Disciplining Desire

In Napoleon Hill’s classic book “Think and Grow Rich” he identifies desire as the starting point of all achievement.  Of course, he was not talking about any desire – but a desire for a positive result, outcome or personal goal.  

We all have desires, but we have to discern which ones will take us to long-term success and happiness and which will only lead to problems for us.  Then we need to choose to follow the right ones and be self-disciplined enough to forego the wrong ones.

“The discipline of desire is the backbone of will and character” – Will and Ariel Durant

Which desires are you chasing?

I didn't buy the car

“People don’t want things, they want the emotions that come with them.” – Tony Robbins

Usually, when you buy a new car, it makes you feel good. Maybe it’s a landmark in your life. Maybe it tells you that you don’t have to worry or that people will look at your cool car and think you are cool too. Maybe it means your family will be secure and safe and have reliable transportation.

I went down to the Chevy dealer to buy a new car. I test drove one and it was great and all, but I didn’t buy it.  When I drove my old car home, I realized that the old one was pretty good. (OK, it’s only four years old.) I determined that the new one would not make a lot of difference. Any emotional high I got out of it would be short-lived, so why bother?  

I’m not making any argument about buying a new car or not. More, I am calling attention to recognizing WHY we do things. Are they important long term? Or do they just give us an emotional quick hit, and then we have to live with our decisions.  Can we get that emotional satisfaction a different way? (i.e. maybe I have my old car fixed and detailed.) Or can I think about it some more and when considering the long-term effects of the decision that will come, make the emotional itch go away?

We’re human; we’re emotional. Emotions are how we experience life. But if we let our emotions make us impulsive, we’ll make some poor decisions. 

Don’t you think? 

Is the story real?

We make stuff up.  We combine an edited version of what happened, our emotions and imagination and wind up with a story.  We tell ourselves the story over and over and our brain believes the story because it does not distinguish between what is real and what is vividly imagined.

Just like that – bang! – you’re mentally handicapped.

Is the story (as you tell it to yourself) real?

Making your home more energy efficient pays for itself

It’s not high priced solar panels or high technology – just a professional sealing and insulating correctly in the right places.  It doesn’t matter how old your house is – it’s not right!  I made this video with my team a number of years ago – I just watched it again – so good!  So true!

Fun fact, those are real dollar bills we used – $7000 of them!  Check it out!  

And I never ask, but you know winter is coming – call Dr. Energy Saver/Attic Systems – we have dealers all over the United States!

Who got to you first?

Let’s say we learned X view from the people around us.  Human nature is to believe X, and go around looking for evidence in the world that X is right, and arguing with others who have Y view.  

Meanwhile, people who were taught Y first, go around doing the same thing with Y.  We believe what we learn – especially what we learned first.  This is especially true when we were specifically handed a book “to learn from” or sent to school “to learn”.

The best approach is to learn all we can, make observations of our own, and make our own decisions.  Even still, we have to stay open to the idea that we may have missed something, and keep learning.

How did you form your operating beliefs?

Admit Your Ignorance

When you think you know it all, you are closed to learning new things, and the possibility that you are wrong. The opposite of being a know-it-all is admitting your ignorance. Say “I don’t know, and I want to find out more.”

The more we are ignorant, the more we can know. 

Playing with Imagination

Go with this – 

If you could be anything you wanted – anything – what would it be?

Spend a few minutes on that…

Headlight of an oncoming train?

As I have said before, I am not political, but I am about ideas, and I do know money math. Google “Chart on Federal Debt” and “Federal Debt per Person.” 

This is not a problem until it’s a problem. Then it’s a huge problem that will affect us all.  

US federal debt per person is expected to grow to $75,000 per citizen by 2025. Let’s say only one in three people work when you take out children, students, retirees, etc. So that’s $225,000 in debt per worker. Interest rates are low now which is the reason we can get away with it. If interest rates are, say 4%, then that’s $9,000 the average worker would have to pay per year just to pay the interest, not including paying down the debt or to pay for anything else. Most people don’t pay that much per year in federal tax now in total to cover all federal government spending.

There is a lot of conversation around this, (factor in this, factor in that) but you can’t get away from the lunacy of it all. The bankruptcy court for the US government is world economic collapse. How close do we want to get?

The federal government has 430 agencies and owns or lease 361,000 buildings.  

How did this happen? As long as we want our government to solve so many problems for us and be involved in so many things, and as long as we look the other way and don’t make it a big issue, and as long as we vote for those that will “give us” this or that, and as long as politicians don’t suffer when they make huge mistakes (they are playing with OPM and OPD, other people’s money and debt), then we will not avoid the financial catastrophe that will come.

Many states, like mine, are in the same boat. As one woman who was a vendor (beneficiary) of a state program to make homes more energy efficient said half panicked in a public meeting where the topic of changes to the program was being discussed “Just tell me the gravy train will last my lifetime” (I paraphrase slightly).     

Government employees and unions, corporate welfare recipients, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid recipients, anyone benefitting from a government program, lobbyist and any group hiring them – those in charge pretty much have most of us covered. Jefferson predicted that when the politicians in office can buy the people’s votes using their own money, it is the beginning of the end.

At what point does the smoke alarm go off?

When smart people get together, they don’t get smarter as a group. Individuals have to be bold enough to put their self-interest aside, call them out by pointing out their mistakes, and yes, vote them out in favor of a representative who will do the correct thing. Whether the correct thing is popular or not depends on what we value as most important now.

(Please don’t pigeonhole me to be on one side or the other. I’m not on either. I’m just looking at the Emperor and telling you what I see.)

Tell me what you think after you Google the charts. Orange button.

Kick the Resistance's A*#!

In the book “The War of Art,” author Stephen Pressfield calls it “The Resistance.” It’s procrastination. It’s feeling we aren’t good enough, ready enough, or smart enough. It’s doing the easy things first until there is no time for the hard and important things.

Today, bust through! Kick the Resistance’s butt! Look at your goals list or to do list and pick that big important thing you have been putting off – and crush it!

Go get it!

The purpose of our lives

“The purpose of our lives is to give birth to the best that is within us” – Marianne Williamson

I love Marianne – check her out.