Be Mindful of The Advice Given

"The man who says in his heart, "I will teach all men, and learn from none," will neither teach nor learn whilst he is in that frame of mind, but will remain in his folly."

-Mind is the Master: The Complete James Allen Treasury by James Allen

In one of the leadership seminars I attended, the speaker said something along the lines of "be careful who you get your information from as you may end up with their results." While we can learn something from everyone we should first analyze the data before we apply it within our own life. 

Don't take financial advice from those who don't have their finances in order. Don't relationship advice from those that haven't been able to keep a relationship longer term. Don't take advice from those that don't have the results that you want in life: If anything they're teaching you what NOT to do.

Making Things Better?

Is the goal of tech companies still to make things better for humanity or are they now trying to replace us altogether? The philosophy of tech companies seems to have changed in recent years for the worse. "If we don't do it someone else will" seems to be their motto.

• Streaming services have changed the landscape of physical media. Now only a handful of companies control our entertainment and they rule with an iron fist often to the detriment of the artist. 
• Meta has tried to create a separate world, called the Metaverse, where they would of monitored everything.
• A.I. is disrupting all sorts of industries to the detriment of employees.
• Robots are coming...

Where does that leave us? 

It will leave us with a handful of companies with more power than governments. Some people will be able to buy an army of robots and overtake these governments if they wanted to. There needs to be a better understanding of what the end goal is in all of this as well as better regulation surrounding it.

Tomorrow Never Comes

“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” 

-Zig Ziglar

I'm not the same person today as I was 20 years ago. Some of the things I thought I would be doing "tomorrow" haven't materialized yet for the simple reason that I no longer desire them. One thing we seem to omit, during our moments of procrastination, is that we may not be the same person tomorrow as we are today and that new person may desire different things.

It's important that we do today what our mind as conjured up as it may never get done otherwise.

Jealousy Isn't Love

"It frequently happens that women who do not really love their husbands are jealous and destroy their friendships. They want the husband to belong entirely to them because they themselves do not belong to him. The kernel of all jealousy is lack of love."

-From "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" book by Carl G. Jung

If trust is the foundation of a relationship then jealousy, which is the lack of trust, isn't a sign of love. Most relationships today have a weak, or no, foundation and can be easily destroyed usually at the man's expense.

The media has created a vision for relationships that, like most other things it portrays, isn't realistic. The man, or woman, must have "X" salary/height/weight... none of these superficial things guarantees success or happiness. A mate shouldn't be disqualified simply because of height/weight(etc...) requirement.

“Choose someone who shows up for you in the storms, not just the sunshine - love is proven in the lows, not the highs.”

-ChatGPT

When Too Much Is Too Little

Someone close to me recently asked for my advice on which book service she should subscribed to. One of them was cheaper and "only" had a million books while the other was more expensive and included "2 million" books.

I suggested the cheaper option for the simple reason that it's not possible to fully appreciate either and money saved is generally better. 

"But what if the books I want are part of the other service?"

"What books do you want?" I replied.

"I don't know..."

After a certain point the numbers are only useful to the marketing team. While it's possible that the one book that you want isn't available (yet) ... you still have a million (minus 1) more books to chose from. Stop wanting what you don't have and appreciate what you do have.