Improving The Quality Of Your Life

On January 12, 2009, the Australian Queensland Tourist Board started advertising for a position they referred to as ‘the best job in the world.’ It is basically a six-month paid vacation on the gorgeous Hamilton Island, which has year-round sunshine, sandy beaches, warm lagoons and sea life galore. The job (’island caretaker’) doesn’t require any academic qualifications, although you need to be a good swimmer, enjoy snorkeling, scuba diving and have the ability to create and maintain an online blog — weekly reports via blogging, a photo diary and video updates. The successful candidate will live rent free in a luxury three-bedroom villa with pool on the island and return home $150,000 AUS richer. Read the rest of this entry »

Business failed? Love of your live left you? Cat died? Got fired? Lost your house? Totaled your expensive car? Found out your favorite TV show got canceled? Friends betrayed you?

“You can spend minutes, days, hours, or months over analyzing a situation, trying to justify what happened. Or you can leave the pieces on the floor and move the f— on.”

– Tupac Amaru Shakur (June 16, 1971- Sept. 12, 1996)

What would you do if any of that happened to you?

Photo by: chrisjfry

One of the biggest enemies of a healthy mind is uniformity (lacking diversity or variation in its interactions). That is, having a homogenous interaction with the world and filtering out everything that does not fit one’s interests.

Imagine a John Doe who only watches horror movies, listens only to country music, eats only chicken, watches TV on a single network, spends all his vacations in Jamaica and all his friends are white, middle-class people from Madrid, Spain - and they have the same interests as him. Other than missing out on many of life’s experiences, this person is also narrowing down his outlook on life and the world around him. And not only will he be useless as the member of a focus group or as a consultant, but he will miss ideas that have the potential to improve him and his life, or the life of others. Read the rest of this entry »

photo by: jmartinovici

People with brilliant minds and extraordinary capacities think little of admitting or exposing their weaknesses and faults. For them, they represent something for which they have paid, something that they deserve to have. They might even feel that their errors do them honor and help define them better.

On the other hand there are the mediocre minds, who would rather conceal and hide their few little faults, as they are very sensitive to any references that are made to them. This happens because the mediocre mind has another scale of values, one in which a person’s worth is defined by its lack of defects or errors, and not by its brilliant capacities or results — which is absurd, for we all know that no man is perfect. Hence, when the faults of the mediocre come to light, they are immediately held in less esteem, for they have lost that which gave them value.

When someone’s life isn’t exactly perfect, friends and family usually advise that person to look at the bright side of things, at what is positive.

When businesses fail, the managers who took them to the ground do the same thing; they look at the positive aspects of their failing businesses.

The two examples above share a huge error, an error that not only will make their subjects hit the ground faster, but will also take them there without anyone feeling the imminent danger.

“You’re heading towards hell, but can you see the bright side!?”

Every time someone advises you to look at what is good in your life, when your life is a mess or not going in the direction you want it to, you might want to slap that person. Call it a “wake up slap” and tell them to take it out on me (give them the link to this post).

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