Showing posts with label Rules of Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rules of Life. Show all posts

Monday, August 13, 2012

6 Recommended Obsessions for a Better Life

Copied from the following blog:

http://meanttobehappy.com/6-obsessions-that-will-make-you-a-better-person-in-2012/

6 Recommended Obsessions for a Better Life

1. Be Obsessed with your Family

Those who obsess over their families are those who uncontrollably and unconditionally love them. They spend lots of time together, play together, laugh together and bond with each other.
They also develop strange little practices like regular date nights and family nights. They prioritize family time high on their to-do lists. They care about how they’re doing as dads and moms and husbands and wives and make regular adjustments to improve.

But Beware the Counterfeit

Jealousy is not love or devotion. It is a fraudulent emotional replica of love. It is insecurity, plain and simple. It’s an emotional infection that can spread and corrupt the organism of relationship, marriage and family.
Root it out, cure it, disinfect the emotional wound before it destroys the real love that still exists. Obsession with family really has no relationship to jealousy. Jealousy is self-obsession, a form of self-absorption, a selfishness that lashes out when threatened. The family suffers at the hand of that emotional disease.

2. Be Obsessed with your Values

Do you have a clear set of values? Do you live your life by them? Do they influence your choices as a reflection of how you choose to live? Or are they things that sit on a shelf you pick up and put down at will?
Those who are obsessed with their values are willing to sacrifice much to maintain them –this sometimes includes their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor.” They yearn to live by their values and exercise integrity to them.
They are very clear about what matters most to them and can articulate their values very clearly when asked to. They seldom, if ever, compromise on their moral standards and hold them as near and dear to their hearts. An obsession with your values is a way to live more perfectly by them.

But Beware the Counterfeit

It is wonderful to passionately advocate a set of beliefs. I do that here. But never allow yourself to even dream of imposing them on others. If your values have led you to degrade or belittle or hurt or threaten others for holding a different set than yours, you have devalued the quality of what you believe. Pull back far away from that ledge!

3. Be Obsessed with your Health

A peek in your refrigerator or behind the doors of your pantry will tell a pretty accurate story of your obsession (or a lack thereof) with health. Those obsessed with improving their health reflect that obsession in the food they choose to bring into their homes.
For those obsessed with health, flavor ceases to be the primary goal when creating a meal. They care deeply about the long-term impact of what they put in their mouths and make a part of their cellular structure.
They believe in the literalness of the truism that we are, in fact, what we eat. They make exercise an integral part of their life experience as well. As a matter of fact, they have a comprehensive approach to living healthy.
They care how they feel and how they live and how long they’ll be around to pursue their life’s work. Quality and longevity of life are important to them.
At its highest form, an obsession with health is an altruistic obsession. It cares more for loved ones and their happiness than any particular flavor you put in your mouth or a preference for sitting around the house with a bag of potato chips in hand.

But Beware the Counterfeit

An obsession with appearance or weight or body fat or build is an unhealthy obsession and should be avoided at all costs. I am advocating a mild obsession with HEALTH. And anorexia and bulimia are certainly NOT healthy.
A preoccupation with the mirror or the scale is not what I’m talking about either. Nose jobs and other cosmetic surgical procedures are largely the result of a devotion to the wrong kind of obsession.

4. Be Obsessed with Learning

Don’t let a day go by that you don’t learn something new. Be obsessed with developing your intellect and ability to use your God-given mind closer to its full potential.
Some people claim they’re just not readers. But that is such a cop-out. The world’s great ideas are not floating through the atmosphere waiting to be plucked out of the sky. They are recorded in books, waiting to be absorbed into fertile minds. And ideas matter. They alter courses and change civilizations.
So read and study, whether or not you like reading or studying. Stimulate your mind and creativity, challenge yourself, tackle difficult subjects, build your vocabulary, your ability to communicate the growing knowledge you obsessively acquire.
Develop a passion for knowing, for discovering. Yearn to learn and understand. Create a passionate love affair with the words “why” and “how” and “why not?” and “what if.” Turn off the reality shows and watch the Learning channel or something equivalent to it. Feed the hunger of your mind. Listen to books on tape, listen to talk programs in the car.
Those obsessed with learning are passionate about learning from their own mistakes and from others mistakes as well. They welcome challenges as a way to discover new insight and meaning about themselves or life or humanity.

But Beware the Counterfeit

It is important to employ wisdom in your pursuit of knowledge. To pursue knowledge and its application without the moderating voice of wisdom is to walk blindly through a minefield. Eventually someone is going to get blown up!

5. Be Obsessed with Making a Difference

Do you yearn to leave an impact on world (or your community)? Do you ache to leave the world a better place than when you found it? Do you look for ways to add meaning and value to people’s lives, to reach out and touch someone, to lift the downtrodden? If so, you may be suffering from this obsession. My recommendation? Give in to it!
Those obsessed with making a difference are not satisfied in a cubicle. They can’t add numbers in columns for hours on end or shuffle papers or attend mindless meeting after mindless meeting.
They may do those things as part of a larger mission, but they can’t simply bring home a paycheck without something deeply moving about the work they do, the difference they make.
They have to touch lives, inspire something more in those who are living under their potentials. They almost instinctively lift and build and encourage and motivate and teach and elevate and reach and comfort and love others.
Their hearts beat differently than most. They thump to the tune of other hearts. They dream of being able to reach more people, impact more people and inspire change and growth in more people. Is this your obsession?

But Beware the Counterfeit

There are, however, some who care only for others. They are the martyrs and victims, the ones who wonder why no one cares for them like they care for others. They pity themselves for always serving and never being served.
And so they resent the service they give even while giving it. And they miss the point of service altogether, receiving few, if any, of its benefits.

6. Be Obsessed with Balance

Obsessions are intense things. They are focused like a laser beam on the object of the obsession.
As such, they can easily take control and throw our lives out of whack. But with an underlying obsession with balance, other obsessions don’t overtake the rest of life. There is equanimity, a sort of life equilibrium.
Obsessive compulsions are moderated so that an obsession to ones work is prevented from pushing family and friends to the back of life’s bus.
An obsession with balance can tame success in any given area of life, it’s true. But it is the only way to achieve the highest kind of success … the success of a life lived well.

But Beware the Counterfeit

The only counterfeit to balance is thinking all things must be perfectly balanced at all times. When you’re working on your Masters Thesis, you will be off balance for a time. You should be or you’ll do a sub par job or never even finish it.
When a project is due, it’s okay to come home late from work every day for a week or two. On family vacation, you will neglect your work and indulge your family.
But never use the need for balance as the excuse for never working hard enough in an area of life to ever become particularly good at anything.

Afterthoughts

Successful living is living with passion. It is being obsessed with living the right kind of life in the right way. It is an obsession with making the most out of the life you were given.
An obsession with life is an obsession with living it to its fullest, loving it even for all its dirty messiness.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Rules of Life


Found this brilliant piece in FB and wanted to know if it was truly authored by Bill Gates, especially since one knows that he was not so fond of Harward and had dropped out. But then he was a brilliant student; if not, Harward would not have admitted him. And, not all can become a Bill Gates.



Anyway, the full text is as below and About.com says the following:


As frequently happens when texts are repeatedly copied and forwarded over time, something written by one person has come to be attributed to another. Here, the displaced text is a pared-down version of an op-ed piece by education reformer Charles J. Sykes, best known as the author of Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good about Themselves, but Can't Read, Write, or Add. The op-ed was originally published in the San Diego Union-Tribune in September 1996. It began making the email rounds under Bill Gates' name in February 2000, and has continued to do so ever since.


Forwarded-by: Daniel Rogers rogersd@nanaimo.island.net

Some rules kids won't learn in school

Text By Charles J. Sykes

Printed in San Diego Union Tribune

September 19, 1996


Unfortunately, there are some things that children should be learning in school, but don't. Not all of them have to do with academics. As a modest back-to-school offering, here are some basic rules that may not have found their way into the standard curriculum.



Rule No. 1: Life is not fair. Get used to it. The average teen-ager uses the phrase, "It's not fair" 8.6 times a day. You got it from your parents, who said it so often you decided they must be the most idealistic generation ever. When they started hearing it from their own kids, they realized Rule No. 1.


Rule No. 2: The real world won't care as much about your self-esteem as much as your school does. It'll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself. This may come as a shock. Usually, when inflated self-esteem meets reality, kids complain it's not fair. (See Rule No. 1)


Rule No. 3: Sorry, you won't make $40,000 a year right out of high school. And you won't be a vice president or have a car phone either. You may even have to wear a uniform that doesn't have a Gap label.


Rule No. 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait 'til you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he's not going to ask you how you feel about it.


Rule No. 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grand-parents had a different word of burger flipping. They called it opportunity. They weren't embarrassed making minimum wage either. They would have been embarrassed to sit around talking about Kurt Cobain all weekend.


Rule No. 6: It's not your parents' fault. If you screw up, you are responsible. This is the flip side of "It's my life," and "You're not the boss of me," and other eloquent proclamations of your generation. When you turn 18, it's on your dime. Don't whine about it, or you'll sound like a baby boomer.


Rule No. 7: Before you were born your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way paying your bills, cleaning up your room and listening to you tell them how idealistic you are. And by the way, before you save the rain forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your bedroom.


Rule No. 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn't. In some schools, they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. Failing grades have been abolished and class valedictorians scrapped, lest anyone's feelings be hurt. Effort is as important as results. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life. (See Rule No. 1, Rule No. 2 and Rule No. 4)


Rule No. 9: Life is not divided into semesters, and you don't get summers off. Not even Easter break. They expect you to show up every day. For eight hours. And you don't get a new life every 10 weeks. It just goes on and on. While we're at it, very few jobs are interesting in fostering your self-expression or helping you find yourself. Fewer still lead to self-realization. (See Rule No. 1 and Rule No. 2.)


Rule No. 10: Television is not real life. Your life is not a sitcom. Your problems will not all be solved in 30 minutes, minus time for commercials. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to jobs. Your friends will not be as perky or pliable as Jennifer Aniston.


Rule No. 11: Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.


Rule No. 12: Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you're out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That's what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for "expressing yourself" with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.


Rule No. 13: You are not immortal. (See Rule No. 12.) If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven't seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.


Rule No. 14: Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school's a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you'll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now.

You're welcome.


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