What Is Your Greatest Achievement?

My 25-year high school reunion is next month. I’ll probably go. My best friend from high school intends to go (we’ve been friends for almost 30 years now), and it will be fun to catch up with other old friends.

There can be some amusement at a high school reunion as you see that everyone has grown fatter, balder, and more married. The jock is now an insurance salesperson with two kids. The star of the school play now manages a restaurant. That sort of thing…

When I reflect back on what I’ve learned in the past 25 years since graduating high school, I ask myself what accomplishments I appreciate most. I’m not interested in showing off to my peers. I simply wonder how I’d answer this for myself.

My high school self was a straight-A student, graduating with top honors, excited about going to college, and following the path that society had laid out for him. I was expected to continue along that path. I excelled in school partly because my goals aligned with other people’s expectations. I had little social resistance and plenty of social support for most of what I wanted to do. Nobody tried to talk me out of pursuing a computer science degree.

The real tests came when I wanted to do something that other people didn’t agree with, such as starting my own business or going vegetarian. For whatever reason, those types of tests came up often for me.

Because of the path I followed since high school, I strengthened my independent will. Today I’m able to follow my conscience and make decisions based on my character, beliefs, thoughts, and feelings on a matter, and not be overly dissuaded from my course even if many people around me disagree. I’m capable of following my path with a heart in ways that would surprise my high school self.

Back in high school, it was a big deal for me to share with a few close friends that I didn’t believe in the whole Christian god story anymore. Now I find it much easier to share my thoughts and feelings openly regardless of how people may react. Religion is spiritual immaturity, the fool’s path of growth. If people feel a need to go kittywompus when they hear me say that, I let them go kittywompus.

Today I take better advantage of my freedom than my high school self ever did. He felt very constrained, but he still honored most of the constraints that other people placed around him. I’ve since lost respect for externally imposed constraints. I do value constraints, but only if they align with my values. If I don’t agree with other people’s rules or conventions, I largely ignore them. I still consider predictable consequences, but I don’t follow rules merely for the sake of following rules. I think for myself and make decisions based on what I think is right, regardless of what the standard procedure is supposed to be.

If I hadn’t been able to develop my independent will, I wouldn’t have been able to go vegan. I wouldn’t have been able to leave an unfulfilling marriage. I wouldn’t have started two businesses. I wouldn’t be blogging or speaking publicly. I wouldn’t have given away the copyrights to my work.

Often when I talk to people my own age, I find it hard to relate to them. So many of my peers seem overly scared… so fearful of taking risks. They’re afraid to lose what they have, but the irony is that they don’t even appreciate what they have. Most of the time their fear isn’t about taking on risks for themselves. Quite often they’re willing and able to do that. Their greater fear is dealing with people’s judgments of them, especially if they fail to achieve their goals quickly.

What if I fail and my family thinks I’m a loser?

So they’ll think you’re a loser. That doesn’t even matter. You have no obligation to impress them. Follow your path. Let them do the same. If you fail, then fail with style, and take pride in that. Then get up and try again. Stop making failure into this big scary beast. It’s just a road bump. There will be lots of road bumps in your life if you want to do anything remotely interesting.

What if I fail and my spouse leaves me?

Then s/he wasn’t much of a spouse to begin with. This will be a good test to see if you chose someone who can handle you being you. If not, good riddance. You’ll find a better match afterwards. If you want to develop your courage, and you marry someone who’s afraid of that, don’t expect that marriage to last.

What if I lose all my money?

Then you’ll have no money. You can start fresh and earn more. The game doesn’t end just because your gold gets low. The point of the game is to grow, not to acquire gold. If you get on an interesting path of growth, you may very well lose all your money, perhaps multiple times. You may as well get used to it.

These are the kinds of fears that hold people back so much in life.

I’m relieved that I didn’t turn out that way, that I embraced a path of experimentation and failure — and that I find pleasure and meaning in decisions that don’t always turn out well.

I feel good about how far I’ve come since high school, but that feeling isn’t due to external accomplishments that might impress anyone else. I feel good about becoming a man who can act in alignment with his conscience, even when everyone else disagrees.

I don’t eat animal products. I consider it unethical.

I don’t have a regular job. Doing repetitive work for pay seems like a waste of life. It’s not worth the reduction in freedom.

I give away most of my creative work for free (and uncopyrighted), so anyone can share it easily. That feels good to me.

My thoughts, feelings, and behaviors aren’t that unusual. Many people feel the same as I do about these subjects. They agree that it would be more ethical to drop animal products. They’d rather not spend years of their life working for someone else. And they like the idea of expressing their creativity and contributing. The difference is that they let their fears about other people’s reactions stop them from making a bigger push in those directions.

I feel very fortunate that something inside me popped and said, “Nope, can’t live like that.”

In reflecting back on the past 25 years, the achievement I’m most proud of was to become a man who finds it unnecessary to satisfy others’ expectations of him. That gave me the freedom to create a life that I enjoy and appreciate.

I also look forward to the possibility that another 25 years from now, my future self may look back once again and reflect upon how much he’s grown. I cannot know what he’ll be like, but I can predict that his path would surprise me. I like that.

What’s your greatest life achievement thus far? What accomplishments do you appreciate the most? Would you name one of your public wins? Or one of your private victories?

Steve Recommends
Here are my recommendations for products and services I've reviewed that can improve your results. This is a short list since it only includes my top picks.

Spring Forest Healingfest (Free) - Learn to heal yourself with qi gong
Site Build It! - Use SBI to start your own money-making website
Getting Rich with Ebooks - Earn passive income from ebooks
Lefkoe Method - Permanently eliminate a limiting belief in 20 minutes
PhotoReading - Read books 3 times faster
Paraliminals - Condition your mind for positive thinking and success
The Journal - Record your life lessons in a secure private journal
Sedona Method (FREE audios) - Release your blocks in a few minutes
Life on Purpose - A step-by-step process to discover your life purpose

If you've found Steve's work helpful, please donate to show your support.
Get Steve's Free Newsletter to stay in touch and receive the newest updates

View the original article here

Dad is My Greatest Teacher

photo by skpy http://www.flickr.com/photos/skippy/

There are a lot of young guys around the world that don’t get a chance to grow up with a father. And because of that, may lack the knowledge of what “being a man” is. At the same time, there are young men growing up that have a father at their disposal and still don’t get valuable life lessons. It’s a shame.

My father died when I was 18 years old during my senior year at high school. He had a blood clot pass in his lung. I remember the day vividly, being woken up at a friend’s house the night after my band played in some far off place. It was a beautiful, sunny, Sunday morning and I remember seeing my family members’ faces as I walked into the hospital. No one really said anything to me but I could hear from their expressions,

“Everything will be OK, bud.”

What happened next is a blur still to this day. I had to deal with the public viewing of my dead father, helping bury him at the funeral, a 21 gun salute, “becoming the man of the house” (or so all my relatives said), and appeasing my weakened mom in the process.

What happened in the next 3 years was something that I choose to describe as being lost. I entered a phase in my life where I was in a semi-touring, semi-serious band and had a terrible outlook on life. I had a problem with everything; from society to myself. I didn’t have any real friends or relationships and just “faked” my way through. I made a ton of terrible decisions, worked a crappy job and was looked down upon by my most of my family because of those terrible decisions.

It was only until I decided to make a drastic change in my life that I could make up for this lost time. Some people go 20 or 30 years without having a bottom in their lives and one day look back and see the wreckage of their past. Luckily, my bottom was at 21. I’ve come to accept this and liken it to what Robert Frost wrote,

“… the best way out is always through.”

photo by roy_ http://www.flickr.com/photos/roy_/

After my period of being lost, I got very angry at my father for not being what I thought that he should have been in my life. Why did he never teach me to build a fire? Go camping? Teach me other “manly” stuff that every father teaches their son, right?

It took me a while to make my way through the five stages of grief. I was at the anger stage.

After talking to someone that had some more experience with death, life, and resentments I came to realize this: my father did the best he could with the tools that he had to work with. My dad never laid a hand on me or my mom, was at all of my opening nights at the theater when I was young and in plays, took me fishing (when I wasn’t being stubborn and wanted to go), wanted the absolute best for me and my mom, and later in life, indirectly taught me what it is to be a man.

And for that, I can overlook the not teaching me “how to build a fire thing”.

So, what does this have to do with Father’s Day? Other than this post being something that I needed to write, accepting my father for who he was has enabled me to become the man that I truly want to be because of my learning from his mistakes.

Would you touch a hot stove right now? I have a feeling that if you have touched a hot stove in the past and remember the pain of being burnt, you won’t do it. It’s the same idea of learning how to be a man from my father.

If the old man before me did things that were right, then hopefully I pick up those traits. And if he did things that were wrong, I sure as hell need to learn not to do those things. Learning from my dad’s mistakes has helped me develop my own, upgraded “set of tools” that I can use to do my best in life.

My dad was one of the greatest teachers I have ever met and he didn’t even try to be or know that he was. There are so many things that I have accomplished since his death that I wish I could share with him. That is the one thing that still chokes me up to this day. But, allowing to let my father live through me, I know that he is with me every step of the way; even when I’m stubborn and don’t want to go fishing.

So, on this Father’s Day, make sure that you understand that your dad does the best he can with the tools that he has. It’s not a father’s job to teach you how to build a fire. It’s your job to learn from him, develop your life’s tools to do your best, and live the life that you want to live.

Chris is a developer, writer, tech enthusiast, and husband. He studies MIS and Computer Science at Penn State Behrend. Chris is also interested in personal productivity and creativity and how to utilize technology to get more things done. Check out his tech writing at androinica.com where he writes about Android.

View the original article here

A reflection of the greatest

A surprising study has just appeared in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology about whether narcissists realise what others think about their egotistical self-image.

Narcissism is a trait where people are more concerned about themselves than others and tend to think they are better and more important than their peers.

This has often been considered to be a form of self-delusion or self-serving cognitive bias, while this new study deliberately tested whether highly narcissistic realised what others thought about them.

The study came to the surprising conclusion that narcissism is usually accompanied by a crystal clear insight into how others don’t share the shining view that narcissists have of themselves.

You probably think this paper’s about you: Narcissists’ perceptions of their personality and reputation

J Pers Soc Psychol. 2011 May 23. [Epub ahead of print]

Carlson EN, Vazire S, Oltmanns TF.

Do narcissists have insight into the negative aspects of their personality and reputation? Using both clinical and subclinical measures of narcissism, the authors examined others’ perceptions, self-perceptions, and meta-perceptions of narcissists across a wide range of traits for a new acquaintance and close other (Study 1), longitudinally with a group of new acquaintances (Study 2), and among coworkers (Study 3).

Results bring 3 surprising conclusions about narcissists: (a) they understand that others see them less positively than they see themselves (i.e., their meta-perceptions are less biased than are their self-perceptions), (b) they have some insight into the fact that they make positive first impressions that deteriorate over time, and (c) they have insight into their narcissistic personality (e.g., they describe themselves as arrogant). These findings shed light on some of the psychological mechanisms underlying narcissism.

Link to PubMed entry for study.

View the original article here

The greatest TED Talk ever sold: Morgan Spurlock on TED.com

Much of the TV, video, film and sport we watch is sponsored by a brand, a product, a corporation. But … why? With humor and persistence, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock dives into the hidden but influential world of brand marketing, on his quest to make a completely sponsored film about sponsorship. And yes, the onstage naming rights for talk were sponsored too. By whom and for how much? He’ll tell you. (Recorded at TED2011, March 2011, in Long Beach, CA. Duration: 19:28)

Watch Morgan Spurlock’s talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 900+ TEDTalks.

THIS SATURDAY: Join a Q&A with Morgan Spurlock! Meet us online at 9am Pacific on TED Conversations >>

View the original article here

Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

10th Anniversary Edition book with a new afterword by the author Mitch Albom

Price: $13.99

Click here to buy from Amazon