Suffering – necessary? I think so.

People who had it easy tend to have low resilience.

“Greatness is not in intelligence.  Greatness is not formed by smart people.  It is formed by people who have suffered.  I wish you ample doses of pain and suffering.” – Jenson Huang, founder of Nvidia 21 years ago, now the third most valuable US company.

Have you gained wisdom, strength, and resilience through your own pain, suffering, and disappointments?

Poison or fuel, your choice.

Really understanding other people

We are tribal.  We cling together with people who think like us.  It’s very rare to have someone really understand others without becoming defensive and argumentative, outwardly or inwardly.  

Why is it so difficult to understand others?  The problem is in large part from the tendency to filter, color, interpret, misinterpret, and even distort what people say.

“The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolor the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.” – Francis Bacon

As difficult as it may be, the skill of really understanding other people is the key to so much – getting along, solving problems, harmony, good relationships, avoiding conflict, selling, and getting things done.

Do you slow down and put yourself aside to really listen and understand others?

You believe you.

How do you tell your story to yourself?

You can say to yourself – “I am a loser” or “I am a winner, I just haven’t won yet.”

You can say “I don’t deserve better” or “I deserve better”

You can say “I did my best” or “I can do better, and I will”.

You can say “People don’t like me” or “I can see how I can be more friendly and valuable and I will, starting now.”

You can say “I am a victim” or you can say “I got with the wrong people and hung around too long.  It’s my fault and I know better now.”

You can say “I am unlucky” or “I learned a lot and am more capable now and I’ll keep going”.

You believe you.  

Your story, your choice.

Energy Resource Dynamics blog

My son Tanner writes a blog about Energy and Sustainability.  He writes a new article about twice a month or so.  The articles are short and interesting, and devoid of agenda or hype.  He focuses on the science of things.  I think you will find his articles interesting. 

Here is a link to one of them – 

https://open.substack.com/pub/energyresourcedynamics/p/the-paradox-of-resource-abundance?r=2lr3yj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

You can subscribe from there.

Get in the game

Funny story – My friend Mike Lane went out on a friends boat fishing. (He never fishes.) Not paying attention, a big fish hit his line and he reels in the Connecticut state record Sea Bass!

My other friend Mark Daconto goes racing in Baja for the time in the passenger seat in our race car, and we win the Baja 1000!

It doesn’t always happen that you win the first time out. But if you never try, nothing good can happen. 

To have victories you have to play. Get in the game. Sometimes you lose. But, with your efforts – sometimes you win!

You are choosing this

“What you are not changing you are choosing.” – Bruce Lee

What are you choosing?

Everyone is unqualified at first

Don’t let that stop you from doing it anyway.

Master Yourself

You are the most difficult person you will ever lead.

You want the easy way, you are resistant, and you have habits that are not helpful to getting you to your goals.  You make excuses and blame others for your problems.  And you have this voice in your head that you think is you, justifying what you are doing and telling you it’s right.

Take control of you.

Choosing your friends

“Choose your friends based on the health of their character.  It’s the beginnings of disease to expose healthy things to sickness.” – Seneca

What are your friend’s thoughts, habits, ideas and actions?

If you hang out with a dirty person, you are likely to get a little dirty yourself.

Plastic Water Bottles – an Environmental Liability

When I was a kid there was no such thing as bottled water.  Nobody would buy a bottle of water.  I recall when it first came out and thinking about how ridiculous it was – who would spend money on water? 

Somewhere people got the idea that drinking tap water is bad for you.  So Coca-Cola and Pepsi took tap water from Detroit and filtered it and sell it to you at a crazy mark-up (Dasani and AquaFina).  

Many people want to drink water because it’s a lot better for you than sugar drinks – so we buy bottled water for convenience.   

But a bottle of water takes 2000 times as much energy to create (plastic, trucking, handling) than tap water.  And the bottle is an environmental liability forever.  People may drink up to eight 12-ounce containers of fluids a day on average. Imagine that – for one of 8 billion people on earth to satiate themselves for a couple hours, a plastic bottle is produced and discarded on the earth.  That is going to cause a huge problem.   There is an island of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas!  This is not good!

If you “recycle” your plastic water bottles it will take a lot more energy still.

So, get a water filter (I use a Brita-style pitcher) and metal or glass water bottle and fill them up at home for free, and use them at work, and in your car and everywhere else.  When I go on a plane trip now, on my packing checklist is an empty water bottle.  I go through security and then fill it up at bottle refill stations they have in airports now.

Let’s stop the plastic bottle madness.

You in?