Category: Josh Feingold Blog

I know too many people that don’t take time out for themselves.

They all have different excuses, but the net results is that they don’t.

Look friend, you only have a few years here on earth, and then you go wherever you believe you go next.  In the interim, isn’t it important to take a few minutes to check out the view from the road?  Well, how can you do that if you don’t stop along the way?

That’s where vacations come in.

Now there are two types of vacations.  The pack your bags, and not stop until you get home, and a few days before the vacation ends, you are ready to be home already.

Then there is the stop everything and sit by the pool reading a book for a week vacation.

Now if you know me, I’m a man of action.  There is nothing I hate doing more than nothing.  I wake up on the weekend ready to DO.

However, once a year, I take off 10 days, and do absolutely nothing.

Well, I lay out by the beach.  I go horseback riding.  I read books.  I sleep.  I stop worrying.   I go surfing.  I go hiking.  I go exploring.  I eat.  I go parasailing.  I drink.  I relax.

And when I am done, I am ready for more relaxing.  I don’t want to go home!

So how does it happen that someone who is can’t stop all year, can really get into a vacation of doing nothing?

Because I realize that stopping itself is action sometimes.  It takes a physical action for me to get into the mindset of nothingness.  And once I am there, I am hooked. Another upshot of this is that for those of you who are “lazy” and still read this post, is that it is just a mental shift to get into the habit of action.

So do yourself a favor and take a vacation.

People often quote “the world is your oyster” to imply something to the effect of there is a whole big world out there, go forth and and seize the opportunities that make themselves available to you.  Just Google it.

However, I’ll argue a different meaning that with an oyster, you never know what you’ll find inside, perhaps a pearl, perhaps an oyster, perhaps nothing but sand.  However, you have to go out and open it to see what you’ll find.

Here is the original quote from Shakespeare:

Why then the world’s mine oyster/Which I with sword will open.

I think my perspective fits better.  Not that I read any of the rest of the play.

Anyway, there is a very important lesson here that we need to constantly remind ourselves.  We have opportunities that present themselves daily to us, and we have decision points that come along with these opportunities.  Since these opportunities are unknown (like a closed oyster), we need to take a risk about taking time, energy, and perhaps open yourself to insecurities to grab the opportunity (open the oyster) or move on (ignore the oyster).

So what will you do next time opportunity knocks?  Will you let it pass or will you welcome it like an old friend, and invite it inside to see what’s been going on and how you can be involved?

One of my close friends stopped by last night for a beer, and he was able to help me finish off an idea that has been nagging at me for a while.

Here goes. Let’s start with guys.

If you are a sensitive guy, that cares, and listens, and can be a good friends and person, then society labels you as a wimp or a nerd, but certainly not cool or attractive.  On the other hand, if you are a macho guy, that doesn’t care or listen, or “get it” then you are a loser, for lack of a better term.

On the girl side, if you are too smart or not attractive enough (whatever that means in your society), you are are not much of a woman but if attractive but not too smart, you are a dumb blond.

These are the messages that we are sent as a society that we all must fight on either extreme.  The problem, is that as people we are not very good at discerning shades grey, rather, we are more blank and white kind of thinkers, it is just easier for us to do – and our brain likes easy.  So we have this constant inner critic that tells us that we aren’t a good person for being on either side of the spectrum!

How sad. And it starts when we are a child and no one tells us to think any differently!

So there are a few lessons here.

First, truly believe that there is no qualification for being masculine or feminine.  To make things simple, if you consider yourself masculine, you are as masculine as they come.  If you consider yourself feminine, you are as feminine as they come.  Then teach this to your children.

Remember, this is your world, and you define things, not others, not society, so this is not a false assumption.  You can’t let the world define you, or your view on others, unless that is something you want it to do.  But who would want that?

Pain is the body’s natural way of waking us up to something that is wrong with us.

Physical pain alerts us to something that is broken, which we use as an indicator to go to the doctor.  So too emotional pain.

The problem is that to get to the bottom of ones issues in life, typically the emotional pain has to be so great that it forces you to delve really deep to take the time and effort necessary to stop life and figure yourself out.

The problem with this is that, there is cumulative emotional pain that we carry along on a daily basis and never fix until we have a life changing negative event that forces us to face ourselves.  This means that we live a substandard life until whatever time some random event happens that pushes us to look hard in the mirror.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Your body is giving you constant emotional signals of pain that you are ignoring on a daily basis.  If you can become aware of these signals, you can begin working on them, and creating a model of your issues, and digging deeper into things while things are still good.

The upshot of doing this is that when things go bad, you’ll be prepared, and able to stand up straight and not need to roll up into a ball under your covers, rather can face the world head high, and keep on going.  Plus, in the interim, you’ll live a much more enjoyable life, since you will have tackled your life issues, and have uncovered your underlying fears and anxieties that were holding you back in life and not allowing them to impact your daily living or get involved in making bad choices that will hurt you later on.

I’ve been thinking about marriage lately, and thought I would share my thoughts on what I have discovered to date.*

Basically, if you aren’t fully happy and fulfilled when you get married, and have some inkling of hope that you’ll get married and find happiness, you weren’t really ready to get married in the first place – and probably should have waited.

This is because, as we have discussed, lack of happiness is a sign of incompleteness in a person.  So what happens is that you take two people who are incomplete and are looking to each other to complete themselves, and in due time find that they aren’t happy (which they never were!) and that the person that they married is missing something big (because they always have been!).

So with that in mind, most everyone who gets married, isn’t ready to get married.  It’s an unfortunate state of affairs, but it is what it is.  What else is there to do but get divorced – or be like the other 75% of unhappily married couples that stick it out until the bitter end – death.

But let’s say you wanted to come up with a paradigm that would ALMOST promise success for the most important decision in your life from the beginning, how would you go about it?

The answer is simple.

Be a whole person before you date, and only accept a spouse who has also learned the truth of these words.

By a whole person we mean someone who has discovered absolute happiness and peace in the world, which comes about through self-discovery, self-alignment, and finally self-acceptance on the personal development side, as well as solid family relationships, intimate friendships, and professional achievements on the social development side.

The problem is that all of these things take time to achieve, and most of us have a natural desire to get “attached” before we are whole, resulting in the entire divorce conundrum.

But here is the point, if you (and your spouse) are can achieve wholeness before you get married, marriage moves from a pit that you are looking to fill (taking), to a mound of excess that you are looking to give away (give).  Meaning that the other person serves as a vehicle to make yourself bigger, because you have grown as much as you possibly can within your own finite self, and have a natural urge to connect with something bigger than yourself.  And you are willing to give in order to have that privilege.  And giving is what marriage is ultimately all about.

P.S. Over the next few months, I’ll be writing about all different aspects of this post, and bringing out these ideas in more detail, but since it is always good to start with the end in mind, I thought I would go ahead, and post, one of the many conclusions that I have arrived at in my discoveries.

* This is just a beginning thought on things, and I might retract it later, but I think it is better than nothing, which is what I had before.