Ego Friendly

Remember the smell of your grandmother’s kitchen or the soft feel of that first hand you held? Can you taste those perfect waffles you had in Maine that day or see, in your mind’s eye, that stunning Pollack they have up at the Met? Your brain is a lot more than just a machine to keep you alive, it is also a database that keeps you living.

Most of the memories that are kicking around in our heads are easy to understand the import of; your grandma made you happy, that first special someone is still special, those waffles were amazing, that painting blew your mind. But what about the strange details we recall? Why do you remember the prongs on the moose head in Maine, or the design on Grandma’s wallpaper?

No one can say, for sure, why we remember all the things we do- maybe to keep memories vivid, maybe because these little details have more importance than we realize. Whatever it is, you have to trust your Sense.

No one wants to hear your whining, your gripping and your complaints. No one wants to hear you go on and on about what things have caused you to fail or what Obstacles are in your path. Do you know why? It’s not because no one cares. It’s not because we’ve heard it all before. No, it is because indulging you by listening gives validity to your problems, it doesn’t make them smaller, it makes them bigger.

Too often we think that all we need to do is let off some steam, speak out our problems, and everything will be fixed. Well that’s not the way that you conquer- that’s not the way that you win. If something is getting in your way or holding you back, don’t go running off to someone with a shoulder to cry on, buckle down and tackle that challenge!

While not the most pleasant memory for some, High School math class is one of the perfect places you can learn the importance of Wisdom. Don’t get confused, that doesn’t mean that the math you learn in high school is one of those bits of wisdom you need all your life (unless you’re an architect or mathematician), just that the way you learn there is something you can… um… learn from.

Most Maths require the learner to not only understand the basic rules, but also to memorize and understand a formula or two. A formula is a symbolic representation of a rule of math, a simpler way to remember how the basics work.

This is really what all wisdom should be- a building block of proven fact that allows us to make decisions faster. So whether or not your Math teacher looked like Ben Stein or if you use the Pythagorean Theorem on a daily basis- you learned something useful in Math class.

Originally posted 3/5/10

We are all in business of discovery, some of us just don’t realize it yet. Every day, with every action we take, we are moving towards something- a breakthrough, a culmination. Life is not a simple journey from point A to point B, it is a wandering, meandering quest from various places to others. When we look at the world as the same old, the monotonous, then we are willfully closing our eyes to the opportunities that are all around us.

Think of a Search Engine, any word or phrase that you type in can lead you to the most fascinating and interesting knowledge. Sure the first 5 or 10 or 20 results will be mundane, run-of-the-mill, but if you keep searching you’re going to come across something new, something invigorating. So to with life; you can go about your life skimming the surface, not looking deeply, or you can dive in and Discover wonders and beauty that you never knew were there.

We talk a lot about success here at Ego Friendly. We offer thoughts and inspirations on how to achieve it. We give you quotes and comments to help you excel and grasp it. But what is success? Really, when you get right down to it what does it mean to “succeed”? Is it the big car, the new house, the hot wife, nailing that gig? Does success only come at the end of a great task or can you call every small move in your great plan a success?  What, damn it all, does “success” mean?

It seems odd, doesn’t it, that a company that claims to help you get what you need to succeed is saying they don’t even know what the word means, right? Follow me here, people- there is a point coming. When we at Ego Friendly say that we will help you succeed, in fact when anyone says that, the offer is not to give you whatever it is you think you want. That’s called instant gratification and that is not what we are about. Success, we can all agree, is a goal and we are not in the business of fixing games. What we do is give you the tools we can to help you take out the other team, the inspiration and energy to carry yourself to the goal.

Success is, in actuality, something that you cannot define. Sure, you can define the word, but for each person the state of success is different. Success is subjective. Each person has their own goals and their own measuring rod of success. For some it’s landing that promotion, for others it’s just getting to the office everyday. For one person it could be finally refinishing their deck, for another- taking out the garbage.

Even those who have never even had success in their own lives can tell you what shape it would take for them. Emily Dickinson put it best, perhaps, when she said:

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory!

As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

Who doesn’t have a Dream? Some secret desire that burns within them, some wish or want that they long for, even if they wish equally as strong for no one else to know. Secret dreams are what keep us moving- the dream house, the dream car, the dream job- all act as incentives to plow through the mundane tasks of the everyday world and accomplish.

So what’s the big deal, right? It’s healthy, everyone does it and no one is hurt. Well, 2 out of 3 isn’t so bad: someone, in fact, does get hurt- you. If no one is aware of your dreams than no one can help you achieve them, if that little fire is only tended by you, the spark might easily go out. No one is recommending that you go around and tell strangers that you secrety wish to be a circus clown, besides for not helping much that could end with you in jail or a mental instituation. What you could do that would actually help is share your dream with someone- someone you trust or love, someone who can help you by encouraging and believing in you. Try it, we guarantee it will help.

We can’t all be Indiana Jones; Archaeologist, expert in ancient languages and cultures, adventurer and just all around hero. Most of us couldn’t pull off the fedora, for one and that bull-whip! Forget about it. Still, besides enjoying Dr. Jones’s many adventures on the big screen there is also a lot that we can learn from him.

You see, despite the way most of us remember the films, it is not “Junior”‘s bravado or machismo that saves the day or beats the Nazis or gets the girl. In fact, those attributes are usually the exact things that get him in most of his messes in the first place. No, what Indy can teach us all is to harness the powers of our mind, our wisdom and our analytical skills to make good Decisions- decisions such as the one made here:

True, most choices we make don’t have such dire consequences if we get them wrong, but that doesn’t mean we still shouldn’t do our best to “choose wisely.”

Represented by a group of wavy lines around his head, spider sense is one of Spider-Man’s special powers. It warns him about things he can’t see and even lets him know when a seemingly harmless situation is actually not. How many of us, reading those comics, haven’t wished for that very gift? Forget web-swinging or sticking to walls- this is an ability that would really come in handy all the time!

The fact is that while the odds of getting bitten by a radioactive spider is low, something like spider-sense is actually well within our reach. Though science is still skeptical about ESP and other phenomena, it is an established fact that our brains collect data from all our senses to make “guesses” and  create what we call intuition. Whether it’s a person’s posture telling you they’re not safe or even the combination of senses that make you turn your head just in time to dodge the ball flying at you from the direction of the park, our regular 5 senses (and their combination) can do a pretty good job of protecting us. So next time you get jealous of Spidey, remember- he doesn’t have a monopoly on super powers.

Originally posted: 2/15/10