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It seems like practically every day I drive by a dead squirrel in the road. I never thought much about it until yesterday when I slammed on my brakes to avoid hitting one. At first, I figured that it’s because there’s a lot of squirrels and a lot of cars where I live. But there are a lot of other animals too, and I rarely see them lying dead in the road. But watching this squirrel dart back and forth clued me in on the problem, and it’s a problem I see with a lot of people.
In my many years of driving, I’ve seen probably thousands of squirrels darting across busy roads. Most of the time, they could have escaped doom by doing one simple thing – being more decisive. A typical animal will start crossing the road, and if it sees a car coming at it it’ll turn back, otherwise it will continue across the road. Squirrels on the other hand dart out and then turn around when the see a car, then think they can beat it so go back across, then get almost to the other side and then turn back, and by then the car has stopped and they continue to other side. While this zig-zag pattern of unpredictability has its place in the world – this is what makes a ride like the Tower of Terror in Disney World exciting and unpredictable.
I’ve noticed a trend lately that has started to bother me – too many people telling us that there’s something wrong with us. I don’t know about you but I’m getting tired of it. Everywhere I turn, I see ads or people trying to get me to go along with their scheme to correct the problems in my life. And it’s everywhere from TV and radio to magazines & newspapers to even social media.
I have no problem with people out there trying to make an honest living. But it just seems like there are a lot of people out there with solutions looking for others to push their solutions on – and these people may not even be in need of these solutions.
There’s nothing more saddening to me than to meet someone who truly feels worthless. Sometimes, they’ve made a mistake and have allowed it to eat away at their self-worth. Other times, they missed out on something they were vying for – perhaps they lost on out a client, job opportunity, promotion or something else they were competing for or were bullied or abused to the point where they feel worthless. In most cases, there’s a way to reclaim your worth.
The bottom line is that no matter what happens to us, we still have the same self-worth and potential that we had the day we were born. A great way to visualize this is to imagine you’re a $100 bill (or whatever the greatest value of your country’s circulated money is). When a $100 bill gets soiled, crumpled or ripped it has the same value. Even if it is shredded and then taped back together, you can bring it to a store and purchase $100 worth of goods.
I had a discussion with some friends recently about prayer and whether or not there’s a point to it. We all agreed that many people misuse prayer for things like getting a good hand at the poker table, winning the lottery or their favorite team winning the Super Bowl. And of course, when it doesn’t work out, they blame whoever or whatever they’re praying to.
When I was in school, I remember having teachers that would do a roll call each morning to take attendance. While this was customary for the first few weeks of the school year (or semester) until the instructor learned everyone’s name, I had some teachers (and even professors in college) that would do this every day. I remember one teacher insisting that we say “present” versus “here” or, as many of my classmates would say, “yup.” I found this to be pointless but looking back, there was a benefit to it (especially by saying “present”).
I spent most of my afternoons throughout my early teens playing the infamous NES (Nintendo Entertainment System
) with friends from my neighborhood. At the time, I remember a few articles that I’d share with my parents about the benefits of playing video games – developing problem solving skills and increasing hand-eye coordination were the two biggest. But I learned something else that I didn’t realize until I was an adult – how to balance my life.
Last night when I was doing my cardio workout, I found myself getting tired towards the middle of it. Since it was my 12th day in a row of cardio, I started to wonder if it might be okay to do a 20 minute workout instead of a 40 minute workout. After all it was a Sunday night and I had had long day. But as I thought more about it, I decided that it was in my best interest to finish my workout.