The anonymous comment to the last post has made me think a bit more than usual. Nothing unusual there tho as I think to much anyway. But I wonder, do you think you are a success or do you think you are a failure?
I'm going to get a bit ahead of myself here as far as chronology goes but not to bad. If you've read any of this you know I started with nothing. Not even wanted by my mother so actually less than nothing.
I've been hungry, didn't eat for a week and others times for several days at a time. I've been completely homeless with no place to live and several times all I've had were the clothes on my back.
Did I consider myself a failure even then? Not a chance in hell. I may have been at the bottom but I knew I wouldn't be on the bottom forever. There is one thing I have faith in and that's myself.
While I wasn't homeless and hungry by choice, things that weren't in my control happened. However in another way it was by choice because there were people who would have taken me in, fed me and given me a place to live if I had asked.
Letting them do that for me would have made me feel like a failure. I have always been to damn stubborn and independent to ask others for help. I've taken care of myself since before I can remember. I rely totally on myself as I'm the only person I trust 100%. Perhaps this is one of the reasons I can't or won't deal with people who are unreliable.
Lol, so that statement is going to lead me to relationships eventually. Before that tho I want you to know that I have had 4 successful businesses. Success being I made money at all of them.
The best part of it is I was successful in 4 different areas. I owned a construction business, new homes and remodeling. I owned a restaurant and I'll never own another one. That was as close to failure as I've come in any business. I owned a highly successful manufacturing company that I started after I'd gotten laid of from a job I'd had for 12 years or so. Then I owned a successful Internet business.
I'm in the process of starting a different Internet business because I got bored with the old one. Hired some people to run it and they pretty much made a mess of it. See, that's what happens when you rely on others. I needed a new challenge and this new biz is it.
I expect the one I'm starting now will be even more successful than the last one. Why? Because I've spent the last year reading, studying and learning. Same as I did before I started my previous net biz.
I didn't know how to write html, I barely knew any marketing, nothing about search engines or much of anything else I needed to be a success on the net. I taught myself everything I know with free tutorials I found on the net.
MOF I also worked a full time job while I was teaching myself. I hate working for other people and I have one hell of a fear of failure. Combine that with being intelligent, stubborn and independent and there is no way I can fail. Not one. No chance. It's not an option. Never has been and never will be.
Relationships are another story. I don't even begin to know how to define success in that area. What I do know about me is that after the newness wears off I haven't been truly happy in any of them. Hmmm, just a thought but perhaps I've set my standards for a woman so high so I won't find one and thus can't fail.
OTOH I don't know how to define happiness either. I'm not sure I even know what it is, let alone how to be it.
However I haven't failed at happiness or relationships yet. How can I say that? Because I haven't given up yet. I've learned from each relationship, I've learned from sadness and depression and I've read and studied both relationships and happiness.
Besides, you can't fail until you give up. I didn't make it this far to fail at two of the most important things in life. Now I admittedly started out at less than Zero in those two areas but I'm learning and I may have learned enough to be slightly above Zero now.
Like everything else I've done in my life I expect to be successful at those two also. Like with everything else I'm to damn stubborn to give up. You absolutely can not fail until you give up or quit.
Giving up and quitting on myself are two things I just don't do. They are both choices and those very same choices can be made by anyone.
From where I started to where I am now is one hell of a long way. If I could do it so can you. So what's your choice? Be successful or a failure.
Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Monday, April 23, 2007
Revelations and wanderings of my depressed mind
In the last couple of weeks I've mad a lot of decisions that are going to give me a better future. Yes, I know, experts say you shouldn't make major life decisions when you are seriously depressed. Having done things my own way all of my life I'll do depression and decisions my own way too.
Lol, that's one of the two or three songs I want played at my funeral or memorial service. "My Way" by Frank Sinatra. I've been successful at many different things and I've done them the way I wanted, not the way the experts said but MY WAY. Just as I will do them for the rest of my life.
It's possible that I may be deluding myself about my depression getting better but I don't think so and the bottom line is that's all that matters. Remember, it's my reality and it's my mind and I can do with it whatever I think it's capable of. What my mind believes is all that counts. What you believe of me does not matter. What you expect of me does not matter. What I expect of myself is what matters.
Now I don't know which decision was the biggest or the best as I made a lot of them. I decided to move from an area I'd lived in for the last 12 years. I decided to end my relationships with the girls I was dating because I was letting them influence me in a negative way. I decided to stop dating girl like them and start attracting a different type of person into my life. I changed the direction of my business. I decided on a purpose for the rest of my life. I decided to be more friendly and understanding of people. I also decided one other important thing. I'm going to have everything in my life that will make me happy.
One other little thing, I decided that I'm going to have plenty of money to be able to do what I want and a percentage of that money is going to go to help people who want to help themselves. No, not as charity. I don't really believe in charity as helping, except in emergencies. What I do believe is people take advantage of charity and get lazy about their own lives and want someone to take care of them.
I don't believe in taking care of people but I do believe in helping to teach them to take care of themselves. Like the old saying goes, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. There are people who feel as hopeless and as helpless as I did as a kid and those are the people I want to help.
It's really that simple. No one was there for me and I want to be there to help whoever I can help with what I know. IOW I want to be a teacher. Not your conventional teacher like you have in school of college because the things I know, you don't learn there. Nor will I be teaching conventional students but in general teaching people who know all about the school of hard knocks.
As a general rule these are hard people to reach and to deal with. They know of you are full of crap, if you've been where they are, if you are all flash no cash and if you talk the talk or walk the walk. They immediately know if you understand and know or if you just understand. A psychologist understands but doesn't know. Understanding without knowing isn't really understanding.
I had a shrink once, yep court appointed, who tried to explain life to me, who told me how I should live, what decisions I should have made in certain situations and in general why my life was all messed up. He didn't know one damn thing about me or the situations. He'd never been in a life or death situation, he'd never been hungry, he'd never lacked anything, he'd never been homeless, he'd never been anything at all but a college educated idiot.
Everything he thought he knew about life he'd learned from a book and he wanted to apply what he'd learned from the book to everyone, in the same way. This man who people looked up to had never lived a life yet he wanted to tell me how to live mine. He may have understood but he sure didn't have a clue. Of course what would you expect from someone 55 years old who still lived with his mother and had all of his life. He lived with her even while he went to college.
There was no way he could help me because I knew he didn't know what he was talking about. If you haven't been there then it's all abstract and you don't understand the problems in most cases. The people I want to help feel like no one else understands. Well I do because I've been there, done that.
Why have I decided to do the things I've decided to do? Because they will make me feel good and feeling good will make my life better. Helping others will help me be happier and that will be a good thing.
So what made me change my life so radically in the depths of a depression? Just one thing and it came at exactly the right time. I'd been trying to explain what I believe, to one person, for as long as I've know her. Particularly in the area of making ones own reality and what and who you allow into that reality. We've had many a fight over this and we aren't speaking now. I have refused to speak with her until she meets my standards for being in my reality. I love her but I don't much like her because she is so damn unreliable and manipulative and full of drama.
When I watched the videos for "The Secret" I had at last found something she would be able to understand. All the things I believe possible, all the things I've believed for a long time and could never explain adequately. All the things I wanted her to understand about life. So I sent her the url to the videos and the lessons and told her when she finished them whether she understood them or not I would speak with her again.
She's a smart girl and she will understand. Lol, I took out insurance tho and told her she had to answer questions for me to prove she'd read the lessons and watched the videos. I know she has them on her computer as I had uploaded them to my own server and she was the only one with the url. Checking server stats I now who visited, what time, where they came from and a lot of other things. So I know she has them.
The things she will learn will change her life just as applying what I know has changed mine. What influenced me so much? You can check out the secret by clicking here I hope you read it, understand it and apply it to your own life. Hopefully you will have some of the same revelations I did.
Lol, that's one of the two or three songs I want played at my funeral or memorial service. "My Way" by Frank Sinatra. I've been successful at many different things and I've done them the way I wanted, not the way the experts said but MY WAY. Just as I will do them for the rest of my life.
It's possible that I may be deluding myself about my depression getting better but I don't think so and the bottom line is that's all that matters. Remember, it's my reality and it's my mind and I can do with it whatever I think it's capable of. What my mind believes is all that counts. What you believe of me does not matter. What you expect of me does not matter. What I expect of myself is what matters.
Now I don't know which decision was the biggest or the best as I made a lot of them. I decided to move from an area I'd lived in for the last 12 years. I decided to end my relationships with the girls I was dating because I was letting them influence me in a negative way. I decided to stop dating girl like them and start attracting a different type of person into my life. I changed the direction of my business. I decided on a purpose for the rest of my life. I decided to be more friendly and understanding of people. I also decided one other important thing. I'm going to have everything in my life that will make me happy.
One other little thing, I decided that I'm going to have plenty of money to be able to do what I want and a percentage of that money is going to go to help people who want to help themselves. No, not as charity. I don't really believe in charity as helping, except in emergencies. What I do believe is people take advantage of charity and get lazy about their own lives and want someone to take care of them.
I don't believe in taking care of people but I do believe in helping to teach them to take care of themselves. Like the old saying goes, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. There are people who feel as hopeless and as helpless as I did as a kid and those are the people I want to help.
It's really that simple. No one was there for me and I want to be there to help whoever I can help with what I know. IOW I want to be a teacher. Not your conventional teacher like you have in school of college because the things I know, you don't learn there. Nor will I be teaching conventional students but in general teaching people who know all about the school of hard knocks.
As a general rule these are hard people to reach and to deal with. They know of you are full of crap, if you've been where they are, if you are all flash no cash and if you talk the talk or walk the walk. They immediately know if you understand and know or if you just understand. A psychologist understands but doesn't know. Understanding without knowing isn't really understanding.
I had a shrink once, yep court appointed, who tried to explain life to me, who told me how I should live, what decisions I should have made in certain situations and in general why my life was all messed up. He didn't know one damn thing about me or the situations. He'd never been in a life or death situation, he'd never been hungry, he'd never lacked anything, he'd never been homeless, he'd never been anything at all but a college educated idiot.
Everything he thought he knew about life he'd learned from a book and he wanted to apply what he'd learned from the book to everyone, in the same way. This man who people looked up to had never lived a life yet he wanted to tell me how to live mine. He may have understood but he sure didn't have a clue. Of course what would you expect from someone 55 years old who still lived with his mother and had all of his life. He lived with her even while he went to college.
There was no way he could help me because I knew he didn't know what he was talking about. If you haven't been there then it's all abstract and you don't understand the problems in most cases. The people I want to help feel like no one else understands. Well I do because I've been there, done that.
Why have I decided to do the things I've decided to do? Because they will make me feel good and feeling good will make my life better. Helping others will help me be happier and that will be a good thing.
So what made me change my life so radically in the depths of a depression? Just one thing and it came at exactly the right time. I'd been trying to explain what I believe, to one person, for as long as I've know her. Particularly in the area of making ones own reality and what and who you allow into that reality. We've had many a fight over this and we aren't speaking now. I have refused to speak with her until she meets my standards for being in my reality. I love her but I don't much like her because she is so damn unreliable and manipulative and full of drama.
When I watched the videos for "The Secret" I had at last found something she would be able to understand. All the things I believe possible, all the things I've believed for a long time and could never explain adequately. All the things I wanted her to understand about life. So I sent her the url to the videos and the lessons and told her when she finished them whether she understood them or not I would speak with her again.
She's a smart girl and she will understand. Lol, I took out insurance tho and told her she had to answer questions for me to prove she'd read the lessons and watched the videos. I know she has them on her computer as I had uploaded them to my own server and she was the only one with the url. Checking server stats I now who visited, what time, where they came from and a lot of other things. So I know she has them.
The things she will learn will change her life just as applying what I know has changed mine. What influenced me so much? You can check out the secret by clicking here I hope you read it, understand it and apply it to your own life. Hopefully you will have some of the same revelations I did.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
How do you know if you are happy?
What is happiness? How does it feel? This is just another emotion I have no clue about. People tell me I am not a happy person so I'll always ask them how do you be a happy person? What does it take to have feelings of happiness? How does it feel? No one has yet given me an adequate explanation.
I've had a few girlfriends who I thought made me happy but the truth is what they did was just lessen the mental pain I have always felt. Seldom has anyone made me totally forget the mental pain. The only thing that's ever done that is adrenaline. The more of an adrenaline rush I can get the better I feel.
However adrenaline gets harder and harder to come by. Example of this is I was driving west on Interstate 90 in South Dakota. It was raining lightly, below freezing and the wind was from my right at around 45 mph. Lol, I was doing the usual 79 mph, smoking a cigarette and driving one handed as always.
All of a sudden I hit a slick spot and my car started sliding sideways. I corrected for the slide, calmly reached down and put my cigarette in the ashtray, meanwhile the car starts sliding in the opposite direction and the wind is pushing me toward the south shoulder of the interstate. Still steering with one hand I finally got the cigarette in the ashtray and got the car straightened out at the same time. Didn't even bother to take the cruise control off.
About another mile down the road it happened again and this time I got completely sideways but was able to control it again with no real problem. I even considered slowing down but hey, it was a couple of freak things so I didn't care. Then it happened again and was a little more difficult to get control off but still no big deal, to me.
No adrenaline rush from that at all but I did have a big grin on my face. Was I stupid for not slowing down? Certainly. Did I put anyone else in danger? Nope traffic was pretty sparse due to the freezing rain. Did it make me happy? Nope, not a bit.
Is happiness just a lack of bad feelings? Is it as simple as not being depressed? Just what the hell is happiness and how do you get it? I have a warm/cool place to live, I get enough to eat and have enough to support myself for a long time, I have a decent car and plenty of clothes etc. People tell me I should be very happy for what I have but it's just stuff.
For sure it beats the hell out of being homeless and hungry and I'm grateful for that but it doesn't seem to make me a happy person. I truly want to be a happy person but there don't seem to be any guide books on how to be happy.
I'm seldom in a truly bad mood but at best my moods mostly stop at neutral. Helping others with their life problems or stopping them from being abused makes me feel good for a bit but it doesn't last long and I don't have a clue if that's happy or not. I can only think of one time that I had great feelings and a big grin for hours but that was due to making 300 bucks on the net while I was taking a nap for an hour and a half. It was my first good day on the net and it felt great. People tell me that's how I should feel all the time.
Money doesn't buy happiness. Having things doesn't make me happy. I've had more things than most people ever will. New boats, cars, houses, hell I had a 7 bedroom, 3 bathroom on 2 acres at a very good fishing lake, four wheelers, motorcycles and all new furniture with all of the trimmings. Still didn't make me happy. It's just stuff. Doesn't matter to me if I drive a brand new suburban or an old pickup truck as long as it's reliable and gets me where I want to go.
Same with houses, apts, etc. As long as it keeps me warm or cool, dry and comfortable I don't care if it's a penthouse or a cheap motel room. Stuff doesn't have any meaning for me as long as it does the job I need it to do.
So how do you get to be happy? I really wish someone would answer that for me with something that works. I'd really like to know how to be happy and have weeks or months that are happy. Is happiness something you can learn, is it an absence of bad feelings. Just what is happiness? Someone explain it to me, please.
I've had a few girlfriends who I thought made me happy but the truth is what they did was just lessen the mental pain I have always felt. Seldom has anyone made me totally forget the mental pain. The only thing that's ever done that is adrenaline. The more of an adrenaline rush I can get the better I feel.
However adrenaline gets harder and harder to come by. Example of this is I was driving west on Interstate 90 in South Dakota. It was raining lightly, below freezing and the wind was from my right at around 45 mph. Lol, I was doing the usual 79 mph, smoking a cigarette and driving one handed as always.
All of a sudden I hit a slick spot and my car started sliding sideways. I corrected for the slide, calmly reached down and put my cigarette in the ashtray, meanwhile the car starts sliding in the opposite direction and the wind is pushing me toward the south shoulder of the interstate. Still steering with one hand I finally got the cigarette in the ashtray and got the car straightened out at the same time. Didn't even bother to take the cruise control off.
About another mile down the road it happened again and this time I got completely sideways but was able to control it again with no real problem. I even considered slowing down but hey, it was a couple of freak things so I didn't care. Then it happened again and was a little more difficult to get control off but still no big deal, to me.
No adrenaline rush from that at all but I did have a big grin on my face. Was I stupid for not slowing down? Certainly. Did I put anyone else in danger? Nope traffic was pretty sparse due to the freezing rain. Did it make me happy? Nope, not a bit.
Is happiness just a lack of bad feelings? Is it as simple as not being depressed? Just what the hell is happiness and how do you get it? I have a warm/cool place to live, I get enough to eat and have enough to support myself for a long time, I have a decent car and plenty of clothes etc. People tell me I should be very happy for what I have but it's just stuff.
For sure it beats the hell out of being homeless and hungry and I'm grateful for that but it doesn't seem to make me a happy person. I truly want to be a happy person but there don't seem to be any guide books on how to be happy.
I'm seldom in a truly bad mood but at best my moods mostly stop at neutral. Helping others with their life problems or stopping them from being abused makes me feel good for a bit but it doesn't last long and I don't have a clue if that's happy or not. I can only think of one time that I had great feelings and a big grin for hours but that was due to making 300 bucks on the net while I was taking a nap for an hour and a half. It was my first good day on the net and it felt great. People tell me that's how I should feel all the time.
Money doesn't buy happiness. Having things doesn't make me happy. I've had more things than most people ever will. New boats, cars, houses, hell I had a 7 bedroom, 3 bathroom on 2 acres at a very good fishing lake, four wheelers, motorcycles and all new furniture with all of the trimmings. Still didn't make me happy. It's just stuff. Doesn't matter to me if I drive a brand new suburban or an old pickup truck as long as it's reliable and gets me where I want to go.
Same with houses, apts, etc. As long as it keeps me warm or cool, dry and comfortable I don't care if it's a penthouse or a cheap motel room. Stuff doesn't have any meaning for me as long as it does the job I need it to do.
So how do you get to be happy? I really wish someone would answer that for me with something that works. I'd really like to know how to be happy and have weeks or months that are happy. Is happiness something you can learn, is it an absence of bad feelings. Just what is happiness? Someone explain it to me, please.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)