You know what sensitive people are? They are bullies.
Straight talking people will give it to you straight and take it straight. They will lock horns with you and then pat you on the back and tell you you put up a good fight. They admire your ability to speak and defend yourself and they are rarely offended: disagreements are a form of lively and exciting debate - good for them, and good for you - to practice that kind of head butting. Everyone gets stronger when you butt heads.
But those sensitive souls who get upset over every little thing you say - they are the abusive ones. You know, the ones that cry because you hurt their feelings, or the ones that say they are afraid to say x, y or z out of some "fear of you". Because when someone is debating, or arguing at least you always know where you stand - you always have the option of justifying, explaining, or defending your position. You have the option to agree or disagree. But these sensitives give you a message:
"Be careful what you say, or I will cry"
I am speaking the truth. Sensitive people are very selfish - they allow you no real freedom of expression. You never know what's going to set them off, and their victim status automatically puts you in the position of "the bad guy" when all you are doing is speaking. Whilst before, you were free in your speech and self expression - suddenly you have to watch out! You have to be careful what you say, you have to mind your tongue and "use more tact".
Basically, you walk on eggshells now.
So for that reason, I am declaring all sensitive people as selfish hostiles who play the victim to get their own way and make you uncomfortable with your natural self - when they could just be generous and let you be who you are, without ruining everything with their constant and consistent taking of offense, hurt feelings and bloody crying all the time.
Dear sensitives: being around you is A DRAG. Please grow some balls and act like a grown up, we are sick of your whining and complaining, your crying and bitching. Get a life, get a personality, get a voice and stop making out like you are helpless and defenseless all the time to get your way.
Its VERY VERY BORING having to constantly rescue you and tell you its all going to be OK. We are just wishing that you would get a grip and stop being a victim all the time.
"Feelings" are invisible things - if yours are hurting all of the frickin time, maybe you need to get some better, more updated, more robust feelings and get rid of these ones that get damaged by every frickin non-praising sentence that hits your eardrum.
We comfort you because we hope it will make you shut up. Really, we would feel much better and would like you much better if you just stood up for yourself and got over things a bit quicker so that we could actually have some fun with you instead of having to comfort you 24/7.
Tuesday, 20 March 2012
Wednesday, 14 March 2012
Monday, 6 February 2012
Don't Bite bait
Bait is used by fishermen to catch fish. The bait is normally a maggot on a hook, dangled into the water on the end of a string. The aim of the bait is to tempt the fish into biting onto the hook. Fish sees the bait, bites the bait, and ends up dead on a hook. Fisherman will now eat the fish, or take a lovely picture for his collection book and fling it back into the water - injured and exposed. Sometimes, the fisherman will throw a great handful of bait into the water, attracting hundreds of fish - straight into his net.
In life, our reactions are fish. Inflammatory people, thoughts, opinions, acts and words are the bait. The people feeding off of our reactions are fisherman.
In life, people will bait you obviously by straight out calling you names and insults until you lose the plot and get violent, and they will bait you subtly, by asking leading questions, insinuation and passionate speech. Your job, as an intelligent person is to not bite the bait, to not lose the plot and to not give someone the satisfaction of seeing you lose it and to not give anyone an opportunity to get one up on you.
You see, here in the UK - power comes from your ability to adminstrate. Whilst your popping off to your local ticket inspector about the massive find he's just plastered over your car, some administrator somewhere is logging all of your activities so they can whoop you with an even bigger fine and possibly charge you with a crime. You shouldn't have taken the bait - you should have administrated - write a letter of complaint, start a petition, thats how things work here. When someone outside of the mosque hurls insults at you and you rush over to punch them in the face, a teeny little camera and a few witnesses are ready to throw the book at you. You took the bait. You should have sued. That's how the shit goes down.
As satisfying as it is to organise a march about discrimination in the news and the lack of available halal food - what you could be doing is establishing these things for yourself. Meanwhile, the Government is swiftly increasing the rich poor divide, raising the cost of living, limiting access to education and passing emergency bills and laws and powers that will allow them to arrest you and imprison you without cause. Who exactly is all of this change going to impact the most? You and your community. That's right folks, you are slowly but surely being locked out of the system, and your ability to get educated and establish business is slowly being taken away from you - and you didn't even notice did you? You see you fool! You're so busy looking at those tasty maggots wriggling in the water, that you have not noticed the massive fisherman's net encircling behind you.
The next time you find yourself feeling inflamed by a person, or a thing, or an article or an opinion - just stop right there. DO NOT BECOME ENRAGED. Do not get aggressive in government buildings, do not abuse people in public and do not ever assume that what you are witnessing and experiencing is anything more than just another fisherman, baiting you onto a hook and distracting you from the presence of the net.
If you want to make an impact, you do so by calm and effective administrative practice, an intelligent team, and the establishment of codes, practices and bodies that can operate within government guidelines and compatibly with the news to push for changes that will make a difference in an effective way. Yes, you marched and screamed and ranted with placards - did it change anything? NO! You fed the problem - you made it bigger, you made yourself look like crazy insane manics and you chose the wrong individual to represent you and now the whole community has to suffer with the bad PR and fear that you have caused. If you are too busy popping off over every little inflammatory act that crosses your path, and you will definitely not achieve your goals - because you don't have a goal do you? You are simply reacting to the bait.
Instead of doing that, learn how to operate in our administration-based based system. Forget that nutcase shouting abuse at you outside the mosque - keep your eye on the bills and laws that are going on where it really matters, and operate in a way that has a chance of impacting the system - and make his actions illegal. Make his actions trespassing and fine the bastard every time he comes close. Get a restraining order on him. It is only through administration that we can solve the issues that are pissing us off - and solve them at the root and not at the street. If your boss tries to touch you, don't hit him and get yourself done for GBH and generate a load of witnesses that will testify to your "anger issues". Go straight to HR, write letters, seek out a lawyer and get yourself a tidy compensation and have him done for sexual harassment. If your neighbours won't stop making noise, don't bang on their door and get aggressive - start keeping records and build a case for their eviction.
And when you find yourself getting all heated up about a religion or race issue - you stop right there and you ask yourself if losing the plot at this moment is going to solve the root cause of all of this, or if losing the plot is actually going to bring you and your community even more headache. Maybe someone out there wants to capture your rage on camera to feed a fear of you and give them an excuse to legislate against you. Maybe someone somewhere is profiting from your outrage. It could be that your outrage will end up making the next council reject your mosque planning application because they have started to see you as antagonistic. Or maybe a year or so down the line, members of your community stop getting jobs because other members of your community keep popping off all the time and the greater public has started to worry about your prescence. Maybe, just maybe, the rulings on immigration, housing, voting and wearing veils can be swayed to disadvantage you by just one more image of you and your buddies losing the plot. Maybe your anger and outrage is very useful to a different community who get their way because they have managed to focus public opinion on your actions, so their actions go unnoticed, or at the very most - seem minor in comparison. Meanwhile, the book is being thrown at you left right and centre in every which way imaginable, your integrity as a community is tarnished and no one is taking you seriously anymore.
SO WATCH YOURSELF.
A fisherman will not keep throwing maggots into the water if he stops catching fish. When you stop biting, they will stop baiting. If, every time bait crosses your path you respond administratively, not only will you stop feeding the problem and giving advantage points to your enemies, you may actually have a chance of making some kind of long term sustainable impact on your situation.
Get out there. Learn the rules. Know your MP, your HR manager, your local newspaper, Imam and other important administrators that are constantly and consistently affecting your life in a very significant and major league way.
Stop biting the bait - because behind every bait is a fisherman, itching to catch you.
In life, our reactions are fish. Inflammatory people, thoughts, opinions, acts and words are the bait. The people feeding off of our reactions are fisherman.
In life, people will bait you obviously by straight out calling you names and insults until you lose the plot and get violent, and they will bait you subtly, by asking leading questions, insinuation and passionate speech. Your job, as an intelligent person is to not bite the bait, to not lose the plot and to not give someone the satisfaction of seeing you lose it and to not give anyone an opportunity to get one up on you.
You see, here in the UK - power comes from your ability to adminstrate. Whilst your popping off to your local ticket inspector about the massive find he's just plastered over your car, some administrator somewhere is logging all of your activities so they can whoop you with an even bigger fine and possibly charge you with a crime. You shouldn't have taken the bait - you should have administrated - write a letter of complaint, start a petition, thats how things work here. When someone outside of the mosque hurls insults at you and you rush over to punch them in the face, a teeny little camera and a few witnesses are ready to throw the book at you. You took the bait. You should have sued. That's how the shit goes down.
As satisfying as it is to organise a march about discrimination in the news and the lack of available halal food - what you could be doing is establishing these things for yourself. Meanwhile, the Government is swiftly increasing the rich poor divide, raising the cost of living, limiting access to education and passing emergency bills and laws and powers that will allow them to arrest you and imprison you without cause. Who exactly is all of this change going to impact the most? You and your community. That's right folks, you are slowly but surely being locked out of the system, and your ability to get educated and establish business is slowly being taken away from you - and you didn't even notice did you? You see you fool! You're so busy looking at those tasty maggots wriggling in the water, that you have not noticed the massive fisherman's net encircling behind you.
The next time you find yourself feeling inflamed by a person, or a thing, or an article or an opinion - just stop right there. DO NOT BECOME ENRAGED. Do not get aggressive in government buildings, do not abuse people in public and do not ever assume that what you are witnessing and experiencing is anything more than just another fisherman, baiting you onto a hook and distracting you from the presence of the net.
If you want to make an impact, you do so by calm and effective administrative practice, an intelligent team, and the establishment of codes, practices and bodies that can operate within government guidelines and compatibly with the news to push for changes that will make a difference in an effective way. Yes, you marched and screamed and ranted with placards - did it change anything? NO! You fed the problem - you made it bigger, you made yourself look like crazy insane manics and you chose the wrong individual to represent you and now the whole community has to suffer with the bad PR and fear that you have caused. If you are too busy popping off over every little inflammatory act that crosses your path, and you will definitely not achieve your goals - because you don't have a goal do you? You are simply reacting to the bait.
Instead of doing that, learn how to operate in our administration-based based system. Forget that nutcase shouting abuse at you outside the mosque - keep your eye on the bills and laws that are going on where it really matters, and operate in a way that has a chance of impacting the system - and make his actions illegal. Make his actions trespassing and fine the bastard every time he comes close. Get a restraining order on him. It is only through administration that we can solve the issues that are pissing us off - and solve them at the root and not at the street. If your boss tries to touch you, don't hit him and get yourself done for GBH and generate a load of witnesses that will testify to your "anger issues". Go straight to HR, write letters, seek out a lawyer and get yourself a tidy compensation and have him done for sexual harassment. If your neighbours won't stop making noise, don't bang on their door and get aggressive - start keeping records and build a case for their eviction.
And when you find yourself getting all heated up about a religion or race issue - you stop right there and you ask yourself if losing the plot at this moment is going to solve the root cause of all of this, or if losing the plot is actually going to bring you and your community even more headache. Maybe someone out there wants to capture your rage on camera to feed a fear of you and give them an excuse to legislate against you. Maybe someone somewhere is profiting from your outrage. It could be that your outrage will end up making the next council reject your mosque planning application because they have started to see you as antagonistic. Or maybe a year or so down the line, members of your community stop getting jobs because other members of your community keep popping off all the time and the greater public has started to worry about your prescence. Maybe, just maybe, the rulings on immigration, housing, voting and wearing veils can be swayed to disadvantage you by just one more image of you and your buddies losing the plot. Maybe your anger and outrage is very useful to a different community who get their way because they have managed to focus public opinion on your actions, so their actions go unnoticed, or at the very most - seem minor in comparison. Meanwhile, the book is being thrown at you left right and centre in every which way imaginable, your integrity as a community is tarnished and no one is taking you seriously anymore.
SO WATCH YOURSELF.
A fisherman will not keep throwing maggots into the water if he stops catching fish. When you stop biting, they will stop baiting. If, every time bait crosses your path you respond administratively, not only will you stop feeding the problem and giving advantage points to your enemies, you may actually have a chance of making some kind of long term sustainable impact on your situation.
Get out there. Learn the rules. Know your MP, your HR manager, your local newspaper, Imam and other important administrators that are constantly and consistently affecting your life in a very significant and major league way.
Stop biting the bait - because behind every bait is a fisherman, itching to catch you.
Sunday, 5 February 2012
The Classic Marriage Mistake - not being ready for adulthood.
In my humble and albeit limited opinion, the greatest error a human being can make before they embark on marriage is to NOT GET THEMSELVES READY FOR ADULTHOOD.
There are many blogs and speeches about, saying choose a spouse for this, and choose a spouse for that - and it is easy to get the impression that a successful marriage is all about choosing the right person.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but you could not be more wrong if you tried. Yes, spouse selection is important - but even more important, is the level of investment you put into yourself to make sure that you are ready to be an adult and handle the responsibility of being in a marriage.
Marriage normally means that you are living away from parents. It means that no one is looking after you anymore. No one is washing your clothes, or paying your bills or keeping you in good stocks of loo roll and toothpaste.
Responsibility of Adulthood Number 1: Can you Manage Finance?
Once you leave the nest, you will be responsible, not only for day to day commodities like food and drink, but also electricity, water and gas. Want something to sit on? You have to buy your sofa. Wanna watch TV? Better buy one. Prefer showers to baths? Better learn how to fix a shower into the bathroom. Drive to work? Yep - you guessed it! You've got to buy the car, and insure it and tax it and put petrol in the tank.
So before you start focusing on what you want in a spouse: make sure you have trained yourself to deal with the onslaught of financial responsibilities that are going to come your way as soon as you leave mum and dads.
Money is going to fly out of your hands like there is no tomorrow and you just have to learn how to deal with it - and maybe, after a year or so, you can even save. Who knows?
Responsibility of Adulthood Number 2: Dealing with problems as an when they arise.
If you are still with mum and dad, probably when something goes wrong - they fix it. Leaking ceiling? They fix it. Boiler broken? They fix it. Need a window cleaner? They've got one. Incorrect council tax bill? They know how to manage it.
One major skill in life is to deal with problems successfully, sufficiently and appropriately when they arise. And they will arise. You will get items delivered to you broken. You will get overcharged by mistake. People will direct debit your account. You will get unfair parking tickets, your ceiling will leak and flood your bathroom, your washing machine will break down, the boiler will throw spasms and you will receive a monthly pile of administrative work that you will have to sort through.
You will end up in disputes with landlords, tenants, banks, suppliers, shops and the council. Parts of your home will degrade, break down, fall apart and need repair. You will want to change things, you will have to spend, people out there in the real world will try and take the piss, will over charge you, will sue you and will bring you a level of issues and problems that you cannot even imagine.
Your job, before you get out there and drown in it all, is to make sure you have made yourself comfortable with the reality that problems will appear, sometimes very serious, sometimes very minor: and your job as an adult is to be able to deal with them when they arise and not fall apart, crack, crumble, have a nervous breakdown or become rendered disabled by it.
Responsibility of Adulthood Number 3: Food
Yes, I'm sure Mum's Chicken Curry is the best thing in all the world. Did you know that she used seven thousand five hundred ingredients to make it taste that way? No, probably you had no frickin' clue at all. And that little machine she uses to make the soup all nice and lump free - where's that? Oh that's right - you don't have one. So naturally, you pop down to your local food shop and start perusing and suddenly you realise that not only do you have no clue about how to make this or that, but you really cannot identify the difference between a courgette and a cucumber.
Slowly, it dawns on you that food may not be that great for a while, and you have to accept that. Your spice and pot collections will building slowly, and gradually over time. You will acquire items on a demand basis and gradually you will gain graters and garlic pressers and pestle and mortars so...
MANAGE YOUR EXPECTATIONS! and learn how to cook ASAP for crying out loud, or else you'll starve to death and end up crying on mum's door step with the BMI of an anorexic from a third world country.
Responsibility of Adulthood Number 4: Keeping a cool head
One of the luxuries of living at home is that you can be very free with your emotions. Had a bad day, why not - just sulk it out in your room. Pissed off about that late train? Yeah go on! Shout and scream your head off. Boss spoke down to you today? Hand in your notice!
Yes, the parental home is a safe haven for irresponsible outbursts of emotion, a sanctuary for sulking, a variable menagerie of mood swings and outbursts all in the comfort of your room.
If you cannot keep a cool head when times get rough, or challenging or hard - you better start practising meditation or some other technique because in the world of adulthood no one is going to do it for you. No one is going to calm you down, or run you a bath, or help you out. You have to deal with issues, and you have to deal with them in a cool, calm, responsibility manner. Fail to do this, and not only will your problems build up into a veritable mountain, but you will end up making bad and costly decisions.
So. If you are living with mum and dad and you find yourself getting in a mood about having to do something, or sulking over some misfortune that has befallen you today, or generally worrying yourself to death instead of proactively seeking solutions and taking positive actions - you're done for my friend.
Taking time out to be upset about something is an expensive luxury only an elite few can afford. For the rest of us, you just have to plough on.
Focus, address, commit, resolve - that is the way of the adult world. Yeah, you can NOT do this - but be warned: it will cost you.
Responsibility of adulthood number 5: Maintaining relationships
This one is largely about the level of respect you are willing to show to other people and the massive levels of benefit that respect will deliver for you.
Every time you interact with another human being, you are making or breaking a potential connection. So when you are living with mum and dad, you might be of the opinion that it's OK to speak to a shop assistant like they are piece of shit because your hoover stopped working. Or you may feel it's OK to scream and shout over a long queue, or a bad driver.
You might go one step further than that, and be of the kind of person whom employs manual labourers to do work, and then fail to take care of them and speak down to them. Or you might go to a restaurant and disrespect the waiter.
BE WARNED. In the adult world, every good relationship is of benefit and every bad relationship is danger.
When you're a grown up, builders, plumbers, mechanics and other fix-it people you are on good terms with can save you hundreds of thousands of pound over the course of your live. Service people can short cut you through a mountain of administration and fast forward you to the front of the queue. Advisers and consultants will willingly find loopholes and snags and opportunities that you didn't even know existed. A policeman will let you off a ticket and a fine, if you just treat him well and apologise. A nurse will run around the whole hospital to get you the help you need if you just say please and thank you.
So be good to people! All of them!
Whilst its true that solicitors have spent years on training and thousands on education, your humble mechanic is the one who you will be seeing the most, and it is he who will save you the most heartache and trouble. You should not need a solicitor so often as you will need a mechanic. Or a doctor. Or a waitress. Or a customer service representative.
Get the picture?
That waitress can recognise your voice on the phone and squeeze you in a table when everyone else gets a no. That friendly builder? He can cut your rebuilding costs by over 50% in return for a cup of tea and a kind word. Your neighbours? They have a choice - they can call the police when shit goes off over at your place, or they can turn a blind eye. They can tell you who smashed into your car in the driveway, or they can stay out of it.
In short, what you receive from the world is directly related to the level of investment you put into being kind to people and showing them respect EVEN WHEN YOU FEEL THEY HAVE MISTREATED YOU. Because even if they did mistreat you, your actions will end up determining all outcomes - and you never know whose watching and willing to help, assist, aid, guide, act as witness, support your cause and get involved in making your life better for you.
If you have a sense of entitlement and not getting your way with other people (workers, doctors, police, delivery people, mechanics, builders, plumbers and so on and so forth) say hello to a world of shit.
Get people on side, as much as you can, all the time and stop popping off at everyone who pisses you off. It really helps more than you can ever know.
Adulthood responsibility Number 6: Learning how to wind down
When you're with mum and dad, it's very easy to start taking things a bit too seriously. This is mainly because your life is rather simple and tiny things like your internet breaking down can send you into a puff for weeks on end and even ruin your whole entire year.
GROW UP!
CHILL OUT!
If you don't know how to chill out and have some fun, you will end up a chattering mess, rocking back and forth in the corner of a room, hallucinating. I mean it - the responsibilities of adulthood are great and vast and the only thing that will keep you energised, positive and proactive is the ability to chill out, wind down and have a laugh in the midst of any issue.
Laughter IS indeed the best medicine around and when things get tough, it is important that you can say to yourself "STOP", "CHILL", "BE COOL" and "DON'T WORRY" - and there is no better way to solidify those messages than to have a local chill out spot, some fun friends, and some loving family in your circle that you can go to.
Never, and I mean NEVER allow yourself to be a worry wart that infects all chill out and fun times with personal woes and problems. Use down time to re energise the happy parts of yourself and don't bring your issues to the party - the invitations will soon stop coming, trust me.
Better, to just learn how to enjoy yourself, ESPECIALLY when times are rough - it is an excellent tonic for dealing with things. Having shit with the boss? Invite mates round, share a pizza and take the piss out of the situation. Massive bill landed on you that you really can't handle? Phone a friend and laugh your head off. Car stolen? See the funny side and share it with family.
Seriously, if you can't chill out in rough times - ALL time will soon become rough time. Learning how to relax is a VERY essential life skill. You will always need a good nights sleep, you will always need hope, and positivity, you will always need the ability to enjoy yourself and forget things for a while - and for this reason, I have made knowing how to chill out a major adult responsibility.
Adult Responsibility Number 7: Distancing yourself from other people's crap
When you're living at home with Mum and Dad, and your best friend's relationship breaks down - it may be that you end up in a mood yourself. Or maybe one of your mates is having a hard time with their studies and you start feeling stressed about your own studies. Perhaps it was a cousin that got married and it ended horribly, so you start reassessing the way that you are going about things. What is happening here, is that other people's crap is infecting the way that you are living your life.
STOP THAT.
In the real world, people's lives fall apart for a variety of reasons and the first thing these people will do is seek you out and try to convert you to their world view. And it may even succeed. Your paranoid co-worker can make you paranoid, even when you never had a suspicious bone in your body. Your man hating friend, can make you consider lesbianism. Your cousin in marriage misery can make you come home and slap your husband in the face as soon as he says hello...
DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU
If you start letting everyone's problems, stories, world views, ideals, teachings and opinions affect you will never establish the stable sense of self that is needed to make clear and accurate decisions and judgements about your own life. The way you need to see things is that everyone in the world has their own set of shit to deal with, their own baggage and their own personal issues and ultimately, they are the cause of their own problems and they need to learn how to deal with them.
Never ever lose sight of yourself, or lose your personality, doubt yourself, question yourself or start worrying because some misfortune has befallen someone else. If you cannot be clear and clarified about the major difference between your own life experience and everyone elses life experience you will be like a feather in the wind, swaying whichever way the wind blows. What you need to be is not a feather, but a stone: solid, firm and unchanging about how you feel, what kind of day you are going to have today and what decisions you are going to make tomorrow.
You must have a psychological barrier against mental intoxication so that you are in control of your emotions, thoughts, conclusions and decisions and that you only take the advice that you want to take, and that you trust.
So - if you are finding yourself in a situation, feeling sad or low because someone else in your life is, feeling worried because someone else is: you need to stop that crap right now and grow up. Make the distinction between you and others and guard your mental space with vigour. No one is going to guard it for you.
There are many blogs and speeches about, saying choose a spouse for this, and choose a spouse for that - and it is easy to get the impression that a successful marriage is all about choosing the right person.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but you could not be more wrong if you tried. Yes, spouse selection is important - but even more important, is the level of investment you put into yourself to make sure that you are ready to be an adult and handle the responsibility of being in a marriage.
Marriage normally means that you are living away from parents. It means that no one is looking after you anymore. No one is washing your clothes, or paying your bills or keeping you in good stocks of loo roll and toothpaste.
Responsibility of Adulthood Number 1: Can you Manage Finance?
Once you leave the nest, you will be responsible, not only for day to day commodities like food and drink, but also electricity, water and gas. Want something to sit on? You have to buy your sofa. Wanna watch TV? Better buy one. Prefer showers to baths? Better learn how to fix a shower into the bathroom. Drive to work? Yep - you guessed it! You've got to buy the car, and insure it and tax it and put petrol in the tank.
So before you start focusing on what you want in a spouse: make sure you have trained yourself to deal with the onslaught of financial responsibilities that are going to come your way as soon as you leave mum and dads.
Money is going to fly out of your hands like there is no tomorrow and you just have to learn how to deal with it - and maybe, after a year or so, you can even save. Who knows?
Responsibility of Adulthood Number 2: Dealing with problems as an when they arise.
If you are still with mum and dad, probably when something goes wrong - they fix it. Leaking ceiling? They fix it. Boiler broken? They fix it. Need a window cleaner? They've got one. Incorrect council tax bill? They know how to manage it.
One major skill in life is to deal with problems successfully, sufficiently and appropriately when they arise. And they will arise. You will get items delivered to you broken. You will get overcharged by mistake. People will direct debit your account. You will get unfair parking tickets, your ceiling will leak and flood your bathroom, your washing machine will break down, the boiler will throw spasms and you will receive a monthly pile of administrative work that you will have to sort through.
You will end up in disputes with landlords, tenants, banks, suppliers, shops and the council. Parts of your home will degrade, break down, fall apart and need repair. You will want to change things, you will have to spend, people out there in the real world will try and take the piss, will over charge you, will sue you and will bring you a level of issues and problems that you cannot even imagine.
Your job, before you get out there and drown in it all, is to make sure you have made yourself comfortable with the reality that problems will appear, sometimes very serious, sometimes very minor: and your job as an adult is to be able to deal with them when they arise and not fall apart, crack, crumble, have a nervous breakdown or become rendered disabled by it.
Responsibility of Adulthood Number 3: Food
Yes, I'm sure Mum's Chicken Curry is the best thing in all the world. Did you know that she used seven thousand five hundred ingredients to make it taste that way? No, probably you had no frickin' clue at all. And that little machine she uses to make the soup all nice and lump free - where's that? Oh that's right - you don't have one. So naturally, you pop down to your local food shop and start perusing and suddenly you realise that not only do you have no clue about how to make this or that, but you really cannot identify the difference between a courgette and a cucumber.
Slowly, it dawns on you that food may not be that great for a while, and you have to accept that. Your spice and pot collections will building slowly, and gradually over time. You will acquire items on a demand basis and gradually you will gain graters and garlic pressers and pestle and mortars so...
MANAGE YOUR EXPECTATIONS! and learn how to cook ASAP for crying out loud, or else you'll starve to death and end up crying on mum's door step with the BMI of an anorexic from a third world country.
Responsibility of Adulthood Number 4: Keeping a cool head
One of the luxuries of living at home is that you can be very free with your emotions. Had a bad day, why not - just sulk it out in your room. Pissed off about that late train? Yeah go on! Shout and scream your head off. Boss spoke down to you today? Hand in your notice!
Yes, the parental home is a safe haven for irresponsible outbursts of emotion, a sanctuary for sulking, a variable menagerie of mood swings and outbursts all in the comfort of your room.
If you cannot keep a cool head when times get rough, or challenging or hard - you better start practising meditation or some other technique because in the world of adulthood no one is going to do it for you. No one is going to calm you down, or run you a bath, or help you out. You have to deal with issues, and you have to deal with them in a cool, calm, responsibility manner. Fail to do this, and not only will your problems build up into a veritable mountain, but you will end up making bad and costly decisions.
So. If you are living with mum and dad and you find yourself getting in a mood about having to do something, or sulking over some misfortune that has befallen you today, or generally worrying yourself to death instead of proactively seeking solutions and taking positive actions - you're done for my friend.
Taking time out to be upset about something is an expensive luxury only an elite few can afford. For the rest of us, you just have to plough on.
Focus, address, commit, resolve - that is the way of the adult world. Yeah, you can NOT do this - but be warned: it will cost you.
Responsibility of adulthood number 5: Maintaining relationships
This one is largely about the level of respect you are willing to show to other people and the massive levels of benefit that respect will deliver for you.
Every time you interact with another human being, you are making or breaking a potential connection. So when you are living with mum and dad, you might be of the opinion that it's OK to speak to a shop assistant like they are piece of shit because your hoover stopped working. Or you may feel it's OK to scream and shout over a long queue, or a bad driver.
You might go one step further than that, and be of the kind of person whom employs manual labourers to do work, and then fail to take care of them and speak down to them. Or you might go to a restaurant and disrespect the waiter.
BE WARNED. In the adult world, every good relationship is of benefit and every bad relationship is danger.
When you're a grown up, builders, plumbers, mechanics and other fix-it people you are on good terms with can save you hundreds of thousands of pound over the course of your live. Service people can short cut you through a mountain of administration and fast forward you to the front of the queue. Advisers and consultants will willingly find loopholes and snags and opportunities that you didn't even know existed. A policeman will let you off a ticket and a fine, if you just treat him well and apologise. A nurse will run around the whole hospital to get you the help you need if you just say please and thank you.
So be good to people! All of them!
Whilst its true that solicitors have spent years on training and thousands on education, your humble mechanic is the one who you will be seeing the most, and it is he who will save you the most heartache and trouble. You should not need a solicitor so often as you will need a mechanic. Or a doctor. Or a waitress. Or a customer service representative.
Get the picture?
That waitress can recognise your voice on the phone and squeeze you in a table when everyone else gets a no. That friendly builder? He can cut your rebuilding costs by over 50% in return for a cup of tea and a kind word. Your neighbours? They have a choice - they can call the police when shit goes off over at your place, or they can turn a blind eye. They can tell you who smashed into your car in the driveway, or they can stay out of it.
In short, what you receive from the world is directly related to the level of investment you put into being kind to people and showing them respect EVEN WHEN YOU FEEL THEY HAVE MISTREATED YOU. Because even if they did mistreat you, your actions will end up determining all outcomes - and you never know whose watching and willing to help, assist, aid, guide, act as witness, support your cause and get involved in making your life better for you.
If you have a sense of entitlement and not getting your way with other people (workers, doctors, police, delivery people, mechanics, builders, plumbers and so on and so forth) say hello to a world of shit.
Get people on side, as much as you can, all the time and stop popping off at everyone who pisses you off. It really helps more than you can ever know.
Adulthood responsibility Number 6: Learning how to wind down
When you're with mum and dad, it's very easy to start taking things a bit too seriously. This is mainly because your life is rather simple and tiny things like your internet breaking down can send you into a puff for weeks on end and even ruin your whole entire year.
GROW UP!
CHILL OUT!
If you don't know how to chill out and have some fun, you will end up a chattering mess, rocking back and forth in the corner of a room, hallucinating. I mean it - the responsibilities of adulthood are great and vast and the only thing that will keep you energised, positive and proactive is the ability to chill out, wind down and have a laugh in the midst of any issue.
Laughter IS indeed the best medicine around and when things get tough, it is important that you can say to yourself "STOP", "CHILL", "BE COOL" and "DON'T WORRY" - and there is no better way to solidify those messages than to have a local chill out spot, some fun friends, and some loving family in your circle that you can go to.
Never, and I mean NEVER allow yourself to be a worry wart that infects all chill out and fun times with personal woes and problems. Use down time to re energise the happy parts of yourself and don't bring your issues to the party - the invitations will soon stop coming, trust me.
Better, to just learn how to enjoy yourself, ESPECIALLY when times are rough - it is an excellent tonic for dealing with things. Having shit with the boss? Invite mates round, share a pizza and take the piss out of the situation. Massive bill landed on you that you really can't handle? Phone a friend and laugh your head off. Car stolen? See the funny side and share it with family.
Seriously, if you can't chill out in rough times - ALL time will soon become rough time. Learning how to relax is a VERY essential life skill. You will always need a good nights sleep, you will always need hope, and positivity, you will always need the ability to enjoy yourself and forget things for a while - and for this reason, I have made knowing how to chill out a major adult responsibility.
Adult Responsibility Number 7: Distancing yourself from other people's crap
When you're living at home with Mum and Dad, and your best friend's relationship breaks down - it may be that you end up in a mood yourself. Or maybe one of your mates is having a hard time with their studies and you start feeling stressed about your own studies. Perhaps it was a cousin that got married and it ended horribly, so you start reassessing the way that you are going about things. What is happening here, is that other people's crap is infecting the way that you are living your life.
STOP THAT.
In the real world, people's lives fall apart for a variety of reasons and the first thing these people will do is seek you out and try to convert you to their world view. And it may even succeed. Your paranoid co-worker can make you paranoid, even when you never had a suspicious bone in your body. Your man hating friend, can make you consider lesbianism. Your cousin in marriage misery can make you come home and slap your husband in the face as soon as he says hello...
DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU
If you start letting everyone's problems, stories, world views, ideals, teachings and opinions affect you will never establish the stable sense of self that is needed to make clear and accurate decisions and judgements about your own life. The way you need to see things is that everyone in the world has their own set of shit to deal with, their own baggage and their own personal issues and ultimately, they are the cause of their own problems and they need to learn how to deal with them.
Never ever lose sight of yourself, or lose your personality, doubt yourself, question yourself or start worrying because some misfortune has befallen someone else. If you cannot be clear and clarified about the major difference between your own life experience and everyone elses life experience you will be like a feather in the wind, swaying whichever way the wind blows. What you need to be is not a feather, but a stone: solid, firm and unchanging about how you feel, what kind of day you are going to have today and what decisions you are going to make tomorrow.
You must have a psychological barrier against mental intoxication so that you are in control of your emotions, thoughts, conclusions and decisions and that you only take the advice that you want to take, and that you trust.
So - if you are finding yourself in a situation, feeling sad or low because someone else in your life is, feeling worried because someone else is: you need to stop that crap right now and grow up. Make the distinction between you and others and guard your mental space with vigour. No one is going to guard it for you.
Adult Responsibility Number 8: Going with the flow
When living with Mum and Dad, its very easy to get yourself into the trap of making yourself some kind of plan. Maybe you have decided that you will get married by this age, drive this car and live in a place like x, y or z.
NEWSFLASH: THINGS CHANGE...
...DAILY!
Plans should never span for more than 5 years ahead and plans should never be set in stone, or bank on something out of your control happening as it leaves you no room for manoeuvre. It builds up expectation and it leads to disappointment. Worse than all of that, however, is that it blinds you to opportunity. You cannot afford to miss opportunities in life, and opportunities have the ability to take you beyond the limits of your dreams and into a whole other sphere of life.
Planning is good and it is important to give yourself goals and directions - but show caution and do not invest the rest of your life into something you dreamt up in your bedroom. Maybe you wanted to run an IT business, but a web design business falls into your lap - you gotta take it! You gotta go with the flow! Or maybe you wanted a guy with green eyes and some brown eyes hunk knocks on your parents door to ask for you...you never know.
You may be made redundant, you may not get the job, the degree, the girl or the guy you wanted, you may not live in a certain area, or achieve a certain income, you may not end up going where you wanted on holiday - but if you can swish and sway on the plan a little - you can see opportunities when they arise: BOOM!
You are going to have one great big wonderful life adventure.
Adult responsibility Number 9: Seek knowledge (the real knowledge....from books.)
When you're with Mum and Dad and you don't know something, probably you ask your parents about it and probably your parents have the ability to summon a "person who knows" into existence. But let me tell you know, once you're out there in the real world, you better get used to learning your shit - otherwise you will be ripped off, conned, manipulated and hoodwinked at every given opportunity.
Get used to checking facts, information, details and seeking expert advice from experts (no, not your mate John or Joe or Sarah - real bonafide experts). That way, you will be able to easily deal with false legal claims, redundancy and work issues, doctors diagnoses, and con artists lies successfully and also know what you should do about them. Some professionals are professionals and others are just full of shit: the only way you will know the difference is if you gain the ability to fact-check and think independently - so when the Imam at the masjid tells you its OK to beat your kids - go and check. When your payroll clerk tells you you are on the right tax code, go and check. When your lawyer advises you to ignore a threatening letter - go and check. When your doctor send you home telling you not to worry - get a second opinion. And when the news tells you so and so is bad and such and such is your enemy: learn to not believe it.
Yes, it is possible to learn all this trial-and-error stylee - but if you can get down off your high horse early on and accept that there are people out there who know more than you, and there are people out there who know how to manipulate and influence you - you will be a great deal better off.
Learn to seek out, identify and take good, sound, expert advice on a wide range of issues and keep these people in your phone book and maintain good relationships with them, because you never know what challenge lies just around the corner, waiting for your ignorance to trip you up. Read, gain knowledge and never EVER rely on a persons word or promise or apparent religiosity or qualifications. The real world is full of charlatans waiting for a uninformed mug like you to turn up on their doorstep with their wallet open and ready for the taking.
Adult responsibility Number 9: Seek knowledge (the real knowledge....from books.)
When you're with Mum and Dad and you don't know something, probably you ask your parents about it and probably your parents have the ability to summon a "person who knows" into existence. But let me tell you know, once you're out there in the real world, you better get used to learning your shit - otherwise you will be ripped off, conned, manipulated and hoodwinked at every given opportunity.
Get used to checking facts, information, details and seeking expert advice from experts (no, not your mate John or Joe or Sarah - real bonafide experts). That way, you will be able to easily deal with false legal claims, redundancy and work issues, doctors diagnoses, and con artists lies successfully and also know what you should do about them. Some professionals are professionals and others are just full of shit: the only way you will know the difference is if you gain the ability to fact-check and think independently - so when the Imam at the masjid tells you its OK to beat your kids - go and check. When your payroll clerk tells you you are on the right tax code, go and check. When your lawyer advises you to ignore a threatening letter - go and check. When your doctor send you home telling you not to worry - get a second opinion. And when the news tells you so and so is bad and such and such is your enemy: learn to not believe it.
Yes, it is possible to learn all this trial-and-error stylee - but if you can get down off your high horse early on and accept that there are people out there who know more than you, and there are people out there who know how to manipulate and influence you - you will be a great deal better off.
Learn to seek out, identify and take good, sound, expert advice on a wide range of issues and keep these people in your phone book and maintain good relationships with them, because you never know what challenge lies just around the corner, waiting for your ignorance to trip you up. Read, gain knowledge and never EVER rely on a persons word or promise or apparent religiosity or qualifications. The real world is full of charlatans waiting for a uninformed mug like you to turn up on their doorstep with their wallet open and ready for the taking.
So conclusion - yeah, it's very important to choose the "right" spouse (whatever the hell that means), but MUCH more important, much more significant and much more impactful in the overall outcomes of every area and aspect of your life is preparing yourself to be the right you - before you even think about looking at someone else.
5 Things a Man Needs to Do in a Successful Relationship
I found an excellent article on the 5 Things a Man Needs to Do in a Successful Relationship.
Just click to have a read
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
Monday, 30 January 2012
Doing things you don't want to do
Are You Going to Keep Doing Things You Don’t Want to Do?
By Trevor Hill
What are you doing this week that you actually don’t want to do?Clues are when you hear yourself saying ‘I have to…’, I must…’, ‘I should…’. This is the language of reluctance, obligation and coercion. It may seem that this is inevitable but is it?
The games we play in our heads can tie us in knots. Can you imagine a hippopotamus down at the river wallowing in the mud but not really wanting to? Or a lioness getting miserable because she must hunt? We humans get stuck; we become overwhelmed; we procrastinate.
Consider just one statistic – more than two-thirds of people don’t enjoy the work they do. That’s a lot of people! The internal tension caused by repeatedly doing things while not wanting to be doing them creates stress, drains energy and is ultimately destructive.
There are, of course, enlightened folk who always want to do what they do. This is something the rest of us can aspire to. How do they do this?
Put simply, they make it a matter of choice. They switch what they do into a choice they make, rather than a choice that is made for them. The locus of control is with them, not somewhere else. Control over what we do and how we do it – autonomy – is in itself a powerful self-motivator.
Here’s an example: Glen drags himself to work each morning telling himself that he must do it otherwise the mortgage company will make him and his family homeless. No wonder he feels pretty sick about the whole thing. He’ll probably blame the mortgage company, or his employer or the political system or something else.
To turn this completely round, he could make the choice himself. He could decide that he chooses to go to work to provide for his family. The critical difference when he does this is that now the responsibility lies with him.
Of course, this new perspective won’t change the content of his job – tasks and colleagues remain the same – but the locus of control is now his. This change in his frame of mind will in itself be a positive step forward. And crucially, now he is aware he is making a choice, he can decide over time whether he is happy with that choice or whether he would like to make a different choice.
So how can this work for you?
Let’s go back to my original question – what are you doing that you actually don’t want to do? Take one item from the list – say X – then follow these steps:
1. Hear yourself say ‘I must/I should/I need to/I ought to/I have to/ do X
2. Check the physical feelings you get from this (people often report a tightening of certain muscles, a sinking feeling, a heaviness)
3. Now reword the statement from step 1 so it becomes ‘I choose to do X because…’ and fill in the best reason you can think of (if you come up with no reason at all, why does doing X matter?)
4. Check again the physical reaction you get and feel the difference from step 2
5. Go ahead with X for now on the basis of your choice from step 3
6. Most importantly, stay open to better choices. Because you have signalled to your brain that you are making a choice, it will come back with potentially better choices over the next few days.
Trevor Hill helps people who feel stuck in their situation and yearn to live life according to their own agenda. He specialises in harnessing the power of inspiration so you can be energised, motivated and fulfilled. If you would like other articles like this one or get a FREE copy of Trevor’s ‘Passport To Inspiration’ simply visit
http://www.inspiration-at-work.co.uk
http://www.inspiration-at-work.co.uk
Article Source: Are You Going to Keep Doing Things You Don’t Want to Do?
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