Life’s lesson - House Rat

“Lesson repeated until lesson learned.” - Unknown

Loosing things is often a sign of what need to change and sometimes you need to loose it more than once so that the error becomes evident to you.

To me, it’s with relationships that it shows the most. If I look back now, I can see a lot of the things I did wrong and it became evident, lately, that I was repeating one major mistake. That mistake is being a house rat. The kind that sit in his room and don’t socialize. I was blind to it until someone sat with me and told me about it. The first thing that went through my head is “I’ve been through this before!” and I felt like such a looser.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very social but it comes to an end every time I’m in a relationship. I’m not into bar scenes nor anything like that, I just can talk to anyone about anything.

Every relationship I ever had was because of my ability to socialize. They were interested in me for that reason and when I stopped doing it, they lost interest in me and left (which I would do the same in their situation).

There’s other things I do wrong, obviously, this one just stands out the most every time and it would be stupid to ask the entire world to change for me and accept me so I have to change for “it”.

What things do you have to work on to be a better you?

Physical strength controlled by your mind

Why is it that we seem to perform more when you have a partner at the gym? I have some friends over for the week-end and I went to the gym with one of them yesterday. Not only did I lift more weights, when he was around, I also was able to do more sets.

Sometime we think that we can't lift certain weight and I believe that it’s because we don’t believe we can. I think I can roughly lift 10-20 pounds more than I think I can.

When I have someone with me, who’s stronger, and I see him lift more weights than me. It’s like it becomes possible and I want to do it not to look too “weak”.

What are you thoughts on this?

Can’t handle honesty

Everyone wants honesty and yet when we’re honest with them they don’t like it. It’s okay to be honest as long as it’s with someone else.

It’s easy to see the wrong in other people and so hard to see the wrong with ourselves. Why would we purposely do something wrong?

Proud Insignificance

Before I start, I do drink (Very rarely, ask my girlfriend),I’m totally aware that I’m going to be labelled “Old Fashioned”, or “party pooper” after this blog and I will go with it anyway because there’s things that need to be said.

It’s not the beer belly that’s the problem, it’s the pride they get from it.

Being drunk seems to be an excuses to do things that you wouldn’t normally do more than an actual “lost of control”. Drinking 5 cases of beer is impressive in itself but what accomplishment is it really? Did it save someones life?

Why is it that the people who achieve the least, in life, brags about it the most.There’s people that brags about kills they got, to me, in a virtual universe. What in the world are they expecting me to say? Good job for sitting around and pressing buttons?

Why do we try to find worth in the little things? Is it because we’re afraid to face the things that actually needs to be faced?

Being the best, at something insignificant, doesn’t make it significant! Besides having important to the owner, it doesn’t do much else.

Voice your thoughts

When people have ideas they usually don’t tell anyone of their findings. It means a great deal to share those ideas at the work place. It adds value and give away the impression that you want what’s best for the company.

Sharing ideas doesn’t mean that they’ll accept and move forward with it. We have to be prepared to be turned down or even laugh at depending on what idea it is. If you can move forward disregarding this, you’ll become more unique in the eyes of the company.

Growing up

My understanding of life grows the older I get. Growing up is a little bit like climbing a mountain, the higher you are, the broader vision you have.

When I was younger, I was looking forward to get on top of the mountain and now that I realize where I am on it, I'm beginning to understand the phases that we have to go through and why I believe we're being tested.

While our experiences are all different, we do face similar obstacles growing up. Nobody can say "I went through this and nobody else ever went through what I'm going through". That's simply not true, there's millions of people, there's bound to be 1 person who had a similar experience.
Life gives us daily lessons to help us come up with conclusions and it's amazing how similar conclusions can be when you share them with someone who went through similar things.

Word to mouth spreads ignorance

“It only takes a mouth to have an opinion. It doesn’t take a brain.” -Tim Marks

We’re too quick to take what other people say and consider it true for us and that is due to a complete ignorance on the subject with little desire to learn more on it. People can take a lie and make it sound like the truth. A lie, that sounds like the truth, is still a lie.

There's a decline in religion beliefs and it's not because we became smarter, or “discovered” new things with science. It’s because society can’t pick up the bible and read it to have their own opinion. People, with no background in religion, take what their neighbour say and make it true for themselves.
I lost count of the amount of people who told me “I don’t believe in religion because I believe in science”. After talking to them for a while, they have no background in science nor religion and it turns out they just listened to what the mass said. A thousand people believing in something wrong doesn't make it right. Do your own research and have your own opinion.

In order to be knowledgeable, you have to have knowledge. Otherwise, what you say is an opinion.

This is just an example, this is true in every area of life. Every time someone give me “tips” that’s my cue to ask about his background on the subject.

Fear of being alone

A fear most felt in the teen years. The fear of being alone is the opposite of the fear of commitment and is in major part due to low self confidence issue.

See: Self Confidence - How awesome do you think you are? Self Confidence - How awesome do you think you are?

It can also be associated to the fear of the unknown. No one knows how we’ll end up in life and nobody can predict if we’ll be alone, or not, in the end.
This fear isn’t as common as the fear of commitment because it goes away with time. We either have a better self confidence, and have no problem finding people, or we accept the fact that we’ll be alone.

*Image by Brian Roy (used with permission). For more http://briansketchbook.blogspot.com/

Fear of commitment

Commitment is almost becoming a bad word these days. The fear of commitment is the same as the fear of making a mistake. We seem to come up to the conclusion, pretty quickly, that if we can’t make it work, it’s because we don’t have the ability to do so and we should move on to something else.

Nothing, worth achieving, is easy. Success, in anything, requires commitment. The greater the fight, the sweeter the victory. There’s no such thing as success without struggle. When things don’t go our way, we shouldn’t attempt to change the situation, we should be changing ourselves to adapt to the situation.

Constant fights

There’s constant battles that we have to fight against ourselves. We can either move forward or backward, there’s no neutral. Every time we loose a fight, it’s a step backward and every time we win a fight, it’s a step forward.

Sometimes, it’s possible to get the illusion of winning. We feel victorious but we only cheated ourselves. We think that we’re so far ahead but we missed something crucial, from the start, and it deviated our trajectory just enough to not be where we should be.

It will all catch up, eventually.

It came out wrong - I’m sorry

I’d like to apologize to my girlfriend and who ever read my previous post (not “Self Confidence - How awesome do you think you are?” the one that was there previously). What I wanted to say came out wrong.

It made me look like a big jerk more than anything else, I can deal with that no problem but what I can’t deal with is that it also brought my girlfriend with me. I will be more careful in the future. If I am to post personal things, i'll make sure that I'm the only one involved and not the people I love.

Self Confidence - How awesome do you think you are?

If I was in a conversation with you and you would tell me that I’m not awesome, you would be the only person, between you and me, who would believe so.
If I would tell you that you’re not awesome, would I be the only one of us to believe so?

Self Confidence is approaching a negative statement in a student/teacher kind of way. It’s to ignore it if it was meant to hurt or learn from it if it’s a constructive criticism.

All that people care about is themselves, they have no time for you. Everyone is afraid of what other people think about them. If I think like that, and you think like that, then really nobody but ourselves thinks about ourselves.

“Most people don’t have any plans to grow.”-John C. Maxwell

Self Confidence can also be define as fear of people and fear, at it’s core, is ignorance. Growing, intellectually, is a big part of self confidence. Learning about people can significally change how you see yourself around them.

The only way people can hurt you is if you let them and you’re more likely to let them if you don’t understand people.

Words have different meanings

It amazes me how the meaning of what you hear can change depending on he experience we’re going through in life. A once happy song can sound so sad when things aren’t doing all that great in our lives.
We, somehow, have the ability to associate what we go through with what we hear. Giving a new meaning to the words.

There’s no such thing as a good break up

Every break up is bad. As some of you may know, since late yesterday, me and my girlfriend are no longer together. Over time, I became a source of stress, to her, rather than a source or relief.

It’s in my belief that you have to let go of the people you love. If they come back, they were always yours. If they don’t, they never were. There’s a reason for everything. God decides who I come in contact with and how long I’m going to have them.

I never know how to feel in time like these. I find change to be very exciting and frightening and, sometimes, necessary. There was a time where I would cry, beg, and try mind games to get a woman back but as I’ve learned before, those things never work.

Only time and praying ever gets me anywhere.

If you ever happen to read this, I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.

Judging Others

Matthew 7:1-6

Judging Others

1 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
6 “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

Source:
-The Bible
-http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%207:1-6&version=NIV

Intellectual Property - Success thinking can’t be passed on, only earned

Technology is the one thing that can be passed to the next generation. Technology always becomes better.

Our intellect can’t be passed down like technology can. People don’t get smarter from generation to generation. The only way, for me, to teach the next generation is to guide them through the same information I went through and even then, they won’t understand it the exact same way than I did.

The principle for success were, are, and always will be the same. They never change and always have to be learned. They can be passed down, through books, cds etc... but it still takes someone willing to get through them.

One would think, since the Internet contain all the information in the world, that there would be more people successful but too much information is just noises. The fastest way to learn what you have to learn is with the help of someone who already made it. Who already have the results that you want.

When family and friend turns into the enemy

You’ll face opposition as soon as you do something that’s a little bit outside of someone else’s comfort-zone. It doesn’t make them bad people, they just have no clue.

I remember when I first called my parents about my decision to go to the gym. They warned me about how dangerous it can be on the body. Funny thing, I tell ya, considering that it’s harder on the body not to do anything. I never had such warning when all I was doing was sitting around and eating wings. Why? Because when people were looking at me, I was doing what they were doing; nothing.

Another time, when I told everyone that I was now following a self-growth program (called TEAM). I was warned about how it can brainwash me (...) ANYTHING you listen to, for more than an hour a day ,will brainwash you. That includes TV, Video Game, or anything else! I never was warned about what I was watching on TV because everyone else was doing it. (I don’t watch TV anymore)

My advice to you is, if it’s morally right and politically correct, to keep moving forward despite the opposition. They don’t live your life, you are. Keep moving forward in the direction you chose!

Removing Copyrighted Material

I was recently contacted by Google for an opportunity to add advertisement to my site, and get a few bucks out of it, using AdSense.
Lately, I was struggling to find the motivation to write anything (I got a bit sloppy with the things I did write too) and AdSense might be able to help me find the motivation necessary to provide better content for you.

With this in mind, I’ll go through all my previous blogs to remove all the copyrigthed material, I can find, before implementing AdSense.
This site was used to remember paragraphs but if there’s money to be made with this (even pennies) I don’t want it to be because of content that’s not my own. I prefer having a sucky blog because of me than a good one because of someone else’s work.

I meant no arm in adding those paragraphs in the first place. The objective now will be to provide better, original, content to a broader audience.

FEAR

Fear is mostly due to ignorance.

There was a time where we had no fear. We were going to conquer the world; become president, a champion soccer player and an astronaut on the week-ends.
At the time, we were in an environment of our comprehension. Go to school, do your homework, dream about the opposite sex. It was simple.
Granted, there was still some things we didn't understand. For me, it was girls and I was scared of them.

As we grow older, we're faced with more things that we don't understand and we can be paralyzed by it. We’re afraid to try because we’re afraid to fail. How could we win at something that we don’t even know how to play?

How can we conquer fear? We read about people who conquer fear. They tell you how to play the game, you just have to follow the path they took.