| Ben's Theory Of Life | ||
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Introduction
My Visions Stepping
Stones to Success
Stepping Stones to Happiness
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IntroductionWelcome to the world the way I see it. Before reading this text further, please ask yourself a simple question. “Am I reading this to learn from or to fill in time?” If you are reading it to fill in time, good, please read on, and feel free to ignore the actual meaning of this text. Of course I’d prefer if you actually read properly and learned something as well. And please don’t get to the end and say you didn’t learn anything from my book. If really you didn’t learn anything, it is either because I am writing your own thoughts, or you aren’t paying attention! Common courtesy says “Don’t tell someone my book is no good, if it is you that is not paying attention”. On the other hand, if you bought this as an attempt to learn something about life and how to live, then please be aware of what you are reading. Reading this book alone will not change your life. Only you can change your life. This book is just meant to give you a guide or a few ideas of how your life can be improved. Ultimately it is up to you personally though. If you find yourself agreeing with something I say but don’t already act that way, please try to do so. Thinking “yeah he’s right” and then forgetting what you read won’t help anybody.
My VisionsI have visions of the future. I’m not saying I’m a visionary, because that brings a religious tone to the statement. I’m not going to press religion into this discussion.
If the world in which we live isn’t the world in which we wish to live, does that mean we should resign ourselves to that fact and put up with everything we don’t like? I don’t think so, do you? Surely it is far better to do whatever we can do individually to make the world a better place. Only in extreme circumstances has the world been vastly changed by one generation of people, most of those cases involve war. Don’t expect the world to change for the better over night.
Do what you personally can do to make the world nicer for everyone you encounter, and if they do the same, the world will seem nicer to you too. If it helps you to deal with it, then say you’re doing this to make the world a better place for your children. If that isn’t good enough, how about for your descendents in ten generations from now? It makes sense that if each generation does a little to make the world better for the next, that in ten generations there will be a vast difference. One of the key reasons this would work is that children follow the example set by their parents. And I mean example. Don’t preach to your children if you can’t abide by your own rules. It is far more effective to show them how to live.
Paperless SocietyIs a very unlikely state of affairs until we reach a money-less society. Even then I feel that paper plays a big part in our lives. There are things you can do with paper, that childhood wouldn’t be the same without. You can draw, you can fold, you can paint, you can tear, and you can stick it to the fridge. I want you to show me any single thing that can do all that and doesn’t involve trees in some way. Then I’ll consider paperless society a possibility.
Money-less SocietyThis is one of my dreams. By that I mean it’s an ideal. In my mind, a world without the influence of money would be a good world to live in. The idea is that people would do things to help each other because they enjoy doing that. The drawback is some people enjoy doing nothing, or worse, enjoy exploiting other people.
Peaceful SocietyNow really this shouldn’t be so hard to understand. Peaceful means, no wars, no terrorism, no vandalism, no crime. Of all these things, I would say crime is the hardest to stop. Rather unfortunate people commit crimes because they can’t afford not to, and others do so because they enjoy it. War and terrorism on the other hand usually have a cause, deal with the cause and the effect should stop too.
Vandalism also has a cause in my eyes. Take a hypothetical person named Todd: Todd is a creative person, he’s stuck doing a dead end job or studying subjects he doesn’t like, he needs an outlet. If he can’t find an outlet that suits him, he’ll create one. Now on the other hand, if we created a more suitable outlet for creativity that interested him, (and didn’t cost too much for him to participate in!) he could be convinced into expressing his creativity that way instead. The basic idea is to turn spray paint vandals into sign writers and so forth.
Stepping Stones to SuccessSome people like to call this ‘secrets to success’. I say ‘stepping stones’. If they were really secrets do you think I’d be telling them to you? No. So they’re ‘stepping stones’.
ReadYou already read? Good. Now read some more. Not making you rich? Maybe it’s time to start paying attention. When you get right down to it there are two types of reading. Reading to learn, and reading for enjoyment. I believe there is a balance in there somewhere. You can’t read to learn all the time without going insane, and you can’t expect to learn if you read purely for enjoyment.
Reading for enjoyment is basically escapism. There is nothing wrong with escapism; it is a perfectly normal part of life. Escapism is when you imagine yourself in a different role or as a different person or in a different world. The more you do this the more you exercise your imagination. Imagination is a very important function of your brain.
Reading to learn requires different material. Don’t expect to learn from fiction, and don’t expect to learn a great deal from biographies. Yes you can learn some things from both of those, but in terms of becoming financially secure or even rich, you aren’t likely to find anything of interest.
Money can be made in all sorts of ways. One way that people often neglect is to find a way of earning money by doing things you enjoy. Have a look at your hobbies. Say you have painting as a hobby. How about selling some or all of them?
For further interest, try painting something different. The best way to do that is to have someone else make the suggestion of what to paint. You may find that painting something you don’t normally paint helps you refocus on painting as something you enjoy, as well as teaching you that you can do something you didn’t realize you could do.
Take value in what you doBe judgmental. Did I just say that? Hmmm! What I mean is look at the things you do and really pay attention to how much value you get out of it. This applies to activities as well as objects and services. Don’t forget to take time into account. Is it worth saving $0.02c a can on a certain type of food if it took you 3 hours to find that discount, and you had to drive further to get it? I don’t think so. But! That is up to the individual. If you say yes, that is fine. If you think 3 hours is worth 2c in that situation, then that is what works for you.
Another prime example: Alcohol. Now I admit that I am biased right from the start here. I don’t like alcohol. I don’t like the way it affects people, and I don’t like the whole principle behind it. The question is simple, and the answer depends on the individual. Do you get a worthy amount of pleasure or usefulness from alcohol for the price you pay on it? For me the answer is no. So I don’t buy it. I have never drunk enough to get to like it. People tell me, drink more you’ll begin to love it… I say if I have to spend that much on it to convince myself I like it, it isn’t worthwhile. Alcohol is mainly an expense. It resembles smoking in so many ways. Generally speaking, it is bad for you, it is addictive, it makes you stink AND, it costs you money. One of the things to remember when you are quitting smoking is how much money you spend on cigarettes in a year or in a lifetime. Try applying that same idea to alcohol.
Say you spend a thousand dollars per year on alcohol. What if you saved that money and did something else with it. What would you do with a thousand dollars? I’m sure for most of you spending it on alcohol is not the first thing that you think of.
This doesn’t mean that not drinking is the way to become rich. It just means that if drinking alcohol isn’t what you most value in life, it may not be worth the amount you spend on it. Try moderating your drinking. Spend what you get out of it.
The same idea can be applied to anything. Be careful though. Don’t forget that enjoyment is not the only factor. You may not enjoy sport, or going to the gym, but spending money there may be very valuable in terms of your health. Health could be considered as something worth investing in. If you’re healthy, you’ll spend less on trying to stop being sick. If you’re fit, you’re less likely to become injured through strain.
Stepping Stones to HappinessHelping PeopleOne of the main things to know about happiness nearly all of it comes from two sources. Helping people, and being helped by people.
Having a job is helping people. If your job is something that you enjoy doing then you are doing well. Look at people who are long term unemployed. There is a generalization that can be applied to people in that situation. They are depressed. Why? Because they aren’t helping people.
I mean this in some of its most basic ways. A truckie helps people by moving stuff around, so that other people don’t have to. A builder builds houses that people live in. If there weren’t any builders, we wouldn’t have houses and we would all need something … that something is help. We need builders. We need electricians, we need truckies, we need shop attendants. Without them there are tasks that need doing and no one to do them. When people do those tasks, they help everybody who doesn’t do those tasks.
Be NicePart of helping people is being nice to them. If someone has a problem and they choose you to help them, try. If you can’t help, see if you can guide them to someone who can. And be nice about it. Do not say ‘fuck off’ or anything even resembling that meaning.
I realize this sounds like the saying, “Wouldn’t it be nice, if everyone was nice?” but I believe there is something in that. When you are nice to someone, you make him or her feel better, and you feel good about it. Why do you feel good about it? Because you’ve just helped someone!
Be PositiveI’m not going to condemn negative thinking totally. It is often the negative thinkers that spot the real problems in plans or ideas that positive thinkers completely miss. But try not to be negative about life. If you can’t figure out how to do that, then smile first and find a reason afterwards!
Enjoy Life and Please YourselfThere isn’t much point to living if you aren’t enjoying it. In fact the only reason I can see is to help other people enjoy their lives, but you aren’t only here for that, are you? One of the most important things I’ve learned in my life is that if there isn’t anything to enjoy about life I won’t enjoy it.
I learned this at one point in my life where I was so sick that I had been told not to eat various foods. I’m not trying to say that my doctor was wrong for suggesting that. On the other hand, I went off many different foods all at once, and felt no better for it. In fact I became very depressed. This was mainly because I wasn’t allowed to eat anything I enjoyed anymore, so even when I was hungry I didn’t want to eat. I used to be a very fussy eater, and I believe if I was put on the same diet now, I wouldn’t enjoy it but I would be able to survive more happily. To give you an idea though, among the things I wasn’t allowed to have were: wheat, sugar, dairy products, processed foods and red meat. On the other hand that diet caused me to discover a type of bread that I previously hadn’t known existed. I absolutely loved that bread, but only ever knew of one bakery that made it. Sadly that bakery closed down years later and I didn’t get the recipe.
Prevent RegretsSome people like the quote “live every day as if it were your last”. I don’t like that quote, I believe it encourages recklessness. If you lived your life by that quote you would be far more likely to injure yourself and others. I prefer to think along the lines of “prevent regrets”. That is the real point behind “live every day as if it were your last” anyway.
The idea is to be able to die knowing that there is nothing left you should have done and didn’t. Learn how to deal with people appropriately. Most of our ‘death regrets’ are along the lines of “I never told <such and such> how much I love them”. So my policy is to treat people like you would if this was the last time you ever saw them. Or to put it another way, BE NICE. I know we all participate in heckling and teasing. It seems to be a part of the human psyche. We enjoy making others feel bad. This is NOT the way to make friends. Nor is it the way to treat friends. So prevent regrets, be treating people properly, that way when you do find yourself on your death bed, you shouldn’t be feeling like ‘Oh I wish I was nicer to <whomever> last time I saw him/her’.
Regrets of that kind are associated with another word. Guilt. I believe all humans need to learn that our words have an affect on other people. We each go through our lives telling ourselves that we are small and can’t possibly change the world around us. But it isn’t true. I don’t need to tell you how many books are out there saying “be positive, believe in yourself” and so on. We all know those self-help books exist. And there wouldn’t be so many of them if they didn’t have a point. What we each do individually affects others. Every time you say something about someone, be it a compliment or not, that spoken word, or sentence, will be recorded in their memory. We live by our memories. We take all the things we’ve ever been told and try to work out from that how to live, and what we can achieve.
Some people are more inclined to remember the positive things; others are more inclined to remember the negative things. If you are a negative person, than even one put-down or insult can affect your life. How many people have ever thought, “I can’t do that, such and such said I’m no good at whatever”. It happens in schools all the time. A teacher or peer says “you’re no good at maths” (or sport or whatever), and then you come to believe in that statement. Once your brain believes something like that, it will find a way to make it true.
Our brains are incredibly powerful. Without them we wouldn’t be human. It is important to learn to harness our brain power and use it to improve ourselves. Far too many people use their brain power to remember the negative things, and say to themselves, “I can’t do it, I’ll fail, I can’t run that fast, I can’t jump far enough, I won’t make it” and so on. If you believe that, your brain automatically tells your body not to do/run/jump/whatever to its maximum capability. Your doubts affect your outcome. Your step may falter at a crucial moment, or you may not breath in enough air at a demanding part of a song. Whatever the situation, if we don’t believe in ourselves, we drag our abilities down to the level of our belief.
Creativity and InspirationSomething I have noticed: In terms of being creative, we work best when we are inspired. Often inspiration can seem hard to come by, but I’ve found a source of inspiration that is fairly reliable for me.
Talking. Talk about the subject and think it over while you are talking. After a while you start getting ideas. Keep talking and thinking a little longer. Then be creative.
Once the ideas start, give it a little time to build up before you begin. This helps me to get my mind ticking over fast enough that once I begin writing or painting or composing a song, my brain will automatically provide the momentum to keep going for a reasonable period of time. If I didn’t let it build up for a short period, my train of thought would have been derailed when I started trying to do rather than just think. This would have meant that I would run out of ideas very quickly, and feel a lack of inspiration again.
InformationLearn to differentiate between fact and fiction. Money has become so important to us that we’ll do anything to get it, even lie. Lying is a major part of advertising.
Take fast food for example, when was the last time you actually ate what was shown on the advert? Chances are you never have. Food adverts have one specific goal; to make you crave that particular food from that particular company. Even if what you purchase doesn’t actually look like the food shown on the ad. They’re lying to you. The ad suggests things to you, it says, “You know what this tastes like, you’ve had out products before, well look at this one, it is far superior, come and buy it” But you get to the shop and buy the same thing you had last time. It isn’t that you’re buying a different product to what they’re telling you to buy, it is just that what they show you isn’t what they give you.
But adverts are not the only source of fiction. There is a very big, ever changing, very quick source. It is called gossip. I won’t deny that gossiping is fun, but please learn to understand that it is almost always unreliable information. Most gossip is inaccurate to say the least.
What’s the biggest source of information in the world? I’ll give you a clue; it made gossiping easier, because now you can gossip to people all over the world at the same time.
It is the Internet; the biggest source of lies ever seen. Ok, so the telephone came first, but that doesn’t help you talk to people all over the world unless you already know people all over the world. You wouldn’t be far wrong if you said Television either, but talking to the screen doesn’t allow other people to hear you miles away.
Sending messages over the Internet does. The Internet is the playground of sensationalists. Someone can type something once, even jokingly and almost guarantee that someone reading it will take it as Gospel. Heck, the person typing it the first place may 100% believe what he is saying, but that doesn’t make it true. Knowing what is true and what is not true is harder than it may seem.
People often try to work out the difference by paying attention to the speaker. If the speaker sounds convinced of his own words he is more likely to get other people believing him. Again that doesn’t mean he is telling the truth. In all likelihood, he is just very good at talking.
Here is a thought, try telling your mirror something you honestly don’t believe. Then tell it something you do believe. Which sounded more convincing? Probably the second one. Now, try telling it the first thing again but pretend that you believe it. Did you sound more convincing? I bet you did.
This is how lies work. All they have to do is get you to believe. It doesn’t matter what truth there is in it, it doesn’t even need research, you can lie without even trying. Which sounds easier: doing lots of research and proving that one product is the best in the world, or just paying someone convincing to say that it is the best product in the world.
Think about it.
There is another thing. If someone believes what he or she is saying is true, and knows no better, then is he or she lying? It can be argued both ways, and I don’t intend to get into the moralities or ethics of this. I only mention this, as it is another important thing to watch out for.
The next trick is to compare what is being said with the facts you already know. If you know someone is wrong, what do you do? Yell at them and argue with them until you convince them? Ok, fine. But it won’t do you much good. As soon as that person is out of site he or she is likely to shrug off your reasoning and return to believing the wrong thing. This is just human nature; it doesn’t make the person stupid. We don’t like to be wrong, and we certainly don’t like to be told we’re wrong. Returning belief to the wrong idea is easier than accepting we are wrong. It is far better to mention one or two small facts and guide the person until they work out the correct answer.
Ask the person questions. Ask them how it works, or ‘would it work better like’, or ‘doesn’t it do this?’
MoneyBeware the PyramidI have seen the workings of several companies which will remain nameless. They make money on a lack of morals. They claim to be wonderful. And they are. Just as long as you do exactly what they say. The problem is what they say, is akin to the well known 'pyramid scheme'. I shouldn't need to explain what an everyday pyramid scheme is. These nameless companies use the same basic principal, but do a very effective job of disguising it.
Often the disguise starts with the simple fact that it is a company, and not just an activity. Your basic pyramid scheme is, send $x to all these people, then send this list on to Y people. You will receive money from each of those people to a total greater than the amount you paid out. Once this is disguised as the sale of products and the use of discounts, refunds and benefits, it becomes much harder to recognize.
Each of these systems rely on the base of the pyramid not getting anything out of the deal until they add someone else onto the next base line. A very well known organization works on this principal. You join the company, and are expected to purchase a certain amount of items each month. You are also expected to tell everyone you know how great the company is, and try to get them to join up. This is difficult, but by talking the talk of the company - you show your friends how easy it is to get to a decent level in the pyramid. What you don't tell them, is that they will be on the bottom of the pyramid first.
The basic pyramid scheme applied in this way would say "Imagine getting all of your friends to send you $1, while you only have to send $1 to one person". What they're not telling you, is that before you can do that, you have to send your $1 to that one person. That person just benefited from you, while you haven't received anything yet.
In these morally bankrupt companies, you are sending your money to your 'inviter' indirectly. You are purchasing products, but the fact you are doing that helps the 'points' of the person above you in the pyramid. That person is benefiting from the fact you are doing what you're told without asking questions. One of the best examples uses 'discounts'. You have to earn 400 points to earn $27 in discount. But you gain points not only by what you purchase, but what everyone below you in the pyramid buys also.
Eventually your discount is larger than your spending each month, and you are 'earning money'. But in actual effect, you are receiving that money from the people you sucked into the business. Meanwhile the people that convinced you to join up are getting the benefits from you, and everyone you convinced to join, and everyone that your friends convinced to join and so on down the line.
The poor people at the bottom of the pyramid are still paying out, to receive nothing. The only thing that has changed is who is at the bottom. The simplest way to show why this is morally wrong, and cannot survive in the end, is to take it to it's ultimate extreme.
Imagine this company has turned out to be unusually successful, and every last person in the entire world has joined up. There is now no one left to add into the company. No one to place on the bottom of the pyramid. Who ever is on the bottom can either remain there or leave the company. This means there is several billion people, who are paying for their products dutifully each month, so that the people above them in the pyramid can 'earn' money. But the people on the bottom do not receive money from anyone. They are propping up the business. It is their spending that 'pays' the 'higher-ups'.
Once there is no one left to add to the company, people at the bottom must surely realize that they are getting screwed. So they'd leave the company. Which means the people directly above them are now on the bottom. There is still no one else to suck into the business, no one new to make money out of, so they leave as well. The pyramid will either disappear completely, or reduce in size for a period of time long enough for the general populous to forget. That is, it will reduce until someone new can be sucked into the scheme.
The other morally corrupt point is as follows: The people who are decently high up in the pyramid don't need to work, because their participation in this company (sucking more and more people in), is 'earning' them money. Sometimes very large amounts of money. So if everyone in the world is in this situation, who’s going to do the work that needs doing?
Who's left to run the power stations? Build the houses? etc. There isn't anyone left because they're all trying to earn money for doing nothing. And that is the simple truth. Earning money for nothing is essentially immoral.
That is not to say that earning interest on your money is immoral. In that situation, your money is being used someone else, and they will pay you a small interest to reflect the risk that you are subjecting your money to. The interest is in effect a guarantee that you will get your money returned to you. This is how shares work, and is far better than the pyramid scheme, where you pay out money, for no direct benefit to yourself.
Compare it back to what I was saying earlier about happiness. Is what you're doing helping someone in some way? If not, you're probably not deserving to make your money. Investing in a company by purchasing shares, helps that company to achieve it's goals. And for that, the company will pay you dividends, or interest on your investment to help you in return. The pyramid scheme just takes your money so long as you're on the bottom.
Hope and MotivationI believe that humans survive on hope. Without hope we see no point to living. There are two ways to loose hope. The first is obvious – to know that what you want cannot possibly happen. That is not a guaranteed hope destroyer however. Often we are able to hope against the odds.
The other way to loose hope is to get everything you want. This I believe is the worse of the two. Generally speaking, you will only see this occur in rich families. If the rich person (or indeed child with rich parents), gets everything they want instantly – they have nothing to hope for – nothing to aspire to.
Many people do not hope to be something. They often hope to have something, which usually requires them to be something. That is to say, some people don’t have profession based goals in their lives. They make up for this by having object based goals.
For example, a fictional person named Jim. He has no ambitions to be a great singer, or a business manager, or a salesman. He does however want to own a decent car. That is his hope. Because he wants the car, he is motivated to work, to earn his car. Marcel on the other hand, has the same desire – he wants to own a decent car… But Marcel had rich parents and they gave him a Ferrari. Now Marcel will spend time enjoying his car, but he won’t have any motivation to achieve. He has no goal left to work for, no hope. Marcel becomes depressed and bored, while Jim is happy because with each passing month he is closer to his goal.
SpiritualityI believe that everyone has to find his or her own sense of spirituality. Mass religions often have rules that the individual will not agree with. At some point you have to work out for yourself what you believe in, and really believe in.
Whether you believe in some sort of Supreme Being or not is completely moot. The majority of spirituality is about dealing with life’s ups and downs. Use it for this reason, and you will benefit. Spirituality comes in many forms, including the simple form where you find some way of meditating, or concentrating on something you like. It may be the image of your garden from when you were a child. Whatever it is, it fills you with peace, and the thought of it helps you deal with the world. That is spirituality.
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