What are False Feelings?
What are feelings? The very question seems ridiculous to ask doesn’t it? Feelings are of course joy, elation, happiness, sadness and all the other things we might feel. They are an emotional experience we have at a given point in time. But where do feelings come from? Feelings are triggered by stimuli in our environment. When I tell ladies I see in public that they shouldn’t be wearing short shorts because it reveals their large bulbous thighs, I often get a sense that they are upset, angry, enraged, and embarrassed - often all at once. Curious thing isn’t it - an opinion I express,
Should we refer to ourselves in the Third Person?
Joe is sitting at one of his favourite coffee shops writing a blog post. He is writing a blog post exploring whether we should refer to ourselves in the third person. Joe is a promising young writer with great ideas, and this might be another one of them. Versus
Is It Better Not To See?
It is my joy today to tell you about the best movie you’ve never heard of. If you’re of my generation, there’s almost no chance you’ve heard of the 1989 classic See No Evil, Hear No Evil starring acting legend Gene Wilder and comedy legend Richard Pryor. In this timeless classic, Wilder is deaf, whilst Pryor is blind. They are both in the wrong place at the wrong time when a murder takes place and are wrongly accused. They suffer from a lack of awareness of what is going on given their disabilities, and this makes them vulnerable: Pryor’s character hears the
What Does It Mean To Be Human?
What does it mean to be human? That was the question my young cousin asked me. It was for a school assignment of his - what an assignment. And what a question. First I reframed the question, but then I answered it below. To what extent do you agree with what I’ve written, and what is your answer? I think the proper question is, what does it mean TO ME to be human? My answer to that: TO ME it means to exist and realise our best possible form of ourselves. To truly express and accept who we are in the context of
Become A Faceless Man.
Who are you? What are you? Where do you come from, and where are you going? If you’re a Game of Thrones fan you’ll understand what Valhar morghulis means. For the rest, you’re about to be enlightened. Let me tell you about a girl. A girl named Arya Stark from Winterfell. In the hit HBO Series Game of Thrones, based of course off George R. R. Martin’s book series A Song of Ice and Fire, Arya seeks vengeance against all the people who have wronged her and her family. In her journeys she comes across Jaqen H'ghar, one of the Faceless Men, who has
Your Thoughts Do Not Come From You; There Is No ‘You’
If you are losing the fight to be an individual, it is probably because you are fighting against the truth. We are a collective, not an individual. We are the sum of many parts, but we are under an illusion. An illusion that we are just the voice we hear. But the voice you hear is just Astro the Dog. You don’t identify as a dog… so what do you identify as? A note on Pizza. There are few sweeter joys in life than leftover pizza in the morning. It was some years ago, and I’d ordered an extra pizza from my family’s favorite local takeaway, just
Completely Rethinking The Comfort Ladder: I Was Wrong #1
Imagine you were the wealthiest person in a poor community. You are well-known and everyone looks up to you. But you have a problem. Because of the gap between you and everyone else, you feel guilty. You can afford to do whatever you want whenever you want, but the same is not true for everyone else. You want to maintain your position, as after all, your whole life has been focused on getting to this point. So what do you do to remove the guilt? That’s when you have an idea! You have more money than you need. You don’t care as much about
The Bucket and the 80% Rule
Who says you have to do one thing with your life? You know my opinion, I say it all the time… ask yourself what you want to do with your life, but never expect to find a single answer! Secondly, always have a complicated answer to the question “What do you do?”. This is a stupid question, a ‘box-thinking’ question, and if you have a simple answer, it means you fit simply into what people can understand. Be hard to understand, but not at the expense of your own clarity. We talked in a recent article about being a ‘Renaissance Person’, about being a
How to Figure out What Your Time is Worth
You know what the biggest obstacle is to selling a home? As a real estate agent (or ‘broker’ for my American friends), I can tell you for sure. It’s not the market. It’s not the time of year and it’s not the weather. It’s the client. Funnily enough, the client, the one selling, is usually the biggest obstacle. They very often stand in their own way. Though more specifically than 'the client', it is more accurately, the client's biased and inherently flawed view on how to understand value. Everyone thinks their house is Xanadu It’s called ‘The Endowment Effect’ - where people value something more highly just
How to Trade Your Time for Work and Avoid Slavery
The fact is that you invest your time. The same way famous investors like Ray Dalio, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are investing, so are you. But the most important resource you’re trading with is not financial capital, but your own time. This is factual. It is not a questionable reality. The only uncertainty is whether you are aware of it or not. We have talked recently about the kidnapping of Marshall Godeyemi, lessons from United Airlines Flight 173 and the Two Steps to Purchase a Slave in the 21st Century. These lessons teach us one key thing - people are bad at managing