Friday, February 26, 2010

Do You Know What The Difference Is Between You and An Expert?


I'm sure you're thinking about how experts really smart, have tons of schooling, make a lot of money... any number of things. But the truth is, there is no difference.

This is how it boils down... you can work the same job for 10 years and admit to yourself that you have some good job security, good experience under your belt... you might even say you have a solid career.

An expert, on the other hand, would work for 10 years and call him/herself an expert in their field. Simple as that.

See how that works? No? Let me break it down to you like this. It's about self confidence. Not to be confused with the confidence one has in their work.... it's self confidence.

Your issue is that you feel emberassed, shy or just awkward telling someone you're an expert. Because that sounds like you're bragging or boasting. Maybe they won't even believe you.

This is where your confidence comes into play. It has nothing to do with your actual job. The truth is, anyone can get any job and anyone can call themselves an expert once they know how to do that job. I didn't say do it well, just do the job.

Let me put it another way... do you think your boss will ever call you an expert? Co-workers? Friends? You could live your entire life just being some other worker hoping for someone to finally recognize you for who you are. Very few 'experts' in the world were ever given that title. They called themselves an expert and proved it.

If you're now asking yourself how you prove it, don't feel alone. The reason for that is because you've never thought about it before and chances are, still don't think of yourself as an expert. Give it some time, get used to telling yourself you know your work. You are an expert!

Chances are the opportunities to prove it have been there all along and will be there again. You just didn't recognize or sieze them because you didn't think of yourself as an expert.

Once you do though, the chances will come. People will come to you for advice and presto, you're a consultant! Peope will need an expert rather than just a bunch of worker drones from some company they don't know... presto, you're an independant contractor/entrepreneur.

Stop telling yourself that you're just an employee or that it's just a career. That's the old way of thinking. No one has careers any more. It's just a job. And either you think better of yourself and take charge of it or you'll just keep doing that job or some other job for the rest of your life wondering why the new guy went off and became an 'expert' when you've been doing it for 20+ years and can't do the same.

You are an expert. Act like one.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Motivation In the Form of Video Games - What Can We Learn?


Even if you don't play video games, just follow along with me. I've always played video games and have taken a lot away from them over the years. First and foremost, as a child, it greatly increased my hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills and most importantly, my problem solving skills. However, as an adult, it taught me something even more important, how to motivate myself!

It didn't really dawn on me until I started playing Xbox 360 games, they had caught on a long time ago and found a way to turn it into money. Microsoft knew that what they needed to make more money was to feed us what fuels us... no, not food. Achievements!

Each and every game that you can get for their system comes with a laundry list of Achievements that extend beyond the normal game itself. For example, you can finish the story or beat the bad guys or play with friends and still need to get some Achievements or conversely, not finish it and still get some Achievements to your credit. I've seen people play a game for days, weeks, even months after they "finished" it just in search of those Achievement points.

It's a secondary feature which may seem kind of silly if you haven't tried to get them before but for avid gamers, these can become addictive. If a game had an achievement for playing 365 days straight, you can be sure that there would be people out there playing that game every day for a year. And not just children either, the average age of a video game player might surprise you.

The thing is that the Achievement system drives you on an Xbox 360 because it drives you in real life. It's the fuel you need to move forward.  It's just not usually laid out for you on your television screen. But it could be.

Think about it for just a second. If you could fire up a video game, say... PacMan, and see a list of things like surviving for 20 minutes without dying, getting 500 dots in a row without dying, eating 12 ghosts in a row... what ever, you would load that game up and say to yourself "I can get those!" And when you did get those, you would feel really good about it.

You don't have to play video games to get that feeling. And there's no reason that a list of Achievements should only be seen in a video game.

Put it in to practice right now. Make a list of Achievements in your life that you would like to get. Maybe it's drinking only one coffee a day instead of two. Maybe it's putting $100 into a drawer every month until you have $5000. Maybe it's playing less video games.

It doesn't matter what it is. The Simpsons video game has an achievement for pressing Start when you first turn the game on. Hard to get?? Not even close. But it's an Achievement!

Microsoft makes a fortune from doing what you really could do for yourself. Think about it. Learn from it. Do it.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The Hardest Advice To Follow: Your Own


What is it in us that makes us great at giving advice to friends and family and yet prevents us from believing our own words? Is it that we think we're simply saying what the other person needs to hear and not really what we believe?

Think about this; if Michael Jordan gave you advice on basketball, would you listen? If Donald Trump gave you advice on making money, would you listen? If Anthony Robbins sat down and talked to you about motivation, would you listen? Conversely, would you listen to advice on the stock market from a convenience store clerk?

There's no real secret here, the secret is in the source. In this case, it's you.

Listen, I'm not saying you're not worth listening to. I'm saying that if you are needing the advice, especially on motivation or other self help areas, chances are you are already down on yourself. Hense the desire for advice.

You put yourself down, you don't like yourself or some aspect of yourself so you need advice... why would you listen to yourself? You think low of yourself just like you would think of that store clerk trying to give stock advice.

The fact is, the advice is in you, you already help others with it. Now think about this, their source is the same as yours. You! And they believe you. Why? Because you're you.

Look, there's an expression for this sort of thing. It's called a 'pity party' and it only ever has one person in attendance.

What you need to do is look in the mirror, slap yourself in the face and admit to yourself that even if there is only one single person in the whole wide world that actually takes your advice... then the source can't be all that bad. If the advice sounds like it could be good advice if it came from Michael Jordan, or Donald Trump, or Anthony Robbins... then maybe it's just good advice and you should stop caring who said it.

You're reading motivational articles, you don't feel like you're the greatest human that ever lived. I get that. But there's no reason to think that you can't give someone, even yourself, advice. Good advice is good advice, ignore the source. No matter what it is in you that says you shouldn't.

Friday, February 19, 2010

The Irony of Misery - Why is Our Natural Instinct To Make Ourselves More Miserable?


Have you ever noticed that when you're really miserable or even depressed that all you want to do is be alone, not go out with friends, not do things that you enjoy... not not not!

Probably the hardest thing a person could ever do when depressed is try to be happy. Why is that? What kind of backward self defeating programming is this that the one who kicks us when we're down most is ourselves?

It's not so apparent when you actually are depressed because no one is really thinking very clearly when depressed. We tend to focus on the things that make us depressed, even if we have to blow those things way out of proportion to do it. Ever had a friend or family member laugh at the things you say to depress yourself because it just sounds so ridiculous to them? I bet you hated that. Fact is, it was ridiculous.

Everyone gets miserable, depressed, has a bad day... and everyone has seen it happen to someone else. And when that happens, we can very easily see the triggers in them that they use over and over again to keep themselves in that frame of mind. And it makes no sense to us at all! But when it's our turn to feel that way, we do the exact same thing as them and it makes total sense to us for some reason.

This is a motivational article and so far all I've given you is observations of the absurd things we do when miserable. Truth is, I'm hoping you can see where I'm going with this on your own.

Next time you're having a bad day, feeling miserable or even depressed and you're scouring the Internet for some way to get your motivation back... think about these absurd observations. Think about just how stupid it is that we as humans do this to ourselves.

The next time you're miserable and you say no to doing something that you know you'd enjoy if you weren't miserable, remember just how dumb it is that we do that. Ask yourself, why do we do that?? And when you can't come up with an answer, stop doing it!

It's not really that simple, I know. When you're miserable, thinking straight is rough. But you can do it. You don't have to cheer yourself up or chuckle about it. Just realizing what your own mind and chemical make up is doing to defeat itself should be enough to snap you out of it.

The fact that our mind is wired to do it is just stupid. It defies logic. Don't let something so dumb drag you down further.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

The Only Thing You Need to Know About Being Motivated - The Secret Revealed!


Do something you want to do!

Wait, what? You wanted more than that? I'm sorry to let you down. You were expecting some great revelation or some inspiring novel of information that would finally pick you up and get you moving when you really just want to get back into bed and feel warm and comfy huh? Please, even you know better than that!

Think about all the things you would really like to do right now, besides just sitting where you are. I don't care what it is, think about something you would really like to do. Now, do you think that you would have any trouble finding the motivation to get up and do it if the opportunity presented itself for you to do it right now?

You see it all the time, when someone offers tickets to a sports fanatic, they get excited and go! When someone asks if a shop-a-holic wants to go shopping, they hop up and go! When you ask a child if they want ice cream, they drop what they're doing!

Let me tell you another little secret: No one is motivated to do something they don't want to do.  Finding the motivation to do something you don't want to do isn't really motivation at all. Likewise, promising yourself something nice for doing it is a reward, not a motivation. It's a bribe. It's nice but it's a very temporary solution.

The concept is really very simple and I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. The trick now is to find a way to do things you enjoy all the time.  Either find the time to do a lot of things you enjoy in your free time or better yet, find a way to do something you enjoy as your primary source of income!

The people who succeed most are people who do what they love. It's not just a cliche, it's the truth. And the truly great part about it is even if you don't get rich or successful, it's something you love doing anyway so it's not a problem.

Only an idiot would do something they hate all the time and think that reading some random article on some random website is going to unlock the secret to motivating them to keep doing that thing they hate. I know that sounds harsh. It is, but if you saw someone doing something they really didn't like and they asked you to say something that would make them suddenly like it, or want to do it.... you'd tell them they're an idiot too.

Want to be happy? Want to be motivated? Do something you want to do!

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Facebook is an Interesting Social Experiment on Just How Many People Truly Are Sheep


It all started with chain emails which would state something like "forward this to every single person in your contact list or you will have 7 days of terrible luck" or something similar. Some even had interesting sliding scales where if you sent it to half, you'd only have 4 days of bad luck. Nice of these things to have discount options.

Now we have Facebook where status messages often contain "real friends will copy this status" insinuating that anyone who doesn't isn't a real friend.

The last craze to go around was the bra colour thing where women would set their status to the colour of their bra, supposedly in support of breast cancer awareness even though the majority of people really didn't know what was going on. This spawned the 'awareness' craze where anything and everything that people could possibly have became a status message that insisted that "people who care" would copy and paste it.

Did anyone really care about those follow up awareness issues or did they simply want to see how many people would copy them? It even went so far as to have one stating "everyone knows someone who is an idiot. This is to raise idiot awareness" and so forth. It was an obvious parody which garnered the same results. People copied and pasted.

Every time I see a Facebook status message that concludes with "copy and paste this to your status", I cringe and find myself deciding on if I should remove this person from my friends list.

The latest crazy is even funnier where people (mostly kids) are creating groups which promise you the world if only you'll suggest the group to every single friend you have.

I've seen people promise farmville items that aren't even in the game, some promise multiples of things you can only get once, some promise thousands of rewards coins in games like Mafia Wars or others like it. Some groups even promise to let you roll back to a previous version of Facebook if you don't like the changes they make.

And the instructions are always the same, stating that you must suggest ALL of your friends. Not all minus one, not half, not a few... all.

I shouldn't have to explain this but Facebook doesn't even track if you send to 'all' friends. How is this kid tracking it when he doesn't have access to their code? Also, Facebook doesn't offer the ability to roll back to a previous version, how would this random kid be able to do it?

Going one step further, how does this random person have the ability to track through Facebook's code and end up giving you extras from a 3rd party company that they have no affiliation with? Oh right, they can't. No extra Farmville land or Mafia Wars points for you.

This wouldn't be so bad, and would be almost comical if not for one small thing... people don't just fall for it once! They join group after group after group hoping that just one of them will give them this wonderful bounty that no one else can get and they keep suggesting all of their friends over and over and over again.

There is a lot of wool on Facebook.

The scary part is, these people are out there, in real life. They're your friends. It may even be you!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

"Don't bother, I'll never figure it out" - The Self Fulfilled Prophecy


Recently I've had people asking me to explain things to them that they didn't understand. However, if they do not understand even the smallest portion of what I explain, they throw their hands in the air and tell me they just don't get it and should stop.

It's very easy to get frustrated with things you don't know or don't understand. You can see it from the earliest ages in almost every person alive, it's a human trait. Children throw toys that won't work, they get mad when they can't solve a puzzle, when they die repeated in a video game... and on and on. This translates into adult hood where you certainly have a better grasp thanks to years of schooling however it's not something that many people address directly and therefore never deal with directly.

What happens is that people get frustrated with common every day experiences such as dieting and finances. Most people simply don't know what foods truly are the best for them because they don't take the time to learn. Finances are a huge one; who really takes the time to learn all the investing terms and options, takes the time to find the best banks with the best interest rates?

What results is a very large frustration; not only in dealing with your weight and money/bills but also in knowing full well that you need to know more but just don't.

This is the part where I should explain that you can easily walk into any bank or go to any dietitian and they'll explain anything and everything.

But I won't because you and I both know that it won't make any difference. This is a motivational article, not an informational one. What you are lacking is not only the motivational requirements to get up and out of the house to seek out a professional and spend time learning, but also the desire to actually learn from them.

Here is how it works; you don't know certain things because you don't care to know it. You get more frustrated learning it than you do not knowing it. Am I right?

I've had to re-explain things so many times to some people because they simply have no interest in learning it. They ask me to explain it, sure... but the explanation doesn't sink in for one simple reason, they didn't know it before, they won't know it after, they don't care to know it now. They just ask because it makes no sense to them at the time and they ask out of frustration, not a desire to learn.

It's a very childish attitude when you get to the bottom of it but as I said, it's a human trait. We all do it.

Do you know why successful people are successful? It's because they took the time to learn. They didn't just learn business management, or take "how to be successful" seminars by over paid speakers in some random convention. They learned as much as they could every day that they could. Want to learn about diets? Read some books. Want to learn about finances? Read some books!

You don't have to go back to college, you don't have to even have a high school diploma. You just have to put aside that really childish, frustrated, temper tantrum throwing little voice in your head that makes you want to scream when you are faced with something you don't understand and instead, ask for some clarification.

We live in a very exciting time with the Internet at out fingertips, Libraries are still out there and best of all, real live humans who will actually set aside time to just talk to you and not even charge you a penny.

You just have to want it. And that means putting aside a very basic human trait.

The only reason you're dumb is because you want to be. Stop wanting to be. It's less frustrating.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Needs vs Wants - You Know the Difference, But Do You Use the Wrong Word Anyway?


How often have you heard someone say "I need a coffee."? Do you say it yourself? How about "I need a smoke" or "I need a beer" or....  well, you know where I'm going with this.

When someone says something like this to me, I respond with "Really? Do you really NEED that?" which usually results in them rolling their eyes or other responses that brush off my dumb sense of humour. I'm not joking though.

Usually the response is "it's just an expression" but so is "if you say something enough times, you start to believe it." Even if you know you don't really need that coffee, you've been saying it out loud to yourself and to anyone that will listen every single morning for years, even decades! And what happens if you wake up one day and the coffee maker isn't working? Or the coffee shop is too busy to stop in and you're running late??

Your whole day is ruined isn't it? You can account all kinds of terrible things that happen that day all to that missed cup of coffee that you told yourself you needed.

If I was to ask at that point "Do you really NEED that?" I bet there would be no more rolled eyes, no more brushing it off. The answer would be an undeniable "yes!"

It's because you've convinced yourself so completely that you really need that coffee every morning. Now, I'm not a doctor but I'm fairly certain a daily 12oz cup of coffee is not a daily requirement for our existence.

I hear it all the time from the funniest things like "I need to have bread with my eggs" to "I need to pierce my eyebrow." And people don't even realize they're saying it wrong because it's become such a normal part of every day speech (not the eyebrow piercing part but the 'need' part).

But even if you and I know the difference and think it's so very obvious that "need" isn't really what we meant when we said it.... we still said it, and our mind still believed it. And we still fell apart because we didn't get it.

You don't need a team of scientists on this to prove that it's true. We convince ourselves so deeply that we need something that eventually, we do need it. Like a drug, we can't cope without it.

You could argue that it's simply the act of drinking coffee every day that makes us feel terrible when we don't, and you wouldn't be entirely wrong but would you have had that coffee every single morning for so many years if it was just something you wanted, rather than needed?

Think about all the things in your life that you want to have and ask yourself if you've made those things a daily event. When you convince yourself that you need it, you prioritize it. And you make it happen until eventually, you have to keep having it even when you don't want it anymore... all because you once said "I need a coffee."

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Why we Like to See Others Fail, Fall or do Something Stupid


If you were to ask anyone, they'd tell you that the reason they like to see people fail, fall or do something stupid is that it's funny... and there's certainly no denying that it truly is funny.
Would you believe, however, that people didn't always find it funny?

Years ago people would feel bad for those who failed or try to help prevent someone from doing something stupid or help to prevent them from doing something stupid again. However today, it's amusement which we can build sites around and entertain ourselves for hours as we go from post to post.

It's entirely up to you to decide if such a change is right or wrong but I do find it an interesting commentary on how we as humans have progressed. Is it that it that we care less about our fellow man? Is it that our senses of humour have changed over the years? Is it that we just didn't get the joke back then?

I'm not a psychiatrist and don't pretend to be one (because I'd be pretending to be a very bad one) but it's been my observations over many years that what it boils down to is one very simple concept: for a very brief, flashing moment before the laughter starts, we feel really really good about ourselves... that we're "not that guy!"

It's the idea that if we can't rise up to be great, at least there's someone failing or falling or doing something dumber than we are. It only makes sense that if there is a 'higher' point in life that there has to be a 'lower' point as well. So what we do subconsciously is find or even push people 'lower' to give the illusion that we are 'higher'. It's not a perfect analogy but you get the idea.

We see it every day from bullies on a school yard to your typical Internet 'haters' that frequent any social gathering.  Those that feel they can never be better than they are try to associate with and push others down.

But think about this, they may seem to be lower on the ladder than you... but they may be failing, falling or doing something stupid while on their way up that ladder and they'll pass you as you stand there and thinking you're superior.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Everyone is good at something - Not Just a Cliche, It's a Lie!


I've always had a problem with the "everyone is good at something" mentality... I mean, why does everyone have to be good at something? Isn't there almost 7 billion people on this planet? Doesn't it stand to reason that with that much diversity, there has to be some people who are simply pathetic at everything? I know there are some people who seem to be really good at everything so why not the opposite?

I'll tell you why, it's because people need to tell themselves something to help them feel better about themselves. When you aren't good at anything, you tell yourself "everyone's good at something!" and suddenly you feel a little better about yourself. You convince yourself that you just haven't found what that one thing is yet.

It may just be me, I'm a sadist like that, but I think it's simply more frustrating and depressing to have people tell me that all the time, only to keep prodding along not being good at anything.

Instead, I'd be a lot happier knowing that not everyone has to be good at something. It's ok to not be Gretzky playing hockey, or Jordan playing basketball or Gates taking over the computer industry. Reassure me that I don't have to win the Olympics to be "just like everyone else".

I know what you're thinking, the purpose of the statement is to give you hope and to motivate you to get out there and try some more. But you have to realize that when someone is down, when they feel defeated, when they feel that they just don't fit in with the rest of the world, a statement takes on a whole other dimension. Suddenly you feel like everyone has expectations of you that you "know" that you can not meet. It can be very demoralizing.

Instead, you should pay attention to the people who tell you just be happy with who you are. You don't have to be good at something to be loved or even respected. Be confident in yourself even if you're convinced that you'll never rise up to be anything great. Because most people don't and that's ok.

That doesn't mean to stop practising or to stop trying new things. You should still keep the search going and keep experiencing new things because even if it turns out you're not good at any of those things, at least you have those experiences, those adventures, those memories! And who knows, maybe you actually will find something that you are good at too! Maybe!

Don't beat yourself up if you truly aren't good at something, sure you suck because of it but so does almost everyone else. Us "average" people out number the "good at something" crowd 1000 to 1. We can take them in a fight.... even if they're good at fighting.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Failure is your best teacher, but why all the extra homework?


When Thomas Edison was asked why he didn't just give up after failing the first 1000 times trying to make a light bulb, he said he didn't fail, he just found 1000 ways it won't work.

This is the part where I'm supposed to tell you that persistence and hard work pay off, like it did for Thomas Edison... I'm not.

If you haven't figured out the message in the story, my little words of inspiration won't help you. In fact, I bet you've already heard that little story before and yet here you are, looking for more motivation because it simply wasn't enough.

Leave this site and go find some other motivational site. I can guarantee you that you'll see that Thomas Edison anecdote on every motivational site you find. So if it didn't work before, and doesn't work now... why are you still searching?

Wait wait wait, there's a reason I am asking and asking the way I just did. Think about it... let me put it this way. Have you found 1000 sites yet on motivating you?  Now go back and read the Thomas Edison anecdote again and see if you can figure out why I asked.

Not everything is a world changing invention. Not everything is a HUGE success. Sometimes successes and failures come in nice neat little packages that we don't even recognize...  including, being unable to motivate ourselves. And for a moment, you asked yourself... why are you still searching when it's just not working? Why are you still trying?

Well, if you can't keep trying at the small stuff, do you think you'll quit when it comes to the really hard stuff?

Remember, you suck because you fail and keep trying.... but you'll suck a heck of a lot more if you fail and quit.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Life is a Highway - It's Not About the Destination, It's About the Journey, Right?


There are pot holes, sink holes, rock slides, head on collisions, drunk drivers, road kill, blinding lights, traffic jams, pollution, road rage, car jackings, etc.

I forget where I was going with this...

There are a lot of references to life being a road or path or some other surface that we'd travel down. I think the reason for that is that we can't visualize the passage of time so we substitute it with some great distance we need to traverse. This helps us to create an image in our head from which we can make all kinds of metaphors and comparisons.

The problem is that I don't have to go down a road; I can just stand there. But I can't suspend my life in an instant; stop and look around. I can't just sit down and relax until I feel like going again. I have bills, responsibilities, children and a whole host of other reasons that make it impossible for me to just stop what I'm doing for a while. I have to keep going down that road whether I want to or not.

The sad reality is that many people do sit down, many people do stop travelling. Whether it be because they quit, they get side tracked, they're tired or they're simply a procrastinator... they continue down that road regardless. Most of us want to do all kinds of things on that road but for one reason or another... we simply don't. We think that we can just put it off for a while and get back to it because the road will always be there.

It's not a road, it's your life.

You're life is only so long and if you don't make the most of it... you'll come to the end of the road and realize that it's too late to make things happen. It's too late to get moving those feet. The road didn't wait.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

The Things We Take For Granted - We've Come So Far, But Lost Sight of So Much!


Let me tell you what I know about you.. you're not happy. I don't mean at this very moment or even this week... but with life in general, you're not happy. Even if you deny this, there are times when you're not and there will be more.
Let me put a few things into perspective about just how stupid that is (I don't mean you, but rather the fact that it's true for everyone).

Do you realize that humans have been treking around this big ball in space for a few hundred thousand years... not just a thousand, not tens but hundreds of thousands. Now, think about what life was like about 100 years ago; the car was just being invented, phones were around but chances are your house didn't have one, the toilet was outside in an outhouse, they didn't even have encyclopedias much less wikipedia, there was no flying in planes... life was very different!

Now think about this, most people lived in small towns, say... 1300 people. They never had any problems finding their significant other, raising a family or growing old together.

Today, most people live with 1300 people in their building! They live in cities of millions and is that good enough? No. Online dating/match making sites are the hottest thing there is right now because so many people are scared they'll never find that perfect love and they need to look all over the globe!

What the hell happened?!??

Imagine living in Europe during a time when a plague raged through the entire continent and you knew that even if you were one of the very very lucky that survived, everyone you knew was likely going to die. Imagine living in Asia in a time when you knew that Genghis Khan could come through at any moment and destroy everything.

Today, most people feel like they have nothing to live for despite having a cell phone, home phone, 9 email accounts, a fax machine, instant messaging and a bunch of other ways for people they know all over the world to be able to reach them.

What the hell happened?!??

A few hundred years ago, most people never left their town, much less travelled the world. Most people never even saw pictures of anything out of their city! They heard stories or perhaps made one voyage from one place to another for a new place to live but consider that a few hundred years ago, it would take YEARS to travel across North America from east coast to west coast.

Today people can skip across the continent in under 5 hours, get to the other side of the planet in 23 hours or so.... even just get in their car and be in the next city in a few minutes! But people have no desire to do that, no time, don't care.... or, they get themselves down about how "impossible" it is to just get up and go somewhere.

What the hell happened?!??

Grab your mouse, open a book, watch a movie... see what life was like and you'll notice that those people weren't the miserable sacks of self pity pessimistic bunch that we are today and ask yourself...

What the hell happened???

Monday, February 8, 2010

If only I could win the lottery


You might as well wish that Tinkerbell would show up and sprinkle you with pixie dust so that you can fly too. It's just as likely.

Let me tell you a little secret... a big lottery win won't help you. I'm sure you've heard that upwards of 2/3 of all lottery winners go bankrupt within 5 years, right? And I'm sure you tell yourself and all those that will listen (all 2 of them) that you'd be different and you'd be smart with your money! Right?

Well, you're praying on a lottery win, and you have no money now. So you've already proven yourself wrong.

Little girls eventually stop wishing for a pony, little boys eventually stop wishing to be super heroes.. I think it's time you stopped wishing for a lottery win. You would go bankrupt, your family would hate you for not giving them millions and buying them houses and you would find that you still have all your life problems plus more!

Want magic? Here's some magic for you. Stop saying "I will be smart when I win the lottery" and start now.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

If only there was more time in the day!


How many times have you said "if only there was more time in the day!" ?
Ever ask yourself "Then what?"

I would wager all that I have (a bottle cap and nail clippers) that you would still be a miserable failure even if you could get that wish.

Think on this: You work 9-5 and the next day, the work is still there. There's still more work to do. So then one day you do extra and work 9-8 and yet, the next day the work is still there. So another day you do nothing but work from 8am to 10pm and the next day?? You guessed it; the work will always be there.

I would venture to say that 99.99% of the people who say they want more time would just fill it with more work. That hard work would ultimately get them no where, and eventually they'd still find themselves saying "if only there was more time in the day!"

Stop wishing for fairy tale scenarios and come to the realization that either you change how you organize your time or you're doomed.

Or take the much shorter route and just realize that you're doomed.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Over come your fear of public speaking


There's only one thing you have to remember when trying to over come your fear of public speaking and that is... no one cares what you have to say anyway!

Think about it, you're looking for help getting motivated, you're reading up on self help crap... I mean... uhm... insightful, brilliant advice... and you're a scared little pansy. Who wants to hear what you have to say???

So don't be scared, no one is listening.

And if you find yourself in the rare position that someone is listening, say... family members or some pets... then you've already over come the hardest part! Being a loser!

Friday, February 5, 2010

400 page books on Time Management


Ever buy one of those? I bet you didn't find the time to read it, did you?
The only thing more ironic than the book existing is you buying it.

The author is supposed to be this self proclaimed expert on helping people learn time management... I'd say they don't know their target market half as well as they think they do.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

If being a failure was a race..


If being a failure was a race, you'd finish second... because you can't even win at that!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

in 10 years time...


So I found some old college classmates of mine on Facebook (a site you don't know about because you have no friends) and it occurred to me that a LOT can happen in 10 years!

Some friends were over seas, even on the other side of the planet, some had done over 20 different jobs since then, some had big families, some were still single... even 2 classmates married each other!

And it dawned on me just how much you can accomplish in 10 years, and how far you can be from who you are, to who you will be in 10 years.

Then I started thinking about how much time I had wasted doing nothing really, and learning nothing and being nothing. Then I started thinking about how stupid I was and what a failure I've become and then I realized... I could get up and make things happen so that in 10 years, I'll be a completely different person doing something totally different and be truly happy!!!

Then again, nah... screw it. I screwed up the last 10 years, I'll probably do it again so why bother? Sound familiar? It should. I'm your subconscious.

You suck.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Setting goals


Goals are what set people apart, there's successful people and then there's you.

Successful people set goals, and work hard and achieve them and move on to better goals.

You, on the other hand, set goals and think about all the things you don't have, and how you'll never get them, and work hard and don't achieve them and set lower goals and fail at that too.

But hey, at least you have a list of stuff you don't have and can't do! That's something... right??

Maybe it's better to just not set goals.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Happy all the time = freak!


Ever seen someone who's just happy all the time? For no reason, no explanation, no sense.. they're just happy! And they smile all the time, and seem to bounce all over and talk all weird, like... not monotone?

Freaks!!!

It's funny, in this day and age we see people with their heads down every day, miserable people, complaining people, crying people, homeless people, helpless people and people just lost in general.... and it's ok. It's normal. It's what we expect to see when we walk out the door and find ourselves in a crowd.

But someone who's genuinely happy???  Strange!!! Not natural!

You can't help but think "What's wrong with that guy??  He's just not right!"

Funny how that is, isn't it? Imagine if it was the other way around.

Nah....