Monday, May 27, 2013

Your life is a project…. accumulation

I am looking back on this wondering where the heck I found this article, better yet why I felt it was important enough to post. I'm just gonna go with my mood whenever I found this and let it be published. - SH

  Your life is a project…. accumulation


I have written how I consider men’s lives to follow three fundamental phases: foundations, accumulation and maintainance. Don’t overthink this it’s just a convenient mental map to be deployed where useful. So let’s consider the second stage which typically begins upon graduating university or beginning an apprenticeship.
Goal: Max out your manly talents of intelligence, creativity, wealth-generation, physical competence
The accumulation phase could equally be described as “setting yourself up for life” or “becoming the best man you can be”. It’ll typically take you the whole of your twenties. Whereas the foundational phase was building the well-rounded basic skills of life taking advantage of the general education granted to children while side-stepping the weakness inherent in kids of not knowing who they are or what direction they wish to go in, the accumulation phase is about specialisation. Society channels you down predetermined tunnels as a kid fixing everyone on more or less the same generic path. Where foundation is Call of Duty (“follow the NPC”) accumulation is Deus Ex (“augument and choose”). I’ll let you in on a little secret right now:
There’s no money and no status to be had from being a generalist. All the upside is in specialisation.
Specialisation, in the future
Specialisation, in the future
1. Choices
What does that mean to you, dear reader? First off you have to carefully marshall your intellectual, physical and emotional resources. Make careful decisions on what skills you seek to acquire.
  • The payoff for any given skill is wildly disproportionate to its difficulty
  • If something is enjoyable, its probably not lucrative. Expect to make tradeoffs
  • Scaleable skillsets are a huge gamble
Consider language learning. It’s a difficult task
involving hundred of classroom hours and, to be fluent, living in a country where its spoken as a native. I had university friends doing language degrees and almost exclusively the only ones who got good jobs did a joint honours with another skill. Spanish on its own will help you navigate South America but it won’t add a penny to your salary unless it’s combined with a real money-making skill such as accounting, engineering or law. Speaking of language, they are not all created equal. Japanese takes approximately three times longer to learn than Spanish or French and it’s only useful for one country. Serbian is bloody difficult and only useful in one small country where per capita income is only $11,000 and they all speak English anyway. Why on earth would anyone learn Serbian unless they are fully commited to living there for years on end? It’s just a dumb waste of effort.

Consider the UFC. That’s the biggest-paying promotion for the sport of MMA. There’s only one PPV every six weeks or so which only has six TV fights per show across all weight divisions. So that’s twelve fighters getting TV-level paydays per show making an annual total of TV-paydays about 104 slots. Assuming you are fighting at that level and get offered a slot, it’ll be a minimum of six week’s training with its attendant costs. Probably 20% goes to your manager and gym. Assuming no medical costs or long injury-related layoffs, fight four times a year, and assuming you win every fight (so statistically 75% of fighters won’t manage even this) you are spending 24 weeks in training and getting by on four paydays. Now go look at how much these guys get paid.
Shocking. Truly shocking. And this is at the most lucrative end of the sport. The top guys do fine (well, not compared to £80k per week footballers but fine compared to normal guys) but look past the top 5 names. Most MMA guys are taking <£10,000 a fight. Drop down to the next level of show and its <£1,000. For six week’s work. I make that in two days sitting at my desk. When I have a bad day at the office I don’t get beat up too.
The lesson isn’t that I’m awesome and fighters suck. The lesson is some careers are far better than others despite being considerably easier and considerably less risk. The 437th-best lawyer in London earns considerably more than the 10th-best London MMA fighter and that income is far more stable. My advice is treat the exciting careers as a hobby.
Nicolas Taleb writes well on the risk/reward payoffs of scaleable careers. The general self-improvement advice is choose a business / career where you can scale upwards. Acting, music, software are classically scaleable careers. If you can be Seinfeld (syndicated worldwide), or have Gangnam Style (200+ million youtube views), or write the next Angry Birds then you can rest on your royalties. The problem is survivor bias and winner-takes-all. The very nature of a pyramid business structure is that only one pharoah is buried in it. Freakonmics has a great essay on how the scaleability of the drug dealer business model means almost everyone earns less than minimum wage and sustains themselves on the dream of being the one Mister Big. Don’t gamble your life’s trajectory on being that one guy. If you truly believe you’ll overcome unsurmountable odds buy a lottery ticket. And stay away from battlefields.
Yes, that's me
Yes, that’s me
In summary, choose your career wisely. Don’t be afraid to switch careers before you become too committed. Your risk appetite likely differs to mine but here’s my dream list of career conditions:
  • Based on a real skillset that is difficult to learn (e.g. accounting, medicine, architecture)
  • Most of the population is literally unable to compete (e.g. requires too much abstract thinking, training period is too stressful, entry costs are too high, apprenticeship is difficult to obtain)
  • Nature of the job cannot be adequately offshored or automated because it relies on high-trust thinking, verbal knowledge, quality decision making, and personal contact (e.g. law, computer programming)
  • Stable income stream with a large pool of commoditised jobs (e.g. accounting, contract law, computer programming, consulting)
  • EDIT: I haven’t read this book but it looks like a great resource for choosing a career: “Worthless”
2. Excellence
Once you’ve started on your career your main goal is to become really good at it. Shine your star as bright as you can. Take real passion in excellence for its own sake. Ignore all those office-politics TV shows and books that would convince you advancement is all about who you know. No. Right up until you hit senior management advancement is what you know.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

20 Encouraging Bible Verses for the Brokenhearted

20 Encouraging Bible Verses for the Brokenhearted

Monday, May 20, 2013

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Falling In Love Again

Dating Checklist: Questions to Ask Yourself Before Falling In Love Again

Insight Is 20/20
Exploring the pervasive, and unperceived, patterns that govern our lives

Men and women often focus on the wrong questions when choosing their partners.

Good relationships start with good decisions, and evaluating your beliefs about relationships and love before you start a relationship is the most important thing you can do. You must be sure that your expectations are realistic in order to have a happy and functional long-term relationship, and I’m including a quick cheat-sheet below you can use to do a little self-exploration in the romance department. I pulled these questions from a checklist in my book, Overcome Relationship Repetition Syndrome, where I include three entire chapters to hands-on checklists and inventories about your love life. With each question, I also share my advice!

What are the three most important characteristics to look for in a partner?
Men and women have the hardest time with this issue, as they’re usually too focused on sex appeal and personality ‘sparks,’ and focusing too little on the factors that actually matter the most. Simply put, the most important characteristics are kindness, reliability, and emotional stability. If you’re lucky enough to be spend much of your life with someone who has those qualities, you are going to have years of happiness and peace ahead of you.

What is the primary purpose of a romantic relationship?
It took many years of studying psychology and working with clients to get to the bottom of this one. When we’re young, we believe that the purpose of a romantic relationship is to provide you with an ultimate family: first a partner, then kids. But the purpose of a romantic relationship isn’t about procreation, necessarily. Actually, the purpose of a romantic union is to provide support and bring out the best in each other, so that each individual has the nourishment and strength to go out in the world and reach the life goals that each individual has. Meanwhile, in bad relationships, the relationships actually drain both partners and hold them back from what they could otherwise be doing to advance themselves and to keep evolving as individuals.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Thinking of Inking?

I don't have any tattoos myself but I found this interesting.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Too "Plugged In"

Lately I've been catching myself just way too "plugged in". Facebook, texting, computer....television is the only thing I've held back on.
Two days ago, after getting a lil' bothered by someone's reply on a Facebook comment, I knew it was time to step back. I rarely get upset about stupid comments on FB but here I was, a little aggitated.

I ran past this while checking out Ann Voskamp's blog site. You might know her better as author of 1,000 Gifts. Here is 10 things to do before you Click!

Un-Plug | 10 things to do before you Click

Monday, May 13, 2013

What To Know When You're 25(ish)



What To Know When You're 25(ish)



Here are the things really worth caring about in your 20s.
Editor's note: This week, we're taking a look at some of the "Best of RELEVANTMagazine.com" from 2010. This article is our most read ever. Period. End of story. It clearly hit many of you (and us) right where you're at—approaching, at, or just past your late 20s, trying to figure out what it's all meant and where you go from here. Most of you really resonated with Shauna's thoughts, though some of you had quibbles with some of her emphases. But read it over again, and chime in below. The year might be almost over, but the conversation can keep going.


When you’re 25-ish, you’re old enough to know what kind of music you love, regardless of what your last boyfriend or roommate always used to play. You know how to walk in heels, how to tie a necktie, how to give a good toast at a wedding and how to make something for dinner. You don’t have to think much about skin care, home ownership or your retirement plan. Your life can look a lot of different ways when you’re 25: single, dating, engaged, married. You are working in dream jobs, pay-the-bills jobs and downright horrible jobs. You are young enough to believe that anything is possible, and you are old enough to make that belief a reality.
Job
Now is the time to figure out what kind of work you love to do. What are you good at? What makes you feel alive? What do you dream about? You can go back to school now, switch directions entirely. You can work for almost nothing, or live in another country, or volunteer long hours for something that moves you. There will be a time when finances and schedules make this a little trickier, so do it now. Try it, apply for it, get up and do it.
When I was 25, I was in my third job in as many years—all in the same area at a church, but the responsibilities were different each time. I was frustrated at the end of the third year because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do next. I didn’t feel like I’d found my place yet. I met with my boss, who was in his 50s. I told him how anxious I was about finding the one perfect job for me, and quick. He asked me how old I was, and when I told him I was 25, he told me that I couldn’t complain to him about finding the right job until I was 32. In his opinion, it takes about 10 years after college to find the right fit, and anyone who finds it earlier than that is just plain lucky. So use every bit of your 10 years: try things, take classes, start over.
Relationships
Now is also the time to get serious about relationships. And “serious” might mean walking away from the ones that don’t give you everything you need. Some of the most life-shaping decisions you make in this season will be about walking away from good-enough, in search of can’t-live-without. One of the only truly devastating mistakes you can make in this season is staying with the wrong person even though you know he or she is the wrong person. It’s not fair to that person, and it’s not fair to you.
Counseling
Twenty-five is also a great time to start counseling, if you haven’t already, and it might be a good round two of counseling if it’s been a while. You might have just enough space from your parents to start digging around your childhood a little bit. Unravel the knots that keep you from living a healthy whole life, and do it now, before any more time passes.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

The 10 Most Important Lessons For 20-Something Workers: #2

The 10 Most Important Lessons For 20-Something Workers


Adult Responsibilities Make You Happier

#2: Adult Responsibilities Make You Happier
While many young people may resist getting a "real job" or becoming independent, Jay says these are the things that make you happy and give you purpose. "Some people underestimate the satisfaction of working, thinking they’ll be miserable in a cube," she says. "The 20-somethings that do work are happier than those who don’t or are underemployed."

Credits: Forbes article

Friday, May 10, 2013

Springtime is the season for new beginnings.

Napoleon Hill Yesterday and Today!
SUCCESS INFORMATION WITH A DEFINITE MAJOR AIM  APRIL 12, 2013  ISSUE 325

Vintage Essays By Judy Williamson, Director of the Napoleon Hill World Learning Center at Purdue University Calumnet
Dear Readers:
Springtime is the season for new beginnings. The ground breaks through with life. Trees blossom, bulbs sprout, grass greens, blue skies linger, sunlight warms the earth, and the soft breeze touches our senses with a bit of nostalgia. Since time immemorial this ritual has prepared the earth’s residents to begin again. This “something” that awakens inside us, encourages renewal.
Falling in love with life requires action not inertia. Getting outdoors and greeting the season head on with rake or spade in hand enables each one of us to feel as if we have made a contribution to the planet. In Indiana I anticipate the arrival of the pussy willows, the return of the robins, the scent of lilacs, the blossoming of the cherry trees, the sprouting of the peonies, and the smell the first time the grass is cut. And, I do not have to leave my home to experience any one of these. These are rituals of spring for me, and fill me with wonder.
Rituals create much needed patterns in our lives. They reverence the good things. By creating rituals in our families and work environments, we honor the people that fill our lives. Celebrating birthdays, holidays, landmark dates, special one-time occurrences and honors, as well as the more mundane things such as the first robin of the season, unite us as a group. Begin today by thinking which days in the calendar are special to you and why. Ask someone about their special dates too. Next, share your dates and remember them when the day arrives – not just for yourself, but for the other person too. I love the greeting card quote that states:
“Friends are angels who lift our feet when our own wings have trouble remembering how to fly.”
Be an angel and lift someone’s spirits by remembering for them when they forget! They will never forget you because of it!
Be Your Very Best Always,
Judy Williamson
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SaraHHouse365 | It's Never Too Late...to find balance!
SaraHHouse365 | I go to nature...


Credits: Napoleon Hill Foundation email

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Don't waste your Twenties - Part 1


Don’t Waste Your Twenties — Part 1: Taking Advantage of the Unique Powers of the Twentysomething Brain

by Brett & Kate McKay on February 4, 2013 · 92 comments
lying1
At age 20: Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and cofounded Microsoft, and Sir Isaac Newton began developing a new branch of mathematics.
At age 21: Thomas Alva Edison created his first invention, an electric vote recorder, Steve Jobs co-founded Apple Inc., and Alfred Tennyson published his first poetry.
At age 22: Inventor Samuel Colt patented the Colt six-shooter revolver, and Cyrus Hall McCormick invented the McCormick reaper, which allowed one man to do the work of five
At age 23: T. S. Eliot wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” John Keats penned “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” and Truman Capote published his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms.
At age 24: Johannes Kepler defended the Copernican theory and described the structure of the solar system.
At age 25: Orson Welles conscripted, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane, Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly alone across the Atlantic, New York farmhand Joseph Smith founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, John Wesley began planting the seeds for Methodism at Oxford, and Alexander the Great became the King of Persia.
At age 26: Albert Einstein published five major research papers in a German physics journal, fundamentally changing man’s view of the universe and leading to such inventions as television and the atomic bomb, Benjamin Franklin published the first edition of Poor Richard’s Almanac, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, and Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Italy.
An impressive list of accomplishments to be sure. And despite how many might interpret this kind of “precociousness,” I would argue that these men accomplished what they did not despite their age, but because of it.

A Disposable Decade?

Maybe you’ve heard it said, or even said it yourself: “Thirty is the new twenty.”
Things that were once markers of maturity in the past — finishing school, landing your first “real” job, getting hitched, having kids, buying a house – are getting pushed back later in life. Instead of hitting these milestones in one’s early or mid-twenties, as our parents and grandparents did, economic, sociological, and cultural factors have postponed these steps for many until the latter part of the decade, and into one’s thirties.
This has opened up an unprecedented period of time and development for young adults. The twenties have been relabeled “emerging adulthood” or “extended adolescence,” and because of its nascent nature, there aren’t a lot of guideposts on how a man should spend this new stage of life.
In the absence of such guidance, the twenties have come to be seen as a time to dabble, drift, and adventure, with the idea that you can get serious about stuff later — once you hit thirty. Thus, the twenties have been branded as disposable — an inconsequential holding period between two decades of schooling and becoming a “real” adult.
But the idea that one’s twenties are unimportant couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, “thirty is the new twenty” is one of the biggest lies of our age.
In this two-part series, we’ll explain why.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Your future depends on many things...

Your future depends on many things, but mostly on you.
-Calendar at Mom & Dad's



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SaraHHouse365 | No quit option
SaraHHouse365 | Time for Everything

Life is better when you ______ ?





Credits: Mark & Angel's 25 Thought Questions Article


Tuesday, May 7, 2013

10 Signs it’s Time to Let Go

10 Signs it’s Time to Let Go


10 Signs it is Time to Let Go
Holding on is being brave, but letting go and moving on is often what makes us stronger and happier.
Here are ten signs it’s time to let go:
  1. Someone expects you to be someone you’re not. – Don’t change who you are for anyone else. It’s wiser to lose someone over being who you are, than to keep them by being someone you’re not. Because it’s easier to mend a broken heart, than it is to piece together a shattered identity. It’s easier to fill an empty space in your life where someone else used to be, than it is to fill the empty space inside yourself where YOU used to be.
  2. A person’s actions don’t match their words. – Everybody deserves somebody who helps them look forward to tomorrow. If someone has the opposite effect on you, because they are consistently inconsistent and their actions don’t match up with their words, it’s time to let them go. It’s always better to be alone than to be in bad company. True friendship is a promise made in the heart – silent, unwritten, unbreakable by distance, and unchangeable by time. Don’t listen to what people say; watch what they do. Your true friends will slowly reveal themselves over time.
  3. You catch yourself forcing someone to love you. – Let us keep in mind that we can’t force anyone to love us. We shouldn’t beg someone to stay when they want to leave. That’s what love is all about – freedom. However, the end of love is not the end of life. It should be the beginning of an understanding that love sometimes leaves for a reason, but never leaves without a lesson. If someone truly loves you, they will never give you a reason to doubt it. Anyone can come into your life and say how much they love you, but it takes someone really special to stay in your life and prove how much they love you. Sometimes it takes awhile to find the right person, but the right person is always worth the wait. Read The Road Less Traveled.
  4. An intimate relationship is based strictly on physical attraction. – Being beautiful is more than how many people you can get to look at you, or how others perceive you at a single glance. It’s about what you live for. It’s about what defines you. It’s about the depth of your heart, and what makes you unique. It’s about being who you are and living out your life honestly. It’s about those little quirks that make you, you. People who are only attracted to you because of your pretty face or nice body won’t stay by your side forever. But the people who can see how beautiful your heart is will never leave you.
  5. Someone continuously breaks your trust. – Love means giving someone the chance to hurt you, but trusting them not to. When you completely trust a person, without any doubt, you’ll automatically get one of two results - a FRIEND for life or a LESSON for life. Either way there’s a positive outcome. Either you confirm the fact that this person cares about you, or you get the opportunity to weed them out of your life and make room for those who do. In the end you’ll discover who’s fake, who’s true, and who would risk it all for you. And trust me, some people will totally surprise you.
  6. Someone continuously overlooks your worth.Know your worth! When you give yourself to someone who doesn’t respect you, you surrender pieces of your soul that you’ll never get back. There comes a point when you have to let go and stop chasing some people. If someone wants you in their life, they’ll find a way to put you there. Sometimes you just need to let go and accept the fact that they don’t care for you the way you care for them. Let them leave your life quietly. Letting go is oftentimes easier than holding on. We think it’s too hard to let go, until we actually do. Then we ask ourselves, “Why didn’t I do this sooner?”
  7. You are never given a chance to speak your mind. – Sometimes an argument saves a relationship, whereas silence breaks it. Speak up for your heart so that you won’t have regrets. Life is not about making others happy. Life is about being honest and sharing your happiness with others.
  8. You are frequently forced to sacrifice your happiness. – If you allow people to make more withdrawals than deposits in your life, you will be out of balance and in the negative before you know it. Know when to close the account. It’s always better to be alone with dignity than in a relationship that constantly requires you to sacrifice your happiness and self-respect. Read Stumbling on Happiness.
  9. You truly dislike your current situation, routine, job, etc. – It’s better to be a failure at something you love than to succeed at doing something you hate. Don’t let someone who gave up on their dreams talk you out of going after yours. The best thing you can do in life is follow your heart. Take risks. Don’t just make the safe and easy choices because you’re afraid of what might happen. If you do, nothing will ever happen. Chances must be taken, mistakes must be made, and lessons must be learned. It might be an uphill climb, but when you reach that mountaintop it will be worth every ounce of blood, sweat and tears you put into it.
  10. You catch yourself obsessing over, and living in, the past. – Eventually you will overcome the heartache, and forget the reasons you cried, and who caused the pain. Eventually you will realize that the secret to happiness and freedom is not about control or revenge, but in letting things unfold naturally, and learning from your experiences over the course of time. After all, what matters most is not the first, but the final chapter of your life, which unveils the details of how well you wrote your story. So let go of the past, set yourself free, and open your mind to the possibility of new relationships and priceless experiences. Read The Power of Now.
And the one thing you should never let go of is hope. Remember what you deserve and keep pushing forward. Someday all the pieces will come together. Unimaginably good things will transpire in your life, even if everything doesn’t turn out exactly the way you had anticipated. And you will look back at the times that have passed, smile, and ask yourself, “How did I get through all of that?”



Credits: Marc & Angel's 10 Signs it's time to let go article

SaraHHouse365 | Love makes requests...

Saturday, May 4, 2013

The 10 Most Important Lessons For 20-Something Workers : #1


The 10 Most Important Lessons For 20-Something Workers



How You Spend Your 20s Will Define You

#1: How You Spend Your 20s Will Define You

According to Meg Jay, Ph.D., a psychologist and author of The Defining Decade: Why your twenties matter--and how to make the most of them now, many 20-somethings believe they have all time in the world and how they spend their 20s doesn't matter. But Jay says they matter most. The foundation you build in your 20s will define the rest of your life. Take yourself seriously, she urges.

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SaraHHouse365 | Why Your Twenties Matter
SaraHHouse365 | 10 Lessons everybody learns in their 20s
SaraHHouse365 | Happy 25th, A fun point to see

Credits: Forbes article

Friday, May 3, 2013

The link between man & GOD is FAITH



I've seen this before but just saw it again tonight and I know it will come up again when trying to explain God, faith, etc.


Professor : You are a Christian, aren’t you, son ?
 
Student : Yes, sir.
 
Professor: So, you believe in GOD ?

Student : Absolutely, sir.

Professor : Is GOD good ?

Student : Sure.

Professor: Is GOD all powerful ?

Student : Yes.

Professor: My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to GOD to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But GOD didn’t. How is this GOD good then? Hmm?


 
(Student was silent.)