Category: Josh Feingold Blog

As I imagine I have discussed elsewhere, life really can be defined as a series of choices that we make.  These choices are what makes our lives uniquely ours, and make us, well, us.

The interesting things about choices, is that they are really a series of decisions we make.  However, as humans, we don’t like to make decisions for ourselves.  Personally, I found that there were two reasons that I was escaping making my own decisions in life.  1) I thought there were people “out there” more qualified than myself to make decisions for me.  2) I was scared to make my own decisions, lest I make the wrong decisions.

I started doing some research on decision making and found that in fact, most people probably feel the same way I used to feel.  Check out what Wikipedia says about “some of the decision making techniques people use in everyday life

• Pros and Cons: Listing the advantages and disadvantages of each option, popularized by Plato and Benjamin Franklin
• Simple Prioritization: Choosing the alternative with the highest probability-weighted utility for each alternative (see Decision Analysis)
• Satisficing: using the first acceptable option found
• Acquiesce to a person in authority or an “expert”, just following orders
• Flipism: Flipping a coin, cutting a deck of playing cards, and other random or coincidence methods
• Prayer, tarot cards, astrology, augurs, revelation, or other forms of divination
• Taking the most opposite action compared to the advice of mistrusted authorities (parents, police officers, partners …)”

You will notice that only two of six methods actually involve our own thinking!  Pretty crazy if you ask me.  What that means is that we are outsourcing our decisions, and therefore our choices, and therefore our lives to others for whatever reason you will attribute this fact to.

Amazing, huh.

So take back your life.  Make a cognizant effort to make your own decisions.

A friend of mine pointed out that more often than not he was noticing a competitive nature to interactions between him and other parties with whom he has relationships.

Of course, I thought, that is what our ego makes us do!  What a cool insight.  Our ego, forces us to compete.  For if we can’t be number one, says our ego, we are nothing.  Or so the exaggerated thinking goes.  So instead of just admitting that we are wrong, or simply number two (or three, or four) we fight.  And we fight like our whole existence depends on it.  Because, to some extent it does – since our ego is under attack.

[Tangent: It is for this reason, that it is never good advice to disagree with someone we want to impress.  Since if we are disagreeing with them, we are really attacking them, and in doing so, they have to defend themselves, and put up separation between themselves and us, which if our goal is a positive impression – well, you get the idea, that just isn’t the right direction.]

Ever see the bumper sticker, “He Who Dies With The Most Toys Wins”?  Same idea.  As is the desire to drive the nicest car, be the most famous person, the richest person, the most attractive spouse, the most well behaved children, etc.  We just need to be number one – or we are nothing.

However, friends, life as you know is not a competition.  For if it is.  We are all losers.  None of us will ever be number one at EVERYTHING.  We just aren’t built like that, we are human.  And humans are imperfect – which is why fairy tales are just tales and why there is an industry built on the image that lives of movie stars are somehow different than ours!

And this is why the person who acts like he has everything should be pitied.  Because, I can tell you with 100% certainty that underneath his/her façade is a very vulnerable person that realized that they are faking things so the world won’t see them for who they are.  Someone who projects a false image so the real world won’t see the real them.

And how can I say this with such certainty, you ask?  Because, all of us put up a façade, and the more blatant it is, the more they are trying to hide behind it.  Those people who have less to hide, and who accept themselves, or don’t care how they are perceived, put on less of an act and let the real them shine through and have found that, by doing this, they have freed themselves from the competitive aspect of interactions with others.  Like me if you will, hate me if you will.  It’s your choice, and I respect it.

So remember, life is not a competition.  Just be brave, be yourself, and allow the true you to spill forth.  We’ll love you for it.  Most of us at least.

For those of you who don’t know me (all one of you 🙂 ), I spend my days trying to help people get jobs – and every once in a while things don’t work out for whatever reason.

What is always interesting to me, is that in most cases, if the employee had simply taken a moment and asked their supervisor, how am I doing, they might have been told “actually Stan, you need to get your production up.”

Instead, people walk around thinking, “I do such a good job.  How could they get along without me.”  Problem is, that they got along without you before you were there.

I’ve learned that no one is irreplaceable.  Sure, change can be hard, but given time, pieces are picked up, and life goes on.

Similarly, I was in DC when the dedicated the new MLK monument in October.  On the trip home, I started chatting with someone who was there and asked him how many people were there, and he told me that there were close to two million people in attendance.  Well, I got home, and read the articles, which said that there were “tens of thousands” of people.

How exactly do you mistake tens of thousands for millions?

By giving yourself too much credit.  No one wants to travel all the way from Atlanta to DC to be with a few thousand people.  We want a million people to join us.  So we overestimate the importance in our own mind and then how we share it with others.

But who does that really serve? No one, but ourselves, temporarily.

The problem is that then we are living in a false life.  I’m not sure if I have ever talked about living in a false life on this blog, but it is a life where we unintentionally lie to ourselves to serve some purpose to try to keep ourselves happy.

However, the problem with false lives is that it is impossible to be happy until we shed our false life and live a real life.  I’ll try to explain more about that on the next post.

 

Interestingly, those people that I know that have worked through what they really want in a spouse usually end up with a list that looks pretty much like who they are in base characteristics.

So why is it that people often feel that opposites attract?

I’ll give you my take on it. 🙂

It’s pretty simple actually.  When we are attracted to our opposite, what we are really saying is that we are unhappy about an aspect of ourselves.  So instead of doing the healthy thing, and telling ourselves that this aspect is achievable, and we can become like the person we want to be, we take the easy way out, and bring someone into our life so we can live vicariously through them.

So if we want to figure out those areas where we ourselves feel restricted, look at those areas that we are attracted to in other people – or that attracted us to our spouse.  In doing so, we can see those areas that we are currently suppressing our natural desires, probably due to fear of some sort, and where if we can find additional happiness by making some brave changes in our lives by living the life WE want to live, and not the life we are living.

 

I was talking with the taxi driver on a recent trip, and asked him about the book that he had next to him, which talked about thinking big.

I won’t go into what he told me he learned from his book, since it is irrelevant to this post, but I will tell you what came next in the conversation.

He asked me, “and what have you learned recently” to which I replied that I learned that I learn about myself from journaling, thinking, and talking.  He said, in his broken English.  “But those are all outputs, what are your inputs.  You need inputs to learn something new!”  To which I replied sheepishly “yeah, I’ve been read voraciously recently” and got out of the cab at my destination with a great lesson, that I had forgot about for a few years due to a busy life – keep the inputs coming!

I thought a little more about inputs, and realized that the other main input that we really have is listening.  Honestly, I do try to listen, but I’m not so good at it. It’s funny though, because, when I listen, I always learn so much new stuff.   So why is that?

Basically, my ego gets in the way.  It says, if someone teaches me something, they are better than me, so be careful, and don’t listen – talk and make them see how smart you are.  Well, my ego is telling me some real bad advice, and I think it’s better to just ignore him (my voice is me after all), and rather, stop talking so much, and really focus on listening to the inputs from others, so I can learn new approaches and aspects on life.

P.S.  He also told me that he would do anything to raise his kids and send them to a good school so they can have a good life – and he meant it.  Another great lesson for us all to emulate.