Category Archives: Life Lessons

Wisdom 2021

Life Lessons

Here is what I learned this year.

Pure selflessness and self sacrifice makes me depressed, unhappy, and resentful. Choosing to lose win when I can win lose is not sustainable for me. Take the win lose, then be gracious as the winner. Don’t take the lose win, and then beg as the loser.
1. win win
2. lose win win lose
3. win lose lose win
4. lose lose

Trust yourself more than anyone else. Work on yourself so that you are worthy of that trust.

  • Only you know your specific circumstances
  • Only you know all the context and details
  • Only you know what you want
  • Only you know what makes you happy
  • Only you know what you need right now
  • Only you will suffer the consequences of the action and decision
  • Only you will live with the outcome

Other people can and will help, but remember that they can only work with what you give them. You must communicate comprehensive honest details if you want others to be able to understand and help you.

If you communicate with bias, you will get biased help. If you use a happy tone for one option and a unpleasant tone for another, you signal to the other person what you want and will get a biased answer. If you do not use the same dimensions to describe your options, you will get a biased answer. If you talk a lot about one option, and very little about another option, you will get a biased answer.

Everyone is biased. Remember the background of the people you talk to and ask for help from: They are biased to recommend their own choices.

Do not mistake good intent for good advice. They can mean well and still not know what is right for you. You must be the final decision maker. You must retain your control over the circumstances by exercising your decision making power.

Do not give into emotional people. They have lost their self control, don’t follow in their footsteps. Only you can protect yourself at the end of the day.

Be honest with yourself. Video record yourself talking. Look in the mirror. Your body language will reveal to yourself what you really want.
Example: Everyone told me to pick Option A. I secretly wanted Option B and I was not honest with myself because I was afraid to go against everyone else. I video recorded myself talking about why I would choose Option A and why I would not choose Option B. The flat tone, disinterested body language, made it clear I was not honest with myself. I recorded a video of myself explaining why I was going to pick Option B over Option A, why I would go against all my advisors. I was smiling energetic passionate certain relaxed and honest and true to myself.
Use videos of yourself to find the honesty you’re too afraid to share with yourself.

(The following is personal to me:) I have completely freed myself from all external forces that have held me back in the past. I am a free man today. At this point, if I’m not happy now, it is due to the accumulation of my own choices. I have earned this opportunity now to build the future that I want. Do the following:

  • Eat
  • Sleep
  • Relax
  • Move around Physically and Often
  • Exercise
  • Have Fun
  • Smile

Focus on the present moment, do not focus your spending. When you do something, be focused on what you’re doing. When the time is up, move on to the next different thing. Don’t spend 24/7 on the same thing. Spend 8 hours on sleep, 8 hours on work, etc. Live a balanced life. Express your focus in the moment, not by giving up everything else.

Find good work, not good reward. You want a job where, if you get a reward, you want to go back to your job the next day. You don’t want a job where you can’t wait until you get your reward so you can stop working that job. Do the work you want more of, not the work you can’t wait to get rid of.
(Personal Anecdote: When I was at my peak and winning awards nearly every week, I barely had time to attend the awards ceremony. In fact, when my math team won 1st place for the first time in 4 years, I was on a car to my next competition and my co-captain had to accept it for me. That’s how dedicated I was to the work–I didn’t even care or think about the ‘loss of reward opportunity.’ I didn’t care at all. I had work to do, and I was focused and excited about moving on to the next thing to work on. )

Managing Insecurities.

  • As a leader, you can’t expect everyone else to be leaders too, that’s a paradox. If you want to be a real leader, you have to expect many followers to be afraid and emotional, inexperienced and unknowledgeable, and unable to understand your level of strategy and execution. So you need to build trust and sell them the idea that you are the one to make decisions and lead them through difficult times.
  • When you do something different, you make other people insecure so you need to get good at managing their insecurity. They are afraid that they made the wrong choices if you turn out to be right, so they will fight your success to convince themselves they are right. They feel inadequate and will fight you not to feel that way.
    • If someone lashes out at you, it’s more about them than about you.
    • (Personal anecdote: I used to believe if someone lashes out at you, it’s more about you than about them: You did something to trigger them and therefore you are responsible. Now I think you did something to trigger them, but you are not responsible for the trigger being a part of who they are, and if you want to show care to them, you can help them recover from being triggered.)
  • Learn to manage other people’s insecurities by learning to manage your own. Have trust faith and confidence in your abilities.

Looking back for opportunity is living a mindset of regret and negativity. I look back because I’m afraid of losing an opportunity when instead I should understand I already lost it because it is in the past. I look back because I think I won’t find anything better when instead I should trust that the best is yet to come, so look forward for the better. Looking for a better life in the past is living a life of regret: I don’t want to have a tone of regret hovering over my whole life attitude. It’s also not possible to go back in time so looking back is a fundamental flawed and failure approach to life.

Life Lessons July 2021 – Focus and Priority

Life Lessons

Lesson: Watching someone else’s life diminishes my life. (7/11/21)
Solution: Focus on living your own life.
Situation:
– All the time spent watching people do activities on TV, could be spent doing activities myself with people.
– All the time spent viewing images on social media could be spent taking pictures in real life.
– All the time spent reading about other people’s lives to see what they are up to, could be spent reaching out to them, interacting with them, building memories together.
Commentary:
Taking a break is OK. Relaxing with entertainment is OK. The mistake I made was I fulfilled my desire to live a better life by watching videos of the better life I wanted to have. I spent time immersing myself in the life I wanted to have through YouTube, instead of spending time moving myself to the life I wanted to live. I celebrated the career success of celebrities as my own success, instead of remembering that while the celebration is shared, the actual achievement and the rewards are not shared: My life remains where it is, and my life doesn’t get better when I celebrate achievements of people I don’t even know in real life.

Lesson: Blame the perpetrator, ask for help from the bystanders. (7/16/21)
Solution:
– Put the blame on the perpetrator, not the bystanders. Blaming is how you lose support from people who otherwise would help you. If you go to them and you ask them to help you make it right, they will. If you go to them and call out their failure, you have lowered your chance of getting help.
– Focus on the perpetrator: who did what and when. Someone did you wrong: Describe what they did and make that the central detail of your story. Don’t get distracted by what ‘should have happened’ and who ‘should have helped’ and what others ‘should have done.’
– Focus on the present. The mistake I make is focusing on prevention and trying to think of ways to keep things from going wrong again. While prevention is valuable for future events, prioritize the present threat and danger of what is going on. Pursue preventative measures after the present damage is mitigated and you are safe.
– Inform and forgive the bystanders and treat them better than the perpetrator. The mistake I make is to hold those responsible for ensuring things go right to a higher standard than those who did the actual crime. This is wrong. I should blame the person who does bad actions more than the people who don’t even know it’s happening. I shouldn’t blame them for not observing or noticing when they can’t: it’s behind closed doors, etc.  The bad person is often strategic so they go undetected. Blame the bad person for their bad actions, inform the bystanders of how the bad person got away with it so they can get better at detection.

Be the Driver of Your Car

Life Lessons, Thoughts On Life

Lately I’ve been feeling tired and I don’t know where my time is going. I don’t feel like I’m doing very much, yet I’m exhausted. Also, I don’t know what I’m doing. Did I mention I don’t know where my time is going? I feel lost and confused, like I don’t have control and I don’t have a map and I don’t have any skills. Do you know what I’m talking about?

If you’re feeling this way, this is the article for you.

The way we are getting out of this feeling is by using driving as a symbol and analogy for our life. If you are in the driver’s seat of a car, what would you do?

The first thing to do as the driver is to take action. As the driver, the car goes where you tell it to go. If someone else takes the wheel from you, then you are no longer the driver. Sitting in the driver’s seat does not make you the driver. Taking the action of controlling the car’s direction makes you the driver. You must take action to be the driver of your life.

The second thing to do as the driver is to make decisions. Make decisions in your life. Don’t let other people make decisions for you. You decide where you are going to take your car. They can tell you they want to go to the bathroom, or to visit their favorite restaurant, or see a park, but you are the final decision maker. You are the driver: make the final decision.

The third thing to do as the driver is to always be moving. A car that isn’t moving is not being driven: it’s a parked car. Don’t be a parked car going no where in life and panicking at what you’re seeing out of the tiny windows you’re looking out of. Keep Moving.

The fourth thing to do as the driver is to clean your windows. See the world, as much of it as you can. Take in information so you know where to go, whether there is danger up ahead or not, and whether to take this detour or not. The circumstances of the world around you are constantly changing, so be on the look out and keep your eyes open.

The fifth thing to do as the driver of your car is to take care of your car. Take it to maintenance, to the shop, for oil changes, purchase insurance

The sixth thing to do as the driver of your car is to equip it so you are read for the road ahead. Stock it with snacks and water and comforts while driving and equipment for the activities you’ll have along the way.

The seventh thing to do as the driver of your car is to do your research and plan ahead. Buy a map, make advanced phone calls, get feedback and input from others. Plan your trip so it goes smoothly with less surprises.

The eight thing to do as the driver of your car is to make advanced purchases. This goes hand in hand with planning ahead: When you make a plan, pre-purchase things you know you will need in locations you expect to be. Make your journey a pleasant one. Give yourself 5 star customer service and take care of every detail you can.

The ninth thing to do as the driver of your car is to influence the world around you positively in the direction of your goals. Ask for things from the world: you will be surprised at how often you will get what you ask for. And you will not be surprised when you don’t get what you didn’t ask for.

The tenth and final thing to do as the driver of your car is to control the attitude, personality, values, integrity, tone, and atmosphere of your environment. Be calm. You are in a car, it’s safe in here. The world is out there. You can’t always control the external world, but the inside of the car is yours to take control of. Take control of it.