Monthly Archives: July 2021

We all will face challenges from time to time. It is easy to be overcome by negativity reducing us to our lesser selves. For some, this means we become violent. Others it means we are just grumpy. Or we just could not be performing at our normal capacity.

You need to first isolate yourself from what is actually happening. This can either be by walking away, ending a conversation early, or perhaps just stop paying attention altogether. If you are getting physically abused and need help, this is not the same and I am not saying this is a solution – please get help.

The next step is quite unique to the individual, and it would need looking back at experience. You should consider this before you enter such a situation as you may not be able to think clearly at that point. It could be you like to talk out problems, or just shout. You may want to break something or hurt someone – you don’t want to break a valuable item, so due consideration prior is important.

And this is what I would call a negotiation – it is getting some perspective on the situation and finding the right response to it. Events may make us sad or angry and it is up to us to respond to it. Give it some time but also allow yourself the space to express your frustrations and disappointment. Realise that you are in control of how you respond at that particular moment.

When you are deciding to jump from one career to another, or when you want to move to a different city. Or perhaps you want to decide whether to get married or to plan for another child. It would take a very long time to make such a decision before proceeding.

If the next question is when and you are stuck, you should only look at the negatives. For example it will be more risky moving to another city during a pandemic because it is difficult and very expensive to get flights. It might be a bad time to open a new restaurant for similar reasons. However, if you are waiting for some signals, then it is likely procrastination.

The mentality you actually get into should be one of no return. There may be a way to go back to what you used to have, but you should be prepared for an all in. Having a secondary backup plan often hampers progress or paints a different outcome. It may cause you to linger longer than you should. The comfortable past will call back to you at different difficult times. Sometimes that is warranted and you really do need to go back. But stick with it 100% and see it through as far as possible.

This mitigates timing risk. When we wait for a certain opportune time, what we are also doing is giving ourselves an easy way in and more excuses to fail. Good times don’t last forever, so you need to be able to move forward even if it has gone past that point. There is no point to go in at a bad time though, that is just asking for trouble.

We have come to a point where vaccination is the only defence we have against the protracted COVID pandemic. Yet it’s not going to be a clear path ahead because vaccination is too slow.

At the beginning, it looked like we would have it under control pretty rapidly with many lockdowns. Every country had a different response to it, but we all had the same enemy. This virus will claim more lives than some leaders estimated, and finally we all had no choice but to develop a vaccine, in record time.

Yet this vaccine rollout wasn’t perfect in many ways. The main problem was that it was rushed, meaning that its real efficacy can only be determined long after it was first mass produced. This doesn’t allay people’s concerns because of lack of testing in the field.

Compounding the issue is that despite being mass produced, it still isn’t produced fast enough. Why do I say that? It is because the virus will mutate among the unvaccinated (and eventually vaccinated) people to a point where the vaccine stops being as effective. What then?

Well the flu has been around forever, and so has the flu vaccine. The thing is the flu vaccine needs to be taken yearly to protect you from the various strains. Basically we have not eradicated the flu – how are we going to eradicate COVID which is so close to flu?

If it is somehow possible to accelerate the production and issuing of vaccines say by a factor of 10, perhaps we will be on our own way to eradication. Until then, we are just living experiment subjects of rapidly issued vaccines.

Does this mean I don’t support the vaccination? I do wholeheartedly agree with the intention and will happily vaccinate in due course. But these shortcomings should be acknowledged as they are.

The most classic ways to make money is to go to work or to sell something. Sometimes selling something feels like it needs to bring the worse out of you. Or if you have never sold anything before you might associate selling as something someone deceitful does. That leaves us to think money is a form of reflection of your self worth. After all, the harder you work the more you are worth… Right?

Well if you think along these lines it is going to be difficult to amass wealth. You will be self sabotaging yourself whenever you try to relate earning money and not putting in effort. You will probably also struggle to see past your own morals. Surely not everyone needs to be a millionaire, but a bit of extra money wouldn’t hurt, right?

Once you have conquered this self defeating thought, you open yourself up to bigger opportunities. The rich are not always evil, and life doesn’t have to be just about how hard you work to reach success. You can potentially have the cake and eat it too.

One way to do that is to consider money as just a tool. It is a tool that can be exchanged for other useful and frivolous things. It can be exchanged to give you experiences that are hard to obtain. But most importantly it is a tool that can make you even more money. The tool may need to be used in many different ways to generate more of itself, or it can be exchanged for something you need there and then. It’s just a tool – no need to be overly righteous about it.

In time you will then see that most forms of investment are similar, you are just using that same tool to make more of itself.

Not everyone was born knowing what they want to do in life. With access to so much knowledge, you could do multiple things along the way. The challenge would be to find out where to start. Well the idea is to just start!

Take an inkling of an interest, or any passing moment and dedicate some time to it. Make it something you can do in a short period of time, but regularly. It doesn’t have to be great strides – just a little bit will do. And don’t give up so soon, give it a decent amount of time to have some fruit. Then after a certain point, you can then assess whether you enjoyed it or not. Chances are if you didn’t take any shortcuts you would have enjoyed it somewhat.

Doing this continuously helps you focus your energy and give any fleeting ideas a chance for being reality. No harm stopping later, but to not try is to fail forever.

Over time you will start to truly identify whether or not you want to continue by questioning your motives and assessing how you feel doing the routines. It is fruitless to push mindlessly but the start must be pushed for.

Passion may be a bit of a misnomer for something you might have just developed a knack for over time. But it’s nice to be good at something and it tends to be self rewarding.