Tag: friends

Under the Influencers

I have not been writing much. Writing outside of academia is a thing based upon inspiration. I now understand why my uncle has been writing a book for 30 years and no one has yet read it. Couple that with the corona virus and the election and the protests, the mind gets a little jostled. I’ve been trying to write this singular post for four days. Now I think I know what the universe is trying to tell me.

I don’t belive in interpreting dreams but I believe they are our subconscious working like a program in the background of our computer. When we stop actively using the computer the resources get freed up and that background program can get more done.

So the other day I had a dream that I was working back at a retail position I had during college, but I was attending Harvard instead of my actual college in the dream. When I went to use the restroom at Harvard in the dream it was filthy and disgusting. I was shocked to see such a prestigious institution with such a unkempt facility.

In my life there are times when I have downplayed myself, and engaged in behaviors that were unbecoming of the person who I have the potential to become. Most times I did this to gain social approval or acceptance from friends and, acquaintances and even strangers. I definitely was taught better and was aware that there was a better way but at the time I was laser focused on the goal of acceptance.

Social media, movies, television, music, news, podcasts, vlogs, blogs, churches, educators, cults, friends, family etc. All these people have a goal or agenda. We have to choose wisely who we listen to and associate with. As we will overtly or subconsciously will modify our behavior to  gain their acceptance. These modifications in some instances may delay or utterly destroy us. So we owe it to ourselves to live up to the standard that will make us realize the dream of who we are destined to be.

Cut out the negativity, cut out the destruction, cut out the addiction, cut out the laziness. Cut out the people associated with indiscipline, ignorance and stagnation.

 

Featured image by: Jeff Kubina https://www.flickr.com/photos/kubina/152730867

Sabotage Pt. 2

I have written previous blog posts about friends who are threatened by your happiness and accomplishments, even their imagination of your happiness offends them secretly. The friends that try to engage you in situations where you will be embarrassed, degraded, devastated, drunk, fired, divorced, imprisoned, physically harmed, and in worst case killed.

In a blog post titled Sabotage I retold a story where a jealous friend gave a woman bad advice, telling her to engage deeper into a relationship with a musician that lived overseas. You can read the post here: https://goodguyfinder.com/2019/07/29/sabotage/ but it is not necessary to read it to understand this post.

Gossip ultimately is a terrible thing as it is a snippet of a much greater issue. Since we are not naming names, and hopefully I am using this as a example of how to protect yourself, I don’t wish this to be misunderstood as gossip. I will call it, current events.

So the current event is the younger lady she advised to go all-in with the musician is now pregnant with the musician’s child. While a new life is a blessing to the world, for a child to have the best chance the father should be present. Unfortunately in this situation the musician has advised the young woman that he will not be relocating as he has other children to care for in his homeland, but he will visit when he can. You can use your imagination from there as to how the months and years ahead will play out.

This to me is partially sad, as the woman is probably disappointed, while simultaneously realizing how silly she was to expect a musician who sings and performs hyper-sexualized music to be domesticated by her. Understandably she believed herself to be the exception, like we all believe ourselves to be, but that has to be followed by exceptional decisions for our selves.

Though I wrote the Sabotage post about five months ago, and expected things to go badly, I did not expect it to go this bad. I expected him to use her for sex, a visa, and money as she is a high paid professional. I did not however expect a child to have to suffer from her naive decisions or the maleficent advice of a jealous woman. I am confident that there were other women giving her bad advise regarding the relationship for their selfish entertainment.

The jealous people now pretend to feel sorrow for her but are actually reveling in the devastation because they themselves are miserable. Now that someone else’s life is miserable they don’t feel lower or threatened by the still  accomplished, but once perceived happy person. They achieved their goal of sabotaging her life, and if she manages to overcome and smile again, they will again be envious and seek to tear her down.

All the signals were here, there and everywhere she chose not to heed them, she sought out the advise of those who also saw the signals but enjoyed the ratchet reality show that was developing.

In conclusion beware of people encouraging you to act against logic. Beware of people who themselves engage in reckless behavior. They are acting based on emotions and if you hold yourself to be exceptional you should not make decisions that are not based on facts and stats.

 

Featured image: Ben Mortimer https://www.flickr.com/photos/mort183/

Sabotage

I wrote a blog post about bad company. I have mentioned many times the benefit of avoiding bad company. We are like sponges when it comes to information and emotions but we are unfortunately not omnipotent.

In the past month I have overheard one woman encourage two other women to engage in reckless behavior, all while doing it with a smile under the auspices of friendship. In one occasion she congratulated a young single woman on her new long distance relationship with a musician. Read that sentence again. A long distance relationship with a musician. Is that a paradox or oxymoron or a fairy tail. Anyhow in that instance she had not had much choice but to congratulate her as she was basically screaming it from the rooftops.

Having worked with a few entertainers I would say there is a maybe a 99/100 probability she is not the only one. Although, if that is acceptable to her, it is acceptable to me and that’s great, but that wasn’t the impression she gave. Also there were some financial things involved that made it even worse and you will have to refer to the movie Casino, specifically the relationship between the characters of Robert Dinero and Sharon Stone for a visual. I will not elaborate here.

On the second incident I observed her encourage another young woman to just let go and be free with a guy she just met on Tinder(I hate apps) the same day. The young lady in question has had a history of poor decision making, some even life threatening.

What kind of friend is this you may say? It is what they call a frenemy. Someone who enjoys being in your company and likes to se you fail in order to feel better about themselves. They may not be happy with the terrible reality they have made for themselves and would feel much better if they had company in their suffering. When you laugh, smile, travel, graduate, get attention, or are successful at anything, they feel it is an attack on their person. They want to be included in your comings and goings so that they will have breaking news of your failure.

They can be easily identified as they to bully or manipulate you into behaving according to their flawed modus operandi. They gossip and slander other people who they call friends. People such as these are why you have to refer to traditional tried and true methods of reasoning and courtship.  I am going to conclude by saying, I don’t exaggerate when I say people like this can get you literally killed. You have to asses the conditions in which they live on a deep basis and determine if they are speaking from a place of anger, hate, bitterness, clarity, joy, love or envy.

 

Bad company

We are social beings right? Even before Myspace-if you are too young to know what Myspace is ask your parents.

The creatures we call animals, operate according to their own social order likewise. Unfortunately we designed cellphones to fit opposable thumbs so the animals are not yet able to sign up for Instagram. Ultimately socializing is as old as life on the planet and we mostly choose to get together with like-minded individuals. These can be human or otherwise-a lot of people have proven that your dog might be a better friend that a large segment of the human population.

Choosing to only make acquaintance with like minded people makes you feel great. You agree, you relate and probably have a heap of fun together. Though fun, this association can be destructive, especially if you are already destructive. Also, if your acquaintance is not necessarily like-minded but practices enabling your destructive habits. Figuratively it is like a friend that sees you are on fire and throws gasoline on you.

They may have an interest or dependency on the fact that you are screwed up, or they may be oblivious, or maybe they are not your friend at all but you think that they are.

The human need to be in a group is beneficial in may ways. We can develop things, share information, heal, entertain, defend, teach, the list continues. So it’s important not only to keep the council of people that only say yes but we also need the council of people that tell us NO! I touched upon this in a prior posting but it is a thought that needs to be repeated.

Instagram and Facebook have option where you can continue to be a friend to someone but mute their postings. I have done this with people who constantly post disrespectful, tasteless, raunchy, detracting, violent and just dumb content. If they mix it(crap) up with mostly something edifying, uplifting, encouraging, entrepreneurial, enlightening then I don’t mind.

Stay away from destructive persons and those that enable destruction. They may be in misery and want you to join them. They may enjoy gossip so thoroughly that they would revel in you having drama or it would make them feel better about themselves to see you brought low. Analyze whether they have verifiable experience or knowledge of what they are encouraging you to do.

Friends, family, television, movies, social media, billboards, music, artists, horoscopes, palm-readers, fortune tellers, celebrities, government all want something from us. They all do things to get us to behave a certain way, give our time, give our money, give our lives, give our souls to their specific relative agenda. Therefore we have to be careful and reject the poison and take the medicine.