Just thought of this idea today when I was at work and posted by the time clock was a disney world fund raiser for a little boy who has cancer, they just found another tumor in his body. My question is do you think that when things are going right for you, the sun is shining , you’ve reached a new bench press max, whatever, that you have been blessed by God ? If you do, then have all the cancer patients been cursed ?
It almost seems like to succeed in this world , you have to trample over those who have fallen just to get to your goal in a sense. You can sympathize for someone in pain but you cannot worry to long or you will not be able to focus on your peice of the pie. Sounds rather selfish. Any advice for this attitude of despair ?
[quote]triple-10sets wrote:
Just thought of this idea today when I was at work and posted by the time clock was a disney world fund raiser for a little boy who has cancer, they just found another tumor in his body. My question is do you think that when things are going right for you, the sun is shining , you’ve reached a new bench press max, whatever, that you have been blessed by God ? If you do, then have all the cancer patients been cursed ?
It almost seems like to succeed in this world , you have to trample over those who have fallen just to get to your goal in a sense. You can sympathize for someone in pain but you cannot worry to long or you will not be able to focus on your peice of the pie. Sounds rather selfish. Any advice for this attitude of despair ? [/quote]
[quote]triple-10sets wrote:
Just thought of this idea today when I was at work and posted by the time clock was a disney world fund raiser for a little boy who has cancer, they just found another tumor in his body. My question is do you think that when things are going right for you, the sun is shining , you’ve reached a new bench press max, whatever, that you have been blessed by God ? If you do, then have all the cancer patients been cursed ?
It almost seems like to succeed in this world , you have to trample over those who have fallen just to get to your goal in a sense. You can sympathize for someone in pain but you cannot worry to long or you will not be able to focus on your peice of the pie. Sounds rather selfish. Any advice for this attitude of despair ? [/quote]
I think we like to believe all the cancer patients have been cursed. I’m not trying to be funny. It’s easier on us to believe that people with troubles and tragedy have somehow deserved it or had it coming. That helps us believe that we can avoid the randomness of tragedy in our own lives.
When I have one of those pristine moments in my life, whatever it is, I savour it. Collect those moments to hold against the bad times.
I hope that didn’t sound too gay but I’m running out trying to avoid a bolt of lightning
[quote]triple-10sets wrote:
Do you think that when things are going right for you, the sun is shining , you’ve reached a new bench press max, whatever, that you have been blessed by God ? If you do, then have all the cancer patients been cursed ?
It almost seems like to succeed in this world , you have to trample over those who have fallen just to get to your goal in a sense. You can sympathize for someone in pain but you cannot worry to long or you will not be able to focus on your peice of the pie. [/quote]
I like this question. Good food for thought.
Life is a crapshoot. Blessings are often curses in disguise, seeming curses often lead to new insight and new development. I think the take-home point is that shit happens, and whether it’s good or bad has more to do with your reaction to it than anything else.
I also totally disagree with your last statement. I think interdependance is the way to acheive goals in the long-term sense. A marriage isn’t good with just one happy partner. Likewise, international relations (I’ve been reading a bunch of news recently) are best when there’s consensus and trade.
Cancer patients just have a bad gene reader. Now gay people…
[quote]triple-10sets wrote:
Just thought of this idea today when I was at work and posted by the time clock was a disney world fund raiser for a little boy who has cancer, they just found another tumor in his body. My question is do you think that when things are going right for you, the sun is shining , you’ve reached a new bench press max, whatever, that you have been blessed by God ? If you do, then have all the cancer patients been cursed ?
It almost seems like to succeed in this world , you have to trample over those who have fallen just to get to your goal in a sense. You can sympathize for someone in pain but you cannot worry to long or you will not be able to focus on your peice of the pie. Sounds rather selfish. Any advice for this attitude of despair ? [/quote]
use what you have been blessed with and help those you deem not as fortunate as you - go spend some time in a pediatric cancer ward, donate money to cancer research - whatever.
who knows, maybe they are the ones who are truly blessed - bet they could teach you a lot of what it means to be blessed and what true success is.
You never know what curse or blessing life might decide to bring you. All you can do is try to minimize the risk for the curses and multiply the chances for the good things. Life will bring you plenty of both however, in terms of pleasure and pain, how strong you are will determine how you handle both.
I’ve learned way more about myself and life in general through the hard times than I ever could have learned without those bumps in the road. Some people (like someone with terminal cancer) just go through more difficult stuff, but I believe they also have the opportunity to understand life even better than the rest of us. If life is a learning experience, some of the people with the hardest, most [seemingly] cursed lives are actually the most blessed. It also does depend on one’s attitude…going through life with a “woe is me” attitude does nothing for you or anyone around you.
Good post bush and some good posts above as well. I believe that last quote is from the Bible.
To the OP, I think everybody should take MORE time to think about others. It will help you shape your goals correctly and reach them faster in my opinion.
According to Dale Carnegie in his book How to Win Friends & Influence People, “when we are not engaged in thinking about some definite problem, we usually apend 95% of our time thinking about ourselves”. I think we could be a little less selfish.
[quote]hit the gym wrote:
According to Dale Carnegie in his book How to Win Friends & Influence People, “when we are not engaged in thinking about some definite problem, we usually apend 95% of our time thinking about ourselves”. I think we could be a little less selfish.[/quote]
This statistic is unmeasurable. Even if it were measurable who is to say what the correct proportion of ones time should be spent thinking about oneself?
I can tell you the vast proportion of ones day spent thinking about oneself is usually in the form of: what should I eat? what should I wear? do I really need to work today?
The other portion is spent interacting with the universe just to stay alive. I reserve 20% of my day to reflect on my own awesomeness and another 20% thinking up cheeky responses to others’ posts on T-Nation.
I don’t think just because someone spends 95% of their day thinking about themselves it makes them selfish. Being selfish is having no regard at all for the rights of others.
However the line gets blurred quite a lot. I consider that anyone who is earning stupid amounts of money, and not giving much back, to be guilty of taking advantage, even if their product or service does have some benefit to the end user.
Bushy[/quote]
That point is nonsense.
A product has not some benefit to the end user, but more than he paid for it.
So by buying it, he is instantly better off.
In other words, someone making stupid amounts of money at the marketplace has not only created jobs and paid taxes, he has also helped people enormously.
Measured in dollars he must have helped for more than 1 million to even earn one. Much, much more.
Which also means that the more money someone makes by selling goods and services the more he benefits mankind.
Often even more than nurses, fire fighters and other non-“greedy” “heroes”.
