Category Archives: Expectation
Sucker Promises
I’ve got a pet peeve. And that’s when somebody tries to sell me something which they claim will change my life. The price will be surprisingly low, but despite this, they vow that their system / club / product / seminar will produce results so automatically that I’ll have to put forth little to no effort to reap these miraculous results.
They often state that their system / club / product / seminar will provide results so quickly that I won’t
Still in the Stone Age
Over the course of mankind’s development, we have so far never actually created any new thing. We’ve only ever manipulated and rearranged the rough materials we’ve found lying around. Everything ever made, from the caveman’s stone axe to the physicist’s particle accelerator, has all been crafted from rocks, sticks or mud.
Doubt that? Consider …
Take any modern material, such as plastic. It’s made from petroleum, right? So, your polyester-acrylic blend shirt and your Tupperware bowl are made from highly processed mud.
Reasons You Can’t – All Unreal
My grandaddy, who ran a plumbing shop, used to say, “There are lots of reasons you think you can’t, but not one of them is real. Not one.”
Grandaddy may have been a country boy from south Georgia with only a third-grade education, but that never seemed to slow him down. For instance, I recall that in his late fifties he still remembered all the states and their capitols. He could tell you every US president and when he served (as well as interesting little stories about things each one achieved).
Stepping into the Realm of Uncertainty
Living is a do-it-yourself project. At birth we were given our life, and in the course of that life, we’ve encountered circumstances, people, events.
What we make of them – and of ourselves – has been left entirely up to us. But there are certain people and certain organizations who see what we’re doing and may not like the direction we’re headed in. Some of them might even feel they have the right to step in and direct our life for us.
Dump the Beggar’s Tin Cup
Passive or Active?
When a beggar sets up a spot on the sidewalk, you’ll always find a cup, bowl, hat or some other container in front of them. That’s so people can put in their donations, impersonally, without having to do it hand-to-hand. This cup creates an emotional distance between the person giving and the one receiving.
Information Overload? No Such Thing
So Much Information, so Little Time
How will I ever keep up? … that feeling grips many of us.
When it does, we shrug our shoulders and curse the glut of data pouring into and through our lives. It has, in fact, become quite trendy to complain about feeling harassed and overwhelmed by all the incoming info that we need to know. Somebody even coined the term “information overload,” right?
But I Don’t Want to Wait THAT Long
Impatience
Years ago, I worked in a camera shop with a man named Sam who was constantly bemoaning his bad luck. He often talked about Mr. Dawson, a man in our town. He was in his seventies, and he was really lucky. Dawson was “lucky” according to Sam because he owned buildings all over the western suburbs of Chicago.
One day when he mentioned Dawson, I commented, “Hey, Sam, you’re only thirty-five now. Why don’t you start buying buildings this year? By the time you’re seventy-five you’ll have become as rich as Dawson.”
Control Your Words — Control Your Destiny
Undependable
Mike had run into a stubborn little glitch with his affirmations. “When I say the word ‘productive,’ he told me, “I get a little spike of self-doubt.”
Each time Mike affirmed that he was productive, it stirred up in him a deep feeling of mis-match — what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. This basically means he was trying to believe two things that contradict each other. At the gut level, Mike “knew” that he was UN-productive, so strong doubts came welling up within him.
