Found:Article on post Katrina Exploitation that blew me away

Every single person in this world is where they are because of choices. It may be their parents choice to have a child in the middle of the Iraq conflict. It may be the choice of a company to shut down the factories and fire the husband of a wife and three kids. Our choices lift us closer to what we think we want and simultaneously weigh us down with the byproducts. Chasing money robs us of time for friends, family, opportunities we’ll never know. Focusing more on friends and family makes financial situations tighter.

What of the person who loses their job and has nothing to fall back on? Nothing. No savings. A car and bills and a rent they can no longer afford to pay. There is a system called welfare in this country. There are other social programs. Depending on the situation such systems can be a lifeline back to a better place or a life preserver to hold them afloat while they linger and collect paychecks. Abuse of the system is going to happen by its very nature. Does that mean it should be stopped? Is there a better way than such a system?

Politics is seductive. Vote for me and I’ll impose trade sanctions to protect our jobs. Vote for him and he’ll raise taxes because he’s too stupid/inexperienced/the wrong guy. The world we live in is filled by shades of gray. Police are not around because we enjoy the need for law enforcement. Rules and laws are created because without them people with greater power than others have used it to take what they want without a care for the people whose lives they destroy by stealing from them, lying, abusing the society they live in. Americans are not different people compared to the rest of the world so much as the ideals we as a people have chosen have been enforced through our schools, our courts, and the everyday decisions of the people in our government. These ideals are NOT carved in stone. Laws change. Governors, senators, congressmen, presidents change. The men and women we choose to make decisions are either lifting our nation up or dragging it down.

At least, that’s how its supposed to work. When the laws are taken off the books for ‘extreme circumstances’ you see people’s true colors. Pissed off does not begin to describe how I felt when I ran across this article about Hurricane Katrina.

http://www.alternet.org/katrina/56958?page=entire

How did we let this happen? How do laws get brushed off the books and no one hears about it? Sure, FEMA screwed up big time. The government screws up all the time. But how did basic standards- paying people for the work they’ve done, regulating the strings of contractors/subcontractors to prevent the abuse they inflicted in the weeks and months after this vicious disaster continue to be tolerated without clamping down on the problem? What is preventing this from happening again?

Why I will never name ’stock tips’ or talk about investing strategies

Everywhere we turn there are people telling us what to do with our money. Websites promise to send emails of ‘hot tips.’ Newspapers are eager to bury us under in-depth analysis of this or that tarzenian bond fund. Personal finance magazines provide us with ‘ten high flying stocks for fall’ every year.

The focus of this site is not primarily on making money. The focus of this site is making a measurable difference in our own lives. If we cannot focus on ourselves, how can we ever fully focus on another? How can we expect anyone to read the material on this site with an open mind when I’m shoving brokerage service ads down their throat every other word?

Every media source has an agenda. Whether they openly state it or deny it, its there. I have an agenda. I shape my words to present ideas a certain way. Whether you choose to indulge in these ideas or not is your choice.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not calling the media evil, selfish, or labelling them as the villains. They’re trying to make money just like anyone else. They have families to support, habits to keep fed, and like having a roof over their heads as much as I do. If you truly feel the need, go sign up for whichever service you think is best. With a little bit of research its not hard to find detailed advice on how to invest on your own for free. Research the great investors of today. Like a basketball player shooting for the big leagues, study the greats.  Magic Johnson. Michael Jordan. Patrick Ewing. Scottie Pippen. Larry Bird. The list goes on. Find the best in the field you want to succeed in and model your plans on what they’ve done. Take what you like and leave the rest. Times change and what worked yesterday may need to be changed to meet today’s unique environment.

If I believe in anything, I believe in choice. I believe in free will. There is a fundamental conflict between the media source and the consumer. They provide information. The majority of sources substitute quality with quantity. Its a giant free for all. By sifting through the information for what makes sense, what we can understand, we can build understanding and skill without signing up for $59.99 a month in services.

The biggest reason I will never give advice? The only strategies  I could talk about with a free conscious are the ones I use for my own investing. I’m wise enough to listen to the Oracle of Omaha’s advice and don’t tell anyone which specific securities I own or am getting in or out of at anyone time.

Life is harsh. I may believe in second chances but there is no guarantee any of us will have one. Sometimes the only way to succeed is to help people as much as you can while taking care of yourself. Keeping our mouths shut. Knowing how to present ourselves to people and when to shut up can save our career, our relationship, and our life under extreme circumstances.

Paradox Experience Creates Breaking People and Hope

The moment in our lives when we have the greatest power to influence our futures is ironically the one in which most of us don’t understand how precious our opportunity is. When we are young and free. As we begin to become adults. We have forever to make important decisions later. Without realizing the consequences of our actions we rashly ‘go after our dreams’ and ‘party ’till the sun goes down.’ Or we don’t. We take life too seriously.

Life is extreme. Extreme poverty. Extreme wealth. Every single one of us is guided by our individual extremes .

The challenge is to understand ourselves. Understand who we are and prevent ourselves from swinging so far to one extreme that we fly off the handle. This challenge is complicated by the nature of experience.

The more experience we have the more it impacts us. For good or for ill. If the experience brings out the best in us it can inspire us to new heights. Experiences for ill such as being used, cheating, loss of family, extreme poverty, hardship, loss of limbs, disease, cancer, you name it, can bring us down to the depths of despair. That is not the only choice. Extreme hardship builds extreme skills. Extreme strength, extreme tenacity that the woman who had the comfortable life has never been pushed to develop.

People break. It happens. It sucks. Sometimes they never put themselves back together. Sometimes someone else can help. And sometimes when the pieces come together they are a radically different person. Ploughshares beaten into swords do not serve the same purpose.

They see the world differently. Their new skills may serve them well, but they will never see the world the way it was before.

How much experience is enough? How much is too much?

How much can we take and still be us?

Do You Remember me Michelle?

Late at night when odd thoughts drift through my head I think of people I used to know. People I knew for a long time and people who drifted in my life and right back out like a wisp of smoke.

Have you ever met someone who stood out from the rest? The kind of person you have a casual conversation with once and remember for the rest of your life? I have. One of those people was a girl named Michelle.

The Pizza shop not far from Times Square in NYC was almost closed. The only people there were my friend, myself and two girls. It was empty because it was two AM on a weeknight. We were there because the bars had mostly closed and my friend and I didn’t want to go back to the ship yet. One of the girls started talking to my friend so a casual conversation sparked between the other girl and I.

She was a little shorter than me, cute with that look like she knew she’d done something she’d never be caught for lurking in the back of her eyes. She asked me where I was from, how I became a marine. I asked her where she’d been. She’d been living in England for a while. Somehow we began talking about life and important events.

She was in England. She was  in the area when the London Subway Bombings happened on July 7, 2005. Time has worn the edges off what we talked about, but here is what she told me as well as I can remember it.

“When the TV came on I was in a room with a lot of people. Then as the reports came in of the bombings in the subway it was like time stood still. There was a woman in traditional middle eastern dress nearby. As the images of what happened played out she covered her face. Her body shook as she cried with shame. You could feel the tension in the room. At that moment I felt the world changing around me. Like the world was never going to be the same. I’ll never forget that day.”

The world changes. Sometimes we can affect it. Sometimes we can’t. I gave my phone number, my email address, and other contact information to Michelle. I enjoyed talking to her. She was one of those people I felt a connection with.

She’s also the reason I always take down the other person’s phone number and contact information when I give out mine to this day.

She never called me. Never emailed me. I don’t mind never seeing a copy of all the pictures people took with my friends, myself, and their families. I was deeply disappointed that we would never talk again.

Do you remember me Michelle? The boy you had a quiet talk with at two AM at the pizza shop near Times Square late one night in May 2005?

He remembers you. He hopes that maybe, someday, you read this or a friend or a family member of yours does and asks you about it. He hopes. But he doesn’t expect that to happen. He stopped believing in miracles a long time ago.

I’ll never forget you Michelle. I hope you never forget me.

What Brad Pitt can Tell us about Sacrifice

The Aztecs may have taken sacrifice to the extreme when they killed people to appease their gods. They had the right idea, wrong method. We may not be able to influence the weather. We are able to alter our entire lives. Maybe its not as dramatic as calling rain when a drought comes around. The rain would be gone eventually. The impact we can make on who we are can last a lifetime.

Its not easy. It couldn’t have been easy for Brad Pitt either. He did something most people will never do. He left college two credits shy of graduating to make it big in Hollywood. How many people have the courage to follow their dreams? Follow them into great jobs like driving strippers around in limos? Moving refrigerators? Wearing a chicken suit while working for the El Pollo Loco Restaurant chain? Brad Pitt worked in every one of those jobs as he worked his way  through auditions and bit parts. No one was there to hand him his dreams.

I’ve never interviewed Brad Pitt. I’ve never spoken to him. His actions say more than a thousand words ever will. He took a chance. Then he took another. He didn’t give up after the first few months. Sure, he started to get big roles but that took even more work. Work he threw himself into or he wouldn’t be where the man he is today. So what does that tell us?

Source of Brad Pitt Info Courtesy of -

http://www.kidzworld.com/article/1083-brad-pitt-biography

Don’t Fear the Reaper.

Death.

We’re all going to die. Whether we want to or not. Its going to happen. This simple statement could be taken as an excuse to be selfish. To live in the moment and forget tomorrow. ”We’ve got one life to live, let’s get it over with!” That is not what I want to talk about. If a person has that attitude, chances are there are other issues lurking in their past then the one they shout to the world.

What I want to talk about are the feelings that come with death. Whether we are the son of an elderly gentleman slowly dying of cancer or the father of a young woman crushed in a motorcycle accident it affects us all. It happens fast. Its not cool.

Every story has a beginning. A middle. An end. Our life is our story. Our birth is our beginning. Our middle is in between our birth and our death. We are able to choose how parts of our own story play out. Like the central character in any novel, we do not control everything in the story. We are limited.

One of the greatest draws in a story is not knowing what happens next. We don’t know when our story will end. The time, place, or manner of our death will remain a mystery until it happens. There are several ways to look at this. Fear is one of them. Fear of dying. Fear of the unknown. Fear of leaving our family. Fear of our loved ones passing away. We don’t want them to leave us. They don’t want to leave us.

I don’t know how you look at death. This is how I look at death. Looking at it this way has given me greater freedom than I’ve had at any other time in my life.

Death is. Its never going away.

We have as much control over death as we do over the rain that falls from the sky. Worrying about it, dreading it does nothing good for any of  us. All it can do is bring us down and clutter our lives with pointless negative feelings. It sucks. Its not fair. Everyone will die.

If death is going to happen anyway, stop worrying about it. Let go. Surrender to the inevitable. Take that energy that used to be thrown against fate and apply it to the parts or our lives that we can change. Spend time with family. Spend time doing what makes you happy. If it doesn’t make us happy, why are we wasting our valuable life torturing ourselves?

Don’t worry about when it will happen. Don’t become fatalistic on me, but stand toe to toe with death. Spit in his eyes. What’s the worst he can do? Kill you? He’s going to do that anyway. We may not be able to completely throw away the fear of death that is inside us all. What we can do is face death with honor, stoicism and dignity. We can live our life the way we choose to live it. If I decide that certain actions are worth dying for that is my choice. I would rather die in the process of living my life to the fullest as the man I am taking the actions I decide must be taken than live a miserable life always fearful of losing that which is already lost. All we can do is delay death.

Decide what you will live for. What’s the point of living if you have nothing to live for? Decide who you will live for. Your husbands. Your wives. Your children. And decide what you would rather die in the process of upholding than live without.

How do you want to be remembered? As the man who faced death with dignity until the day he died? The man who sucked every drop of life out of every day of his life with a smile on his face? Or the man who was so afraid of dying he never let himself really live?

The Power of Purpose in Our Lives

Ships drift from port to port at random. They don’t know where they’re going. They don’t now how they’re going to get there. Imagine.  If they do manage to reach their destination, how will they know to stop drifting if they don’t know they’ve reached their destination?

These ships are us. They are us when we coast through life without plans. Plans are important. Plans are only means to the end. The destruction or radical change of a plan does not mean that our purpose is lost. Purpose is the goal. Without purpose life is pointless. We are not living, we are merely existing.

Purposes are what I believe separates us from animals. All species grow, procreate one way or another, age and die. Nature’s cycle. We cannot break this cycle. Fighting it is as futile as a beach fighting the tide.

Discovering a person’s strongest purposes is a window into their soul. What matters most to one woman may be the anti-purpose of another man. Or never register at all. Discovering your own deepest purposes is one of the keys to unlocking your inner potential. What you do with that knowledge is up to you.

It makes me sad to think of all the people who never take the time to understand what drives them. Living life without even a small understanding of oneself seems suicidal to me. Not physically suicidal. Worse. Suicide of the soul. Our inner drives feed who we are. When we are on the path to achieving our deepest desires it is such an awesome feeling that nothing can replace.

Drug addicts in particular sadden me. They may know a simple fact. I don’t think they understand it or they wouldn’t be doing drugs. Drugs are simply a trigger for the body’s own chemicals. Think about it. As far as I know, every chemical that is injected, inhaled, smoked, ingested, or any other way I can’t think of to take drugs is nothing more than a big red button. A button to trigger chemicals within our bodies.

Anyone can tap into their own personal high. Its not as easy as injecting heroin. Popping prescription pills. Smoking marijuana. It doesn’t last as long. Its all natural. Its legal. It makes you feel better without any of the nasty side effects of drugs. 

There’s a wicked catch. You have to work for it. You won’t feel it all the time. Walk with me for a moment. Let’s walk through a park. A park in your home town. Maybe a park you played in as a child. It could be a park you play in with your children. Now imagine how happy you are. Wherever you are. Whatever you’re doing. Watch the clouds go by. I love watching the clouds. They’re never the same..

Playing as a little kid life was so much simpler. We were all so happy all the time. How many more times a day do kids laugh than adults?

Do they know something we don’t?

What To Expect When your Loved One Returns From a Combat Zone

One remarkable individual I have exchanged emails with asked me a question recently.  She volunteers at two VA hospitals. She is a humble person who asked me a question so important that I want to share it with anyone else who may have similar questions. She is a public speaker for several organizations that help family members deal with returning military members. She asked if there were any areas I think she should speak about. Her speech is entitled ‘When a deployed loved one returns home from a warzone - how to be a loving help instead of a drain on their loved one.’

She hits the nail on the head when she says “I know every single person who comes home from a warzone is going to be a different person.” The hard part is determing exactly how they are different. Details that seem small such as a favorite coffeeshop going out of business may drive home that times have changed when they least expect it. (That is a personal experience, I still haven’t found out if my favorite coffeeshop went out of business or moved)

There are several key issues that come into play when transitioning back to the states. There is the cultural shock from being immersed in a foreign culture so long. Changing timezones radically disrupts sleep habits, mood swings, and day to day life. Several of my close friends do not have the same sleeping patterns they had before. Before I deployed I could sleep eight to twelve hours straight without waking up. Now I sleep anywhere from two to six hours and frequently wake up at odd hours.

Writing off the stress from changing time zones and cultures another issue lurks in the shadows. Depending on where they are stationed and the extent of their duties its safe to say that venturing out on daily patrols, convoys, and combat missions provides an adrenaline rush like no other. Several of my close friends either own motorcycles or are purchasing them. By pushing the limits, driving at high speeds, engaging in risky behavior, I believe many people seek to recapture the adrenaline rush their bodies adjusted to while they were gone.

The best action that I believe a family member, whether they are a wife, father, mother, husband, or anyone else can take is to listen to them. Watch them. Don’t judge them. Its difficult to explain how different life is when you live half a world away for anywhere from a few months to a year or two. One of the most difficult parts for me to adjust to was the standard of living. I had to force myself to stop judging the american people after transitioning from an environment where running water and electricity are uncommon and the level of medical care we have here in the states is simply not there for most of the population. Do I blame the children for trying to get their hands on anything in our Humvees down to the doorknobs on our armored doors? No. I may have lost most of my empathy for them over the course of the twelve months I was in country but I understand why they are who they are. They are struggling to survive while we throw around high minded morals. We are not different people. Our societies are at different growth stages and failure to understand that by actions such as throwing money at the problems doesn’t make them go away. 

Accomplish More in Less Time

Have you ever had enough time to accomplish those tasks that nag you in the back of your mind at the most awkward times but never got around to them? Then you find yourself on the way to work and you realize that you forgot to feed your goldfish or pick up the paperwork you left out on the table so you wouldn’t forget it? Even work critical to your job can grow stale and boring if put off long enough.

Oddly enough, the longer I put off work the more it seems to pile up. I’m a lazy man at heart and know that if I don’t stay on top of myself I’ll keep putting tasks off until the last minute and that’s never fun.

To beat the laziness inside of me I knock out the hardest jobs first. Then I focus on the progressively easier tasks so each one is less effort. I tend to pile more on my plate than I can handle so by focusing on the most time consuming, critical tasks I ensure that they aren’t left hanging on the end of my to do list on a Sunday night.

A trick my parents used when I was a kid was to set a timer for certain chores, such as folding laundry or doing dishes. By creating time limits they taught time management, and gave enough room for a little goofing around. It worked so well that when I want to do something but there’s so much time I keep letting myself sidetrack myself I turn on my stopwatch and create artificial deadlines to give myself a  boost. Sure, I know there isn’t really a time limit. That isn’t the point. The point is to reinforce that I do not have unlimited time.

The longer I put things off the more unnecessary details clog up my head. Then I have less time to relax and enjoy being alive. Your life may not seem like the greatest all the time, but there is a group of people who would give anything to see one more sunrise even on the worst day of your life. I like sunrises, no two are ever the same Don’t believe me? This group is everywhere. Visit your local cemetery for meetings. 

The Hooks that Surround Us

While I was picking up a few groceries I noticed two details that disturbed me.

The store I was shopping at had a table strategically placed in the center of the store. There was one employee at the table. The table was lined with candy bars. Three quarters of the candy bars had been distributed from the design of the remaining candy bars. There were forms at the table. Sign up for a store card and receive a free candy bar.

The combination is sheer genius. Ideas like this make marketing careers. Combine the free candy bar with filling out the form creates disconnect. Instead of ordering a card, you’re taking a few seconds to get free stuff. Everyone loves free stuff. Assuming they give out one hundred candy bars, let’s say only one person uses the credit card and everyone else cuts it up. The average cost of the candy bars had to be less than a dollar, so that one person just paid for the ‘free stuff’. My personal, random, totally unfounded guess is that roughly ten percent of the people who sign up for the card will use it. Even if they only spend twenty dollars each, that’s an incredible return.  Plus the candy bars were a one time promotion, the cards are in their pockets for a long time.

The second tactic that disturbed me was while I was walking by a television in the gym. There was a special cleaning product being advertised. I couldn’t tell you what it was but one line stuck in my head and upset me. “Remember, if you’re using a regular mop, even if it looks clean its not.” What kind of garbage is this? You expect people to believe the word of some random commercial? I would never buy a product that tried to force feed me that. Probably because ‘even though I hear the commercial as I walk by the sound isn’t there so I didn’t hear it.”

Am I saying marketing is bad? No. Am I saying stores are bad for running promotions? Absolutely not. What I am saying is that parents would be setting their children up for success by  educating their children about marketing from an early age because they are literally spoon fed commercialism. These tactics do not make companies good or bad.