Month: October 2018

 

Make yourself vulnerable, take the risks, ask questions.

How else do you experience the world?

Safely, in a constructed home,  a little neighborhood, comfortable with preconceived notions and those who agree with you.

The choice: Whether to be adventurous and risk going out at night, off the trail where the thorns may be (will probably be), and find out what you’re made of.

Or don’t.

 

 

The righteous don’t need to respect you.

Narcissists don’t need to respect you.

But they should.

Why?  Because no one is all the time right.

But being disrespected is allowed in some instances.  Like when children disrespect you. Because they’re children, you let it go.  They haven’t formed a stable sense of self, a confidence in themselves.  So they don’t listen so much, and they go by their heart and their feelings.  They stomp their feet, they scream and shout.

But we let children be.  Because they are children, and they will mature.

As for the adults?

There’s nothing you can do for them.  Their cake is baked.  Their personalities formed. Their triggers set.

Best to let them be.  And hope they don’t damage your community, or your country, too much, so that we can fix it later.

 

If your expectation is to always win, you will live with heartache. Because you’re living in a fantasy world.

But not trying has cost as well. And that is the cost of regret.

Failure is the cost of trying. Failures are always the cost of trying.

And the expectation of failure is what gets you macro-wins.

 

Thanks to Gary Vee for the help on verbiage.

“Every system is improved when it’s in sync, and the narcissism of small differences is a seduction that keeps us from focusing on creating real value by doing important work.

Realizing that things can get better (they can always get better) opens the door for productive conversations, conversations that aren’t based on prior decisions about what team someone is on, and instead, on putting our shoulder to the work, taking responsibility and actually making things better. We can fight injustice without becoming pawns in a boxing promoter’s game.” 

Let’s get in sync and not allow the politics of division to control us by tempting our narcissism of being better than the others.

Immigrants and China aren’t going to compromise America. But we should have standards about monitoring who is allowed into this country or how other nations treat us in trade relations. 

White patriarchy isn’t responsible for keeping others down. But the white patriarchy could be more helpful to  those who need help. And more importantly, to those who want help. 

Forget your “team”. Left, right, Democrat, Republican. 

There is no us and them. Thinking this way divides America. And destroys our communities. We each have a responsibility to be the best we can be. For each other. And most importantly for yourself.

When criticism is my only work, then I’m doing it wrong.

Where is the work that shows my real value?

What am I actually doing?

What are you doing? 

 

Quote credit: Seth Godin

Anxiety is sacrificing the real you to protect yourself from dangers that may not exist.

 

Go lightly 

so you may see clearly , without the intoxication of emotion.

Remain focused on the true value the world provides,

And the service you can provide the world.

Instead of reacting in hate, which is destructive and tears others down, provide something that builds others up. 

 The end doesn’t justify the means

Even if my moral convictions are more heartfelt than the opposition.

 

Amazon now captures nearly $1 of every $2 that Americans spend online.

To think of Amazon as a retailer, though, is to profoundly misjudge the scope of what its founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, has set out to do.

It’s not simply that Amazon does so much more than sell stuff—that it also produces hit television shows and movies; publishes books; designs digital devices; underwrites loans; delivers restaurant orders; sells a growing share of the Web’s advertising; manages the data of US intelligence agencies; operates the world’s largest streaming video-game platform; manufactures a growing array of products, from blouses to batteries; and is even venturing into health care.

Instead, it’s that Bezos has designed his company for a far more radical goal than merely dominating markets; he’s built Amazon to replace them. His vision is for Amazon to become the underlying infrastructure that commerce runs on.

Which leads to the question: Should the government break up Amazon to maintain a fair level of competition in the American marketplace?

Excerpted from thenation.com

 

My first reaction to this was, “Who is this to tell me that my opinion can’t contribute to the conversation?!” I was offended.  I thought, “More authoritarian moralism, telling me my place.”

Then I realized that the statement was unfriendly because it was angry, and that the anger was coming from a place of hurt.  Why were they hurt?  Because they don’t feel understood, they feel alone, ignored, probably from hiding away from the shame of being victimized.

And all these feelings manifested in a confrontational and extreme statement, ironically alienating people, maybe the very people that needed to be brought closer to them, the people who don’t have the empathy or perspective to listen. Whoever wrote this doesn’t need judgment or politics.

They need our patience.  They need us to sit through the emotions.

They need us to simply listen.