8 lessons to learn from the rise & demise of Michael Jackson

Whether you love him or hate him, there’s no denying that Michael Jackson reached a level of success in the music business that still hasn’t been replicated by anyone else yet. He had 13 number 1 hits and his “Thriller” album was the best-selling of all time, with 50 million copies sold.

Michael had a tremendous amount of success but he also had a tremendous amount of troubles and pain. There’s a lot we can learn from his rise to fame and from his demise. Here are 8 of the biggest lessons we can learn from him; even though many he didn’t learn himself.

1. Be generous, but also cautious

Michael was a generous person and genuinely wanted to help people. He gave money to those who needed it and a lot of people took advantage of this.

As you, yourself start to achieve success and wealth, it is your duty to help others but be cautious of the people who come out of the woodworking looking for handouts. It’s not usually the people who are begging for money that need help.

2. Fame comes with a huge price

To the average person, being famous seems like a great way to live. People take care of you, you have piles of money and you can have anything you desire.

Because of this you may think that you’re able to live life any way you want, but nothing is further from the truth. Michael couldn’t even do the simplest of things in life like going to the store. His fame trapped him inside his house and he couldn’t really live.

3. You can be famous, yet completely lonely

Despite all his staff, entourage, friends, and family, Michael’s soul was still lonely. He seemed to be lost and didn’t always have a good person to turn to. What’s important to remember is not the number of friends you have, but how good of friends they are.

4. Money doesn’t bring happiness

Enough said.

5. When you change the exterior, the interior isn’t affected

Michael was very self-conscious about the way he looked. He kept altering his exterior but it didn’t seem to satisfy him. The reasoning? Because the problems he was trying to fix were deeper.

There were facts and rumors that Michael’s father was abusive and often made fun of Michael’s looks. The actions and words of his father had to have led him to making the decisions to change his look.

6. Want to achieve huge goals? You need a huge amount of passion

Sure, Michael was forced into music when he was a child, but he wanted a solo career because he had a love for it.

Michael had a huge amount of passion and because of it he achieved a huge amount of success. If you want to achieve goals with your talent, you’ve got to eat, breathe, and live it.

7. Never forget to appreciate your supporters

Perhaps you aren’t going to be a famous pop star but no matter what you’re going to be, as you achieve success you’ll have fans. People who look up to you, support you and every goal you go after.

Despite how many fans Michael had, he appreciated them all. He gave advice to actor Cory Feldman saying to treat every supporter with love and respect, no matter your mood.

8. How to live forever

In his last print interview with Ebony magazine Michael spoke about death and how to live forever through your work:

“Let’s face it. Who wants mortality? Everybody wants immortality. You want what you create to live, be it sculpting, painting, music composition. Michelangelo said, ‘I know the creator will go, but his work survives’. That is why to escape death I attempt to bind my soul to my work.”

Bind your soul to your talent’s work and you’ll never truly die.

What did you learn from Michael’s talent, success, and personal life? Please share in the comments below.

Photo by Fabio Ikezaki

The clock keeps ticking

No matter how many times you put things off and delay your dreams, the big clock keeps ticking and your time continues to run out.

The recent deaths of legendary icons Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson have forced us to think about how short our lives are and that we never know when our last day will be.

The clock keeps ticking and won’t wait for us and we can’t wait either.

Don’t wait until you have more money.

Don’t wait for the “perfect” time.

Don’t wait until you’re older.

Don’t wait for the economy to get better.

Don’t wait for retirement.

Don’t wait for someone to help you.

Don’t wait until next month, next week, or until tomorrow. Don’t wait! You’ve got to go after what you need and want NOW!

“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.” – W. M. Lewis

Photo by stevendepolo

How to fix fatherhood in America

When you think about the many difficulties our country is facing, fatherhood may not come to mind.

However, there is an epidemic that has swept through fatherhood for too long. The epidemic of fathers abandoning their responsibilities and children.

This epidemic is affecting our society on so many levels. An estimated 24 million children in the U.S. live without their fathers and who knows how many millions more “present” fathers aren’t actively involved in their children’s lives.

The old saying goes; “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well fatherhood in America is broken and it’s time to fix it.

Here are some ideas on how it can be done.

Mothers (and kids) need to demand more involvement

Fathers should have unconditional interested in being more involved in their children’s lives but mothers and kids also need to demand it.

A lot of mothers think that they should be the most involved and that men are just the ones to provide financial support. This is old fashioned thinking and it isn’t working.

Fathers shouldn’t be the “go-to” for discipline

Most dads make themselves out to be the parent their children should be fearful of. And many mothers add to this as well by saying things like; “wait till your father finds out” and making the father out to be the bad guy.

Perhaps this is also a male domination type of thing, but it doesn’t lead to a healthy relationship between fathers and children.

Remove the focus from just “bringin’ home the bacon”

Fathers are often seen as one thing only; breadwinners. They’ve accepted this role as their main purpose in the household and I feel that this mentality has made it easier for fathers to desert their children.

They see themselves as not essential to a child’s life except with regards to finances. This makes many absent fathers figure they can just send child support money. But child support is so much more than financial.

Change the way fatherhood is viewed

President Obama recently gave a talk about the importance of fathers and in the talk he said something profound; “This isn’t an obligation, this is a privilege to be a father.”

This is exactly how many fathers should begin to rethink the way they see fatherhood.

For fathers:

Realize you won’t be perfect

No one is perfect. Like the rest of your life; as a father you’ll do things right and at times you’re going to do things completely wrong. It’s natural and the only way to learn. Excel to be the best you can, not to be perfect.

Succeed where your father failed

While growing up you know what your father didn’t do right. You’ve learned and it’s your shot to do much better, it’s not an excuse for you to be a bad father as well.

Know how crucial you are

You may still be thinking that you’re most important for keeping a roof over your children’s heads and food on the table; but you’re crucial to helping your child thrive and not just survive.

Here are some astonishing statistics about how much you matter:

- 90% of homeless and runaway children come from fatherless households

- 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes

- 85% of youths in prison grew up in a fatherless home

- 75% of adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes

Statistics from: http://www.childrensjustice.org/fatherlessness2.htm

Keep the conversation alive

Fathers not stepping up to their responsibilities and deserting their children is somewhat of a silent epidemic, but no longer.

President Obama just sparked a national discussion and we need you to join in. The stakes are way too high to simply let this topic be swept under the rug again.

What do you think of these ideas? Do you think fatherhood in America needs to be fixed? Do you have more ideas that may help fix it? Please share in the comments below.

Related articles:

- 6 Lessons I Learned About Being a Man from Growing Up Fatherless

- How to thrive in a single parent household

Photo by ajagendorf25

A Simple Exercise That Tells You All You Need to Know

This is a guest post.

It’s hard to come across a blog about personal development or self improvement these days that doesn’t mention goals and how to go about turning them into a reality. After-all, whether they are big or small, we all have them. Common goals include the desire to get out of debt, finding a partner, increasing productivity or even something more challenging like escaping the rat race.

The typical goal achievement cycle you usually read about tends to go something like this: focus on what you want, map out a plan to get it, and stay consistent until you succeed.

If we break things down to their core level, that three step plan is actually enough. That advice really is all we need. If things are that simple though, why do so many people fail to achieve their goals? Is it because they are lazy? Is it because they are complacent? Is it because they don’t want things badly enough?

Maybe. More likely, it’s often a combination of these things. Instead of trying to pick apart all the possible reasons why people might stumble on their path to achievement, I want to share a simple exercise that will give you your own answers. This is a very simple idea, it will take 24 hours, and the results will dramatically improve your chances of goal achievement.

The Exercise

Before I tell you what you need to do, I want to lay down a basic foundation. Something fairly obvious, but often forgotten, is that your current life situation is nothing more than the result of your actions. Your health, your finances, your happiness and everything else. Their current progress is based on your current output. For example, if you ate sensibly and did 50 sit-ups every day, your beer belly would flatten and your stomach muscles would start to tone.

Similarly, if you went jogging every day, your level of fitness and your stamina would improve. If you save a percentage of your income each month, you are going to have a tidy sum in savings at the end of the year. If you perform the actions, life has no choice but to reward you with the results. In essence, all you need to remember is that your current situation is completely based on your current actions.

Therefore, to change that situation, you need to change your actions. Yet, we can’t know where we are going wrong until we identify what those actions are. Remember I said that this exercise was going to be simple? Well, that’s because it is. What I recommend you do, on a typical day in your life, is record every single action you take. That’s it, really!

Of course, you don’t have to write down visits to the bathroom, but things like the time you woke up, what you did for lunch (and for how long), what work you actually completed in the day, how much time you spent checking emails and that kind of thing. This isn’t exciting (it isn’t supposed to be) but it only takes one day, and you’ll be left with clear results of where your time is being spent.

The results of this exercise will mean different things to different people. If you’re trying to grow a business and it’s not going anywhere, you’ll probably realise that you’re spending too much time on ineffective activities. Similarly, if you want to lose weight but don’t exercise and instead you binge eat, it will be clear why your progress is slow or even non existent.

The reason this exercise works so well is because:

• You get to see a clear, concise output of how your day looks
• You can’t fool yourself about being busy or being effective, it’s all written down
• It will make it easy to identify time wasters in your life

A lot of people will read this idea, and, even if they like it, will simply dismiss it. I know because I used to be that type of person myself. Instead, why not give it a shot? This is an exercise for one day of your life that will give you a clear view of where your time is going and perhaps more critically, where your time is not.

Don’t forget: life is just outputting whatever you put in. If you daily log doesn’t show a list of actions you’re happy with, at least you can now change that. I performed this same exercise around 2 months ago and I’m now much healthier, far more productive, and I make a lot more money.

What do you have to lose?

Written by Glen Allsopp

Glen is a blogger who writes on the subject of Personal Development. He also tackles topics such as Personality Development in order to help people realise they can be who they want to be.

Photo by LucasTheExperience

Guest post at The Art of Manliness

Father’s Day is this weekend. It’s a day for people to celebrate and cherish time with their dads.

As you may know from Lyved’s about page, my father left when I was very young. I didn’t have a father figure to look up to. But unlike most people in similar circumstances I didn’t fall to a world of drugs and crime. I decided to make a success of myself and I actually learned a lot from not having my father around.

I learned to take responsibility of my life, I learned that if I wanted something I have to go out there and get it, and I even learned more about how to be a man from NOT having him around.

That’s the basis for my guest post at the outstanding blog; The Art of Manliness. AoM is a men’s lifestyle blog that encourages readers to have self-respect and take responsibility for their lives to become positive and productive members of society.

My article is called “6 Lessons I Learned About Being a Man from Growing Up Fatherless.” I invite you to please read it and please tell me your thoughts on it. Feel free to leave the comments below or at AoM.

And also, please share it with any sons, nephews, fathers, uncles, or grandfathers you may know.

I hope that you enjoy it and that a lot of people can learn from it.

-Andrew

P.S. Welcome to any Art of Manliness readers who may be stopping by. Thanks for checking out Lyved! Please visit our most popular articles page to read our best articles: http://www.lyved.com/most-popular/ . If you enjoy our articles please consider signing up for our RSS or email feed right below, so that you can get articles set to you. Also, please join us at Facebook or on Twitter; we’d love to connect.

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