Each thought we choose to focus on defines our life. Either subconscious or conscious our thoughts bring an energy to our life. If our thoughts are negative, judgmental, or fear based we experience one thing
If our thoughts are positive, accepting, kind and loving we experience another thing. We make the choice every day what those are.
Are you a critic or creator- Someone who looks into themselves and creates something new and powerful or do you spend your time criticizing the efforts of others. Your choice defines you.
Do you choose love or fear? The most basic choice we have in all things. We choose to be kind, understanding, compassionate and caring in all of our thoughts or
We choose to be judgmental, mean, critical, and hateful toward someone else. This is the most rudimentary way we define our experience with the choice.
Which choice defines you today?
Do you choose to give or take? Do you contribute to the positive experience that others have in life or are you more worried about what is in it for you. This is a basic choice we make which brings the basic joy of life or lack thereof. Look for ways you can contribute to the happiness of others.
Who do you want to be in your life? What do you want people to remember about you? All of this is totally in the hands of the Choices you make each day.
Would you rather be a worried genius or a joyful simpleton?
by Jonathan Hilton Day 40
When I read this question I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. My answer is neither but not because I have anything against genius or even anything against a simpleton, (whatever that means).
I assume the question is designed to make you feel like genius comes with worry and if you are a simpler person you will experience joy. I reject the question as biased and borderline offensive. Here are my thoughts.
Worry is a Choice
First lets look at the word worried. This is always a choice, you don’t have to do this. This question seems to assume that only intelligent people worry and only people with no intellect are happy. This if offensive to me as a human being who strives to find a way to be happy, am I merely a simpleton looking for my natural state or am I a genius doomed to failure?
Worry has never made anyone more successful in anything. No matter how much you work something over in your mind, dread it or want to avoid it, you still can’t stop it from occurring.
Any random, run of the mill genius should realize this, so if you are spending your life as a worried genius then you are, in my opinion only half right. There are choices every day that people of all intellectual levels have to make which directly reflect on the experience they will have. Just like kindness is a choice and what thoughts about life you pay attention to are choices as well. I do not know much but I do know that an intelligent person would be able to choose a better recourse than to waste their time worrying.
Why Judge?
There is a judgment in this question that should be ignored and pointed out. Who am I to differentiate between a genius and a simpleton. Suppose I am a member of the latter
I like these guys. Am I a simpleton? Or just a fan of comedic genius?
group, I assume I would lack the skills to understand the question.
If I were in the former I suppose I would be too worried to function and display my genius appropriately. I guess I don’t know why anyone would ask such a question. These distinctions are all relative anyway to the intellect of others.
I may be a genius to some and a simpleton to others, that distinction has absolutely nothing to do with what type of person I am, or how much I worry or am happy. Not one bit. We spend too much time in life labeling others and placing them in categories to feign some sort of understanding.
I may be a simpleton which means I would be a little slow on the uptake but I know that we are all connected and the more time we spend dividing us the unhappier we are going to be in the end, no matter if we think mighty thoughts or nothing more significant than the batting average of a baseball player.
I have been fortunate to know many great people in my time, and intellectual ability has never been a factor in how I felt about them. It was the kindness, the giving, and the value they provided. I have enjoyed conversations with people all of my life there is no intellectual entrance level of intellect.
The Worst Question in The World
Just reading this question I think makes the world just a little more of a difficult place. I
I can’t bear to listen.
apologize to anyone reading it, because I feel like just considering the labels of genius or simpleton makes us all a bit more narrow-minded.
I hope to embrace all of my fellow human beings, not just some endowed with high levels of intellectual capacity, but all of them. The phrase joyful simpleton is along the lines of ignorance is bliss.
They are designed to demean portions of the population. Who are these simpletons? Where do they live? All of us have parts that are intellectual and others that enjoy the simpler things in life. There is no reason to intellectually slander anyone for this.
Accept all people regardless of their intellectual capabilities, if you think yourself a genius then start hanging around with smarter people.
Would you rather be a worried genius or a joyful simpleton?
When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards and just do what you know is right?
by Jonathan Hilton Day 25
It seems that everybody in the world operates on a risk and reward model on which they base their actions on the chance of being rewarded or punished for the outcome of their actions.
Yet I say that the time is always right to act regardless of the risk or reward and this is why.
Right Makes Now The Right Time
All people make mistakes and have to regroup and learn lessons from those mishaps. Yet when it comes to right behavior, it is the responsibility of each individual to make a choice, and that choice is going to color your experience.
If you know something to be right and refuse to act still, the hesitation can only be defined as wrong. What repercussion could be more devastating than making a conscious choice to not do the right thing.
There may be a price to pay when this happens but the price that you pay by not acting is much worse because it will affect your life in a negative way.
Many people believe that the energy that you emanate is created by the choices you make. I tend to believe that in my own experience there is no wrong time to tell the truth or to do the right thing.
Any time I have failed to do these things, and I have failed often, the results were not favorable. Now is the time to stop calculating the cost and do what you know is right.
This Is What Lying Is
Isn’t this question the reason anybody ever lies? The risk and reward of truth vs a lie is the careful scale that every thought and statement is weighed on before we speak or record it to share with someone else.
I was once told that it is nearly impossible to go through a day without telling a lie of some kind. I didn’t believe it, but started to pay attention to all of my thoughts and actions. I found that I was telling several lies without even realizing it.
In one situation, a friend called to do something and I didn’t want to hurt their feelings so I said I had to work late. A lie, but one that I didn’t have to tell. It was my perception that the reward of a bit of time to myself was worth the risk of telling a lie to a good friend.
The truth would have been just as effective yet I still let that lie flow with no initial regret at all. So what’s the harm, it is just to keep the peace. Why hurt someone’s feelings unnecessarily? That is what I questioned at the time.
As time goes by I think that one lie will inevitably lead to another, and maybe the next time you will use another rationale to justify it. Even if it is bigger and maybe a little harmless. Often this seems to be the path people start to travel as they justify not only lies but downright meanness. By justifying it based on some arbitrary factor.
I heard one person justifying treating someone badly because “they were rich”, also for “Being on Welfare” Although this person obviously had some problems and blocks around finances, once you start to justify poor behavior for any reason, the reasons for acting poorly increase.
Why is This Important
The main reason why all of this doing the right thing is important is that in a world where we are bombarded with the misdeeds of many in the mainstream media, the fact is that our honesty and good decision-making is something the we each have a personal choice in each and every day.
In everything that I have ever experienced there is never a wrong time to make decisions based on love and those decisions always move your life and the world in a positive direction. Any other decision is made out of fear, and those choices will move your life in a negative direction and make the world seem bleak.
Only you can decide for yourself when it is the time to throw worry of the consequences out the window and do the right thing.
When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards and just do what you know is right?
I am living and Dying with the choices I made. Classic message, classic song.
One of the things I like the least in life are mean people. Mean people exist and thrive on crapping on the attitude, accomplishments, interests or well being of someone else, with the sole purpose of making themselves feel more powerful or to increase their own self-esteem. In a word these people are toxic and need to be avoided at all costs. They can leave you feeling worn out, tired, depleted and negative about everything but most importantly about yourself. It seems that they spend all day thinking about how to be mean to people.
Now I understand that most acts that can be considered mean come from people who need to make themselves feel better about whatever is happening in their lives and because they feel a lack of power, self-esteem or everyday ordinary goodness in their own lives. This makes them feel the need to treat others poorly. What bothers me is that it takes very little effort to NOT be mean, and perhaps some of the inadequacies they see in themselves would be alleviated if they just tried to be less judgmental and inconsiderate once in awhile.
People’s actions may be done without the intention of being mean to others, but when you gossip, put others down, ridicule, judge or make fun of someone else, you are stepping into the dark side of mean. So often in our social media society do people make fun of others, it has become an accepted form of expression. Look no further than Youtube. You can look at almost any video on there and if you bother to read the comments left, there is always someone who has gone out of their way to leave a not so positive comment, often using foul language and almost always to put down the content of the video or the creator. I often wonder how bad their lives must be to spend their time to be so negative. It is really unnecessary, if you don’t like something you see, why don’t people just not watch it? I guess that to do that would rob them of an opportunity to be a jerk, and being a jerk and getting noticed is better than not getting noticed at all. On Facebook, people go to all kinds of lengths to make negative pages about people, for the sole purpose of hurting them. There are numerous cases of cyber-bullying that have even led to suicide. Why? I just don’t seem to be able to grasp the concept of being that hurtful to someone else.
It has become the right of everyone to be negative about everyone who is a celebrity. We all seem to have a licence to judge them and their situation simply because they are well known. In reality, we know nothing about the issues facing these people and the facts about their circumstances. It all comes from jealousy, we as a society, build people up and seem to relish in tearing them down. Charlie Sheen is a great example. Does he have issues? Yeah, he does. I don’t think that I know enough about him as a person to make a judgement about whether or not he is an addict or mentally unstable. I have never met him and I don’t know any more about his character or values than I do about someone who cleans windows for a living. Most people don’t. That hasn’t stopped our society from judging him and ridiculing his decisions like we are so much better a person than him. Really we know nothing and a train wreck, real or imagined makes people feel good, because it’s not their train wreck. Just say the name Snookie and people will immediately let you know their judgments about this person. I don’t know why people like to judge her so much, but she has gotten rich and famous because of it. I personally don’t know Snookie and how she chooses to live her life is her business and that of MTV. I think people criticize her because they see a part of themselves in her that they just don’t like.
In life there are going to be people we deal with that we may not like or appreciate. It happens, people are different and not everyone is going to get along. But does that give us a license to be mean to them? It takes little effort to be courteous and accepting. If people put in as much effort into being kind and accepting as they did into being mean and judgmental the world would be a much better place.
Here are a few ideas for those of us working on living a positive lifestyle and Stop Being Mean:
Most mean people have a sarcastic edge….arm yourself with a few funny one-liners that you can use when faced with a negative person.
Don’t take what a mean person says personally…it is their problem, definitely not yours!
If you have a friend that has a mean streak and tends to say things that hurt you or others, try saying, “Ouch” out loud and never allow yourself to get sucked into the behavior. Always know it is okay to not continue the friendship.
Don’t go running away scared from a mean person, walk away with a stronger sense of yourself, knowing that you made a good decision not to get sucked into the negativity!
The ultimate victory for us is not to fight back, get even, be vindicated, nor ever to bring the Mean Person to justice. The ultimate victory is to render this person irrelevant.
Some helpful hints on how NOT to be mean:
Before doing anything quickly ask yourself: “Will this thought/action/comment make the world a better place for me, or anyone else?” If not – don’t do it and save yourself the repercussions. There’s no point expending effort in making yourself or others unhappy. Ever.
Tell yourself constantly that you’re a nice person so that your mind begins to accept that you are. Change your behavior accordingly to fit these new standards. Thinking you’re one of the “good people” instead of a “bad person” can really make a difference to how you act. Your mind will react positively.
Resist judging people if they are not nice to you. You shouldn’t judge people anyway. There is always someone nice inside everybody, even those whose insecurity causes them to be mean to you.
Like all habits, this one will be hard to stop. With perseverance, however, your defensive meanness will change.
Smile. A smile will let people know that you are pleasant and inviting. If you smile at someone, look them in the eye.
Ask people how they are doing. Take the time to ask someone how things are going in their lives, without being nosy or intrusive. If they seem resistant to talking, just let them know that you’re always around to talk to, and that you want them to be alright.
Be a good listener. Listen when other people are talking to you.
Be courteous, patient, observant, and considerate. And be positive. Don’t be negative or critical. Keep looking for the positive in any given situation.
Be humble. The key to being nice is remembering that you are not “better” than someone else. You’re an individual, but everybody has their struggles, and being nice to one another makes life better for everyone.
Be sincere. Be nice because you want to look back on your life and know that you were a nice person, no matter what.
Don’t lie. You will go on to do good things if you refrain from lying.
Mike Martin and I have been friends for forty one years. There are not many people in the
Even though Mike is always wrong, he still argues with me all the time. He is so stubborn.
world outside of your family that you have known your entire life, and still call them your friend. I am fortunate to have had a friend for most of my life, who is cantankerous, stubborn and is often not right about anything! He would tell you the same thing about me. We work together right now and that leads to many conflicts about virtually every subject. When I started this new Picture Project I was in between two of these conflicts, so it only made sense that the first picture should be a symbol of the fights we have on most days. These “fights” are more philosophical battles, where we do not agree on much of anything. But when the chips are down, I know I can count on him and he on me.
The core of our conflict has boiled down to the essence of our philosophies, and all of our conflicts stem from this premise:
My Philosohpy: That there is a right and a wrong, that everyone deep down knows it and that morality is definite and binding. (he refers to this as black and white)
Mike Martin Philosophy: That life is lived on a continuum of gray area, sometimes things are right, sometimes wrong depending on the circumstances. (I refer to this as the whatever way the wind blows philosophy)
I could go into each of he specific debates that we have had over the years but when I write about it I seem to be even more clearly right than when the original argument occurred. Needless to say that we have argued over philosophy, thought, morals, honesty, choices, how to stop drug addiction, and even judgments of others.
Needless to say these arguments have traveled with us from Belgrade all over the State of Maine as we have gone to different locations for work related stuff. There are a few things we do agree on though.
Having had some experience with people that are friendly to you face, but not really a friend it is good to know that even though we argue all the time, it is good to have at least one friend that I can count on, no matter what happens.
So this argument has been going on for 41 years and even though I am always right, it still continues, some day he may even get the last word.
No, you’re not entitled to your opinion
Keeping Sartre, and other passions