This is another writing from my past. I believe I wrote this when I was about 20 years old.
Truth and Openness should be your goals. I should want to be open and honest about everything. I try and say everything I say with honesty. Sure, I lie to mess with people. But when it comes down to being asked a questions where an honest response is necessary, I should always tell the whole truth.
I had the extreme pleasure of getting to see Guster this last Thursday at Hoyt Sherman. First off, this was my first experience ever at Hoyt Sherman. It is amazing! It is intimate, intricate and beautiful. I have always prided myself on wanting no more house than I need, but being in that concert hall seeing how much love and devotion went into creating something that amazing made me want one of my own. But I digress…
I was thinking about the Golden Rule: “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you.” I think this is a fantastic way to live life. If you are always treating others the way that you wish to be treated, you are guaranteed to treat others with respect and kindness. At least I hope that is the way you want to be treated.
That last sentence is where I think that the trouble comes in. What if you want to be treated hostilely. What if you are a masochist and pain gives you pleasure? What if you prefer people to lie to you so that you can continue to live in a fantasy world of your own creation?
This is something that I wrote in college. I would guess some time in 2003.
When I was weak, I thought that strong (willed) people were selfish and didn’t think of others. But as I grew stronger willed, I realized that strong people care very deeply for others. But they realize that they are themselves. No one else is them. So in their world, their opinion is the most important. Because you should always be the deciding vote for you.
And here is another on the same topic from the same time period:
I am amazed at how differently I can view the exact same thing at different points in my life. Is it that I am more prepared now than I was back then? Is it that I have different priorities? Or am I a whole different person than I was then? I would bet it is a little bit of all three.
Just over a week ago I went through one heck of an experience. I have been working with Dale Carnegie Training since September of 2008 to become a trainer for them. Needless to say, it is a long process. It all ended last Sunday.
I went to Iowa City for a four day weekend where I went through the final step of the process, what is called product endorsement. I met up with five others who had gone through the same process as me and we were tasked with training a full course, for our very first time, with two master trainers watching us. We had eleven participants over the four days. Our days consisted of practicing from 8am – 1pm, followed by actually doing the program from 2pm – 6pm. Then getting our assignments for the next day, studying, pretending to sleep and starting all over again.
I am proud to announce that I have started a new job with Dale Carnegie & Associates. I am now a Strategic Business Consultant, and I am so excited that I am in a state of perma-grin.
Many of you may know that I have been working with Dale Carnegie (DC) for over two years now to become a trainer. That has recently culminated in one of the most difficult and rewarding four day weekends of my life, but that is for my next blog post.
Pretty picture huh? You can click on it to see a much bigger version. I received this picture in my email. It came with this post:
Visualizing Friendships
by Paul Butler on Monday, December 13, 2010 at 8:54pm
Visualizing data is like photography. Instead of starting with a blank canvas, you manipulate the lens used to present the data from a certain angle.
When the data is the social graph of 500 million people, there are a lot of lenses through which you can view it. One that piqued my curiosity was the locality of friendship. I was interested in seeing how geography and political borders affected where people lived relative to their friends. I wanted a visualization that would show which cities had a lot of friendships between them.
Amber likes to make fun of me this time of year by calling me Mr. Bah-Humbug. You see, I don’t like Christmas music. One of my first jobs was as a clothing salesperson at the mall, and so every year I had to sit there and listen to Christmas music day in and day out until I wished I could tear my ears off.
Honestly, I might even like it now. It has been so long that I might just be saying this because it is what I always have said. But, my dislike of Christmas music combined with my not caring if my abode is decorated for Christmas or not has gotten me a bad rep with Amber.
I wanted to discuss why I am so interested in growing my financial education through learning to invest and build businesses. Amber’s father, Tom is still on my mind and I decided to go back and listen to the speech he gave at Amber and my wedding. Here it is for you to listen: (The speech begins at 4:45 in. Sorry about the dark quality, it was a bright and beautiful day for our wedding.)
First he talks about staying strong through adversity and never giving up on our marriage. But as of right now, the thought of being without Amber is ludicrous. So I will consider that lesson if I ever (hopefully never) need it.