Lee decided to pack up a horse drawn covered wagon and travel around America. Why? “Just because” he had the urge to do it.
Some might call him stupid, many will call him crazy, but I call him inspiring. He took a leap of faith and he’s fulfilling a dream.
Please watch the video below.
To learn more about Lee and his journey, please be sure to visit LeeTheHorseLogger.com. Video courtesy of KXLY.
This is a guest post.
No, this isn’t a post about an upcoming horror movie, but a troublesome group of people in society. They’re Zombies. Negative, dreamless, bitter and lazy people. Zombies don’t want to excel in anything which challenges them to think and make improvements in their lives. They blame the world for their problems. Membership is open to anyone feeling hopeless, unloved or dissatisfied with life. Subdivisions of the Zombies group are Party People, Disgruntled Workers and Dream Smashers.
These people want to have a good time ALL THE TIME! Once in awhile they mention their dreams, but it’s hard to accomplish them because it takes self discipline and sacrifice. Party people look forward to the end of the week not the future. Why make sacrifices for a better life when you can have instant gratification? It’s more fun drinking booze, taking women home and getting high.
It seems as if they’re living a wonderful and carefree life. But when you examine their lives it’s a culmination of irresponsibility, immaturity and neglect. There’s no balance between work and play.
They hate their job but are too scared and lazy to make a change. Party people complain of an unsatisfactory life and envy those chasing their dreams.
They waste social opportunities with fruitless posing and meaningless conversation. Of course, this definition doesn’t apply to all Party People. Everyone isn’t the same.
These people are always grousing. They don’t like their boss and co- workers because of in competency or bad behavior. It’s the same story of office politics and how their such a great worker in a crazy and hostile atmosphere.
By listening to the daily stories of displeasure you wonder why are they still there. Most of them will give poor excuses: “I have bills to pay”, “It’s hard getting a new job because of the recession” or “I’ll be retiring soon.”
Disgruntled workers are those not willing to make a difference in their life. They want sympathy and a shoulder to cry on not a solution to their problems. This category of people enjoy going home to numb away the pain through entertainment, sex or other activities.
Physical stimulation takes precedence over attending networking functions and updating a resume. Also, their conversation usually revolves around the job they hate. If you change the topic, he or she will find a way to tie it in with the workplace.
Dream Smashers are former dreamers who delight in telling people the impossibilities of achieving their goals. Please don’t share your dreams with this group. They’ll lecture you on “living in the real world” and drive you into depression with sarcasm and limiting beliefs.
They are experts in living a safe and comfortable life. Dream Smashers don’t want to take risks because there’s a chance of failure and embarrassment. This group reminisces of earlier years when enthusiasm permeated their bones. They were fearless and optimistic. Disappointment and failure removed an ecstatic and carefree attitude and replaced it with pessimism and cynicism.
WARNING! Do not join these groups. Reject their advances. Create you life by taking action and surrounding yourself with DOERS not LOSERS!
Omar Hasan is the author of the upcoming ebook “The Disappearance of Hate”. He’s a Blogger and Screenwriter from Brooklyn, NY. His blog www.transformationscience.wordpress.com focuses on inspiring and motivating people to achieve dreams and goals.
Contact info: Ohassa@gmail.com
www.twitter.com/ohassa
This is a guest post.
When a disease kills a number of your family members, and threatens your life and the lives of others you love, the disease is asking you a question: What are you going to do about me?
Many possible answers present themselves:
(1) Try to enjoy your life without thinking about the disease, and hope it doesn’t kill you or anyone else.
(2) Become obsessed with the disease, letting its looming threat drain your joy.
(3) Keep your mouth shut, hoping that your silence can prevent people from feeling sorry for you / worrying for you / declining to hire you / declining to date you.
(4) Fight back, without losing your smile and sense of humor.
At 19 I learned that in addition to height and an interest in reading, I had also inherited polycystic kidney disease from my father. Cysts, or pockets of fluid, grow on and throughout both kidneys of people with PKD, often causing high blood pressure, aneurysms and renal failure by the mid-40s or early 50s.
My grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather had all dropped dead of heart attacks in their mid-40s. (My father had died at 42, though not of PKD; he drowned.) I am now 41. For many years I tried not to think about PKD. I definitely didn’t talk about it. I hoped that science would advance in time to save me and my siblings.
Then my first cousin died at 35. A great guy, Mike was just five months older than I was. We had grown up together. PKD gave him high blood pressure and an aneurysm, and when he died he left two young children and many other shocked relatives behind. I decided I couldn’t wait for science: I had to give science a hand. I wanted to help fund the research that would cure PKD, saving not just me, but two of my siblings, my cousin, their kids, and the other 600,000 Americans — one in every 500 people you see — who have PKD.
Doing this makes me feel good. I’m glad to know that my small contribution is much better than nothing. It lightens my burden to meet others who are also fighting PKD. And raising money to fight PKD has also taught me interesting things about people I wouldn’t otherwise have learned. Some close friends whose help I expected have given nothing, while many people I knew much less well have given a great deal, blowing me away with their generosity. I’ve heard similar things from other fundraisers. People are funny.
If you’d like to help, too, please check out my music video at www.kennythekidney.com.
If it makes you smile at least once, please pass it on to a friend or two.
And if you can afford it, please click the “Donate” button and donate $5 or more to help cure PKD. (Sadly, donations under $5 cost more to process than they’re worth.) If you enter your middle name as “Lyved,” I’ll be able to tell Andrew that you heard about me on his site — and that’ll make Andrew feel good, too.
Thank you!
Best,
Kenny the Kidney
A lot of people have felt that the American dream has been lost in recent years, especially since the recession hit. They feel like they can’t get ahead and pursue happiness, liberty, or life.
Despite the Wall Street mess, the modern and ever-changing society we live in, and the loss of jobs, the American dream remains as it did the day the nation was born; and Adam Shepard has found this out first-hand.
Adam Shepard was assigned to read the book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich for a college course. In the book Barbara enters the workforce to see what it’s like for the middle class and for those living (or barely living) on minimum wage. By the end of her journey in the workforce she comes to the conclusion that it’s a one-in-a-million chance that someone can rise above poverty and achieve a better life.
Adam disagreed and was frustrated with this mindset. He believed that the American dream was not a broken dream and that he would prove it with his own experiment.
Adam conceived an experiment where he would leave his home, friends, family, and resources to move to another state with just the clothes on his back, a sleeping bag, an empty duffel bag, a tarp, and $25. He would then work his way from nothing; no job, no help, no home, no car, $25, and few opportunities to achieving something; the American dream.
Adam set out on his yearlong experiment in July of 2006. To consider the experiment a success and the American dream still living; Adam had to own a drivable car, live in a furnished apartment, have $2,500 saved in cash, and opportunities to advance himself further in life.
After 8 months, Adam achieved it all. He chronicled his journey in the book: Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream.
I was very intrigued by Adam’s experiment and had the wonderful opportunity to ask him a few questions about it as well as the American dream, society, and young Americans.
First off Adam – thanks so much for taking the time to answer these questions.
Absolutely.
First of all, I think that what is so special about the American Dream is that its definition is so fluid. You can ask 10 people their ideas on the American Dream, and you might get ten different answers. And that’s what’s so special about it, that there isn’t one concrete way of defining it.
That said, my definition of the Dream is the freedom to wake up in the morning and do whatever you want to do with your life. If you want to sit around and do nothing, you can. If you want to go out there and grab life by the balls, you can. Essentially, no one is telling you what you HAVE to do. This freedom doesn’t necessarily exist in many other countries throughout the world.
No, of course not. There are plenty of miserable rich people. And there are plenty of happy poor people. And vice versa.
But! Money certainly makes happiness easier. If I’ve got $1000 in my back pocket, I’m happier than if I have $50. If I have a boat, and I live on a lake, I’m happier than if I live on the south side of town in the ‘hood.
I see money and “things” as a product of the life we’ve built for ourselves and the work we’ve put in. If I buy a house or a BMW for cash, theoretically, I earned that item from a series of hard work or ambitious pursuits. So, when I walk into my house or drive to the store in my BMW or peek at my stock portfolio, a smile creeps over my face because I know what I’ve gone through to earn that. By the same token, if I make some crazy house or car payment that I know I can’t afford, how do I feel that I’m living beyond my means?
Listen, the happiest moments in my life were living the life I’ve written about in SCRATCH BEGINNINGS. Seriously. The happiest moments of my life were when I was broke and working ten hour days as a mover. The most important thing is that we create a foundation for happiness outside the realm of money, and then our fiscal pursuits can only accelerate that happiness.
Living a life like I lived (outside of my comfort zone) or embarking on a project like this always challenges the depths of one’s abilities or personality. There’s a lot to be said about so many people who wake up every day with the purpose to challenge themselves almost to a breaking point. I never got that far, indeed, but I’d like to think that I learned a lot about what I could handle and how far I was willing to go to succeed in this project.
More than anything I learned how incredibly naive I am. My goodness, I saw crack-cocaine for the first time and you’da thought bin Laden himself had shown up on the front stoop of the homeless shelter where I was staying. I just couldn’t believe it, but to everybody else, it was just kind of, well, crack-cocaine. So what? There were several instances like that, where I came in touch with how sheltered I may have been growing up.
A secret talent? I can scoop poop with the best of ‘em.
There is certainly plenty of merit to the criticism for this project. Indeed, I was given every advantage imaginable, and even more than that, I could have left at any time. This was a project for me. For everyone else that I write about, this is real life.
But I think as the story emerges, you see how little these advantages play in my favor. Does my college education help me to navigate a sofa through a door frame? Does my youth enable me to understand from my past mistakes, learn from them, and “do better next time”? Am I taking this project as seriously as if it was real life?
Really, in the end, this is America. Come on. Each and every person here has a talent or advantage that they can play, and the whole idea is that you are free to play that advantage. Or not. I don’t care. Your neighbor doesn’t care. Only you care. How awesome is that? Your future is determined by your work ethic, and, as I said, that isn’t how it is in Africa or Southeast Asia or Central America.
Would this story have been more of a challenge if I would have had children to raise as a single mother? Of course! My point is that we each have our own adversities to face. Some people face them head on, and others don’t. My favorite emails are the ones from immigrants who didn’t even speak the language when they came over here or from single mothers who left their drunk, abusive husbands, got their real estate licenses, and are now helping their children through college. These stories are not unique and they are certainly more worthy and fascinating than my own.
To be honest, I have a lot of faith in my generation. I think we take a lot for granted, but I don’t think we are as bad off as our parents and grandparents say we are.
The most frustrating thing I see today is that we are not poised to handle failure. We have been weaned in an environment that supports mediocrity (and awards medals for mere participation), so now we figure that if we face adversity and fail, we can just sort of cruise through. “Everything is going to be okay.” Then, we develop habits of failing and giving up. Get knocked off the horse and stay off the horse. And that isn’t realistic. Everything is not going to be okay. Get your ass up and back on the horse. Failure is imminent, as is success if you fight through that failure. And we don’t understand that. We don’t understand how to properly handle failure, and that, to me is a huge problem.
Well, the American Dream is never “lost”. The American Dream is an attitude, so if you lose it, that is your own responsibility and not that of your boss who took your job or the repo man who took your house.
Listen, times are tough. Sure. But my goodness, do you understand how much worse we could possibly have it? In the grand scheme of history, this is going to be a mere blip on some economists radar screen. And he certainly isn’t going to feel sorry for us as he looks at other economies throughout the world.
My advice is to stay the course. The greatest generation emerged from the Great Depression. Plenty of money and opportunity was lost and then made again by people that understood the value in working even harder and smarter, but at the same time taking the time to stop and smell the roses. If anything, let’s take this as a time to learn a lesson or two, and see that it doesn’t happen again in our lifetime (living beyond our means anyone?).
Have a passion. While we’re all running around for thirty or forty years working hard to save money to create a better life for us and our next generation, make sure you have something that keeps you going. Maybe (if you’re fortunate) you’re job is your passion or maybe it’s a sport or travel or building model boats out of toothpicks. I don’t know. Whatever it is, though, have some kind of release that keeps you going. That’s what makes life not only tolerable, but fun.
To learn more about Adam’s journey please visit the Scratch Beginnings website or check out his book at Amazon.com.
This is a guest post.
If there is one thing that can frustrate men and women to no end, it is bad relationships. A bad relationship can ruin a perfectly good day, make us cranky, and ultimately lower our expectations for ourselves.
There is no way to escape relationships, unless becoming a hermit is appealing to you. Whether work, family or social, we surround ourselves with folks who are looking to expand their spheres of influence each and every day.
No matter how bad our relationships have been or continue to be, the key to getting better results lies in the understanding and acceptance of seven simple words:
Think about it for a moment. If you don’t like something someone is doing to us, we have a couple of options. We can alert them of the disliked action, which in most cases will send the message to alter that behavior. On the contrary, we can ignore the action, which may send the signal that this behavior is just fine with us.
The problem with the latter decision is that although many may feel this is an easier option, it eliminates the power that we all have within us. By relinquishing our ability to stand up for ourselves, we give nonverbal cues that we are weak, non-confrontational and ok with mistreatment. I hope that you are ready to ensure that your current and future relationships are maximized. If so, then there are ways we can implement that and channel our power so that our relationships with others remain healthy.
People only cross the lines if they think it is ok to do so. If you appear to be a pushover at work, you are going to be the go-to person to dump work upon. So clearly and purposefully set parameters up front letting those know what you will and will not do. Some might take offense to this, but it is a wise and much easier strategy to do it upfront. But even if you have to alter your past acceptance of behaviors and send the message that certain lines crossed will no longer be accepted, it is a must-do for long-term happiness.
Interpersonal relationships many times reach a fork in the road. You can choose to either continue traveling left and wallow in undesirable behaviors or take a change on going right. Heading this direction may mean you’re leaving someone behind. I don’t think there’s any limit to what we deserve and if it takes that type of bold decision, so be it.
Most of us are conditioned to first channel all of our love and energy to others, and then give ourselves the leftovers. This is a trait that can leave us with an empty feeling and vulnerable to accept less than stellar actions to fill ourselves with love. Just as personal finance expert David Bach teaches to pay yourself first and then spend on other things, we must mimic that action in regards to love. In doing so, we will learn to respect ourselves much more and become less bearable with actions and words that serve to withdraw that love from our personal bank.
Historically, it has been darn near taboo for men to learn to talk about things other than sex, women, money, cars, gadgets and sports. But I do sense a paradigm shift. More men are looking for ways to be better fathers, sons, friends and employees. If we are to exist, why not be the best we can be. As Jim Collins says in the bestselling book Good to Great, “Good is the enemy of great.” So it is my sincere hope that all genders of all races and background will use the strategies and tactics to enjoy great relationships.
Written by Torrey McGrawTorrey is founder and editor of Men’s Playbook.com, which focuses on entertaining, educating and uplifting men in the game of life. You can connect with Torrey on Twitter.com
