No Topic Tuesday

I used to do No Topic Tuesday on here (alright, so I did it twice... and one of the times was on a Wednesday), so let's bring it back this week. I've got a small smattering of things to talk about.

The first thing is about girls, and one of the large characterizations of their kind. I'm not sure if it's a confidence issue or a preconditioning issue, but it really doesn't seem to like a girl ever goes out of her way to show a guy that she's interested. Girl might react positively when guy reaches her way, but it doesn't seem that girl will ever make that first move. Even with girl and guy are talking regularly the girl always seems to be emit friend only fragrances until guy makes a move. Is that because the girl doesn't want to get shut down? Or is it just because they don't think they're supposed to act a different way? I mean there are exceptions, but really for me only one girl comes to mind. Honestly it's probably better this way because from what I've noticed, guys aren't very selective with girls. Any guy will date any girl as long as she the least bit attractive to him. Fortunately that's never been the case with me, but if girls were just going after guys all the time they'd probably get them a lot of times and a bunch of really shitty relationships would start.

Second thing is about sports and sports writing, again. My boy from the Trib Dejan Kovacevic wrote this article about what to do if you're a young person aspiring to be a sports writer. I really liked this piece of advice from him:

"If you’re interested because you want to write about sports, get out. Find something else to do. You will fail, and you will fail quickly and miserably. The job is about journalism, not about being pals with your favorite teams or athletes. The passion has to be for journalism, for reporting and writing and editing and taking pics and page-designing or whatever your specialty."

It seems to be that the thing young people are most opinionated about in general is sports. You know why that is? Because sports are senseless, simple, and frivolous. Also, a lot of young people are also senseless, simple, and frivolous, it's a perfect fit! I've grown to have so much respect for people that have serious opinions and passion for anything that's not simple like sports - I wish I had more passion for such things myself. Anyways, Dejan makes a fantastic point. You'll never be successful in working in sports if you just have passion for sports. Almost everyone loves sports, and almost everyone can talk about sports to some extent. They might sound like idiots, but they can talk about it nonetheless. If people don't have a unique way to get points across and differing perspectives to look through, they'll just be some other average Joe sitting on his couch on Sunday yelling at the TV.

This applies to more than sports too. If you want to succeed in something, you can't do it like everyone else does. There are almost 8 billion people in the world, and there aren't nearly that many different things to do with life. You can't beat someone by copying them, you have to set yourself apart in some way. Following the trend and aping other people isn't going to get you very far.

I've also decided that one thing I really want to do in my life is speak in front of people. I'm not really sure what I'll speak about or who I'll speak about it in front of, but I've always really loved public speaking. Unfortunately there's really not a career for "public speaker" unless you've done something first which makes people want to listen to what you have to say. I've been thinking about writing a book and then speaking to people about what I wrote in my book, but I don't really have any idea what direction I would go in if I did want to write a book. So there's some definite roadblocks there, but I'm still young and I have time to figure all this stuff out.

Being passionless really sucks. I've done it most of my life and I'm kind of sick of it. I thought I had a passion for awhile but that kind of fell apart. Being 20-something is fun and all, but the whole part of not knowing where you wanna be in 10 years is frustrating. Luckily I have a lot of patience, a lot of confidence, and a good head on my shoulders.

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Philosophy

I took one philosophy class in college, and I pretty much hated it. I think the reason that I hated it was because it was my first semester of college and I was this really close minded Christian kid who didn't like to hear people give their world opinions that didn't match up to mine. I thought anyone who believed in the big bang was stupid and couldn't teach me anything. That was one of the reasons I went to a Christian college, to try and avoid a lot of that stuff, so I was pretty surprised when my philosophy teacher would preach how we all came from monkeys every day. In addition to all that, the class was super boring and we were only graded on papers that were graded way too harshly, so it all added up to me just hating the class and hating philosophy in general.

Fast forward four years and I am a lot different person. My beliefs haven't changed, but my perspective on the world's beliefs has. I don't think less of a person because they believe something different than me. Honestly, I'm probably more apathetic than I should be about other people's beliefs. What they believe doesn't change what I believe, so why make a big deal about it? A lot of people, especially Christians, are way too concerned about conflicting beliefs. They'll get offended and straight up insulted by the passing glance of someone who doesn't believe in God or the Bible or what have you. The worst times are when one extra confident Christian feels high and mighty enough to try to change the beliefs of another person by force. I saw this a couple times in college.

I do think that most Christians that do this kind of stuff have good intentions in mind, the problem is that they lack any kind of tact or reasonable understanding of how the human brain works. If there was a way to prove that God existed and that everything the Bible says is true, we wouldn't be talking about this right now. As long as humans exist there will be argument about the supernatural. While most people prefer to avoid it entirely, I don't think that there's anything wrong with talking about it with someone who doesn't agree with your views. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to hear an opinion that butts heads with your own. However, that head butting can easily result in one or both parties getting really offended and hurt, which then often leads to things being said out of anger and everything just becomes a chaotic mess.

There was one time my sophomore year where someone who didn't believe in God (at least as the Bible describes Him) got into a pretty intense discussion with a pastor's kid who had been homeschooled through high school and had just recently been exposed to differing beliefs. While I don't remember it perfectly, I do remember the end result being that these two were not very good friends after that night. They were both being mature about their discussion, at least in the start of it. The atheist (or agnostic, whatever he was) was asking honest, reasonable questions about the Christian beliefs, and the Christian just wasn't answering him how he wanted to be answered, he was basically dodging the tough questions. I remember the one question was something like "so you think that since I don't believe in God, I will go to hell when I die". Christian kid, for whatever reason, was afraid to answer honestly in the affirmative. By this time I had shown up and was catching up on what was going on, so being the overconfident person I am, I stepped in to try to save myself, being a strong believer in Christianity and not wanting to made look foolish by someone else with the same beliefs as me. I simply said "yes, that is what we believe". I didn't know how the kid was going to take it, but that's what he wanted to know, so I told him. From then on I was pretty much entrenched in the conversation and I tried to do as much talking as I could to avoid my tactless teammate making me look bad. I wish I could remember more, but basically it all ended up how you'd think it would - nobody's beliefs ever changed.

While I certainly didn't have all the answers that night, I was still happy with the way I handled everything. The kid I was arguing against and I had mutual friends, and a few months later one of those friends told me how much respect I had earned by being truthful, confident, and not emitting any signs that I thought less of the person because we disagreed on the subject. The kid didn't have the same good things to say about the person he was arguing with first.

Am I tooting my own horn, yes. But I'm trying to make a point.

Changing the opinions of another person is one of the hardest things to do in life. Especially when the opinions are about things that no one can prove right or wrong. It's almost a waste of time to even try. It's happened before, and I'm not saying that Christians shouldn't try to do as the Bible says and be fishers of men, I just think most of the time they do it wrong. Nobody likes being told they're wrong. Starting with that approach is the same as challenging someone in the same shape as you to a foot race and letting them take a 30 second head start. If someone doesn't respect you, they'll never listen to you, even if you are right. Tact is key in all facets of life, and a lot of people never understand that.

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Thomas Edison's Lightbulb Test

Read this story today, think it teaches a valuable lesson:

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incandescent bulb, was an incessant inventor. When he needed to expand his staff, he employed an unusual technique for interviewing the engineers for positions on his staff. Every prospective applicant who came in for an interview was handed a light bulb. Edison then asked the engineer to determine the exact amount of water the bulb could hold.

Edison knew very well that there were two basic ways an applicant could determine the correct answer to his question.

The first, was to apply several engineering gauges and mathematical protractors to each of the complex angles of the glass bulb. Then, using a slide ruler and applying basic logarithmic formulas, the applicant could calculate the inside surface area of the light bulb which would allow him to determine the total volume of the glass bulb. This approach would take an experienced engineering applicant approximately twenty minutes to solve the answer.

The second method an applicant could use to find the answer was to remove the brass base from the bulb and then fill the bulb with water. Once the bulb was filled with water, its contents could easily be poured into a measuring cup or laboratory beaker mug to determine the exact amount of water it could hold. This method generally took less than two minutes.

Nearly all the engineers who used the first method to calculate the volume of water a light bulb could hold were politely thanked for their time and sent on their way. However, the applicants who used the second method were greeted warmly by Mr. Edison who asked, "When can you start?"

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Life's not always about impressing people with how much you know or how much you can do, sometimes it's just about getting the job done as simply as you can.

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Authenticity

Came across a quote in this Dale Carnegie book I was reading today:

"Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody and something other than the person he is in body and mind”
I've basically said that myself a few dozen times in my life, but maybe just not with such profound wording. Maybe this blog is becoming just a bullhorn for me to say the same thing in two to three times a week, but I just feel so strongly about this one general topic that it's all I can ever end up writing about. Nothing is worse than someone who lacks originality, to me at least. As far as I'm concerned we are all born with the potential for three things; three things that everyone has somewhere, three things that I believe the utilization of which go a long way to determining what kind of person you are.

1. Human ability to think originally
2. Human individuality
3. Human creativity

Those three things are really the only things that separate us from animals, or even computers in this day and age. When you long to be somebody and something other than the person you are in body and mind", you are eliminating all three of the above things. It doesn't take make much original thought to try and be someone else, nor does it take much individuality or creativity.

I don't think anybody would willingly admit or even realize that they are living their life without much originality. If someone fully realized that their life was trying to be different than the person they really have the potential to be, I think they would stop living like that immediately. It just doesn't make natural sense to not use what we've been given to become our own person. That said, it does seem like there's a shocking lack of confidence in a lot of people that really makes it tougher for them to have the desire to be themselves.

Again, I've beaten this horse to death over the last year. You don't have to conform to the typical American idea of a "successful person" to have a good life. The worst thing that you can do is live your life with no original thought, no individuality, and no creativity. If you can get those three things figured out, you're going to have a happy life and you're going to attract a lot of legitimate people, and that sounds pretty good to me.


In addition to all that, I have a huge pet peeve for people who put the word "literally" into their sentences preceding something that's not actually literal. If it's not literal, just keep that part of the sentence out.

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Unwinnable Argument

I have spent a lot of time focusing on sports in my life. From my last year of high school to my last year of college, a large amount of my free time was dedicated to studying and writing about sports. While it didn’t really get me all that much, it did teach me a few things.

One thing that has recently started to annoy me about sports and sports writers is when they criticize the fans of sports teams.

First of all, I think people that take their sports fanhood super serious are kind of pathetic. While I was guilty of being one of those people in my day, I feel like I’ve grown out of it. Sports really don’t have the power to change my mood anymore. I mean I still love sports and watch them all the time, but I definitely prioritize other things over them. That said, I do think that you should be free to care about anything as much as you want and express that care in whatever way you want without being ostracized. Okay, well I think a little bit of criticism is fair, because some people really do act dumb about sports, but at the end of the day a person should be able to live their life however they choose. It really doesn’t affect anybody but that person, so why do people get so bent out of shape about things they can’t control and things that don’t even affect them in the first place?

This goes beyond sports, which I’ll get to eventually. But let me point you to the origin of this post. My buddy Mike Waterloo is the editor of a pretty successful Pittsburgh sports news website. Mike, being the great guy that he is, will let a lot of different people contribute to the site, and unfortunately for his website, sometimes the guys that submit articles are real idiots. I give to you, exhibit A. I won’t put the dudes name on here to let him save face, but you can go read the article for yourself and formulate your own opinions before I give you mine (Disclaimer: I didn’t even read the full post, I skimmed it and read some of the comments).

If you know me, you know I’m not even a hockey/Penguins fan. In fact, in the past I did my share of bashing hockey fans, but I’ve since matured (as if by magic), and I try to just leave it alone. But this guy didn’t take that approach. This guy saw a bunch of people acting in a way that he did not approve of, and he decided to start talking all kinds of shit on them. Now again, I didn’t read the post so I’m not going to say much more about this particular instance, but it’s a nice segway into my actual point.

Isn’t it ridiculous how some people see people doing something they don’t agree with (wrong or right) and they let them shape their entire view of that group of people? I’ve had people say terrible things about me personally just because I said something about sports that they didn’t agree with. Does that make any sense at all? One slight (and completely irrelevant) difference in opinion shapes someone’s entire view of a person? Isn’t there a lot more to personality and self worth than one opinion about sports? Or entertainment, or fashion, or whatever, fill in the blank?

I think it all comes back to the fact that humans are so incredibly selfish. We hardly even think about other people, much less try to form fair opinions of them. The average person sees a stranger and wants nothing more than for that person to go away and never look at them. I’ve tried to strike up a conversation with a few people on the T going to work and I end up just laughing at how little they seemed to want to talk to me. Maybe I’m just really ugly, that might be the case, but I think a lot of people would agree that getting to know someone new is not on the priority list for the majority of Americans. That’s kind of another topic though.

My point is that people don’t respond to criticism, especially from people that they don’t know. If you tell a random person that he’s an idiot because he’s not cheering for his sports team properly and then you try to tell him how to do it differently, chances are you are only going to more firmly entrench him in his own opinion. One of my favorite quotes comes from one of my favorite authors (aka one of the 3 authors I’ve actually read from), Dale Carnegie.

”You can't win an argument. You can't because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.”
Basically what he says in context is that if you succeed at belittling someone into getting them to agree with you, you’ve already lost because all you’ve done is damaged that other person while really not doing anything of value for yourself. I should probably post that whole paragraph from that book; maybe I’ll do that later.

What do you have to gain from convincing someone that you’re right about petty things? If you pick a fight with someone over a differing, unimportant opinion, you literally cannot win. It’s time that we grow up and realize that there are more important things to spend our time on than to try and pick petty battles just to win them and get a short term ego boost at the expense of other human beings.

Again, I’ve been a violator of this in the past. I’ve been in dozens of stupid arguments, and I’ve said some really mean things about other people in them, and I’m not proud of it. I have let my entire opinions of other people be determined from a stupid opinion, and I wish I could go back and change it, but I can’t. At least I can say that I learned my lesson and I’m getting better at it.

I wrote this post from a Laundromat, by the way.

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Forever is terrifying

I try to go to church every week, although often times I'm not very successful at that. Through my four years at Waynesburg I could never really find a church I really liked so there were a lot of weeks I didn't go at all. This summer was a bit tough to because for the first four months I was working every Sunday. But now I have a new job and I don't work weekends often and my old church now has a campus in the city, so I'm back to going regularly. The church formerly known as Pittsburgh East is now called Amplify Church and they have services in the Strip District every Sunday night at 6, I highly recommend checking it out.

Anyways, I'm not here to preach, but tonight the pastor talked a bit about heaven and eternity, two pretty common elements of Christianity. I've personally never liked thinking about eternity, because it's horrifying to me. Growing up I've seen my mom always get really excited and hopeful when talking about what happens after we die, she cannot wait to get to heaven, which is probably how I should look at it as well. But for whatever reason I just can't say I'm not scared of the concept of eternity. It doesn't make sense to me. I'll start thinking about it and then I'll shortly realize that my brain doesn't have the ability to think in that way. I can't even control my own thoughts about it, which makes me nervous.


I'm sure heaven's gonna be great, but I still try to not think about it very much. What I'm wondering now is how people that don't believe in eternity deal with life. I'm sure there are some people that don't really believe in heaven reading this right now, so don't take this like I'm criticizing you in any way, I'm just honestly confused as to how you live your life. How can you go through this life knowing that everything you'll ever do or become will just go away forever someday. How can you be okay with working some okay job and doing a bunch of really average things every day knowing that your time here is limited? Do these people just not think about it and ignore the realization of a true end to life? That is even more terrifying, and I don't understand how people can go through life like that. I've never been the kind of guy to come at people for their religious beliefs not matching up with mine, it's not my business what you believe and it would be incredibly hypocritical or me to think less of a person for what they believe. I think I've done a good job with being respectful to people thus far, and I want to let everyone know that this post isn't knocking people who think differently than me, I just simply don't understand. If you could pick what to believe (which I understand that you really can't in a lot of cases), like if you had total control of what you believe, wouldn't you choose to believe in God and heaven and eternity? Doesn't that sound a ton better than just dying and not having a soul that goes anywhere? It seems more appealing to me, but again it's largely irrelevant.

Life's short, that's one of the most overused cliche's there is, but it's true. I feel like people just go through the motions way too much. Doesn't wasting a single day here seem like a horrible idea when you step back and look at how short and irrelevant a human life can be? Yikes.

Imagine you're running and following a telephone wire to get to your final destination. You don't know where the end of it is, but you know you'll get there eventually. Now let's say that the final destination is you dying, and let's say that there are various places to stop and people to meet and talk to along the way. Would there be a stop you wouldn't quit running for? Would there be a single person you wouldn't want to meet and connect with, knowing what you know about the end of the wire? Of course not, because you know you want to squeeze every single moment out of the trip because at the end it's all over and you can't go back.

Why don't we think about life like that? Every second is just another second closer to us dying and being off of this earth, so why aren't we squeezing every little moment out of the short time we do have? Again, super cliche and probably not actually very groundbreaking stuff I'm saying here, but I thought of that analogy the other day while I was running and I figured I'd share it. So there you go.

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Squishy Lemons by Anthony Cooper

My good friend Anthony Cooper wrote this up and sent it to me, and I wanted to share it on the blog. Coop's one of the more advanced thinkers I know, so it might be kind of tough for us weaker minds to get a grasp on his advanced thought processes, but it's worth trying. For more of Cooper's genius, you can follow him on Twitter @acoop13. 

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Everyone has heard the cliche, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Most people have also heard the alternative saying that was brought to life in the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall, "When life gives you lemons, just say fuck the lemons and bail." I'm of the opinion that there is a lot which can be gleaned from both phrases, but neither necessarily has to be followed outright.  If you are of the disposition from which following the first makes you happy, so be it. If you prefer the second, wake up and smell the roses.

Life's gifts are beautiful in the sense that they under no circumstance should be completely discarded, nor should they get in the way of what is truly important in life; happiness. It's extremely easy to get caught up making lemonade, thinking that the final product will bring a feeling of happiness.  If you are one of those lucky enough to have a job you love, then this may very well be the case. Odds are you, you aren't in that position.  I'm not saying don't try in life, I'm a pretty big proponent of doing something right if you are going to do it, just don't take yourself too seriously in your task.  If you can't step back every once and a while and laugh at yourself, or say "Ya know, this is cool and all, and I really hope it works out, but if it doesn't, I've got friends, family, and a pretty solid life that's all more important," then you run the risk of getting so emotionally involved that anything less than perfection can ruin you.  Or you just come off as a total clown ass. 

Bailing on the life and the lemons is sort of "like [the previous] one's fellow... it's sort of the exact opposite in fact of that - not an evil version but just, you know..." And what I mean by this is that happiness comes first, followed by realistic emotional implosion. It's super easy to be envious of those who don't really do much out of high school, and are having the time of their lives' rebelling against the system, ski bumming, popping molly, anything really other than real world stuff.  Sooner or later, (for most people, there are obviously exceptions to almost everything), reality is going to set in, the person in question is going to look at their socially and economically stable peers, and are going to realize the door to that room is on the other side of a marathon.  

The point I'm trying to get at, is "when life gives you lemons, jump up and down on them and listen to the squishy sound they make, and laugh," because life is too short to take yourself too seriously. Appreciate the gifts life throw's your way, make something of them, but at the end of the day, make sure you are able to look back on what you've done and smile, "don't be no cloud on a sunny day."

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Rescripting

This is another post inspired by the book I'm currently reading, The Seven Characteristics of Highly Effective People. Spoiler alert, the second habit in this book is "begin with the end in mind", although what I want to talk about doesn't directly fall under that umbrella.

What I'm writing about tonight is what Covey calls rescripting, which doesn't really tell you much. A huge part of what this book tries to impress on its readers is the presence and impact of paradigms and paradigm shifts.

Paradigm: a theory or a group of ideas about how something should be done, made, or thought about

Relate that to a theory or group of ideas on your life and how you have been living it. Everyone has their own idea about how life should be lived and how they will live their own lives. A lot of times people know how they should live their lives, but they choose to live them other ways for a variety of reasons. I also see people who really never think about they live their life, they kind of just do it. They have no end goals in mind, so there's really no reason for them to gather a plan to try and get there. They just do whatever they feel like in the moment and don't consider its implications on the future. If you're one of those people, then this post probably won't do much for you.

What we're talking about is rescripting our theories and views our lives and how we should be living them. It requires a ton of self awareness, which is not an easy thing to have at times. Not a lot of people can say that they have the ability to consistently take a step back from themselves and look at their actions, thoughts, and responses and evaluate them fairly. When was the last time you looked back at something you did and realized that it was the incorrect response, and that you would have been much better served reacting a different way. When was the last time you looked a life value or view in general and evaluated it objectively? We don't do that very often, do we? We get so hung up in the constant motion of life and the ever ticking clock to ever really even consider the possibility of evaluating ourselves.

It's not that we think that we're good enough or that we can't improve, it's that our minds never travel to the place where we even think about those types of things. I'm speaking to myself more than anyone here. Self evaluation is uncommon, and just another huge tool that we don't take advantage of.

Can you imagine a person that was constantly evaluating his actions, responses, values, opinions, and beliefs? Can you imagine a person that did that and always knew how to change them for the better? How much more effective would that person be? That person would constantly be getting better and more successful in every way. Can you argue that? I don't think you can.

So why don't we try it? Why don't we have that presence of mind to evaluate our presence of mind? It's weird isn't it? Have you ever thought about yourself like this? I don't think I have, and I think I can improve a ton in all facets of life if I utilized this ability better.

Humans are remarkable creatures. God gave us the ability to think and reason so we can become extraordinary beings, but we consistently choose to leave the ability on the shelf so we can continue to live mediocre lives.

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Confidence

It's really hard to get to know a person, and I think that's both a good thing and a bad thing. On the one hand, it would be really lame to talk to someone for a couple hours and then know everything about them. It would be boring and there would be less reason to continue to pursue relationships with said person. On the other hand, it kind of sucks that you really can't gauge much of anything until you're really comfortable with the other person. I wish it was easier to tell what a person is really like the first time spending time with them. Maybe not completely, but just more.

I think the main reason for all that is the general lack of confidence people have. We live with ourselves everyday, we see the good and we see the bad. But for some reason, our minds automatically focus more on the bad than on the good. If you hear a person talk about themselves honestly, it'll almost always come out more negative than positive, regardless of the person. Humans these days naturally have a lack of confidence and self esteem. That translates into them coming off as boring, bland people when they first talk to new people. I would say that I think this is more true in females than males, but I can't say that for sure because I spend a lot more time trying to figure out what girls are like than what guys are like.

I've been on my fair share of first dates and none of them have been spectacular. They've all been at least a little bit awkward (although I think I do a fantastic job at keeping interesting conversation flowing and avoiding most awkward situations), and the girl has always seemed a bit on the boring side to me. In most cases I have gone on to realize that the girl really wasn't how she seemed, she was just nervous and a bit scared to show her real self because of the lack of comfortability with me. That's completely understandable and probably happens with most everybody. If two people don't know each other and aren't comfortable around each other, there's no way for the true personality to come out.

There are just times when I wish that people could always be comfortable with other people and you could really judge a potential relationship based on its first impression. Again, that would create a shallow base to the relationship and would surely make the rest of the relationship far less interesting. It's good both ways and bad both ways, just kind of one of those things.

I do think that there is a difference between being uncomfortable and being unconfident. Being uncomfortable is natural, being unconfident is unnatural (at least in my eyes it is). Imagine if we could see all the positive traits and only the positive traits we have. Imagine if we looked at negative traits ONLY in terms of how we can improve them. What reason would we ever have to not be confident? What if we came into every new relationship without worrying about the other person thinking negatively about us? What if all the shields were down, because you fully realized that you didn't need them? How much better would that make your day-to-day interactions, and your relationships in general? I think that's how God naturally intended humans to be. I could be wrong about that, but that's how I feel.

For whatever reason, we have fallen so far away from loving ourselves that the majority of the thoughts we have about ourselves are negative and destructive, which holds us back infinitely more than any flaw we could ever have.

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