Archive for October, 2007

October 25th, 2007

Be Careful What You Wish For

We’ve all heard this phrase before, but how many people really pay attention to it?

When I was a young guy, probably when I was about 14 years old – I was walking with my best friend Eric. For some reasons we started talking about vision and I mentioned that mine was perfect, but that I wanted to see what it was like to NOT have perfect vision.

“Your wish is my command Jeremy!” said the genie, secretly laughing behind my back.

Well, about a month later I started to notice that I was in fact starting to get bad vision. Now I have terrible eyes, HATE contacts, and can’t wait to get Lasik eye surgery when I graduate in May.

Now fast forward to last week.

I have always been the person who NEEDS 8 hours of sleep or won’t be able to function. However, I know some people that are absolutely fine with 4-6 hours of sleep.

So, of course, I had to make another wish.

I wished that it wasn’t necessary to sleep – that I could become one of those people.

Well, low and behold, the genie granted my wish once again.

It’s 1:12 right now as I’m typing this. Usually, I would have been sleeping for 1.5 hours by now, but since I made that wish, I’ve had insomnia and have been getting about 5-6 hours of sleep per night.

Although I have a little more time now to get some things done, which is why I wanted to have to sleep less in the first place, I realize that my body is hating this.

I’ve have less strength, can’t think as quickly, I’m more sore, and I’m less motivated to do things. I’m also slipping up on my healthy eating more than usual.

When I wished I didn’t have to sleep, I didn’t mean it literally. I meant that I wish our bodies didn’t need 8 hours of sleep because it would make it easier to get more work done.

Bah!

One good thing that’s coming out of this is that I can relate to my girlfriend much better now, who can’t sleep very well either. Since I was always a “I close my eyes and I’m sleeping within 15 seconds” person, I could never understand why she hated trying to go to bed.

I understand now hun!

Now that I know what it’s like to be an insomniac (although I’d still consider myself a mild insomniac), I’d really like for the genie to take my wish back :)

If anybody suffers from insomnia and knows some good remedies for it, please let me know.

My body is begging me to sleep, but at the same time it won’t allow itself to do just that.

I’m going to try and get back into bed now. Wish me luck!


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By Jeremy in Uncategorized  .::. (Add your comment)

October 19th, 2007

How To Have More Fun

I was just looking through the pictures I’ve taken with the new camera I got (it’s an early Christmas present because my other one broke while I was on vacation a few months ago).

I found this one that me girlfriend took of me 2 weeks ago when we were shopping for pumpkins to carve.

Pumpkin thing on my shoulders

As I flipped through them and noticed this one, it occurred to me that most people don’t know how to have fun. If they do, it’s usually in the wrong way.

For example, kids my age in college don’t think they can have fun unless they’re drinking at a party.

Conversely, older folks don’t think they can have fun because “those days are over”.

Well, not really!

You don’t need ot be anywhere special to have fun. All it takes is a bit of creativity and the ability to not care what others think of you.

Speaking of that, why DO you care what others think? Most likely you’re never going to see them again, and if they get mad – that’s their problem, not yours. Right?

Listen, I used to care what people thought about me and it did way more harm than good. Since I do a lot of “unorthodox” things in my life (which I now take as a huge compliment when somebody says I’m weird) I tend to get a lot of “looks”.

What I realized though, is that I’m getting looks from people who are fatter, less happy, and more poor than me. They hate their life, don’t do anything to change it, but yet give those who DO want to change it, some pretty weird looks.

For example I get a lot of comments at work about the books I read. I’ll bring in a book on say, wealth building, and I hear “why do you read that stuff” and “isn’t that boring”?

!?!?!?!?!?!

This is coming from people who are 30-40 years old and still work at a restaurant full-time!

By the way, no offense to those who are working in similar jobs. But it’s up to you to change your life.

Back to the main topic, since I went on a little tangent there.

When my girlfriend and I go out, I make it a point to make her laugh as much as possible. This often consists of doing things such as the picture above. I did this while others were around, and of course I got “the look”. But I loved it because Katie and I were the only ones having fun.

By the way, that pumpkin thing (not sure what’s it’s called) was really heavy! I’d guess that thing was at about 25 pounds – although it fit pretty comfortably around my neck.

My main point is this. Life is short, you don’t get a second chance.

If you want to live your life miserable all the time, go ahead – just don’t expect me to ever converse with you for any length amount of time.

If you have fun while making yourself look like a moron to others, who cares! I would guess about 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999% of the people who see you doing things like this will never see you again – let along even remember it the next day.

The next time you’re out with your spouse, friends, children, etc. make it a point to have more fun than usual. Obviously don’t cause a big scene, but do something a little out of your comfort zone and get people to look.

Then take a second to think about exactly how you feel at that moment. You might be a little nervous, but I bet you’ll like the feeling.


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By Jeremy in Happiness  .::. (Add your comment)

October 4th, 2007

What’s On Your Blame List?

As I live my life each day, I’m constantly trying to live it in a more objective way. I’m trying to place my mind outside my body and see life from a different perspective.

Weird as it sounds, it’s a pretty cool concept.

One thing that I’ve noticed is that almost every single person around me has absolutely no idea what’s REALLY going on around them.

For example, they think that they have “bad luck”. They think they’re fat because of “bad genes”. They have a blame list that, if you wrote down on paper, would probably cover an entire notebook.

Well guess what. The only reason you can be fat, have bad luck, be poor, etc. is because of you. Nobody else runs your life. You are creating the circumstances in your life, not some other outside force.

And yes, I realize that there are exceptions. Someone close to me has to go through a lot in her life because she suffers from epilepsy, which she’s had since childhood. That’s an exception.

Anyway, the other day my girlfriend and I were hiking at a nearby mountain. I couldn’t help but notice (and even mentioned it to my girlfriend) that almost every single person we passed was much happier and more energetic than if we saw some random person on the street.

Why do you think this is?

It’s because all these people are making it a point to do something they love. They’re taking some time to get out into nature and enjoy life. I’m sure a lot of the people we passed were as busy as anybody else in the world, they just made it a point to stop making excuses.

By the way, most of them were also in better shape than a random person on the street.

I’d be willing to bet that if I took 5 random hikers, and 5 random people off the street, the hikers would:

  1. Watch less TV
  2. Eat healthier
  3. Exercise more
  4. Have more money
  5. Work less
  6. Have happier families
  7. Be happier

Also, I bet their blame list is MUCH smaller than those of an average person.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m right, but I have a feeling you’d agree with me.

Take some time today and honestly sit down and write out your blame list. Then take an objective look at it and see if it really has any truth to it.

A better life will only come when you realize that in order to have the life you want, you need to take control of it. Don’t let anything else get in the way of what you really want.

Throw out the blame list and take control of your life.


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