Here are two trains of thoughts-

1. People should accept you for WHO you are. You shouldn’t have to “change” for someone. Be Yourself!

Or-

2. You should work to improve yourself! Always be working to become better. Be a better person, smarter, more fit! Get out there and be more social! Seize the day!

Hmm, so we should change ourselves, right? But we shouldn’t change for others? 

If I didn’t change, I’d be living at home with my parents and asking what was for dinner tonight.  Hey, if that is your life goal (to live at home with your parents….follow those dreams!) but that’s just not for me. 

You should also change for people…especially your spouse. If you are a jerk, you need to change that. I do stupid stuff that makes my wife upset all the time. I do smart stuff that makes her upset but it is for the betterment of the family (so I’m not going to change).  She has told me what upsets her and I have made the change for the better. I’m not some insensitive dope who doesn’t want to get better.

Remember: “You don’t have to sick to get better!”

Now, there are times when I’m not going to change.  Not all of my advice is worthless advice.  I’m not going to stop working hard.  I’ll continue to a good parent.  I don’t give up because life is hard today. Stuff happens; you take a deep breath and move forward.  There are days when I feel overwhelmed but I don’t fall apart.

So if you are a pigheaded jerk, you should change. If you yell at the neighborhood kids because they are making “too much noise”, you should change. If you are afraid to travel, you definitely need to change. If you think you are better than everyone else, please, go ahead and change (and stop thinking like that….you are a nobody everyone hates). 

 

Do you want to be a better leader, boss, or parent? What about being a better spouse? Surely, you answered “yes.” But how? Turn to nagging!  Nagging is a time tested technique that is sure to shot you straight into the ranks of being an awesome person!

Some people might view nagging in a negative light. Those people are naysayer Losers! Nagging is a wonderful technique that brings the best out in the person you are nagging. Without you and your nagging, they would never get anything done. In fact, they would be simple losers that who would aimlessly drift through life unaware that they are lost souls.

Don’t forget to nag about things that are both big and small.  How will you perfect your nagging motivational technique if you don’t like the small things become big things? Make everything you do a nagging battle!

Some people say you should pick your battles…so make everything a battle. Need a new car? Mention how awful your current car is.  Talk about how old it is and how it doesn’t like to go up a big hill anymore. Or how it smells. Or how it has let itself go over the years you’ve been together.  Talk about how your friend just got a new car. Every time a car commercial comes on tv, have a discussion that that Honda dealership is having a sale and wouldn’t it be great to get a new car?  That’s some good nagging right there.

Is short term nagging better than long term nagging?

Hmm, that’s a good question. I think you should show everyone you care all the time. Nag for small items on a short term basis (remember EVERYTHING is a battle!) and large ticket items can be scretched into months or years of nagging!

Action Step: Find something you can nag about tomorrow! You can nag your kids, spouse, coworker, or an employee. Practice those nagging skills right now! Don’t delay!

Enjoy your nagging!

Is it better to listen to a person that has failed numerous times? Or is it perhaps better to listen to the people who have succeed?

What is your defintion of success? Walt Disney failed a number of times but people still view him as a success. What about Abraham  Lincoln?  He ran for public office and failed a lot. Who would have guess he would become our 16th President?

What about relationship and marriage advice? Does the person with five marriages have better advice than the person with only marriage? Does it matter if the marriage is only five years old or 50 years old?

I don’t profess to know all the answers (heck, if I did then this wouldn’t be a worthless blog advice). However, if you think about it, don’t we know all the answers to the questions we ask ourselves? Isn’t that what a therapist would say to you? Wouldn’t they say that you know that you need to do?  We all know “what we need to do” in our lives. We know we should plan better, drink less, focus more, be more considerate, be a better spouse, be a more skillful lover, and a more compassionate parent.

How do we find success? Do we read some article in the latest Parenting Magazine about how we should balance our social and economical lives?  But the reality is, we know that the balance will always be unbalanced. It will never be an easy balance. There isn’t a simple formula that tells you the proper balance between your work life and your personal social life.  However, maybe, just maybe you will know what you need to do to bring inner peace to your life.

So get out there and enjoy your life. Answer your own questions. Do the right thing.

 

Let’s talk about our fears and the lies we tell yourselves to keep us going. The deceit we bring upon ourselves to make the day go by faster and how we can improve our lives.

Just kidding. What kind of worthless advice would that be? That might be helpful advice. We can’t have that here!  It’s my blog about being sarcastic and fun loving so we need to enjoy life.

I’m out camping with the Boy Scouts for a Troop Leadership Training weekend. Except that all the scouts here are older scouts and have been to numerous leadership training weekends. None of our younger Scouts could make it. So instead of leadership training, we are making this weekend into a 6 month short term planning weekend and a long term 3-5 year planning weekend for the troop. We will be planning where and what the troop wants to do over the next 3 years. Long after I’m gone, the troop will be doing fun things. Yippee!

We will be covering summer camps, backpacking trips, canoe trips, snow camping, and mountain bike rodeos. It will be a blast.

Well, my days of being a Scoutmaster are winding down. This weekend (from Friday to Sunday), we have our semiannual (twice a year), Troop Leadership Training (TLT). This will be my last one. Yeah!!

Now, this weekend isn’t super hard if you enjoy 8-12 Boy Scouts (ages 11-15) attempting to learning positive leadership qualities, cooking awful food, and staying up way too late. They also have very boring presentations (really not their fault) that I get to listen to.

Luckily, the adults cook and eat seperately from the Boy Scouts so I don’t have to worry about eating some gross hot dog dinner (for the millionth time).

I do want to spice things up a bit, so I thought we should watch some classical horror slasher movies. I figure a psychopath killing off a bunch of teenagers (in the woods) would be a prefect movie.  I think I could further the Boy Scouts’ experience with the addition of various adults wearing Halloween masks, running around, screaming….Oh, and perhaps a chainsaw running at full speed? And all of this would be done under the cover of darkness.  We want to make sure the scouts learn all about “team building” as they try to stay alive.

I’ll also probably start saying stuff like “Hmm, that’s an odd noise.” Or “Funny, did you hear that?” Or “What the heck was that? Did you see something over there??”  Sometimes the shear anticipation and the fear it produces is the real key to a scary experience.

What if I just start to giggle to myself for no reason whatsoever?  Or “talk” to a ghostly figure once in a while?  That might help the scouts freak out that much more.

Now, it won’t be all bad. We have a fairly nice location with flush toilets, hot water, and a large covered area. We do have to sleep in open air cabins. At least I don’t have to squeeze into some little tent and I’ll be dry too!  I’ll bring my comfortable air mattress, a good sleeping bag, and my pillow. Heck, I can even wear my Hello Kitty pajamas!

Do dear readers, feel free to add in your suggestions on other fun activities we could do? Or movies to watch?

Ah, Saturday. A day of rest and relaxation after a week of extremely hard work. You work hard, don’t you? You’d like more time off while at the same time make more money, right? You want the finer things in life, don’t you?

Then reading my blog will change your life! Now, I’m not sure if your life will change for the better, but it will change. Over the years, I’ve read enough self-help books and watched enough TED talks on YouTube to be a self-made self-help guru. And I’m pretty sure I could attend an online university and get my PhD.  Basically, all I need to do is introduce the pain of your failures and then ask questions that you have to answer in the affirmative.

You do want to be a better person, right? You want a better life for yourself and your loved ones, right? Do you love your family?

You already know you want to be better. You want to improve. You just need me to push you a little.

Fit Bit Woes
In August, we purchased the little blue tooth versions of the Fit Bit devices for ourselves. That is a Fit Bit for my wife, myself, and my daughter. Now, these are nifty little devices that you wear on your wrist (like a bracelet) that tracks your steps. You move around walking, running, or do some kind of exercise, it records your “steps”. You can set your own goal but in general, the common goal is 10,000 steps for the average person to do. Supposedly, this will keep you healthy. That, and cutting back on the double cheeseburgers and three daily beers would also help.

Now, the Fit Bit is pretty easy to use; slap it on your wrist, download the app onto your phone, and away you go. I have the Bluetooth version so it syncs up fairly easy. The only problem I have is remembering to keep the darn thing charged. It seems to hold a charge forever and then just dies. I look at the thing every day, yet I am unable to remember to charge it until it is too late. Then my valuable steps are never recorded and it looks like I had a day of laying on the couch, watching TV.

For example, I just synced my Fit Bit after being up for the past three hours and it says I have a whopping 6 steps. A bit annoying. I thought since it had a full charge, it would be automatically recording my steps. How am I suppose to crush my daughter and her friends if my Fit Bit isn’t recording my steps?

My daughter, a few of her friends, and a few of my friends all compete to see who has the most steps. I’m doing OK but I still think some of the girls strap the Fit Bit to their dog and then throw the ball for the dog to fetch. Either that or they just walk back and forth to the candy store about 30 times.

Overall, it has been a good experience with the Fit Bit. It is a nice reminder that you should be getting your steps in daily and live to a ripe old age.
 Because if you don’t live to a ripe old age, who else is going to bug your kids with worthless advice?