Abiding by the Golden Rule

So you’re drivin’ down the road just a hummin’ a tune.

When you get cut off in your car by some big ass buffoon.

You get real angry while you’re shacking your fists.

Your face gets beet red because you’re super fucking pissed.

Don’t they have any idea who you are?

As you sit there real angry in your beat up old car?

Get out of my because I’m already very late.

I can’t afford to miss this really important date.

When you get where you’re going you’re still hopping mad.

And now this of yours has gone from good to really bad.

But when it becomes your turn to do the right thing.

You decided to drive through traffic with a whoosh and a zing.

It doesn’t matter if the driver you cut off is yelling and screaming,

Because there you sit in your car happy and beaming.

Does this story I’m telling sound real familiar to you?

I am sure it does since we’ve all been there too.

So try not to forget what they taught you in school.

“Do unto others” is what is known as the golden rule.

I thought I would do something a little different today by starting off with a poem. Don’t worry I’m not going to quit my day job to become a poet doing slam poetry like some beatnik. The rhyme came to me in the car and I thought it would be fun to run with it. For a guy who really doesn’t like poetry, I definitely had fun writing it.

If you hadn’t guessed by now, I wanted to write about the golden rule. It’s the “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” rule many of us grew up hearing. (Apparently is from Matthew Chapter 7 verse 12 in the Christian Bible. Who knew? Not this guy).

Having two boys, I actually think of this quote quite often. My kids have a tendency to have a “Do unto others but fuck you if you do unto me,” mentality. I’m constantly telling my oldest if he wants his younger brother to treat him nicely, he might need to be nice first. This goes over like a fart in church and they are soon back at it. Then, all I want to do is shack the shit out of both of them, which only escalates the situation.

Then I started to think about how we, as human beings, tend to treat each other. It all makes sense. Of course my kids, and I’m sure this is most kids, are assholes because the world continuously gives them bad role models. We are horrible to each other and then wonder why people are horrible right back. We do not want to give other any leeway but expect tons in return.

All of us have bad days. We didn’t get enough sleep, receive some bad news, or forgot to do something important and, whether we mean to or not, we take it out on others. We yell or get snippy or talk behind their backs and it’s okay but the moment it happens to us we lose our minds.

It actually goes even further than this too. I happened upon an article called “You Teach Others How to Treat You” by a Dr. Perry, who runs the MakeItUltra^TM Psychology site, which take this concept one step further. In this article, he explains our subconscious habits can transfer to those closest to us creating self-fulfilling prophecies. What this means is the way we treat others is how they will treat us. If we are sarcastic or angry or passive aggressive then, over time, the people closest to us will return the favor. We then wonder why we are continuously surrounded by these traits feeling like we are bad judges of character.

One of the things I semi-joke about around my wife is she only keeps me around as a free live-in babysitter and once the kids are old enough she’ll move onto greener pastures. If she does decide to leave me, when the kids are old, I can easily tell myself I wasn’t surprised. I’ve predicted it for years. What I didn’t realize, until now, is this could be signaling to her I don’t value her or our relationship and I could be subconsciously distancing myself from her to lessen the hurt I’m expecting to feel. Then everything I do or don’t do confirms these signals until she’s had enough and leaves. If she leaves, is it her fault or was I too much of a dumbass to realize I’ve been pushing her away for years?

The point is, the way we treat people is typically how others we will treat us in response. The more we interact with someone the more those habits become ingrained in them until their reaction is subconscious as well. We, also, tend to say one thing but do another making us walking, talking hypocrite. This in turn imprints on our children and the cycle continues.

If we want to break the cycle, we have to look at ourselves first. We have to see how we are acting and treating those around us, and if we don’t like what we see we need to make a change. We need to “start with the man in the mirror. We need to ask him to change his ways.” (Thank you Michael Jackson for helping with this post. RIP.) We need to find compassion for ourselves and extend this compassion to those around us. This isn’t a one time thing, either, but something we need to work on every day.

I’ll end with something I “stole” from Noah Kagan and say, “Go call or text someone that you love them, right now!” It might just make their day!

If I Didn’t have Bad Luck…

“If it wasn’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all.” This maxim is one I like to spout out jokingly from time to time around friends and family. I’m not sure why I started saying it but for years I believed it. I saw my life going a certain way but every time I looked around things weren’t adding up. This must be bad luck, right?

It’s taken me years but I no longer believe in luck. Sure there are random events we cannot plan for and do not know the outcome. Weather patterns, games of chance, and even our genetics are all out of our control, to name a few, but that’s not the kind of luck I’m talking about here.

Many times our lives feel like they are left up to chance. Should I have gone left instead of right? Should I have taken that once in a lifetime trip around the world? Should I have finished college instead of quitting halfway through it? Our choices can sometimes feel like a crap shoot with the outcomes feeling no better than flipping a coin.

The problem with this line of thinking is we lose all control over our lives, over our destiny. We become powerless passengers to our life floating down the river without a paddle. If we accept our life is random it becomes pointless. It becomes meaningless.

It’s easy to feel this way when the decisions we make don’t pan out. When we choose right instead of left and life decides to go sideways, it’s easy to feel like the only luck we have is bad luck. One seemingly bad decision, leads to another, to another, and soon it’s easy to feel life spiraling out of control. “It’s not my fault… It’s bad luck. If I had better luck things would be different.”

The thing is it is our fault. We are making the bad decisions not some Two-Face type evil villain who’s flipping a coin to determine our fate. It’s just us choosing left or right.

While it may feel shitty at times, that’s the good news. As long as we are still breathing we get to choose how our life goes. We can examine the direction our life has gone and work towards shifting it back in the right direction. We can work on being present in our lives so when the chance to head in the right direction occurs we don’t miss it.

One of my favorite stories is about Sir Richard Branson and how he started Virgin Airlines, exemplifies this point. He was at an airport when his flight to the Caribbean was canceled. Instead of being pissed off, yelling at the counter agent, or leaving defeated he contacted a charter company at the airport. After he got the price to rent the plane he held up a sign offering flights to the Caribbean for $39. Branson filled up the plane in no time and the idea for Virgin Airlines was born. Now if he hadn’t been present, mentally, Virgin Airlines would have been created.

I’m sure there were plenty of decisions Sir Richard made to get him to that specific moment. Some good and some bad but when he was dealt cards he didn’t like he decided to change his fate. He wrote his own destiny blazing a new path. We can do this too.

We need to remember though negative choice may have lasting effects on our lives so do the positive ones. We aren’t able to change the past but we can ensure the choices we make have a positive affect the future.

We need to start by having plan and ensuring we don’t follow it so rigidly it fucks us up. The plan has to allow for growth and change by guiding our decision making process not dictating it. The we will make smart, thoughtful decisions, in the moment, consistently until soon it’ll comes naturally, much in the same way as Sir Richard Branson.

We don’t need to fear bad luck anymore because we make our own luck. We are the masters of our own fate… if we choose!

I want to thank my buddy, Darren, for helping with this post.

I Can’t, Can I?

I’ve been on an elimination kick lately. There are tons of stuff in my life I want to get rid of to free up time, space, and energy to do what’s truly important to me. I’m getting rid of unwanted items from my house, I’ve deleted most of my game and social media apps from my phone, and I’m eliminating negative self-talk and other negative influences from my life. One of these bad influences is the phrase, “I can’t.”

Why am I trying to nicks the word “can’t” from my vocabulary? Frankly, it’s lazy. When someone says, “they can’t” do something what they typically mean is something completely different. It could be “I don’t want to” or “it’s not a priority right now.” It could mean, “I don’t know how” or “I’m not good at this.” It rarely means, “Under NO circumstance could I, would I, or should I have the ability to do to (fill in the blank here).”

The thing I’ve come to learn is words have meaning. (No shit, Joe, of course they do). What I mean is if you say something to yourself enough times it becomes true. Some people call it “the Secret,” but I call it self-talk. This self-talk can be positive and negative, as I’ve wrote about already, and can have a profound influence on your life. If you call yourself a loser enough times, you’ll become a loser. If you tell yourself you “can’t” do something, it’ll comes true.

Using “can’t” isn’t necessarily an issue if it’s used sparingly but I find people use the word too frequently. Then it’s not a matter of “can” vs “can’t” but “can’t” becomes the default.

I truly believe people can do just about anything they want to do. Sure there are things like becoming President of the United States which are near impossible but on a scale of 1 to becoming the President, most things are possible. Most things we “can’t” do fall into one of two categories: uninteresting or scary. This turns “can’t” into “I don’t wanna!”

When you say, “I can’t” you are lying to yourself and those around you. You might be afraid, busy, or uninterested, but completely unable is highly unlikely.

This is why I’m working on removing “can’t.” First I want to be more honest with those I care about, and second I don’t want to be governed by fear. I want to learn new things. I want to have new experiences. I want to be more present in my life. Unfortunately, I can’t I’m unable to do this with my old way of thinking. I need to change things up a little.

I want to change. I can change. I will change.