Ponder Your Way Out Of This Loop?

I am new..
New to the beginning of success..
New to any understanding of what success really is..

What I can add is that life is all a perspective, and your perspective of success changes when things start to turn in your direction. Ironically, this is a false statement. Nothing ever turns in your direction, you turn in the direction of everything else.

When I began feeling successful about who I was. When I realized the fortunes I had, when millions struggled to even have that,... THIS, is when change was happening. I began a new lifestyle with a better focus. A focus to improve myself, not my bank account.

By doing this, bad habits faded, and self improvement was a very cheap focus, and what do you know.. I forgot about my bank account, and lived my life to its fullest, and bank, I had a huge load of money saved. New opportunities came, I grabbed them, and what do you know.. More money and more success.. Not even thinking about it..


The problem is that people think about the paradox they live in.. They focus on it, and continue to live it for the rest of their lives.

There is no Pondering your way out of this loop -- Pondering about this loop is the problem that will keep you in this loop.
so yeah,. Focus on what is important - Who you already are, and what you want to do to make you better. Trust me, I just walked around that corner warriors.

I don't keep my house empty during the day.

My family lives there.

/end loop

Most who find themselves in such a situation have in fact pondered their predicament time and again. The problem isn't that people don't think about this sort of thing. The problem is that they are too afraid to do anything about it.

They want their hand held by the system. They want a job. They want an employer. They want benefits. They want that umbrella of safety. The system dictates the rules and the pace and they play the game, whether it be living the 9-5 life or suffering the credit-debt cycle.

In short, it takes balls to break away from that system and to truly do it on your own and to live exactly the way you imagine. Very few people reach this stage in life, not because the rest are less intelligent or less capable, they just lack the courage.

Does this count if you work from home like me?

here is the other thing to ponder ..as this loop only actually worked for a minority of humans over the last hundred years ..in the western world ..so the loop is better much better than trying to figure out how to feed your family when there are no jobs to get .

lets take aim at list loop ..and ask the obvious question ..as long as jobs lasted for years and years and decades ..the loop could form ..but as fewer and fewer jobs get created and more get replaced by advaces in tech ..eventually no job will be there long enough to support a loop ..and the line on this is in 10-20 years .

so you are in the loop .. but you see an advance in tech or a company competing with the one you are working for that could put your company out of business .. ..

so how prepared are you if you are in the loop and the job goes away

the cycle i was on was i would have a job for 4 years and actually double what i was makeing at the start then the job would go away and i would be back at best looking for jobs at 50% of what i was making .

that is probably a more common thing for many peopl now than the endless loop at the start of this thread

While I'm a big advocate of actual freedom ... it is not that dramatic.

The clothes you get dressed in give you a sense of self-esteem and pride. The same can be said about the car. It is fun to drive. The home you live in gives you security and comfort. The work you do gives you satisfaction, doing work for work's sake because you want to excels.

I used to believe that the only way to life is to work in your own business, spend your time traveling, reading, doing your own thing. That people with jobs were wasting their lives away.

That's what most self-improvement books taught me no?

After I've meet some of these people and listened to them, I've understood that they are actually happy.

Now don't take me wrong, for every person that finds himself in the first paragraph, there are ten who are actively hating their lives. But there are some people who yes, are comfortable with a 9 - 5 job, are comfortable with driving each day, are comfortable with living in their big home.

They are happy.

Self-help is very biased.

The movie Fight Club is not a form of absolute truth and The Four Hour Workweek is not a bible on how to live a good life.

These are choices, only choices.

A few weeks ago I've meet a taxi driver and talked with him a bit. He was employed in a managerial position where he earned three times as much as he is earning now. He quit because his wife just gave birth to their child and he wanted to be there at least a part of the time.

So he quit his high paying job to be a part time taxi driver and he was happy.

Does this mean that his life is perfect now? NO, not by a long shot. But he made a choice.

Work is a part of life. You need to do it no matter what. The best thing you can do then is simply enjoy your work. If you are doing it for 50 hours a week, at least be happy doing it.

And as a pre-emptive comment ...

If you think that "clothes can't give you a sense of self-esteem", you are wrong. Everything can give you that. A tattoo, clothes, your phone, even your name. The whole "your self-esteem comes from knowing where you are headed and being happy with who you are" type of thinking is NOT the only way to go.

Yes, exactly.

Why some people are complaining about the "all nine to five thing" there are other folks who would do anything in their power to have that nine to five job.

Do you think more is achievement?

No, it's not. Happiness comes from the perceived difference between two levels, not from the quantitative one. I had this discussion with a doctor two weeks ago, about how substances in our body determines our state.

You are not happy when you have, let's say for the sake of measuring, 50.0 endorphin's. You are happy when you make the switch from 31 to 35. Or from 1 to 2.

Happiness is a very relative thing and it is unique to each one of us. You can't tell me what should make me happy because you are not in my shoes. Maybe for me happiness is what I'm going to do in the next minutes - get back to reading a great political thriller novel.

For another person is eating sushi and yet for another driving two hours to work.

This is what many people refer as the self-help kool aid. To think that there is only one way to see things. That we all have the same goal - good parents, entrepreneurs, working for ourselves, students of life, six pack ab and speaking five foreign languages.

But in reality - every path is different.

And there is a BIG difference between ...

"How can I break free of a life that I don't like" vs "The 9 - 5 life is evil".

I'm not saying that the OP said that. I'm saying that the entire self-help industry is saying that.

It makes life look black or white when life is 1000 shades of grey.

In the end - why we are here?

To earn money, to spend money, to fall in love, to have sex, to learn from our mistakes, to lose all our money, to get our money back, to get hit hard by life, to kick life back in the balls and to repeat it all again.

Translation = TO BE HAPPY.

Not to subscribe to any religious or philosophical dogma. I've read over 150 books so far so by all means, I should be the poster child for self-help. Yet, among those 150 books, there were a few that weren't preachy and told me just that - think for yourself and understand that life is not black and white.

That there is no real GOOD or BAD.

No absolute RIGHT or EVIL.

That everything is highly circumstantial in nature. That what you consider evil may be good for the other person. That sometimes life is a collaboration game, other times is a zero sum. Sometimes both can win, other times one must win and one must lose.

There are 1000 different scenarios, 1000 different type of circumstances, 1000 ways to see things and the best thing to do to survive and thrive in this world is to simply see them as they are.

Don't judge. Don't impose. Don't wish things were different. Just see them as they are. In all their beauty and ugliness. And then you can be happy.

If you think otherwise, you MAY be just deceiving yourself.

Good things don't always happen to good people and bad things don't always happen to bad people. People who live the 4 hour workweek are not always happy and people who live the 50 hour workweek are not always sad.

People who do good things do not always have more friends and people who do bad things enemies. It is far more complex than to simplify life on a binary level. To say that there is something like Karma or universal absolute truth.

Yet ... most people will do just that. Why?

Confirmation bias. We look for proof on what we enjoy, what we want, what we like. So take everything you read, even what I've wrote with a grain of salt. I'm using confirmation bias too.

I'm building a case around what I think it is right. My only advantage here is that I know what I'm doing.

A lot of people don't and see their way as the only way. I see my way as the way until I discover otherwise.

rog ,

i think we are close to the same page . the self help industry put down the 9-5 crowd ..when the 9-5 crowd are doing better than 6 billion other people on the planet ,

9-5 beat the historic norm ..that why around the world people will work for 30 cents an hour ..in horrible work condition ..because it beats the options they have and leads to a better life.

much of the success industry was built preaching to mlms and also big companies .

the reason i feel jim rohn lasted as long as he did .. to the age he did and in the industry is he understood to leave people who are happy where they are alone ..

you know one day someone will be staying at my small resort .. eating fresh food mostly produced from the resort .. and paying me a good chunk of money to stay there .. and will think i am not that successful .. but i will be the one being paid by who ever thing that to live for a few days or a week or two.. like i live every day ..

Loved that. But, I guess I ain't like most people because I don't drive to work (work drives to get to me - I work from home LOL).

But, isn't that what "the dream of living a better life" is all about? You strive to reach the summit (which is endless) and die en-route!

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Luckily most people reading these post, live different lives, better ones, right?

Believe in God and he will guide you through
thats the simple and most easy way which most
of all of us forget..

Think outside of the box and dream big!!! You will succeed! Don't settle for the mundane...

I actually saw that quote on a motivational - or thought provoking - poster the other day.

Yes, everyone is different which is evident by all of the the "I don't do this part" or "I do this instead" comments listed. And again, aren't you GLAD we are all different?

Yet, for me, the thought causes me to consider how much VALUE is there really in a lot of our "stuff". Know what I mean?

What are we willing to sacrifice for that "stuff"? We decide what it's worth in time as well as dollars.

For me, I have found that the older I get the less important - or the less valuable - some of these "things" become.

"Make it an AWESOME day! (Who else is going to do it for you?)"
Mike