Change Your Life | Rock the World

For the most part, people are douche bags. For the most part, they’d rather rant and complain than try learning anything new or discovering facts about whatever they’re ranting about. For the most part, they just want to bitch about things being the way they are and then at the same time ridicule anything that’s different.

What they don’t realize, and will most likely never realize, is how scared they are. Yup, that’s right, scared. Like whiny, cry baby little girls who didn’t get enough love from mommy today.

There, I said it.

What are they scared of? Well frankly, anything that doesn’t fit into their idea of how things should be.

So why should you care? Well, because what they do and how they think affects you.

We can’t really help but have the people around us influence us, at least to some degree. It’s just sort of the nature of things. So it’ll often happen that when we’re faced with someone, or more likely many people, who don’t want us to be different than what they’re used to, a lot of us will just give up and do as they say, rather than go against the group.  Read more...

Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.

 
When I was a kid, my mother would tell me sometimes that I had a defeatist attitude. That’s the word she used, “defeatist”.

She would tell me that in response to my regular comments about how I was no good at something or that I couldn’t do something, before I had even tried. Yes, I was one of those kids.

So she’d say something like, “What’s with this defeatist attitude? You haven’t even tried.” That’s not an exact quote.

And so there were a lot of things that I never did because I already knew that I would be no good at them. And at the same time, I’d sabotage the things I did try because I went in knowing I would fail.

I’m not exactly sure how I ever developed that attitude, or how I eventually got rid of it, but I do know that it can be an overwhelming and devastating personality trait.

I’ve seen the same thing more recently from some of my fellow kung fu students. Every 3 or 4 months we have advancement tests. Pass the test, move up to the next level. Naturally, it takes time and effort to prepare for the test, and it isn’t particularly easy.

Recently, my friend Dan Callahan wrote a little something on his blog about his mentor Jack Jackson, who recently had some medical complications, and Dan wanted to be sure to point out the amount of impact that Jack had on him and others during his many years as a drug and alcohol rehabilitation coach.

You can read Dan’s post here: http://www.rehabilitation-center.org/blog/purpose-of-life

I left a comment there in response, but I wanted to expand on what I wrote in full article format, if I may.

Dan made a great point about how important it can be to make a positive impact on another person, and I said that I agree and I mentioned how, as a result, I often recommend teaching as a possible career path for anyone who’s looking for a new line of work, and looking for something that they might find fulfilling and gratifying.

I realized that I recommend that to a lot of people, but I’ve never mentioned it here before. Which is pretty stupid of me. Sorry about that.

But here I am now. So let me explain what I’m talking about.  Read more...

Last week I wrote an article about taking the time to enjoy yourself rather than viewing whatever it is you’re doing as a race to the finish line, and in it I wrote that we also shouldn’t look at our personal development as an enemy to be defeated.

And I thought, “Hey, that’s kinda catchy. I should write an article about that.” So here we are.

A few months ago, I was talking to my sister, as I am wont to do on occasion, and she told me a story about two gentlemen that she and her husband know who were at odds with each other about something at the time. Most likely something stupid. The details of the argument don’t really matter, especially since I can’t remember them at all. The only part of the story that really matters is that one of the two gentlemen, when asked to patch things up, said something along the lines of – and I’m paraphrasing here – “No way. I play to win.”

And my first response was, “Win what?”

To which my sister replied, “I don’t know.”  Read more...

I know I’ve told you this before, but sometimes it bears repeating: you’re not perfect.

You make mistakes just like the rest of us, and you have certain parts of your personality that are, shall we say, unfavorable, just like the rest of us. That’s just human nature, my friend.

And that’s OK. It’s normal. It’s natural. It’s understandable. So you might as well own up to your imperfections, because without a firm knowledge of what they are, how can you ever take any steps to improve on them?

And therein lies the crux of this article. Kapow!

We all have faults. We all have things about ourselves that we want to improve, but some of us aren’t really willing to look them straight in the eye for fear of what we might see. Wow, that almost sounds poetic.

What happens too much of the time is that we see ourselves in direct competition with everyone else, and we don’t want to admit that the other person is just simply better than we are at whatever it is. Our egos get in the way, and prevent us from being honest with ourselves.  Read more...