Category: Inspiration

You either live your own, self-originated life or you run on automatic and live the life according to that in which your parents, your peers, your siblings, chance or happenstance or “the system” moves you along the stream.
Take a time-out and sit down to determine what it is that makes you feel most alive, how best you like helping others. It has been said that our highest ability is to help and when that is gone, so are we.
I was listening recently to a lecture and learned that we are most slive in the area of our talents.
And from another speaker I learned that it is not just sports and arts that are areas of talent. Our talents are what we do well that others find difficult.
So make a list of your talents!
Do more of that!
Practice it more often.
Improve your ability in that area.
Get REALLY good at it!
Get SO good at it you could make you living either doing, teaching or coaching others to do that.
Floating down the stream of life may not require effort but it will most likely lead you to places you do not wish to be.
Carving out the life you will most enjoy takes time, effort, discipline and sacrifice of things that you probably won’t miss if you are doing what you love to do.
And another important point.
Whenever you start an activity you will have zero or close to zero confidence in your ability.
That is normal and to be expected.
Recall if you learned how to ride a bike, you were probably petrified when it came to your first time on a two wheeler.
So much so that you insisted your dad hold the seat for you until you felt ready.
The important lesson here is FIRST you DO.
THEN you acquire COMPETENCE.
ONLY THEN do you aquire CONFIDENCE!
Do the action uintil you aquire a high level of competence and you will feel extremely coinfident.
Ever seen a really confident athlete or musician?
Boy do they sometimes come across as cocky!
And boy do they make a lot of money!
This is so true that money could be said to be an idea backed by confidence.
So it is out-sequence (illogical) to expect you should feel confident about something you have never tried or at which you have not done a lot.
Don’t fall into that trap!

Have you ever been in the unhappy situation of having tried to communicate your understanding of an issue to another person and had them refuse to look at what you are pointing out?

The key phrase in the preceding question is “refuse to look”.

Just read a brilliant article that explains why many (most?) people have difficulty communicating their observations to others.

And that is that some people (the few) look and some people (the many) follow orders.

Because the order follower does not observe for himself, he relies on received orders to tell him what to think, do and with what to agree. Celebrity endorsements, pronouncements form men in white coats: “my doctor told me”, “science says” or “the head of the government says” all need to be heeded because they emanate from “an authority”.

Never mind that the reason the person is in authority may be because they told more lies and promised to give away more of the other guy’s money to groups of which you are a member (politicians) or they may be scientists in the pay of special interest groups or doctors who make money if you follow their recommendations.

When an observer endeavours to communicate his observations to an order follower, if the observations contradict the order follower’s orders, the observations are rejected. Full stop. End of story.

This is the mechanism by which tyranny and authoritarianism reigns over the masses.The authoritarian influences merely by making definite statements and giving orders to the indoctrinated.

So here’s something with which to experiment. Instead of conversationally beating your head against a brick wall, try asking these questions:

What data do you have on the subject?
From where did you get that data?
If I could show you that data was incorrect or inaccurate or incomplete, would you be prepared to change your mind on the subject?

If they say no to that and you had time on your hands you could always ask their reason for holding fast to their false data.

How a Wolf Named Romeo Won Hearts in an Alaska Suburb
A beautiful story of three species interacting.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/150322-romeo-wolf-dog-animals-wildlife-alaska-ngbooktalk/