Category: Josh Feingold Blog

I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about some things in life I was happy about, but soon started to question if I should be happy about these things or not.  And then I fully realized that everything in life, is totally arbitrary.

Of course, this is not to say that bad things aren’t bad, but in truth, if we look at them objectively, and not with our own biased opinion – we might see that really the definition of it being bad, was one that we made up. Even if everyone in the world might agree with our conclusion, it just means that we all think the same, not that it is actually bad.

Now this thought is a little troublesome, since if we extend it we can come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as truly bad or good.   What about a horrid event like the holocaust?  That would clearly fit into the bad camp in anyone’s moral book.  However, it seems clear that there were people at the time, that didn’t seem to have much of a problem with it – otherwise it wouldn’t have happened.

I think that this is an important point, since to some extent, it helps us understand that in order for something to be bad or good, it has to be dictated by a “higher authority”, aka God.  Without this, things just are, what they are.  Of course, in this case, society gets to define what is good or bad, but as we well know, what is popular in one society (think Pederasty in ancient Greek society) will put you in jail for a long time in another society.

So let’s bring this back around to us.  By moving our model of things that happen as good or bad, and just reflecting on the fact that they just are, we can better remain in a happy state of mind, since those things that we might think are bad, no longer have the same defining power over us.

Want to know what things in life are giving you stress so you can target them for change?  Look to yourself.

Basically, when you get stressed, or are trying to avoid things, you give off clues which you are probably best to figure out.

These clues are behavioral, and involve self-soothing techniques that you use to help alleviate your stress.

For me, I rub my neck.  You might do something else with your hand or body, or mouth, similar to whatever your parents did to sooth you as a baby.

Point is that once you know what your self-soothing behavior is, you can then focus on what thoughts you are having that are creating this behavior, and better understand what is truly bothering you.

Similar to these behavioral tells, there are also avoidance behaviors, such as drinking, overworking, smoking and other such compulsive actions that the impulse to do, is typically created in order to avoid stress.  So by identifying these actions, it can also, help you discover those areas of your life that you might want to focus on to help prevent stress.

We are born self-centered, and one of our goals should be to slowly drop our self-centeredness so that by the time we die, we have a healthy balance that we know clearly that we are the center of the OUR world, but that everyone else has an unalienable right to feel the same thing about their world.

Specifically, if you look at children, they actually believe that they are the center of the world.  Interestingly, when you play peek-a-boo with a baby, they think you actually disappeared.  As children grow up, this slowly dissipates, but if something happens to a child, like someone says something mean, they take it personally, and it impacts their sense of self in a negative way.

However, as we age it is incumbent upon us to realize that in fact, nothing that happens to us is personal, rather, a reflection of the other person’s own private world, and therefore not take affronts to our person personally.  Since nothing is personal.

Herein is the mature sense of self that we must strive to adopt as we age.  Good luck!

(Similar to yesterday, this post was inspired by the  something I learned in a book by Susan Anderson.)

One of the most important realizations that I have come to recently is that we are really just an advanced form of those animals that came before us.

Of course, we have increased brain functionality, but underlying us is really a life-form that has slowly developed over thousands of years from protozoa or some long last ancestor.

This is important, since if we really want to understand our true selves, we can simply look to the behavior of animals and then see how it applied back to us.

I have noticed this quite a bit recently, but one of the more fascinating applications of this fact can be seen in the pecking order of animals.  Specifically, there is one.  A trip to Monkey Jungle in Florida to see the Macaque Monkey’s eat according to their social order, really brought out that point.

This directly relates to us humans, as we too establish hierarchies that are created based on worth, which is further defined by society.  Where we see ourselves in this pecking order, directly relates to our own personal opinion of ourselves, or our self-esteem.

What is important to realize is that in truth, we humans, no longer have a pecking order – unless we create one for ourselves.

Humans have the logical dimension needed to realize that we are all just the same value.  However, the leftover “bag of rocks” that we carry around, really impacts our life, even though it no longer should.

Hopefully, this recognition of the impact of our natural tendencies can help us overcome them.

(On a side note, the second part of this post is not really an original idea, rather one inspired by the writings of Susan Anderson.)

I spent the weekend in Boston, and it helped me understand better why Massachusetts is considered the birthplace of America, and not Philadelphia, where the Continental Congress, and other such organizations were taking place.

Basically, it all comes down to money, and in this fact, we see a very interesting lesson.

You see, if it wasn’t for the additional taxes that the British were imposing, I doubt the revolution ever would have gone anywhere.  There is the cry of “No taxation without representation,” but to me that statement seems more like a red herring since the early American’s really were protesting ADDITIONAL taxation, and not really taxation in general.

Which brings up the main point, people hurt, and thus rebel when they lose the status quo.  So if you want to anger someone, take away what they have.  The reason that you get this extreme negative reaction, is that the anger that festers comes to the surface to protect the downtrodden from additional hurt.

This is a practical lesson in business, where we want to make sure not to take things away from employees, especially benefits and money that they already expect.  When companies don’t heed this lesson, they often find that they have mutiny on their hands.

So if faced with a decision about employee pay, keep this lesson in mind, before you open a Pandora’s Box that you can’t close.