Kindness

 

Whenever the topic of kindness comes up everyone assumes that we refer to being kind to others. "Being kind to oneself" is often pushed to the background if it is discussed at all. In this article I am suggesting not only is being kind to oneself underappreciated it is necessary to be kind to you first. This is because unless the individual has a chance to look at themselves and resolve their own issues around being appreciated and receiving kindness from themselves they often mildly corrupt the kindness they try to apply to others.

--- You can think of this as a mild form of sabotage.

On the other hand if you have honestly reviewed what you are feeling taken steps to improve your personal situation in a way that allows you to put down some emotional baggage, then you are in a much better position to truly show kindness to others. If on the other hand you find that whenever you are kind to people or even a certain person there is a negative effect for you. For example you feel tired after interacting with them or showing them generosity, that is a clear indication that you have some personal work to do regarding being kind to oneself.

It is my personal opinion that North America has placed a huge focus on the external world rather than paying equal attention to what's going on with the individual. This is equivalent in my book to running a car at full speed and being astonished when either the battery or the gas runs out. Perhaps because of my physical disability I am more aware of my internal world because for the most part mother nature gave me no choice. I had to learn to work with myself because the standard playbook of being completely unaware of the limits and indeed ultimately the insights my situation posed simply were not going to work if I did not pay attention to them. Actually I feel very lucky and am very appreciative that things have worked out the way they have.

Challenges can give a person the opportunity to look at a situation from many different viewpoints and from the inside as well with the external. I see this is a real gift. I can sympathize with the difficulty that many people experience in life because I could not ignore my own. The more you know about your self the better you will be to help others and adapt.

One of the things I see in my assisted-living facility is many people avoiding change. Trying to say the same or achieve again what they once had. "Why?…" I find myself asking. Things have changed and you must as well. If you don't all that happens is you set up a conflict. A never ending struggle that will draw your energies away. Approach the situation in an alternate way. If you have lost the ability to do something find other ways to achieve the same goal. If you can't tie your shoes for example with one hand anymore. Don't waste time and effort putting them on the old way. Perhaps think about a different design of shoes or one of the many devices available. This gives you insight to yourself and the ability to help others and as a side effect empathize and practice being kind to the world.

Look inside and be kind to yourself. That is the first step and it will make all others much more attainable and your appreciation of the greater world will indeed increase. A video on this very topic will appear on this website very soon. For now take care of yourself give yourself the permission to be kind. And then move on.

Patrick 

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What Is the Very Essence of Problem-Solving?

 We all have a friend or a family acquaintance who is the go to person when it comes to resolving device issues or even understanding the latest smart TV. What makes them so good at what they do? Is it a skill that can be learned? Or is it some "magical power" they received by virtue of watching 60 years of Star Trek? 😀

In this article and accompanying video I would like to break down what I personally think are some of the key attributes of such people. Let's start with a short list: This is from my own perspective. You may definitely feel differently about the following four points.

1. They come in every issue with a completely open mind. And have a tendency to look at the issue from multiple perspectives. If they could they would indeed try to walk a mile in someone shoes.
   
   One of the most important skills in problem solemnly is the ability to step out of your own mental framework of limitations. Most of us spend the day in this framework because it makes the mental load light on the brain. There is a structure to your reality and everything it's interpreted and filtered through this reality. Being able to put this framework aside makes it possible to be open to unconsidered possibilities. This is the biggest aspect of the essence of problem-solving. If you can do justice first step then you are 90% there to fixing what ever the issue is.
   
   You would be surprised how many people can't or are unwilling to go outside of their framework of reality. I have seen people stop dead in their tracks, hold up their hands and say "I don't know how to make this thing work." Even though the answer may be right in front of them, but not presented in a way they are used to.
   
   A real-life example: Someone bought an Amazon TV and couldn't get the built invoice assistant to work. Here's what they were doing, momentarily pushing the correct button on the remote control and speaking in to the built in microphone. They try this over and over… To no avail. If they had bothered to glance up at the TV while momentarily pressing the button they would've seen a larger message on the screen which read "Press and hold the button down well speaking." Instead they were just pressing the button momentarily and completely ignoring the message on the TV set. The answer was there all the time but they were locked in to their framework which said "You only press a button on a remote control briefly."
   
   
2. They aren't afraid of saying "I don't know.". Then there mind starts to search for possible ways to break the problem down.
   
   Sometimes you are confronted with an issue which is completely baffling or you don't know how to break the various aspects down in order to search for the appropriate answers. Good problem solvers will always ask for alternate input and ideas. This includes using AI to gain further insight or fellow colleagues. Sometimes you just have to sleep on the issue as well, until you get one of those "Eureka" moments. (I find this happens quite a lot with me.) A key point here is, if something isn't working using one approach, don't just repeat the same approach over and over. The open to asking others or stepped back from the problem for a while. Very often an answer will come to you later in the day.
   
   
3. They cultivate emotional awareness in themselves. This aids in the ability to look at a situation in different ways and identify biases they may have which could block the solution.
   
   Additionally, cultivating your own emotional awareness allows you to adapt to other people's way of explaining an issue. In its most basic form this could be just recognizing and adapting to the fact that the person who you are trying to help solve a problem has a completely different way of describing the issue than you're used to. To use a computer as an analogy, you may be completely clear on exactly what a "Drag bar" is on a typical computer screen. The person with the problem on the other hand may have no clue as to what you're referring to. They may see the exact same object and call it a "small rectangle". Emotional intelligence allows you to adapt to another way of communicating with the world under the circumstances. The first step in adapting is to understand how you communicate and how you interpret things. Then using this awareness to translate appropriately in order to make the communication between all parties clear.
   
   
4. Not only do they love to solve problems, they love the entire process. They may experience a little let down if the solution is to easy. 
   
   Oh, this one is so applicable to me! 😊I do love the thrill of solving a problem. I really do love the difficulty. There is one little downside you have to be careful though, and that is knowing when to move on in order to keep a project or other activity on schedule. Left to my own devices I would focus on one aspect for an entire day. Getting everything perfect! Well this can also be a way to shoot the project down completely. The good news is I am slowly learning not to get stuck. But I admit I still love perfection. And I am finding a happy ground between "Too Easy" and achievable.  

Edited photo of a Stella d'Oro Daylily. 
Just thought it looked nice with this post.
Download full size by clicking on image (3285 x 2266) 11 MB

You may have a different order or additional items than the ones I have indicated above, but I think the essence of problem-solving is in these four steps.

Problem-solving is a critical skill, and it is something I do every single day. Indeed I welcome the various challenges and I am the first to say that I actually enjoy difficulty in a variety of aspects. To clarify that previous statement, "difficulty" in this context refers to having to do additional work to find an answer and making progress during the process. Just making something difficult without any reason or expected outcome is a waste of time and can only lead to polite frustration.

There will of course be and accompanying video once I have fleshed out the points mentioned in the above list. For now however, take care and have a great night or morning where ever you are.
 

Patrick

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You Must Have Aspirations (at least one)

 

To my way of thinking "aspirations" are something one assumes everyone has… I have met a few people now however who don't appear to have any desires or goals to reach for. They take each day as it comes without any thought of tomorrow. I find this incredibly perplexing. Not only that a few of them literally don't want an aspiration. They appear to be quite content almost blindly going from one day to the next. This short-circuits my brain.

These people are quite young in their early 20s to the oldest being early 30s. You would think by that stage of life a person would have a few goals at the very least. Maybe it's because they are all in stable situations where most of their needs are met. (I'm talking here about the assisted living building I live in. So maybe this is particular to these kinds of environments.) I cannot recall a time when I didn't have a goal. Even as a very young child I remember thinking clearly "If I could figure out how a light switch worked I could take over the world." I kid you not that is verbatim what I used to think as a child, of about four or five years old. You can find it either amusing or perhaps a little disturbing :-). In either case however I had a goal, an aspiration. I think this attitude of mind frustrated both of my parents because I would come up with spectacular ideas and my parents would have to explain to me why you can't make a steam engine out of just a coffee can and perhaps some tubing.

I think a critical component of my early years was seeing my father build some small item on the floor with my sister and I watching. One time this was a simple electromagnet which she made by simply wrapping some wire around a nail and connecting it to a battery. My sister and myself may not quite understood what he was doing at the moment but we both perceived the sheer joy. And that I believe is key, aspirations involve great emotions and great emotions push personal evolution. That's overstating it a bit but you get the idea.

Now, society seems to be heading in the other direction, not finding the solution and thereby gaining insight to a question, we are now strictly focusing on getting just the answer. Maybe this is why I am beginning to see and meet so many people without ambition. On the surface one may think that "ambition" itself is unnecessary when you can go straight to the answer. To that I counter that a great deal is gained from the process of heading toward a goal. Very often the insights are yet very subtle and at the same moment profound for the individual. That is something you can just not get by going straight to the answer. Think back less than 100 years ago and people would routinely do high mathematics in their head. Or work it out by hand on paper. What a remarkable set of skills they gained and undoubtedly those skills would be applied to various situations throughout their lives. I can't help thinking that as we modernize we are losing the real depth and benefits of hard work and the rewards of aiming toward an achievement.

I will be doing a video for this post in the next few days so please return to the blog and let me know what you think. In the meantime however I hope this short bit of text has given you something to think about. 

Till then, Patrick 

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Reframe, and you will see opportunity everywhere

 

I talk a lot about opportunities. But I've begun to realize that there are even more opportunities available then I had first thought because initially I had imposed a set of restrictions which I wasn't aware of on what exactly an opportunity should look like.

This is something we all naturally do, however if one removes the subtle preconditioned we place on any given opportunity which might arise than a whole range of possibilities opens up. For example, let's say we are looking for an opportunity in a certain field, let's say the nonprofit sector. Further presume that we already have an idea in our heads which we believe would be of great benefit to a particular community. We've done the research, added up the various costs and the pros and cons of slightly different approaches. Then we approach a few organizations and are very surprised as well as disheartened to find that we are turned down after a series of very polite meetings.

What just went wrong? In this case the reason was because we didn't demonstrate any previous experience in the nonprofit realm. Of course the agencies would be nervous about funding an idea and a person who had no previous experience and was a complete unknown.

Now let's approach this same opportunity in a different way. Rather than beating the door down and visiting the agencies as a complete unknown, we instead volunteer with a nonprofit group. Getting to know how things work, and a much better overview of issues. Not to mention networking with various people. Then once we have a bit of a track record we pitch the very same idea and this time we get support and some small funding for our idea.

Green Timbers Park Surrey BC July 24, 2026

The difference between these two approaches is obvious, the first one we attempted to bulldoze what we perceived as a marvellous concept. In the second situation we work with the group gaining a track record and understanding along the way. We approach the same opportunity in different ways and one way led to success. Maybe not the full idea which is often what happens when you are asking for funding but we made a step in the right direction.

Opportunities really begin to appear when you think incrementally. The steps involved toward an ultimate goal, rather than trying to achieve everything all at once. When one approaches a situation in this slower more methodical way there are many benefits. A deeper understanding is acquired which can only be gained by going through the more detailed process. Additionally your network of acquaintances grows tremendously. And let me tell you that network may be important throughout your entire life not just the project at hand.

So when you are looking for new opportunities, make sure to consider the situations which might help get you part of the way there rather than attempting to reach the full goal all at once. I can guarantee that when you adopt this approach you will see many more "opportunities" available to you.

Have a great day!
Patrick

 

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Useful Hardship

As I get older and continue to proceed through life build one consistent message I perceive is that one must continue to change and evolve, pretty much, at all costs. I've written about this previously on the blog and it bears repeating. From observation, it appears that there is a natural tendency in people to adhere to routine more and more as they age. I don't know if this is based in biology or is merely a side effect of the fact that in this day and age we can literally afford to do so. Where in earlier times the necessities of life required that we stayed engaged with the surroundings and the side effect was people stayed healthier.

When the necessity of this involvement is removed, mental and physical function begins to erode quite rapidly and if there are any underlying medical conditions they become magnified. I am seeing this nowadays all around me as I observe people. Sometimes it is subtle, but many times it is severe and very hard to recover from because the modern way of dealing with this is to remove even more challenges. This makes the person "challenge averse", which of course becomes a loop, speeding up one's decline.

"The Choice to Grow or Stagnate"

Although this situation may produce many diverse outcomes, there is one I see consistently. Negativity begins to manifest in the person and they hold on to this darker worldview. Defending it rather than challenging it. This behaviour then spreads throughout the group. I myself feel the effects and have to keep bolstering my defenses. The very activity I am undertaking writing this article is one of the means I used to keep engaged with life. Later today I plan to take a trip into Vancouver using only my electric wheelchair and minimal public transit in order to stay fully engaged with humanity. I am also doing this because next weekend there is a premier of the indie film "The Decision" and I want to show my support of the film's creator, Steven Cayer.

Trailer: The Decision

 "A sharp-witted 30-year-old man with cerebral palsy living in assisted care has his independence tested when his overprotective mother secretly enrolls him in a risky medical trial – forcing him, his girlfriend, and his neighbor to confront what freedom really means."

Showings:

 April 11, 2026 
The Centre in Vancouver For Performing Arts 
777 Homer St, Vancouver, BC.

(Part of the "CRAZY8S", an  annual 8-day short filmmaking challenge that provides support and funding to 6 emerging and mid-career filmmakers.)  

Steven Cayer Executive Producer / Writer

 

The way out of this negative downhill slide is a situation I call "Useful Hardship" finding the difficulties in life and challenging them, whether that be going out in inclement weather or undertaking a task which requires learning and growth. One cannot let their life become to easy or comfortable. Hardship must be dealt with and that keeps the person engaged in life. More aware of themselves.

The inner journey a person experiences as they confront the difficulties and find solutions is just as important as the external one. It is deeply personal and frequently requires a long commitment to improve what ever the individual's issues are. 

I can guarantee that there are many benefits to useful hardship. It will give you the insights required to know when you can change things versus when you must adapt to a new situation. You will continue to own the decisions which affect your personal and public life. Positive people around you will also see the effort being put in and they will stay engaged with you, seeing the wisdom gained throughout the years. There will be other benefits which only you will know about. That is for you to write about if you wish. 

All the best in your journeys.

Take care Patrick Clark

 

** NOTE: The picture displayed at the top of this article is from the service Ideogram AI.  As a layperson, I have read their relevant "terms of service" and determined, to the best of my ability, that the image may be viewed by the public.  However before any reuse, please review fully their terms and if necessary contact the company for more information.

The use of said image does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.  

Change May Bring Discomfort But...

 ...It Is Guaranteed to show you something positive you didn't expect.

It is always wise to remember that no matter who you are and how observant you are there will be many times in the life where one becomes, quite accidentally, a little too comfortable.

That is, in the absence of an external force acting on the human being, we have a tendency to stop our own evolution by becoming a little too comfortable with whatever the current situation is. This stops most people from developing further. That is until something comes along and shakes them up a bit so that they continue on the road of life.

Everyone falls into this trap many times over a human being's admittedly short lifespan. When people become content for a long period of time they inevitably stop evolving. Which  is a shame, because that is the very time to undertake something new and shake up the tree. To be clear I don't mean you have to do this every day, but I do you mean that it should be frequent enough that you are keenly aware of the benefits. And what might the benefits be you ask?… Far too many to mention, and for each person the list is unique. I can tell you however that it keeps you engaged with the very process of life. Allowing you to notice things you might otherwise have not seen. I bet you as a matter of fact that when you see something new especially if it's unexpected, there is always something deep within that feels a little uncomfortable. That feeling of being "uncomfortable" is an extremely important sign because it means that you are looking at an opportunity to change. You may not like what you perceive as the change, and indeed there may be a fair bit of resistance to the new concepts you are confronted with, but I promise in the end you will gain more than you lose. Usually in ways that are imperceptible to other people. But you know what has occurred.

Click picture to view / download full
resolution printable copy.

This artwork is hereby placed in the
public domain and is based upon material
in the public domain. Patrick Clark

So please don't allow yourself to become overly comfortable or complacent. You should always try to shake each day up a little bit. Because the only meaningful constant in one's life is "change itself".

 So go out and do something you were not quite expecting today. Shake up the day!

Feel free to let me know in the comments if you had any Eureka moments 😉

Take care Patrick 

 

** NOTE: The picture displayed at the top of this article is from the service Ideogram AI.  As a layperson, I have read their relevant "terms of service" and determined, to the best of my ability, that the image may be viewed by the public.  However before any reuse, please review fully their terms and if necessary contact the company for more information.

The use of said image does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.

 

 

Where Will Your Magic Moment Be Today?

 

Somewhere, in the next 24 hours you will experience something positive. 

It will be amongst a flurry of other activity. The challenge will be to notice it.

We are also busy with activities and obligations, while at the same time, being not so subtly, attuned to the negative things that we frequently don't notice small moments of enlightening pleasant events. Now evolutionarily the human species is more attuned to the negative things. After all if you were in the wild you would want to be aware of that line hiding in the bush. Trouble is that advertisers and other influencers have learned to manipulate this trait and the things have gotten out of hand. We are absolutely bombarded with the darker side of life so much so that it takes some effort to see the more positive things out there. I promise you however they are there. Small little dots of pleasantness or calmness scattered about.

Make it a goal today to notice these little moments of uplifting insight. They may be very short, but don't discount them. Indeed, add them up and see what the average amount of daily positive insights there are. To this over a week and I'll bet you will be surprised.

One of the things that everyone has to deal with now days which is unique to our generation and those coming after us, is information is coming at us and an incredible rate. Everything is delivered to us almost instantaneously now. We don't even have to type in a query on a keyboard anymore, you can just ask the question directly and for the most part you get an answer. I find that amazing personally on one level, because I see the potential of this technology, however I wonder on average how this technology is used every day. It is used to uplift, or is it used to depress? Give me a moment, I am going to run off and ask "Gemini" this question right now. The question I posed and the answer will be posted immediately below this text.

The question: "Are there any statistics on whether questions posed to Artificially Intelligent services like yourself or chatGPT are of a negative nature versus a positive query?"

Google Gemini produced quite a response, a mini report on the subject. 

As always take everything produced by an AI system with scepticism. I have not verified any of the information contained in the report. Use at your own risk.

Having said that, it does appear to ring true to me. One thing I take from this output is questions to such systems I won't be as "flowery" in my queries.

 Google Gemini's response begins now:

The question of whether users are "nice" or "mean" to AI is a significant area of study for researchers. While there is no single, real-time "dashboard" for all AI queries, several large-scale studies and dataset analyses provide a clear picture of user behavior.

 

Generally, the data suggests that most interactions are neutral and task-oriented, but a small, vocal minority of users engages in highly emotional or "negative" querying.

1. The Majority: Neutral and Utility-Driven

Most users treat AI as a tool rather than a social companion. Analysis of public datasets like ShareGPT and WildChat (which contains over 1 million real-world interaction logs) reveals that the vast majority of prompts are:

●     Informational: Fact-checking or asking for explanations.

●     Productive: Writing code, emails, or summaries.

●     Creative: Generating stories or brainstorming.

A 2025 study by OpenAI on "affective use" found that while users do occasionally personify AI, the majority of users engage in relatively neutral ways. The emotional or negative queries typically come from a "tail set" of power users who use the AI for more personal or experimental reasons.

2. The "Politeness" Statistics

Interestingly, there is a distinct divide in how people frame their prompts. Some users include "please" and "thank you," while others use blunt commands.

●     The Accuracy Paradox: A recent study from Pennsylvania State University (2025) titled "Mind Your Tone" found that rude or blunt prompts actually resulted in higher accuracy (84.8%) compared to "very polite" prompts (80.8%).

●     Why? Researchers suggest that polite language often adds "linguistic noise" or "redundancy" that can distract the model from the core instruction. Direct, imperative commands (e.g., "Solve this.") provide a cleaner signal to the AI.

3. Negative vs. Positive sentiment

When researchers perform sentiment analysis on user prompts, they typically find the following distribution:

Sentiment Type	Characteristics	Estimated Prevalence
Neutral	Fact-based, coding, "how-to" instructions.	70% – 85%
Positive/Polite	Including "please," "thank you," or "good job."	10% – 15%
Negative/Hostile	Aggressive commands, testing "jailbreaks," or venting.	5% – 10%

4. Sentiment Mirroring

A phenomenon called sentiment propagation is often observed in AI interactions. If you are negative or aggressive, the AI may inadvertently mirror that tone (though safety filters now "soften" extreme emotions).

 

●     Positive Prompts: Tend to increase the "verbosity" (length) of the response.

●     Negative Prompts: Often lead to a decline in factual accuracy (up to 8.4%in some tests) because the model may shift toward more speculative or defensive language.

Summary of Trends

●     The "Venting" Factor: A small percentage of users use AI specifically to vent frustrations they wouldn't say to a human.

●     The "Test" Factor: Many negative queries are not "mean" in intent but are "adversarial"—users trying to trick the AI into saying something offensive to see where the boundaries are.

●     The "Directness" Shift: As users become more "AI-literate," the use of social pleasantries like "please" is decreasing in favor of efficient, direct prompting.

 End of Google Gemini's response.

 

Now let's get back to the topic at hand and that is being aware of the positive events that occur every day in your life and mine. Remember to when you're speaking with people to give them the benefit of the doubt and not to check everything so personally. If need be step out of your comfort zone for a moment and look at at the bigger picture. Even if your Magic moment isn't immediately apparent stepping back from an event often gives you some insights which can allow you time to mold your emotions and indeed see the magic which may be just around the corner.

As you can tell, this is how I tend to approach every day. Knowing that somewhere in the next 24 hours there will be something unexpectedly pleasant. Maybe very brief in duration, but it will be there.

Have a great day and don't forget to keep looking. Maybe make a journal of the events you are now noticing which you might otherwise have ignored. You may be very surprised. Let me know in the comments.
.
Patrick

A Midwinter Season Of Procrastination

 Time to talk about this notable topic, "Procrastination". I said, in a very short February 2023 post, that "It had reared its ugly head". I can tell from the shortness of the article and the minimal amount of effort I put into the graphic that I must've been really out of sorts in this regard. Probably stalling on many fronts.

Here it is 2026 and the situation is back again, not as bad, but still annoying as hell. It's a good thing I wrote the original post because it does have some good points. For once I'm going to listen to myself. One of the things I'm going to recognize is that I have been keeping this blog going pretty regularly and it is doing quite well averaging around 7000 to almost 8000 visitors a month.

SIDE NOTE: Not bad for a blog that has issues with google's "smart phone spider", which is how they scan  everything today on the Internet. For those of you in the audience that art totally "geeky", a "spider"is simply a program that scans the Internet for new content. It does this by pretending to be a device, in this case a smart phone. When it gets to the site, the blogger server attempts to send it a smart phone compatible webpage and the process by which it does this by makes the Google spider think something fishy is going on so it doesn't like to add page to the Google index. Because of the way blogger is set up there is not much I can do about it. Fortunately, enough of my articles make it through however.

And now back to the topic at hand, procrastination. Where was I… As you can tell this is a very informal post as I just try to work through getting ready to get things done today. Rather than try to do everything my goal today is to focus on only one thing, if possible, because sometimes reality comes along and goes, "Nope. I'm going to fill up your plate."

One more side note. Unlike other websites, I never take anything off this site and so it has become a bit of a historical crucible with articles going way back to 2012.. So if you post a comment, it is here forever and apparently Blogger.com service on which this site depends it's doing quite well. So disciple be around for a long time I think. So while I'm working through my little boat of procrastination please feel free to use a new feature I added if you're using a laptop or tablet you will see at the top of every post a "Read a Random Post" button, feel free to use it is much as you like.

Anyway, I'm getting on with the rest of my day. Take care and their other items (articles) in the queue. So stay tuned for more.

Patrick

** NOTE: The picture displayed at the top of this article is from the service Ideogram AI.  As a layperson, I have read their relevant "terms of service" and determined, to the best of my ability, that the image may be viewed by the public.  However before any reuse, please review fully their terms and if necessary contact the company for more information.

The use of said image does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.

Time before us

When it really hits home that there are a finite number of days to live, it is not only profound, it begs the question: "Was life worth it?".

I'll get to my answer in a moment, but boy do you start reevaluating everything in your life and surroundings from my totally different perspective. Considering things like:

• Should long multiyear projects be undertaken?
  
  
• Is it really worth buying that large big-ticket item?
  
  
• Since the end of life is now more than an abstract concept, each day becomes "a limited time event". How to spend that time wisely?

The list goes on from there, and the closer one examines it, the clearer it becomes that life is a pretty unusual state to be in. Or perhaps, to put it another way, the very act of considering the above questions, and being conscious about doing so is incredibly inspiring. There-I have just given you my answer to the question "What It's like Worth It?"-"Hell, Yes!" - The good and bad.

Perplexing, only I think the bad was just as important as the good parts of life. When considering the negative experience as a whole after the fact. By definition, you are not going to get anything positive out of the negative experience while you're in the middle of it, unless you literally stepped out of the experience for a moment to consider it from another viewpoint. It is all about taking stock of life; the whole experience. Not being a passive passenger but as engaged with life as much as you can be. That is my take away if I was asked to sum up my reading of existence and it would be a 10 😊😊.

I think it is very important, especially as we are now dealing with more and more technology that is impersonal and literally reformatting the social norm that everyone periodically take stock of their life and if you don't find it is worth it so far make changes to make it a worthwhile experience. These need not be huge changes. Often it starts with a slight mind set adjustment. Take a look at what your preceding to be true automatically. Is it negative or is it positive?. There are quite a few articles on this blog about this topic, I'll  link to a few here.

Funny how this article started out being about the limited number of days before us, meaning of course, "me" and is transformed itself into a short article on how to appreciate life. At least my approach to getting more from life and it is really pretty simple:

• Pay attention.
  
  
• Don't do things automatically.
  
  
• Change your routines regularly and then occasionally change that. Become irregular for a little while.
  
  
• If you are uncomfortable with the idea of "change" consider why that seems to be the case. Often it is based on a misconception about the change itself.

Okay that's it for this brief Saturday article. Have a good day and of course let me know what you think.
Patrick 

What Are the Origins of Enthusiasm?

 

Some people become enthusiastic regularly. While others just never reach thier "Ignition Point".

 

I have noticed this to be the case in my surroundings, but I think it's true of the wider world as well. Once again, it boils down to a few simple differences in general outlook and expectations of life.

Enthusiastic people are:

1. Curious. They want to know why something works a certain way. They desire a deeper understanding and are enthusiastic about the undertaking of learning.
   
   
2.  "Change" is one of their favourite words as well as an action. They innately understand that the world and their life changes frequently. Usually in subtle ways, but sometimes in overwhelming ways. The key is that they welcome and accept this fact.
   
   
3. It is innately understood that the personality and perhaps the very person will change throughout their lifetime. Remaining static and holding onto the old ways is not one of their goals. This point is one of the most important aspects of their character. It is understood that nothing is permanent. Everything about life is in flux.

Unenthusiastic people don't share the above-mentioned points.

There is a false belief that they will remain the same, throughout life. That their character as it is today, will always be. Furthermore they actively will avoid change. Sometimes they will put quite a bit of effort into staying static.

They prefer staying "Comfortable", within known boundaries. This means that they eventually will become very frustrated because things naturally change around them. Yet they will profess a desire to experience or acquire new things. This is a contradiction, you can't avail yourself the benefits of new things unless you come out of your boundaries.

The result of these two behaviors , "staying the same" and remaining "comfortable" means that they don't grow and will retreat into past memories while limiting the negatives they perceive in the modern world. I think this condition has been brought about by the simple fact that in today's world there is nothing that really forces the human being to go outside of their comfort zone. There is no need to hunt, or seek shelter. 100 years ago this was definitely not the case, a person had to avail themselves of opportunities if they wanted to survive.

So, the message is clear. If you are sincerely seeking enthusiasm in your life. You must embrace change and acknowledge that the person you believe you are today will not be the person up tomorrow. You may not the comfortable with change but in order to grow it is a necessary fact which must be undertaken. Do this and the enthusiasm for things in your life will begin to appear.

Have a great day everyone and of course take care.
Patrick

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