Three Things That You Can Do to Make 2013 a Good Year

It is now Sunday, Dec. 30 2012. I think it is now a good time to briefly reflect on the last year and hopes and wished for the next year... Well, maybe not wishes so much, but more like decisions I have made.

Perhaps you have some important decisions that need to be made too?

The best thing you can do on vacation is to be on vacation and not worry about work

Here are three decisions that I made that you can make for yourself that will make you happier in 2013... Some might seem obvious but you'd be surprised by how much people (me too) allow themselves to be trampled upon and disrespected.

A) Get rid of people who are selfish, greedy and dishonest. I don't care if they are family. If they are bringing you down, get rid of them. 

2012 was a very difficult year, business wise, for me. I went to war and played poker with one of Japan's biggest companies and, after getting raped and beaten and left for dead by the side of the road, I came back and was able to boot them out of the company with the help of a partner. 

The people from that big Japanese company lied to us and tricked us. They weren't sincere. They had selfish ulterior motives of greed. That sort of thing is not going to happen again and I'm happy they are gone and we are looking forward to getting the company back on track. 

My lesson from this episode is to always be diligent and not trust new business partners too much. Getting things down on paper and in contracts, while I don't like them, is necessary. Anyway, the key word here is diligence.

B) Stop being overly accommodating to people who do not appreciate you for who you are and what you can do. You have talent and experience. The talent and experience are uniquely valuable. Don't work with people who don't appreciate that. 

I also spent much of the year being, in my thinking, way too accommodating to some people. For example, there's this guy who owns a fairly large private corporation who asked me to do work for him. I did. My team and I bent over backwards for this guy. Why? We thought that there might be a good future in business together. But, the more I think about it, I realize that, while not going into too much detail, I don't want to work with people like that guy; he is a manipulator and a sort of control freak... It took me a while to see it. (Thanks to my best friend George Williams for pointing it out to me almost instantly!)

My lesson from this episode is to respect yourself. I am a top quality professional at what I do. I know that. I don't need to discount my services for people. You don't have to either. You are good at what you do. Remember to not accept too many small jobs and to focus only on the big jobs. Why? It's only the successful conclusion of the big jobs that pay well and increase your status... Small jobs won't do that... Of course, helping friends is important, but we all have to eat.

People get what they pay for. If you are good at what you do, then demand a fair price.

C) Stop helping people who won't help themselves. For the last few years, I've spent far too much time wasting time on hopeless people. 

There is a guy I have worked with for 16 years. He used to be good at what he does. But over these last 6 years, he has been getting progressively bad. He is half the person he was 10 years ago. What happened? I don't know.

He does a half-assed job all the time and seems like he doesn't care. I've been going to the work place once a week and talking and talking and talking to this guy. Sometimes he'll get better for a few days, but soon he will relapse back into being pretty much useless. I've done so many things to try to help support him. 

This has gone on for 3 years... He doesn't get better. He gets progressively worse. The bad part is that this guy has so much ability and talent but he won't show it or put it to use... He's like a bratty 13-year-old who could get good scores on tests at school, but all he does is skate-by; he just does the absolute minimum required and tries to score Ds on every test. Doinng the minimum is not a good way to succeed.

Did I say, "test"? Life is a test. Normally, I'd dump this guy or fire him, but he has a wonderful wife and two kids....

But, then again, I have a wife a kids too. I've been spending all this time and effort to try to make things better.... But nothing works.

I think it's time for me to give up on the guy. It's time for me to get rid of this frustration and get him out of my life... I've spent hundreds of hours on trying to do something to motivate this guy to do a good job, but he just won't. Even the other staff complain about him. 

I have to get this person out of my life. He is bringing me and the other people down... It's like a cancer. It needs to be cut out.... Sad.

And the forth thing you can do to make 2013 a good year (OK, so I said there'd be three but there are four. So sue me!)

D) Stop worrying so much. Worrying doesn't help and only brings you down. Get rid of it (see A above). It's a negative energy....

I think I have been worrying about work and other people (see C above) since 2008. Guess what? It hasn't changed a thing and I'm still here, four years later with the same problems. 

I'm going to get rid of them and stop worrying about them!

Reading all four examples above, I (and you) I have to get rid of all the crappy things in our life now if we want to be happy in 2013. (If you want to read a wonderful article about getting rid of crappy people, read this by James Altucher)

Like I said, we can be happy and prosperous if we get rid of the things that are holding us down. I got rid of those dishonest guys at the big Japanese corporation. I decided to get rid of doing small change jobs that earn me little money and no respect. And I've decided to get rid of people who do not want to succeed.

Hell, the guy who doesn't want to pull his weight? What do they say? "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink it."

Boom! Gone!

2013 is coming folks. It's going to be a good year. Discard all those who are bringing you down and throw away your fears. I don't like FDR but he did say one thing that was alright, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

Finally, here's a story about living for today. Enjoy! Happy New Year!

"Buddha told a parable in a sutra: A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him..... Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!"

(The tigers represent life's dangers that are all around us all the time. The two mice, white and black, represent Yin and Yan. The man running represents his daily efforts to survive. The eating of the delicious strawberry represents living for the now and enjoying what we have now because you might be dead tomorrow!)

For more stories from Zen Buddhism, see: 101 Zen Stories http://www.101zenstories.com/index.php?story=toc

Dedicated to James Altucher.

Doomsday Condos Go on Sale! 2012 is Absolutely the End of the World!!!... Or Maybe Not so Much...

"By the time you hear the thunder, it's too late to build the ark." ~ Unknown

"It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and only a few seconds to destroy one." ~ Unknown

"I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened." ~ Mark Twain

"So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring it's own worries." ~ Jesus Christ 

Did you ever see that sixties movie where the guy was diagnosed with a deadly disease and told that he only had a short time to live? He took all his money out of the bank and maxed out all his credit cards and lived the high life for that short time. Then, to his shock, he found out that it was all a misdiagnosis and that he was actually perfectly healthy? I can't remember the name of the movie but when he found out he wasn't going to die, he realized that was in deep doo-doo and was in debt waaaaaaaay over his head? It was a pretty funny movie.


I wonder why these people today who think we're doomed any minute now don't borrow all the money they can and live the high life if they really do think we're all going to die any day now? Maybe it's because these people are a bit twisted and being twisted is all relative to one's financial status? Meaning they have no money...


I mean, everyone knows that poor people are crazier than rich people, right?


...Or are they?


Yesterday I posted about how so many people worry too much about too many things. Please refer to: Worrying Too Much About a Worse-Case Scenario is a Sign of Serious Mental Illness and Paranoia....


Really, these people who worry constantly? I don't know how they can stand themselves. Isn't just trying to survive on a daily basis enough to worry about for most people? It is for me. I have my hands full worrying about taking care of my family and paying the bills and making sure they are happy and healthy (and other sh*t like, "Is there anything to eat in the refrigerator?") without having to worry about things that I cannot control, like the end of the world. Here's a short list of those world ending things! Things like: 


1) Fukushima ending life on this planet as we know it
2) Nuclear War ending life on this planet as we know it
3) Out of Control Government Spending ending life on this planet as we know it
4) Terrorists killing us all
5) Inflation destroying our lives
6) Rogue nations killing us all
7) China taking us over (I don't speak Chinese!)
8) Crime killing us all (or just me)
9) Tomorrow - will there be one?
10) Life on other planets and will there be alien invasions
11) Will Global Warming/Cooling or even Global Moderate Temperatures end life on this planet as we know it
12) Who is going to be the winner of the next American Idol, Dancing with the Stars or "Survivor Nicaragua"?


Of course I write about these things (it gets them off my chest) but trust that I do not run around thinking about them all the time. 


Girls just wanna have fun, ya know?

I actually met Cyndi Lauper at a Okonomiyaki in Osaka once!

By the way, you're far more likely to die of heart disease, cancer, emphysema, stroke, accident, alzheimers, diabetes, the flu, suicide, chronic liver disease (drinking yourself to death), high blood pressure, parkinsons or pneumonia than anything on the above list of 1 ~ 12. (Although if you do care about #12 and watch too much TV, why don't you just kill yourself and do us all a favor?)


Well, now I found an article that I thought might give you a moment to pause and think and relax if you are one of these people who worry all the freaking time. If you are one of these people (especially) who are foaming at the mouth and screaming "If the water pools at Fukushima collapse, then life on this planet will end as we know it!" (as if you have somewhere to run and/or something that you could do about it if that were to happen) then, read on. This is for you.


It seems that this sort of nuttiness hasn't a financial basis. I mean to say that being this sort of paranoid crazy may not have such a big correlation to eating junk food. Why? Well, I have anecdotal evidence that rich people can be just as crazy as poor or middle class people. Yep. 


I have this weird idea that rich people don't eat as much junk food or processed food as poor people do. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's a notion that I entertain. Well, my friends, here's proof that some rich people are getting caught up in the Zeitgeist of the end of the world too! I remember in the sixties that some people had nuclear bomb shelters... It struck me as odd, even then, the existence of these shelters. I mean, if the world comes to and end and there's deadly radiation everywhere, how is staying in an underground bunker going to matter anyway? Won't that just prolong the inevitable? Won't the end of the world and the radiation kill you soon after anyway? Someone help me out here.


Anyhow, folks, here you go. If you are really worried about the end of the world, then I have a suggestion; work your ass off in the next few days and save up to buy one of these. Or, if there's no way that you could make a few million by day after tomorrow, then if you really are worried about "life ending on the earth as we know it" then take all of your savings, max out your credit cards, and buy all the lottery tickets you can afford. Then, if you win, buy one of these apartments:


It won't matter that you go into debt up to your ass, right? The world is going to end anyway, right? And, when it does, you'll never have to pay off the banks! Everyone is happy!


Check out what the lunatics on the other side of the tracks are buying... The Daily Mail reports in "Doomsday Shelter Being Built Below Kansas Prairie where millionaires will be able to sit out the Apocalypse in Style":


When you buy a house, you end up feeling like you will be paying it off until the world ends.

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW

The doomsday condo - What? No free parking?!

Well, how about one of these luxurious condos, which come with all the mod-cons, as well as a pool, a movie theater and a library - oh, and a guarantee that it will survive Doomsday if and when that fateful day comes.

For these luxury flats, deep below the Kansas prairie in the shaft of an abandoned missile silo, are meant to withstand everything from economic collapse and solar flares to terrorist attacks and pandemics.

Naturally, there will be no one around to phone if the guarantee fails - but at that point, the insurance will probably be the least of your worries.

So far, four buyers have thrown down a total of about $7million (£4.4m) for havens to flee to when disaster happens or the end is nigh.

This developer is a smart guy... But anyone who buys one of these needs to see a psychologist. 


Don't worry though, even if the psychologist is $195 an hour, rich people - who could afford one of these apartments - can afford it. 


Wow! Is that a load off my mind. I can't wait to move in. I hope the neighbors are nice!

Mit der Fuhrer dein Fuhrerbunker 30. April 1945