What Are YOU Doing Tonight?!

As a philosopher and artist, a constant muse of mine is cartoons. I enjoy analyzing the themes and narratives that imbue the stories we feed our children. They are often instructive, nuanced, and cutting. Also, the fantasy of it all allows great leverage for me to extrapolate. Buy me a drink one day and I could share my theories of the dystopian world of The Jetsons or contemplate the communist undercurrents of The Smurfs. But today, I want to talk about a more straightforward favorite of mine, Pinky & The Brain.

Friend or Foe?

 

“My Best Friend is the one who brings out the best in me.” –Henry Ford

What is a friend? Is a friend someone who comforts you? Is a friend someone who is kind, someone who supports you? Certainly, these are things that a good friend does. However, we must not be myopic with this narrow view of friendship. Let me explain.

How To Be Rich

Much of life is about perspective. We choose what we pay attention to, and by extension, what we don’t pay attention to.

We pay a lot of attention to what we don’t have. Moreover, we pay a lot of attention to what others do have. Depending on our perspective, this often causes much stress, anguish, and insecurity. It’s a very rare occasion that we look at what we don’t have as something we’re better off without at the moment because we’re not currently equipped for it.

Simply shifting our perspective can help us receive what we’re after (keep in mind that what we’re after ostensibly, and what that represents to us subliminally are often two different things). So how can we use this change in perspective to help us get rich, seemingly what most people are feverishly chasing after. Here’s how.

If I sincerely offered you $500,000 for one of your legs, what would your response be? You would probably decline the proposition. But what if I offered you $1,000,000 for your eyesight? Again you’d most likely refuse. So, by this reasoning, if you’re a healthy person with two legs and the ability to see you’re already worth at least $2,000,000. You are rich! It is only a matter of perspective that keeps you from realizing this.

-Derek

Places I’m Going: Volume 1

Cinque Terre, Northern Italy

Changing Habits

“First we make our habits, then our habits make us.” This quote yields much power if we really recognize its veracity.

Whether it’s good or bad, we are often identified by personality traits that become familiar to others around us. People are little more than a bundle of habits. Whether that bundle includes biting nails, doing pushups daily, using foul language, journaling or any number of activities is determined by us. While it may seem we are imprisoned by certain habits, we’ve all either succeeded or witnessed someone succeed in quitting, modifying, or creating some habit.

Practice is a habit. Study is a habit. Conversely, laziness is a habit.  Negligence is a habit. The question becomes, which habits do we wish to cultivate? Can we eliminate destructive habits and give birth to productive habits? I believe we can albeit with tremendous effort and intention.

People who attempt to quit smoking cigarettes often find themselves overeating & snacking mindlessly. This is due to our human default to habitual autopilot. Ending one habit simply means we have room for another. The challenge becomes substituting undesired habits with virtuous ones. This is the appeal of New Year’s Resolutions, the desire to craft healthy habits or to eliminate unhealthy ones. These resolutions infamously fail within weeks or even days due to the stronghold our habits have upon actions.

We should start to become aware of our habits—good, bad, or ugly. Once we realize what our habitual actions are, and the consequent of such automated behavior only then can we monitor and attempt to alter them. Just imagine how much we could grow if we could pick and choose our natural default tendencies. 

–Derek