3 STRATUMS OF MOTIVATION

Startum#1 LIFE AFTER DEATH: How will they remember you?

The only difference between Paul Walker dying in a car crash and Nelson Mandela dying of old age is how they will be remembered.  Legacy, indeed is mort important than currency. You will leave one whether you want it or not, so build wisely, so your deeds can be the mouth of a man or woman who no longer speaks. It will act as a mesh trapping all the negativity that people spread around your name and reputation.

Startum#2 THE DEATH OF YOUR ‘LOVE’ ONES: Who am I doing it for?

The truth behind this motivation is two folds. In one hand, some of people you love will pass away before you, therefore never witnessing your realizations. You will hate yourself for having wasted precious time; even worst your accomplishments will seem almost incomplete without them around.  Family, friends, mentors and sometime enemies add more to life than you think. You only feel their emotional weight leave your body once they are gone, like a holy ghost you never knew was there. As an example, how much thought do you give to the fresh oxygen you are breathing right this second until you actually stop breathing… In the other hand some of the people you hate will pass away before you. This will usually create a stronger sense of urgency even though you never wished for them to die. Their death will come as a bittersweet whisper in your ears.

Startum#3 YOUR OWN DEATH: When I die (fill in the bank)________?

Your time on this earth is limited. It started running out the moment you were born. Take sleeping and eating out of the equation of life and you quickly realize how little time you have “left”. So go start something that connects with your calling. The best time to start something is yesterday; the second best time is today. Whatever the project or endeavor you must start before you are ready. Readiness is overrated and beginning something builds the experience you need. Do not wait, nor waste energy by expecting for a seat at the big meeting, an invitation to the exclusive party, a network gathering in your district or an important phone call while saying to yourself and to the third party pick me pick me…

Pick Yourself! Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said: ‘Boldness has genius magic and power in it’. If you wish for the journey not to be easy or sweet then you’ll be fine.

Your death, the death of the ones you love and life after death are the only three type of motivation you really need in life to make a difference.

P.S. A palliative nurse recorded the most common regrets of the dying and put her findings into a book called “The Top Five Regrets of The Dying.”

Here is the #1 “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me”

Leaking out of Sodom and Gomorrah

The heart of an old life 

Walloping and pounding…kissing and fornicating
Deceitful lies, osculating behaviors…

In secret shoplifting emotions and breast-feeding …
Unorthodox Chance Peeling, 

Running out of fear, options and time…
Now matter how good or how bad…

Life goes forward even while driving backwards, Look Back to soon and you end up a pillar of salt... 

Humble lesson from lot’s wife.

Lost your job, lost your wife, lost your dignity, lost your mind but don’t lose yourself in a temporary life crisis, life’s janitor showed up in January for some major spring-cleaning.  If Janus is the two headed God of time, beginning, doors, doorways and transitions, than I believe you ought to behead the 2 headed monsters with the French guillotine and only keep the one that looks toward the future...

Nobody Gives It to You … You Have To Take It

Man jumps over a bridge because he cannot stand his wife having an affair with his Boss. His head hits the water so fast,  so hard that it gets intercalated all the way in his abdominal.

JUST TAKE IT !

They want us to OBEY, the laws, the rules, the school system and pay taxes on top of everything. They want to tell you what to eat, when to go to sleep, when to wake up and how to do it all over again the next day. It’s like we’re all a carbon copy of each other, all melting in the same pot …At least a Pot head gets to break the law… People give you what you don’t ask for, hours of work and low pay, ungrateful bosses and back stabbing colleagues so ...
If you want more you have to take it!  
Nobody gives it to you …

Follow Me !

Rats want cheese, cats want milk and dogs want meat. When the bait is ready and juicy, the animal falls in the trap. That’s how a zoo is filled; hunters bait and wait for the animals to come to them. It would be far too dangerous to proactively chase certain creatures for they can turn cruel when cornered. The same analogy we see in nature is the same we need to apply among humans. Everyone has a price tag, something they hanker for, something that makes their heart echo with uncontrollable emotions. You must know what it is and create the illusion that you can help them get there. The donkey walks in front of the carrot in hope that he will one day eat it, while the traveller uses the donkey for transportation. When people come to you, you set the tune and the rhythm. Since they are willing to “work” for you, you have the power to ask yourself: 

“What can I use this person for”?  

See Me Now !

Information overload is the new era we live in. People have more choices and even less time to make to choice.  It’s easy to get lost, forgotten or not even notice at all. However, it is equally important to stand out and burn brightly. Solving this puzzle boils down to the type of attention you are seeking. You can wear a white suit at a funeral or a red wedding dress at your boss marriage party and be talked about in both cases.  The question is, is that the type of attention you want, if being a fool or a jerk is your life mission, then by all means go for it, but it is better to use your intelligence to control the design and the stage so you can in turn control the perception of the attention you are holding. 

WORDS ...

Less is more. The less you say the more uncommon you appear to be. If you want to convince a friend, a family member or a colleague, do it with deeds and not words. Deeds live no room for argumentation or explanation. A tongue should dance nine times in your mouth before you utter something foolish, because once out, spoken words cannot be taken back. Furthermore, people will remember what you said and how you said it. The how will often carry more weight then the what because appearance counts for everything and what is invisible to the five senses counts for nothing.

However, there is a reverse to this coin … sometime you must play the king’ s joker and act dumber than your mark by being a big mouth.  This act makes you look powerless and weak …no one will suspect anything, the same way no one suspect the class clown to be first or the king’s joker to overthrow the kingdom…

Saying less Talking more two attributes of the same coin … the coin is always in your hand…

Brains shall be tied into a Gordian knot ... with accuracy

A dark snake with golden eyes has carved a hole in the center of your brain; the reptile is slowly tying up multiple intricate knots in different places of your brain creating anarchy among healthy neurons… This reptilian cancer has now overthrown your “head” office and even a chirurgical procedure would end up in brutal death or total paralysis…

Battles are first won on a psychological level. You must create constant pressure like the wheezing of an asthma attack, every breath the enemy takes must feel like it could be his last… Chock hold the opponent attention until their attention span snaps. Close off their access to resources in the outside world by creating a heightened sense of terror with unpredictable assaults, leaving them with a steamy feeling of defenselessness… 

...deadly riddles to dangerous to solve ...

When you feel they have giving in by giving up, like the body of the boxer about to hit the ground after a knock out blow to the face, tighten the noose even harder… You have created a mental hysterectomy, sterile …the mind of the rival is unable to reason properly and bear fruitful thoughts. The mental cancer will spread slowly and painfully like a venomous poison. 

Re – Create Yourself … Shed Skin like a Snake

In life as in the moment of your untimely death, you ought to reject society sculpts molds and coffins by not reincarnating its clichés, chestnuts and formulas.  Forge yourself an identity of your own by mixing the past and the present, what is respected and what has been forgotten, nostalgia and the taste of new …An identity that command veneration and never spells out monotony. You either chose to be master of your own image and persona or others will define it for you. Once you become the prostitute through other people ocular lens… you double down on your luck of standing out like gold in the mist of low-grade metals.

If you do not chose an identity, people will force their choices on you…Sometimes we can be stuck in rut, repeating the same tired methods, by trying to be something we are not. Recreating your self does not mean being a carbon copy of something you do not understand, it means growing, seeing the world with a fresh pair of eyes, it means adding value to who your are, by picking a skill like the piano, a language like Spanish, or a sport like hockey …

It means changing your Skin… like snakes do …

“Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis Faciebat Anno [date],”

Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis Facibat Anno

In 1644, in Cremona Italy, a young man by the name of Antonio Stradivari had gifted hands for violin making at the tender age of twenty-two. His passion and skills translated into the highest standard of violin making to this day. A genuine Stradivarius will fetch couple thousand if not millions. Scientists know the entire ingredients list to build the perfect violin but still are flummoxed on how Antonio did it 300 years ago…  for it still cannot be replicated …

Knowledge is only half the battle when you know how to use it …

      I can circle mother earth in order to find the sweetest brown sugar, the softest president’s butter, 3 eggs from biologically raised hens, a few drops of vanilla and cinnamon, some pink salt from the famous pink lake in Senegal and finally some old fashioned oat meal.  These are the ingredients needed to make world class Vanishing oatmeal cookies that do not vanish when they come out of the oven.  I can have the instruction written in your mother tongue on how to prepare it...So what are your chances of success if you’ve never stepped into a kitchen?

Truth is, what you put in matters just as much as what comes out … and vice-versa.

SRL Epicure Stoicism: Breath Easy ... in my Golden Hookah ...

SRL Epicure Stoicism: Breath Easy ... in my Golden Hookah ...

Breath Easy ... in my Golden Hookah ...

She has made nations go to war against her … while giving inspiration to its leaders … … Writers, Poets and Artist have long used her as a holy muse for inspiration …Many have fallen under her spell beauty and charm yet were never killed .. She is the dark secret between lawyers and outlaws, doctors and patients, leaders and followers … Even death visits her a night into order to dive deeper into darker galaxies … She could be your best friend worst enemy …Men have built wealth using her and witness their lives and the ones around them change for better or worst... Maybe you have seen her, abused her or simply misused her … She has been adapting to change like water flowing from a river … Can you guess who she is ...  TBC... to be Continued 

The American Dream … delayed due to Non Sufficient Funds …

If you work hard and play by the rules you can make it in America.

People go to school, earn a degree or two, graduate with debt and work the rest of their lives trying to pay it back. In 2010, the average college graduate owed $24,000 in student loan while facing an unemployment rate of 8.7%. The majority of young grads hold back on having a family, buying a car or a house because they fell face first in the debt trap. The reality is, the four year college degree is overrated. College Universities are to education what casinos are to Las Vegas. It a huge gamble designs to keep you expanding your debt from books new edition every semester, to general education classes, to credit transfers and faculty professors that play God with you forcing you to play by their rules or flunk out.  From kinder garden you are brainwashed into believing that college is the right choice. If you do not go to college you will be a failure. Kids go in and come back like boomerangs not realizing how ill prepared they are to enter the knowledge factory that plays by four set of rules.

1. 1.    Education success must take four years to achieved not matter what you are learning
2. 2.    The economic rewards of a four year degree has nothing to do with what is being learned
3. 3.    Urge people to get a four year degree, wait until they have spend enough time and money and then watch them drop out
4. 4.    Marginalize everyone who does not have a four year degree

 College students end up dropping out, or committing suicide or worst going on a shooting spree… just remember what happened in Virginia Tech. I can help but wonder if college fosters this type of environment.  Since we live in a society obsess by status people would rather get a low paying white collar job then a high paying blue collar job which can earned in half the time with half the cost.

The question is not to focus on what the average college degree will bring you but to look at your own constellation of strengths and weaknesses and see what is going to fit you best whether it is a college degree, a vocational school or a trade school and who will you be competing against. Maybe the reason why we call it the American dream is because it only exists when we go to sleep and as we wake up we get a taste of the American nightmare. 

Ultimate Realism

See it for what it is ...

Watch what you see and pay attention to the details, for the devil lies in the unseen, the intangible realities that cannot be measured … Life requires seeing things for what they are. Make no exception to this rule… Sometimes the hardest skill to acquire is resisting the pull of emotions. Anger draws people into rash actions which they later regret. Fear is a magnifying glass that increases the true reality of the dangers you face. Love is probably the worst of all, for it blinds your reasoning and puts you in a world of ecstasy where someone else is controlling the switch. You cannot stop the pull of strong emotions, but you can have great awareness and decrease its negative effect to a minimum.  

Know Your Limits

The goal in war is the win while using the least amount of resources. The goal in life is to live while having the least amount of disease. This forces you to be both effective in reaching the outcome and efficient in the use of your assets. Doing more with less. The danger lies in overextending yourself and biting more than you can chew. As an example, people will sometimes get two or three jobs instead of focusing on the one that will carry them to the next level. You must know how far you are able to push and cherry pick your battles with the utmost prudence. Do not fight another man’s war, nor should you fight out of pride or anger, consider the consequences: time lost, money wasted, enemies created, opportunity cost.  It is true, sometime war is just inevitable. When that happens, you must force the other side to fight on your terms and not the other way around.  The less you have, the more creative you have to be. Knowing your limits forces you to be a realist, not an idealist or a capitalist but a man that has his mind and heart grounded in reality. If you are wealthy, fight the poor man’s war, if you are poor be tirelessly inventive, and if you are neither than make the very best of what you have.  

The value in what you want, is not in what you get but in what you pay for it… the final cost , the aftermath … always level the golden scale by knowing your limits and you can outlast the biggest Goliath  with a hand full of slingshots … 

Omnipresent … Like the Devil ... Can You be?

Timing is everything in life. Life itself ought to be built around the concept of being at the right places at the right time, which involve being at most of the places most of the time. However, very few human beings have the ability to be omnipresent. The key is to have eyes and ears where you are not, therefore taping into an informal network of spies, friends and allies. This network “pushes” critical information to you or allows you to “pull” valuable information from the network at your convenience. This allows you to save time while bypassing the hierarchy in any chain of command in which you work.  The information lets you uncover potential opportunities, or threats that you otherwise could not have seen coming.

Isolation is the enemy of inclusion. Do not build fortresses around you, making yourself hard to find or reach. This will only make you an easy target. When you cut yourself from the network of valuable information and people, you stagnate, pollute and eventually dry off like snow during a hot summer day. The pilot of a plane can only take off with today’s weather conditions, not the conditions he had three days ago.

Finally, it’s easy for a hunter to shot a stationary object than for him to hit a fast moving target. The fast moving target is you, connecting with people and places in different social layers making it easy to see more than just the tip of the iceberg.
If God is Omnipresent and the Devil is not ... 
Why can't you ?

Contamination

Picture a sick man in a room. He has been there for a few years now. Pain and suffering have been so deep that he wishes for euthanasia every day. One day you step into that room with a smile on face, flowers, and gifts of joy in your hands. The man is an old friend so he is happy to see you, as he speaks about his pain; you are intrigue by the depths of his dark feelings and overwhelmed by his commanding personality. Time passes and before you know it you starts feeling weak, so weak you can barely make it to the door. The man ask you to stay just one more night and you will leave in the morning. As the sun rises in the sky your healthy body is completely contaminated.The doctor advises you that you a free to check out anytime you like but no one never leave the asylum. 

Do not die from another man's misery ...

People with misfortune and misery deserve all the help they can get, but beware, they have brought hell onto themselves, and they will bring it onto you as well. It is tempting to jump and try to save the drowning man, but with his dying strength, he pulls you deeper in the dark waters. If you “sync” with the misfortunate, they will download their viruses into your hard drive. Do the opposite, stay close to the privileged, the lucky, the blessed, the auspicious man and gain from their good fortune. 

Living at the speed of light

The thought of death can for a moment breathe more life into us. Society is organized to make death more evasive than ether. We seldom talk about it unless we lose a love one or experience a very narrow escape. People don’t go shopping for coffins, cemetery plots or incinerator services. However, at the back of our mind we know that death is inevitable, our days are numbered, and time sinks fast in the ocean of life. Do you ever wonder how many years or days you have left? Truth is your heart could stop before you finished reading this blog.

How much longer do you have left?

So do not wait for the perfect moment to start a new venture, enter new waters or stake everything on a single throw. Enter unchartered territories and no man’s land. When your back is against the wall and you know you cannot afford to lose. You won’t!  This can be anything from picking up a new skills or moving to another country to reconnecting with friends and family or just doing things you truly enjoy. Birth, school, work, career, marriage, children and it’s over.  It’s important to die without regrets.

It’s a good thing you still alive … go ahead live at the speed of light ... 

The Lebron James Story ... And why Legacy is greater than currency...

Black Coffin, priest, family members and old friends, red roses, tears of sorrow… How will they remember you?

We all would like to reach a point in our life where currency does not matter, where we have the ability to choose the path we want, and build a legacy. Those who say time is money are in the wrong when we put aside the zeros and the hours… 

Time is not money; it is what you make of it.

I believe Lebron James is at a point in his basketball career where money does not matter. He also paid his dues with the Cleveland team by single handedly increasing the value of the franchise by an extra 200 millions dollars.  He made the right move by living his old team and going to the Miami Heat to join forces with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.  Who wants to be the best player in the league with no ring? A king with no Crown…  Some people said Lebron was a traitor for living “home” and his teammates. Others took it further by saying that Cleveland made Lebron who he is today. Remember, people will always try to destroy you after you have been good to them. I wonder why is it that when an owner cuts a player it’s considered business as usual and when a player decides to go in a team where he has a better shot at winning he becomes the black sheep.

Each day, you build your legacy and when you leave people remember whom you were, at school, in college, at work, as a parent, a friend or even an enemy.

 See, you are who you are in this world and long after you're gone your legacy good or bad lives on...

Cavity Search

Upon arrest or incarceration, the standard detainee will go through a body cavity search. Armed with a flashlight, police will look for illegal drugs, money, weapons, or jewelry that can be hidden in body orifices like nostril, mouth, ears, urethra, vagina or rectum.

The contraband goods are valuable behind bars and can pose a risk to inmate and staff...

The difference between life and death sometime lies in one simple question:” Who am I dealing with”. When you have no clue about the person you are dealing with, you are drinking a potential poisonous liquid in the dark. You might hurt the innocent man and pay for it later, you might offend the snake with a long memory and pay for it later on in life or you might help the “right” person and waste valuable time and resources. It’s is clear that a cavity search is more invasive than a strip search, but it’s also true that you need to know as much as you can about someone before you let them in your house. The word “house” in this situation could be anything from emotional and professional relationships to business mergers and presidential elections.

Be Good.. yet know when to Be Bad

Society thrusts on us a moral code and ethical barometer by which one ought to abide and follow in order to be consistently right. However, we also witness the rise and fall of citizens who have broken all sort of criminal laws in order to gain supremacy.  This creates ambivalence in the way we think and act. In one hand, being too good may ultimately bring ruin and misery to one’s life. In the other hand, being bad will tarnish your reputation and compel you to live by the bow or die by the arrow. You will suffer for it in the end.  So when does one adjust its own morality according to circumstances? The secret is in knowing exactly when and how to be bad.  When the conditions call for it, you must be a tiger, downright brutal in protecting your territory or acting with blatant force in order to secure a position. At other times, you must be the crafty snake maneuvering and swindling in the midst of rivals while using scapegoats and cat paws to keep your hand sparkling clean.  Finally, you must repeatedly play the koala bear, the self-effacing, the submissive humble meek.  The roles are not easy to play, they require flexibility on the moral gauge, in order to plug in the right voltage of evil as the situation requires. Even though, the skill must be used sparingly, it creates more power and peace, than the man who opts out to be too good all the time. This cleverness is the metaphor of the little girl trapped in the body of a vixen giving fellatio to a man while holding a gun to his head with the safety feature off…

Little Girl (Koala Bear), Vixen (Tiger), Can you spot the Snake?