job with all its benefits. I understand. Hence, my suggestion: take it easy. You don't have the perfect job. So, why trying to find the perfect business? Since you don't give up your job safety, you can enjoy the luxury of abandoning perfectionism. PLAYFULLY, try out something that catches your interest and has the potential to make an additional buck this week or next month.
If you must, sell something on eBay you want to get rid of. It's alright to supplement your income that way for awhile and it's a start, but NO, No, no: I do not want you to become a professional eBay seller, another network marketing clone, or franchisee. That would leave you as empty and drained as the regular job does.
Strengthening and expressing your individual freedom while making money is our objective here. This is not about other people's shady money making opportunities. It's about you and you alone. Your interests and your ability are key. What is your passion? What is so special about you that you can use to SHOCK the world into business with you? How much longer can you hold yourself back?
Explode onto the market. It's easier than you think.
Egbert
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
hard work
Efficiency is more important than how hard one works. Really? As proud as so many of us appear to be about our hard work, I am not that sure anymore what counts. People love to make their money with hard work. What is the true value of hard work and where did the idea originate?
Genesis 2, 17 – 19: Adam got his sorry ass kicked out of Paradise. He was condemned to hard work for life. Why? Because he listened to his wife too much. Hard work is the ultimate punishment for those who give somebody else's opinion weight and value, while neglecting their own better judgment. Hard work is the dumbass treatment for mediocrity. Actually, mediocrity and hard work resemble the chicken and egg syndrome. No one knows for sure what came first. We do know hard work struggles to compensate for mediocrity, and the result of hard work will always be mediocre at best.
Remember high school? Your mediocre classmates were working the hardest. Your loser colleagues and the best performers didn't seem to work all that much. Being terrible in school requires nothing, and the best didn't have to work because things were falling into their laps, or so it looked. The top people were busy, perhaps, but they were also relaxed and had reserves.
Serious hard work has no room for relaxation. It's nothing to be proud of. The harder you work, the tighter you become and the closer you are inching up to the brink of failure. Success is a rare and random result of a hard-working person and by definition extremely temporary. It is simple, when you work hard you are operating near your limitations. There is not much room for improvement and expansion, and sooner or later someone will surpass you. Hard work traps you in the status quo.
Parental approval may have been the first questionable gain motivating you at a young age to buy into that cute yet futile ideology. In the adult world, no one cares for hard work. Markets don't reward it. The hardest working people in any society are the poorest and it has always been that way. Socialist societies are no exception. You work hard, you lose. You are out of breath, you can't win, you won't be happy. Not even money approves of your daily grind.
Did I say you should do nothing, instead? Not that I recall. The alternative to hard work is not some sort of catatonic state. Being active and busy is more fun than laziness. Indeed, it is impossible to do absolutely nothing, unless you are dead of course. Whether you like it or not, whether you're consciously aware of it or not matters little: you are active 24/7, even in your sleep.
Some activities feel like work, while others feel like fun. Interestingly, what's perceived to be hard work for you may be someone else's recreational enjoyment. How so? The average car mechanic whines about his hard job, but you can find an architect somewhere or a lawyer who spends every free minute under his vintage Jaguar. I know commercial airline pilots who seem to be working pretty hard, but when they come home their idea of relaxing means flying experimental aircraft. These guys may be working a lot, certainly not hard. No motivation needed to get them to work. Incentives? That type of B.S. is reserved for people who hate what they do and who beg to be dragged through life like dead rats.
What gets your juices flowing? Think Lance Armstrong. Riding a bicycle hundred miles per day, almost every single day of the year, years and years in a row, looks like an exhausting task to me. For Mr. Armstrong it meant life. What do you do when you find yourself in “the zone”? What sort of activity does not feel like work for you at all, and others are surprised how you can keep at it for so long without taking a break?
It is your work to find the work that is no work. That will make you efficient.
Screw hard work,
Egbert
Genesis 2, 17 – 19: Adam got his sorry ass kicked out of Paradise. He was condemned to hard work for life. Why? Because he listened to his wife too much. Hard work is the ultimate punishment for those who give somebody else's opinion weight and value, while neglecting their own better judgment. Hard work is the dumbass treatment for mediocrity. Actually, mediocrity and hard work resemble the chicken and egg syndrome. No one knows for sure what came first. We do know hard work struggles to compensate for mediocrity, and the result of hard work will always be mediocre at best.
Remember high school? Your mediocre classmates were working the hardest. Your loser colleagues and the best performers didn't seem to work all that much. Being terrible in school requires nothing, and the best didn't have to work because things were falling into their laps, or so it looked. The top people were busy, perhaps, but they were also relaxed and had reserves.
Serious hard work has no room for relaxation. It's nothing to be proud of. The harder you work, the tighter you become and the closer you are inching up to the brink of failure. Success is a rare and random result of a hard-working person and by definition extremely temporary. It is simple, when you work hard you are operating near your limitations. There is not much room for improvement and expansion, and sooner or later someone will surpass you. Hard work traps you in the status quo.
Parental approval may have been the first questionable gain motivating you at a young age to buy into that cute yet futile ideology. In the adult world, no one cares for hard work. Markets don't reward it. The hardest working people in any society are the poorest and it has always been that way. Socialist societies are no exception. You work hard, you lose. You are out of breath, you can't win, you won't be happy. Not even money approves of your daily grind.
Did I say you should do nothing, instead? Not that I recall. The alternative to hard work is not some sort of catatonic state. Being active and busy is more fun than laziness. Indeed, it is impossible to do absolutely nothing, unless you are dead of course. Whether you like it or not, whether you're consciously aware of it or not matters little: you are active 24/7, even in your sleep.
Some activities feel like work, while others feel like fun. Interestingly, what's perceived to be hard work for you may be someone else's recreational enjoyment. How so? The average car mechanic whines about his hard job, but you can find an architect somewhere or a lawyer who spends every free minute under his vintage Jaguar. I know commercial airline pilots who seem to be working pretty hard, but when they come home their idea of relaxing means flying experimental aircraft. These guys may be working a lot, certainly not hard. No motivation needed to get them to work. Incentives? That type of B.S. is reserved for people who hate what they do and who beg to be dragged through life like dead rats.
What gets your juices flowing? Think Lance Armstrong. Riding a bicycle hundred miles per day, almost every single day of the year, years and years in a row, looks like an exhausting task to me. For Mr. Armstrong it meant life. What do you do when you find yourself in “the zone”? What sort of activity does not feel like work for you at all, and others are surprised how you can keep at it for so long without taking a break?
It is your work to find the work that is no work. That will make you efficient.
Screw hard work,
Egbert
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
matter and mind
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you did not do than by the things you did.” --Mark Twain
Imagine all you want: write down your goals. Wish, hope, desire. If you don't DO something about it, nothing is going to happen. Your mind won't move the chair under your keister. You do stuff physically and things start moving. Without your body there is no mind. “Mind over matter” is an insult to anyone's intelligence.
Move it!
Granted, your mind is a brilliant tool and I don't recommend you lose it. Still, just as computer simulations can't predict reality precisely when the input is lacking a variable or two, our minds cannot foresee the future. You mind can't predict if you will enjoy pistachio ice cream if you have never tried it. You don't know the list of ingredients, and even if you did, you'd have to taste it. All theory ends here. Your taste buds like it or they don't. Basta!
Mind depends on the body, matter, all day long. You get a toothache and the reliability of your mind's output is even more questionable than usual. We are making mistakes because mind does not control matter well. Welcome and embrace your mistakes. They show you more clearly than your thoughts which way you do not want to go next.
We must do regrettable things. We need to engage in wrong activities to find what we prefer to do. “Do the right thing,” is the number one jackass theory of schoolteachers. First of all, teachers are scared out of their wits to do anything for real: that's why they chose to become teachers. It's safer to lecture others with worthless hearsay than to get your own feet wet or to collect serious dirt under your fingernails.
Nobody knows what “the right thing” actually is until you do it. Hell, Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II staunchly believed they were doing the right thing for their immortal Tenno and to make their daddies proud. The minds of kamikazes—lots of them were extremely bright and well educated—could not figure it out in advance. Even the most brilliant dumbass has to actively do the regrettable. Matter comes first.
If we were capable of outsmarting matter, we could and would develop systems to beat the stock and futures markets. So far, we haven't come up with ANY money making system, ironclad or otherwise. The mind can't even produce a no-brainer. Long ago sports betting, horse races, and card games would have become serious income sources for the mindful masses. Alas, reality—damn matter, if you will—does not behave the way we think it should.
Agreed, I can make up my mind and visit the grocery store or found a company. But if the body doesn't make a move to get things rolling, the mind is powerless amidst its glorious ideas. Remember when you bought your last car? Did your mind decide which kind and what color? Be honest: most likely, your body moved towards The One—your mind may have made a slight adjustment—but your body steered in the general direction and you “knew” all of a sudden which one it would be. Your spouse couldn't move you, neither could your mind.
With a measurable delay, your mind was struggling to come up with the proper reasoning why you did what you did. Buyer's remorse wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the weakness of the mind compared with forceful matter. To prevent buyer's remorse and to protect ourselves from looking stupid when we have to justify our purchase decision in front of family including brother-in-law, we employ the mind to connect the dots. THEN we claim to have made a rational choice. Our mind proudly announces that the check writing movement of our hand was premeditated and explicitly ordered to be executed by body and matter.
Mind over matter? Cute! I know plenty of investors who can't follow their own exit strategy they patronize and pester others with.
Do more regrettable things. Try stuff. Keep that body moving, and you'll discover more of what you don't like and more of what it is you do want. Expecting a 19-year-old to predict whether she'll enjoy being a lawyer is insane. She'll has to find out by going in that direction. Change directions frequently. Charge forcefully further into the direction you have been going lately. But move, move, DO something, anything. Doubtlessly, you'll regret a few things you do. Myriads of ideas your mind comes up with that remain UNDONE are even more regrettable.
Don't mind your mind. Do what matters to you, move freely and expand your sphere of operation. Your mind will flex its muscles accordingly.
Egbert
Imagine all you want: write down your goals. Wish, hope, desire. If you don't DO something about it, nothing is going to happen. Your mind won't move the chair under your keister. You do stuff physically and things start moving. Without your body there is no mind. “Mind over matter” is an insult to anyone's intelligence.
Move it!
Granted, your mind is a brilliant tool and I don't recommend you lose it. Still, just as computer simulations can't predict reality precisely when the input is lacking a variable or two, our minds cannot foresee the future. You mind can't predict if you will enjoy pistachio ice cream if you have never tried it. You don't know the list of ingredients, and even if you did, you'd have to taste it. All theory ends here. Your taste buds like it or they don't. Basta!
Mind depends on the body, matter, all day long. You get a toothache and the reliability of your mind's output is even more questionable than usual. We are making mistakes because mind does not control matter well. Welcome and embrace your mistakes. They show you more clearly than your thoughts which way you do not want to go next.
We must do regrettable things. We need to engage in wrong activities to find what we prefer to do. “Do the right thing,” is the number one jackass theory of schoolteachers. First of all, teachers are scared out of their wits to do anything for real: that's why they chose to become teachers. It's safer to lecture others with worthless hearsay than to get your own feet wet or to collect serious dirt under your fingernails.
Nobody knows what “the right thing” actually is until you do it. Hell, Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II staunchly believed they were doing the right thing for their immortal Tenno and to make their daddies proud. The minds of kamikazes—lots of them were extremely bright and well educated—could not figure it out in advance. Even the most brilliant dumbass has to actively do the regrettable. Matter comes first.
If we were capable of outsmarting matter, we could and would develop systems to beat the stock and futures markets. So far, we haven't come up with ANY money making system, ironclad or otherwise. The mind can't even produce a no-brainer. Long ago sports betting, horse races, and card games would have become serious income sources for the mindful masses. Alas, reality—damn matter, if you will—does not behave the way we think it should.
Agreed, I can make up my mind and visit the grocery store or found a company. But if the body doesn't make a move to get things rolling, the mind is powerless amidst its glorious ideas. Remember when you bought your last car? Did your mind decide which kind and what color? Be honest: most likely, your body moved towards The One—your mind may have made a slight adjustment—but your body steered in the general direction and you “knew” all of a sudden which one it would be. Your spouse couldn't move you, neither could your mind.
With a measurable delay, your mind was struggling to come up with the proper reasoning why you did what you did. Buyer's remorse wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the weakness of the mind compared with forceful matter. To prevent buyer's remorse and to protect ourselves from looking stupid when we have to justify our purchase decision in front of family including brother-in-law, we employ the mind to connect the dots. THEN we claim to have made a rational choice. Our mind proudly announces that the check writing movement of our hand was premeditated and explicitly ordered to be executed by body and matter.
Mind over matter? Cute! I know plenty of investors who can't follow their own exit strategy they patronize and pester others with.
Do more regrettable things. Try stuff. Keep that body moving, and you'll discover more of what you don't like and more of what it is you do want. Expecting a 19-year-old to predict whether she'll enjoy being a lawyer is insane. She'll has to find out by going in that direction. Change directions frequently. Charge forcefully further into the direction you have been going lately. But move, move, DO something, anything. Doubtlessly, you'll regret a few things you do. Myriads of ideas your mind comes up with that remain UNDONE are even more regrettable.
Don't mind your mind. Do what matters to you, move freely and expand your sphere of operation. Your mind will flex its muscles accordingly.
Egbert
Thursday, March 22, 2007
inhibited love
My friend Cheryl sent me the following story:
It doesn't hurt to take a hard look at yourself from time to time, and this should help get you started. During a visit to the mental asylum, a visitor asked the Director what the criterion was which defined whether or not a patient should be institutionalized.
"Well," said the Director, "we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient and ask him or her to empty the bathtub."
"Oh, I understand," said the visitor. "A normal person would use the bucket because it's bigger than the spoon or the teacup."
"No." said the Director, "A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?"
Sex is not unlike work: people hate it. Yeah I know, we don't hate sex per se, but talk to the gynecologist of your choice and she'll tell you how frustrated women are with their sex lives or the lack thereof. Talk to the average guy and you'll hear a similar response from the husbands of these complaining women. As frustrated as the girls are, as bored and dissatisfied are their faithful husbands. And both parties hate their jobs. No, there is no connection between love life and work life, or is there?
People don't hate their spouses and my wild guess is, we don't really hate our jobs either: what we really really hate beyond anything else are our inhibitions. As in the joke above, we spend years and decades choosing between spoons and buckets, but we're scared shitless to pull the plug. Yep, that's "normal" and equally insane in people's sex lives and at work.
So many guys are afraid to tell the missus flat out what they desire sexually. Chicks want their men to be psychics and mind readers who figure out nonverbally what is expected of them. And? ... Nothing exciting or pleasurable happens for a long time. How surprising!
Confining ourselves to fabulous cubicle careers, we don't even have the balls to tell OURSELVES what we want to do with our lives or what we once dreamed of. Instead, tolerant domesticated dumbasses that we are, we dutifully hate our jobs and we're looking forward to the upcoming weekend and to early retirement—decade after decade. Duh.
Truth is, we defend our inhibitions as religiously as we despise them.
I'll give you a choice: enjoy my condolences or pull the damned plug.
Egbert
It doesn't hurt to take a hard look at yourself from time to time, and this should help get you started. During a visit to the mental asylum, a visitor asked the Director what the criterion was which defined whether or not a patient should be institutionalized.
"Well," said the Director, "we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient and ask him or her to empty the bathtub."
"Oh, I understand," said the visitor. "A normal person would use the bucket because it's bigger than the spoon or the teacup."
"No." said the Director, "A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?"
Sex is not unlike work: people hate it. Yeah I know, we don't hate sex per se, but talk to the gynecologist of your choice and she'll tell you how frustrated women are with their sex lives or the lack thereof. Talk to the average guy and you'll hear a similar response from the husbands of these complaining women. As frustrated as the girls are, as bored and dissatisfied are their faithful husbands. And both parties hate their jobs. No, there is no connection between love life and work life, or is there?
People don't hate their spouses and my wild guess is, we don't really hate our jobs either: what we really really hate beyond anything else are our inhibitions. As in the joke above, we spend years and decades choosing between spoons and buckets, but we're scared shitless to pull the plug. Yep, that's "normal" and equally insane in people's sex lives and at work.
So many guys are afraid to tell the missus flat out what they desire sexually. Chicks want their men to be psychics and mind readers who figure out nonverbally what is expected of them. And? ... Nothing exciting or pleasurable happens for a long time. How surprising!
Confining ourselves to fabulous cubicle careers, we don't even have the balls to tell OURSELVES what we want to do with our lives or what we once dreamed of. Instead, tolerant domesticated dumbasses that we are, we dutifully hate our jobs and we're looking forward to the upcoming weekend and to early retirement—decade after decade. Duh.
Truth is, we defend our inhibitions as religiously as we despise them.
I'll give you a choice: enjoy my condolences or pull the damned plug.
Egbert
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