Compliment everyone

Why do people avoid giving compliments so much? Why can't we just compliment everyone? It doesn't seem like a bad thing to simply give everyone praise when they deserve it.

Even when someone didn't do anything spectacular they would still like to hear compliments and know that someone cares about how they look or how well they did a task.There is nothing wrong with telling someone they did a good job on something. It takes nothing from your time and it lets them know they did a good job on their task.

This kind of thing is simply something that doesn't happen enough, if people are told they did a good job then they feel their time went to a good use. It's really easy to become discouraged at anything if you aren't sure what people think about the things you do.

It's so easy to question everything you do and wonder if the people that you worked for liked it or not. How could you possibly know? You can't read that person's mind, so please, if you are ever in a position to tell someone "good job" don't let them sit there and expect them to know, simply tell them so they know they are appreciated.

There are also the more simple times when it comes down to complimenting a random stranger, what is wrong with that? Why don't more people do it? People aren't afraid to criticize strangers but when it comes to saying good things about people they seem to hold their tongue like their life depends on it.

There is nothing wrong with telling strangers something good if you truly believe it. It's mutually beneficial, it makes them feel good because someone actually pays attention and it makes you feel good because you put a smile on someone's face.

The darkness in us all.

We all have a little darkness in our heart.

All of us have darkness in our heart, a voice that misleads us, destroys us, takes away the things we care about. We are all humans and we all make mistakes but what happens when those mistakes cost us something important?

It's hard to ignore the voice in our head that is constantly casting doubt in our heart, after all, so many things go wrong in life why should we expect something to actually go right? It's so hard to believe in ourselves and others, so very hard. But we must trust others, we must believe that everything will turn out for the best.

If we doubt everything then how will we ever move forward in time. Being scared of everything makes you run from everything as well. It's true that a part of us is destructive but it's everyone's choice if they act on those instincts or not.

A lot of the times our doubts are foolish doubts that we cast in fear, and it manifest itself into something that can drive you crazy. Learning to control these things is very hard for anyone. Some people have less problems then others but for some it's enough to make them want to bash their head into a wall to make it stop.

For some people they think about things like this and they fall to the voice, they believe their doubts over what they want to be true. It just seems more likely too them, but that itself seems a bit sad.

So what can we possibly do to avoid this trap we have set for ourselves? It's rather hard honestly, you have to do many things to avoid those negative thoughts. The most important is believing in yourself and the people around you.

There is no reason to ever doubt yourself, you will never betray yourself so you never have reason to have self doubt. The people who are close to you have been close to you for a reason, if you have let them get close then why are you doubting them. Trust them, and believe they will always be on your side.

What it means to grow old

What does it truly mean to grow old? Most people probably think of people with wrinkles. Some probably think of becoming wiser, and some sadly think about the brittle bones of an aged body.

But does any of it really hold true? There are people who are old who look young and people who look old and are young, what caused that? Why were those people different?

While it is true that with age comes experience that experience means nothing to someone who refuses to use it to learn. Wisdom only comes from those who learn from life. There are those who are youthful who seek to learn many things.

Old but dancing beautifully.

As for aged brittle bones, there are old people who can out run me and dance with the best of them. I don't think that brittle bones comes from age as much as bad management of your body over time. Not taking care of yourself well enough adds up after 60 years, it's only natural after being abused your body would turn to dust.

I prefer the saying "You're only as old as you feel" because there are elderly people doing amazing things for people. They are living life to the fullest even at their age where most choose to simply relax. I found this photo gallery that just shows you everything I could never put into words.

If my stressful days don't get the better of me I will definitely be an elder man who is constantly running around like I'm 20 again. I don't ever really plan on stopping where I am in life. How things are now is really fun and I don't really care to stop. My job is fun, my friends, family, and girlfriend are all great and really supportive. The only thing I actually lack in life that I want is a house to call my own and a German Shepard. But if that's the worst of my complaints I think I'm doing pretty good.

Child Metality, how we can help.

Child mentality is one of those things that is talked about when children are abused, I want to talk about the more broad subject of children's way of thinking without influence.

With that said let us take a quick look at the mind of a child. A child is typically very naive and innocent to how things in our world operate. I know that might sound like a bit of a cruel way of saying it but that's what it really boils down too.

It isn't their fault though, they can't help that.We all learned things through experience. A child doesn't understand the pain of being burned until he puts his hand on the stove, then he never does it again.

With that said, I think we can all agree it is our job as adults to guide them to a more direct path where they don't have to experience as many bad events to learn. Lack of knowledge is never a crime, it's simply the lack of will to use the knowledge you have that is unjust.

Putting a lit match on a puddle of gas is obviously going to cause a fire, but for those who don't know that gas is flammable it's not really their fault if they just mindless chucked a match in a puddle expecting to put the match out. This is a rather extreme example of how lack of knowledge isn't the same as doing something dumb but it is also very good at showing you a mindset that a child might have.

So, with that, considering how a child's mind works is it really okay to get mad at them for something they did that they didn't know would result in such an event? It's true, punishing them teaches them not to do that again, but at the same concept teaching them fear instead of understanding doesn't seem like an effective way to keep them from having similar incidents. 

For example, imagine that we light a candle and throw a scarf on it, big fire right? We get in trouble and typical parental response is a smacking, but does that really teach him anything? Typically speaking you could argue that it teaching him if he throws a scarf on a candle he will get hurt, but what if he throws a shirt on a candle?

See how that can happen now? If you don't teach him that the problem isn't in what he did as much as the result of what he did (causing a big fire) and how to prevent such a thing from happening again (not throwing stuff on a candle) then it is easily very repeatable and explainable for a child to do a similar thing with just a slight difference in how he does it.

Teaching a child responsibility and teaching a child knowledge are two very different things, it is the job of the parent to try and explain things in the level of a child so he can understand it and keep from doing it or similar situations again.

However you also have to be careful of how you explain certain things to a child because if you make something broad seem negative and also make it sound like his fault then you can cause issues where he will make the wrong decisions later to avoid such events from happening.

Rewards can be sweet

For example, what if he just started throwing things around the store, how could you explain the problem here? The true problem is that it is causing a mess and you will have to replace anything that gets broken, but replacing stuff on a shelf doesn't seem like a good excuse to a young child who sees it as magically being there anyway.

So what do you do in this situation, well I was personally profound to find a typical response of the parent is either screaming at the child (really not going to help, sorry, you're just scaring him and drawing even more attention) or telling him a lie to prevent him from doing it. What if you tell him something to induce fear again? Bad idea and here is why.

What happens if the lie is something like "because everyone will make fun of you" or "everyone will think badly of us" well then, what happens when they get to school? They become very easily influenced by the slightest peer pressure. Drug use and rebellion are right around the corner.

Well that didn't work, so now what? What if we try something magical? "Because Santa won't visit you if you act that way." Okay that's cool, teach them self control by using Santa, this too can backfire though. When they get older and forget Santa they might also forget their self control.

They could have replaced Santa with something else to keep their self control in check but it's highly possible they didn't. So honestly what is the right solution to this problem? Teach them responsibility in the closet way to how the real world would, have him do chores equivalent to the amount of damage he caused. Have this as a possible money value, this teaches him that if he ever does anything that destroys something he will have to pay money for it.

There are a ton of similar situations like this that happen every day. We wonder why the generations are getting so rowdy but I honestly believe that it is the way parents are handling punishment. I'm not saying they are bad parents, I know good people who have crazy kids, it's simply their lack of knowledge as to a good way to approach a situation that causing the bad outcome. It's not really their fault, they just didn't know any better.

I'm really interested in anything that anyone of you readers would like to add to this or similar experiences you have had in the past.

Money talks and people listen

Yes you are reading this right, when that little green piece of paper starts having a voice, people start opening their ears. But what really happens when money talks? From my experience mostly bad things happen.

This is your wallet.

Cash has this funny way of saying "haha you don't have enough of me" a LOT and it's really frustrating. You know why rich people still don't think they have enough? It's because even though the money quit talking to them they are still hearing it in their head, they were scarred by the voice mocking them.

Crazy right? I know. But really, how many times a month, a week, a day, do you just wish you had a little bit more dough on you? I think that way every day, If I had enough money I would fly every day. Now you know why I'm broke.

What about that saying that people always use? "People who don't need money always get it." Isn't that how it goes? Things like "The rich get richer" only happen because they never stop doing what they have been doing the entire time to make money. They have been driven by it the entire way and will probably be that way their entire life.

Just like they keep doing what they are doing most people in life keep doing the same things over and over again in life expecting a golden egg to just drop in front of them without any effort in their part. Go to work, get home, do nothing, go to sleep, wake up, go back to work. This is a really common pattern I have seen constantly throughout my life.

It's a constant problem with people that they just blame something else, it's so easy to put the blame on something and look away right? When that one dollar bill starts mocking you for not having a hundred you just turn to the first thing you can and blame it for your problems. Trust me, blaming something else doesn't make that one into a hundred any quicker, I have tried that.

I'm an avid believer that for any good change in your life to happen you have to change yourself first. Nothing ever comes to you just for you breathing air. Anything good in your life you have because of something you did, because after all, we are born with nothing.

Halloween candy: good or bad?

Trick or Treat

Halloween, that really cool holiday where kids dress up in costumes and go out seeking their candy by saying "trick or treat" about 200 times in one night. And for some, a night where ticks are the preferred gift of the darkness.

But is it really such a good thing for kids to be retrieving so many sugar coated gifts in one night? The is a holiday feared by dentist. Cavities don't scare children though, why should it? It's hard to fear something just because someone tells you to, especially to the innocence of children who haven't learned of the cruelty of the world.

So how do we control such a thing? Who do we blame for the worst of all cavities? Do we blame the gift givers who's goal is making children smile and be happy? Do we blame the parents who let their kids trick or treat all night and eat half their candy before morning?

How can we really blame anyone for such things, it seems weird to think about but this is a real problem. Halloween serves a few goal purposes for children. It lets them dress up, this if fun for all kids, they get to become their favourite thing for one night without anyone judging them.

It gives them a way to show off their costumes in the event of trick or treating where most people who do give candy will also compliment their costume. This can help raise self confidence within children.

The act of receiving sweets is to persuade them to keep going on which is highly effective and lets them have a lot of fun.

So how do we continue this ritual where we can continue giving kids an amazing night without giving their parents and dentist. Honestly I haven't been able to think of a proper solution to this problem, candy is cheap so many people can participate in giving away candy which is what makes it so effective.

Candy also knows no difference in gender, if you made Halloween a day where you give away toys it would be a lot more expensive and there would be an issue of what you do with the stuff you don't give away as well as many other problems.

Looking at it from this perspective you can really understand why things are the way they are and haven't really changed, but I still feel not all ideas have really been thought of when considering this problem and would love to hear from you all about this and see what you think on the issue and possible solutions.

Happy to be alive

Do you feel the same?

That isn't something we feel we get to say very much, being happy to be alive. How did it come to be where people simply didn't care or people treated life like it didn't matter to them anymore.

How can we as humans continue to hate everything about what we do in life and still live it. What if I told you there was a way out. What if I told you the only thing from keeping joyous feelings from overcoming you is yourself.

I promise you it's true. But I know what you're thinking too, cause I thought that way too. "Yeah right, we really just don't want happiness." Sarcasm is your worst enemy here I'm telling you. Turning something serious into a joke is the first step to ignoring the problems in life.

The first thing you have to accept is to change the things causing you pain and sorrow is that you have to change yourself. Hence why I say you are your own enemy.  How many people here hate their current lifestyle?

How many of you who answered yes do the same things over and over again? Here is just something to really thing about here, how do you possibly expect the things around you to change if you stay the same?

How many of you don't spend much time with your kids? How many of you that answered yes say so because you don't have time because of work? I don't want to hear it. One of my best friends works 80 hours a week to pay for the apartment, food and everything else for his child but guess what, there are 168 hours in a week.

Even working 80 hour weeks that leaves you 86 hours. Assuming you're an average person and sleep 8 hours a night that still leaves you 24 hours of time to be awake. What the heck are you doing with those extra 24 hours if you are wanting too spend time with your kid? He makes time for it between all his housework that he has to do, getting food, and everything else in his life.

I dare anyone who doesn't work more then 100 hours a week to blame their job, no, it's your fault. You are unhappy because you choose to spend the time you had doing something you didn't want too do instead of spending it with your child.

You could make the argument "Well I have to do dishes and cook ect." Yeah and your point is? Why not ask your kid to help you. If they truly love you they will help you out knowing how busy you are and will love to spend the extra time with you even if it's doing chores. "What if they don't?" Then it sounds like you need to patch a relationship and try to talk too them to figure out why they don't like you.

My point is people always go around complaining about unhappiness and saying stuff like "why can't I be happy" it's because you're too busy crying about little things and not thinking about how to fix the problems in your life. You give up before you even begin. That simply shouldn't happen. You can't let yourself fall into that trap or joy will never find you.

Color: How everything we see isn't real

Have you ever thought about what we see, or better yet, how we see things? I have, many times over, probably too much for my own good. How about the colors we see? have you ever thought about all the things we see and how boring they would be in just black and white?

How boring would your life be if you didn't have any colors to express some kind of emotions. If there was only black and white then everything would look the same, flowers would lose their magic, clothes would lose some of their representations on our personalities.

But here is where things become odd, look around you for a moment, take in all the colors you eyes see. Now realize that they are all fake. None of the things we see are colored the color we see them as.

To understand this you must understand how we see colors. We see colors as a reflection of light. This means that the colors that are absorbed by the object are never shown to us, only the colors that are reflected.

If everything is simply a color reflected to us you could kind of thing of it like a mirror when you shine a colored light on it. If you shine a read light on it then it reflects the light back at you, letting you see red.

When looking at it like this you can conclude that everything you see is actually the opposite of reality. This is a really interesting concept for the simple fact that we never really consider things that are part of our day to day life and it's something fun to think about. Consider what the "true" color of the things you're looking at are next time you have free time and let me know what you come up with.

Love and Relationships, how and why we are involved

From the perspective of a normal day with normal people with normal marriages, what is a relationship? Really, how do you define who you love and want to marry and who you just want to hang out with on the weekend.

It seems really strange the way we as people think about some things like that. The human mind is very interesting in the sense that we all think about relationships differently.

People marry for different reasons, some people marry because of safety, the person they are with makes them feel very safe and secure. This could be because during their life they never really had anything stable and it makes them feel comfortable to finally have that feeling.

There are also people who marry others who are completely different from them for the very reason that they are different. They like being around someone who isn't like them or their friends, someone who can be refreshing in their life and someone they will never tire of.

Yes, there are those who marry for money, but honestly I'm not going to discuss that because that's not a real marriage or love, just greed. Those people aren't good subjects to talk about when discussing real relationships and will be avoided. Though if you are one of those people you are free to give your opinion on the subject of course. :)

Then there is just that perfect couple, the two who married just because they clicked. There is nothing that they don't agree with and they are always having fun together and love their life every second of the way.

But how do people find that magic, the part of them that they want to spend their life with forever. That too is different for everyone.

Some people go out to singles meetings which is a cool idea. If you join a singles group for something like hiking because you like going hiking then you are already put in an environment with people who have a similar interest too you. If this sounds like your way of doing things I strongly recommend looking around google for a local group that you can join.

Some people just go to places like bars and just "play slots" almost with people and just see if one of them will go out with them. I personally don't see this as a very effective way to find a "loving" relationship because you are most likely selecting people based on appearance and that seems more like a lustful relationship instead of a loving relationship plan. But that is obviously just my opinion, you might think otherwise.

A lot of happily married people I have had the pleasure of meeting and talking with however, met through pure chance and accident. To rely on such an accident to happen to you is unrealistic because it's a random encounter, but maybe that is part of the magical moment. This is something that can only happen if you are open to talking to people you encounter, being closed off will lead to knowing no one, and knowing no one will lead to loneliness, not just in a relationship but in friendships as well.

Our life and the happiness we seek.

How many times have we said we were going to do something and never really done it? How many times have we set goals for ourselves just to push it off and say we will do it next time.

These type of events occur all the time for almost everyone but the problem is when this becomes a habit when time for us gets lower every second. Why do we allow ourselves to be absorbed in this crazy society where you are tricked into believing you have to have a lot of money to be happy.

What if getting that kind of money makes you miserable and by the time you actually obtain it the things you wanted to do with it become impossible. What happens when you put other things before your own happiness.

What happens when you decide that you are willing to give up everything you have for some greater good that isn't all that great. "there is always tomorrow" is something I hear people say sometimes. I couldn't disagree more. People are never promised a tomorrow so why would you ever put off something you want to do when you may never get a chance to do it again?

Unfortunately following our goals and dreams take a lot more then that though. The biggest problem is knowing what we really want in life. Comparing what we want with what we "think" we want is sometimes a very difficult thing to do. What we want is true happiness, what we think we want is something that will only bring us a temporary happiness.

So how does one become happy? It is my belief that the first step that is universal for everyone to becoming happy is to remove all the negative, angry, sad, or depressing influences in your life. It is very difficult to be happy when you constantly have people or things in your life that are trying to bring you down.

If there are people in your life that are always negative or complaining you should probably just never talk too them again because they are not contributing to you at all. I'm not saying to ignore your friends when they are going through hard times but if someone is just constantly negative you really shouldn't be around them.

The second step to becoming happy in my opinion is to find things or people who make you happy and surround yourself with them. If you like reading then make a habit of visiting the library every so often. If you like swimming find a public swimming pool and go there every so often. If you like something like bowling which cost money just go to the bowling alley from time to time and watch other people, spend some time at the local pro shop. Just do anything that gets you a little closer to the things you like.

"I don't have time" or "I will do it later" aren't good excuses. No stop it right now, don't do that to yourself. Everyone has time, they just feel like laying dead in front of a TV when they finally get it instead of doing something that could lift their spirits. Saying you will do it later is like saying you are never going to do it. What defines the word "later" for most people? What is to keep you from not just saying it again tomorrow?

Don't put off things for a tomorrow that isn't guaranteed. Don't say you don't have time when time is all we have in life. Our time might be short but all the more reasons to make it worth every second we are alive.

Even good dreams are nightmares.

Tonight I am writing this with the idea of pleasant dreams. Have you ever heard someone say that and actually thing about something nice? It seems kind of silly to me really, why would you want someone to dream something nice? Shouldn't you wish them something more productive? Like finishing the project for their job or something? Wishing good dreams, a fantasy, just seems silly.

With that point stated I have to say that even good dreams are nightmares to some people. I mean, what could possibly be worse then starting off the day waking up from the best dream of your life to continue your normal boring routine. You feel disappointed, sad, ready to go back to sleep. You don't feel like working at all.

Good dreams are only good for the moment when you're asleep, they distract you from everything after that point though. Some people don't ever think about their dreams after waking up so for those of you reading who are like this you probably think that is silly but some people really think about their dreams.

I can't think of a good dream I have ever had that I was happy to wake from, though this could be very dangerous for someone easily influenced because they are unhappy with their normal life. They would dwell on their dreams and try to sleep as much as possible. This is a terrible way to try and live, living in a fantasy is not really living.

For me personally I would much rather start the day waking up to a bad dream, waking up to a bad dream makes me relieved that it's not true and I look forward to the normal day more. But what do you think? Would you prefer to wake to a good or a bad dream?

National vodka day, wait... this exist?

If any of you are like me you are wondering why is there a day on our calendar to celebrate vodka. This is a very confusing thing to me and one thing that I wonder is that if the vodka companies are responsible for it.

This is all just a thought and all of us can obviously think of a thousand different reasons why this exist but let's talk about some, discuss them, and wonder what could be true.

While the origin of the holiday can't be tracked we all know it is there, a day to celebrate a drink, a day to encourage drinking, and a day to forget about tomorrow. Sounds great right? While I don't really endorse the idea of drinking it is very interesting to me how something like this could become a holiday so I would like to talk about it.

Back to my earlier point, I think this could of been something related to the day when vodka became the most popular spirit in North America. This is only a sound thought if the holiday started after it became popular.

Another Idea would be to think that the vodka companies declared it a holiday a long time ago to raise the popularity and increase sales of vodka similar to how stores increase sells for Christmas. This isn't completely impossible.

My final idea for what could of happened is that a group of people simply declared it "vodka day" for them, their friends, or family. This could of simply spread to many other people as well.

Since the origin of the holiday is unknown the real reason for it may never come to life but it could of been anything as silly as a bunch of people starting a tradition to a company trying to make an amazing profit.

What about all of you? What do you think is the source of national vodka day and how do you think it got started?

Why do we judge?

Why do people judge others? Why do people find it necessary to judge others? Have we forgotten that we are all humans and should be treated as humans? I think some of us have indeed forgotten this important fact.

Let us think about this logically for a moment, starting with the most common judgement that some people make. The judgement based on race. Think about this one for a moment, and I mean really think about it. How dumb is it to judge someone based on skin color? Something they have no control over.

You have never met this person, and you see the color of his or her skin and you instantly have an impression of the kind of person they are. How is something like that even relevant to who they are? They didn't choose what their skin color was when they were born.

There are plenty of stereotypes that people judge others on unjustly. Appearance doesn't matter, what we know, what we are capable of, how we act, these are the things that matter.

Let us take a simple example real quick to prove a point. There might be a homeless man somewhere who knows the best construction tricks in the trade, only reason he might be homeless is because the company he worked for went under because of the economy. I can already hear the criticism on this comment, "If he was so great why didn't he get another job?" If people aren't hiring then they simply aren't hiring, it doesn't matter how good you are, to some companies that would even be bad because they know you would want more money.

After that person loses everything it becomes even more impossible to find something because he is homeless, a company will typically not hire someone who doesn't seem very reliable and someone without a home or way of transport wouldn't seem very reliable. From that point any preset skills he had wouldn't even matter to the company.

Another popular argument would be "they can't discriminate who they hire, it's illegal." Maybe not but I promise you that if they don't like you they will find even a very tiny reason on your job application or resume to turn you down.

So again, the question remains, why do we judge? There are a lot of good people that could of been the best of friends if they didn't judge each other. There could be a lot of amazing people working in a lot of different fields if they weren't judged for things outside their control. This world could be even more amazing, if we simply didn't judge others unjustly.