Change your expectations, change your luck, change your life.

Life is a cycle. You're born into poverty, some will stay with the 'poverty' mentality all their lives, others will rise.

You're born into abuse, the same. Born into alcoholism, and so on.

I think it's deeper than expectation, I think it's the "willingness" first to get going and the determination to get moving. Without both willingness and determination you stay stuck in a rut.
 
J.R. Hudson said:
I think it highly important too surround oneself with positive happy people as well.
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Just like Dorothy did with the Munchkins who led her to the Yellow Brick Road. :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

The-Munchkins-Waving-Dorothy-Good-Bye-the-wizard-of-oz-6425278-445-334.jpg
 
dmc said:
Good vibes and a positive outlook attract other people with good vibes and a positive outlook - I agree, I try to live my life in such a positive way. But it also attracts others. I've seen many examples of good vibes/positive outlook people being taken horrible advantage of without them even being aware of it.

A science, really? Honestly, any self help volume claiming (in its title) that is contains "THE ANSWER", has me quickly tying my shoes.


dmc
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Of course it's a science, download a free torrent of the book (so you don't feel ripped off), and read 20 on similar material AND study quantam physics and then, and only then will you understand it as a science. Thoughts = Everything PERIOD

Agree to disagree, I'm don't have time to convert a christian into a muslim.
 
I've been wondering what movie your profile pic is from, Hudson.

I see now that it was from The Wizard of Oz. Cool.




(No, really, where's it from?)
 
It's from an awesome music video, Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice"
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I AGREE
 
jscottprice said:
Is there anything Christopher Walken can't do?
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Nope.
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I AGREE
 
Luck is statistics. If you persist your chances will increase and it might happen soon enough.

But what is one hoping for? What is success?

Lets take the typical self help seminar/book/article. YOU can succeed. YOU can have all the things YOU want. YOU will get where YOU want to be. YOU will get the lifestyle YOU want. YOU can make things happen for YOU. YOU fail because YOU want to fail. YOU don't deserve success. YOU must sets goals and pursue them by any means. It's about ego, hedonism, power. A childish approach to the meaning of life. All it takes to satisfy 90% of those who do not feel successful is a single electronic transaction to their bank account.

For me success can only be achieved though others. You give life to human beings by having kids. Every being is designed for that. You keep your family and friends happy. Their trip through life will be a little better. You contribute to arts and sciences and make the world a little better. If you manage something from all that you will live and die a happy man. If you do it all, consider yourself extremely lucky. You life was not wasted and you are happy knowing that. You will be remembered in good ways. If you have kids, your life does not really stop when you die. A part of you continues. You can provide experiences to people and interact with them after your death. All great artists achieved that. You can influence the lives of others after your death. All great scientists achieved that. Death cannot do much harm to a person that is truly successful. Greeks called it hysterophemy. It's the ultimate form of egoism and the most successful recipe for happiness.

The problems start when we even think about success as a goal, because ego creeps through. We have kids to satisfy our egoism. We want them to follow our path so they can be as successful as we are. We forget that it's about them, not about us. We try to win them with money. By knowing what's good for them. By ruling over them. We know how they will succeed, by our definition, just like us. We eventually pass our unhappiness and emptiness to them. We do the same in science. We pursue what we find profitable. It's about the patents and the licensing. We ignore what the world needs and focus on what the world would pay for. It's the same with art. It's not about what will provide an aesthetical experience and make the world think. It's about what they want to see, the profitability of the project, we will present the decadent and treat them as fools. None of this ever made a human, an artist or a scientist happy. A human reduced to a tyran/merchant cannot be happy. If they started as intelligent people with good intentions, they eventually realise it. That's if sociopathy does not set in.
 
Sad Max said:
Well...

...aside from killing him.
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That's true for a reptile, but, for an intellectual being, life is two things. How we influence the world and how the world influences us. You can do the first after your death, it was easy for Van Gogh, Nikola Tesla and Martin Luther King Jr. You can't do the second, the world will stop influencing you, but is that really important?

LIFE(x)=(SELF->WORLD)*x+(WORLD->SELF)*1

WORLD->SELF only matters if you have no effect whatsoever on the world around you, during and after you life, where both SELF->WORLD and x are very small or zero. In this case nobody will bother to evaluate your LIFE, you could be dead and it wouldn't change a thing.
 
After a few generations have passed, you will no longer exist even in living memory (assuming that you consider this any actual form of 'existence,' which I don't - and doubt that very many other people do, either).

As for the influence you have on the world, post-mortem, you are confusing what other, living people choose to do with what you have left behind with your own activities while living. You are no longer any kind of participant in the processes taking place. That is, Vincent Van Gogh no longer affects anyone; his remaining work does but only to the degree that people are exposed to it and respond to it. Likewise, Nikola Tesla's and Martin Luther King's legacies continue to affect and influence people in the hands of *living* persons who carry their work forward. Tesla and King themselves are dust; unless you have beliefs regarding an afterlife - which are your own business - as individuals they are gone, poof, forever and ever, amen.

In any case even the lowliest unknown illiterate Bangladeshi garbage picker, in *real* terms, has as much lasting impact upon the universe-in-general (as differentiated from specifically human concerns) as did Tesla, King, Van Gogh, Alexander, or anyone else you care to name: their contribution to entropy. And that's about it.

I realize that terror of death is pretty much a hardwired instinct but phoney mathematical formulae constructed to convince one's self of some kind of immortality don't impress me as much of a useful response.


EDIT - on a second reading I realized that you appear to dismiss people who do not make what you view as lasting or perhaps worthwhile contributions, as 'reptiles.' Nice.

EDIT Again - Suggesting that Tesla, Martin Luther King, or particularly Vincent Van Gogh found much of anything to do with their accomplishments 'easy' leads me to wonder about your degree of familiarity with their biographies.
 
Max, you should do a third reading.

Influencing the world through your heritage and work is a form of existance for me and many others. It's just another way of seeing things, it's not threatening to anyone.

Life is nothing by itself. It only exists through the world. If you were living in an sealed container isolated from the world, and everything about you was destroyed the moment you died, would that be living? You know what many people would do in that situation? They would get some pen and paper and create, for others to see, study and experience, even after their death. A human is a higher form of life, it's not a reptile, it needs to create and share, it gets pleasure from keeping thought in motion, it feels it has a duty against the world because it was given the capacity to think at a higher level, it strives to contribute to mankind.

A reptile, as a simple lower form of existence is not equiped to produce and transfer knowledge, art, science. Its brain is very basic. Survival is its only natural instinct. I believe a human is better than this.

Van Gogh affects me. F.W.Murnau and John Lennon do the same.

I don't believe in the afterlife or care about being spiritual. Seeing life as biology and entropy though is a very shallow nihilistic point of view IMHO.

The unknown illiterate did influence the world in his own way. Not as much as others but he still made something of his existance. I respect him/her for that.

Death and me are very good friends. I accept death like I accept the limited duration of a good feature film. It comes with life, it's natural. Death might come today or tommorow. I don't worry about it or fear it, which is why I might live a very long happy life. I'm not religious at all and this could have something to do with my view of death. Doing something important in your life is not about the terror of death, quite the opposite. Those who fear death resolve around nihilism and hedonism, they don't care to contribute anything. They will happily order to have their Van Gogh burned with their dead body. Their world ends when they die. They don't give a damn.

The equation is my view of life, it's not supposed to match your version. I don't understand the hostility. I don't understand why you have to question my knowledge on Van Gogh or Tesla either. Is that the point of the discussion? In the after math, their life was important and they contributed to mankind in their unique way. Any logical person accepts that.
 
There are things you can control, and there are things you cannot. I suppose you could call the things beyond your control "Luck". For me, that word belongs in the same trash can as "talent". More often than not is used as an excuse.

Focus on the things you can control. There really are only two things on that list. Your attitude and your efforts.
 
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