The Dilemma of Helping Those on the Streets
If you’ve walked down the streets of New York City or any metropolitan area, you’ve seen the plight of the homeless, begging for change, sleeping on benches, and walking aimlessly.
When I see someone like this I feel the urge to throw them a couple of dollars. Yet, I’ll admit it; something inside me stops me from doing so. I debate whether it’s the right thing to do. I ask myself;
“Are they really going to use the money to buy food?”
“Is this just putting a band aid on a more severe and long term problem?”
“If this person is really desperate, why aren’t they trying to seek assistance at the numerous organizations set up to help them?”
“Will I be putting myself, those with me, or strangers walking by in harm’s way?”
So the dilemma certainly isn’t about money. I’m not greedy. I’m happy to donate money to a trusted organization that will feed and provide shelter to the homeless.
What do you think? I want to hear your opinions and stories. Is it good to help a beggar? Better to donate to a charity set up to provide more effective help? Post on Lyved’s Facebook wall or Lyved’s Twitter account.
Photo by Mitch2742
Sharing my story on Oprah Radio
Today, June 19th, I was given an amazing opportunity. I was allowed to share a little bit of my story and my family’s story on Oprah Radio’s The Derrick Ashong Experience during a discussion about fatherhood and fathers.
Derrick Ashong is a musician, artist, social entrepreneur, and radio host who’s taking talk radio to the next level. The Derrick Ashong Experience discusses issues in society, arts, business, politics, and about how each of us can make this world a little bit better. I highly recommend catching future airings of Derrick’s show. It airs Saturdays on Oprah Radio – XM Channel 156 and Sirius Channel 195, from 12 pm to 3 pm ET, 11 am to 2 pm CT. You can also watch it live online at Ustream.tv here: http://www.ustream.tv/derrickashongexperience . Or if you can’t tune in live, you can watch a repeat online of the show a few days after broadcast on Oprah.com here: http://www.oprah.com/oprahradio/About-Oprah-Radio-Host-Derrick-N-Ashong . Also be sure to follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ashong and join his Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/DerrickAshongExperience.
I shared how my father was abusive to my mother and how they broke up and how my father left for good when I was about 9 years old. When the video of the show is uploaded onto Oprah.com I will add it to the bottom of this post so those who are interested can check it out.
I’d like to thank Derrick, his producers, and the rest of the crew at Oprah Radio for giving me a chance to share my story. I really appreciate such an opportunity!
I’d also like to welcome the listeners of The Derrick Ashong Experience to Lyved. I hope you find this site enjoyable and valuable. I invite you to please check out our most popular article page as a great starting point: http://www.lyved.com/most-popular/ Also, I invite you to please join us at our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/lyved and follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/andrewgalasetti . Look forward to connecting!
Thanks everyone!
-Andrew
You can hear me share my family’s story after the 1 hour and 26 minutes mark, but I recommend checking Derrick’s full show out and his future shows.
Logo from The Derrick Ashong Experience facebook page.
The Mistakes of Making Mistakes
From the young to the old, we all make mistakes. From big ones to small ones, it’s part of being human.
Making mistakes is inevitable, but there are ways you can come out a better person by avoiding the additional mistakes we often make after realizing we did something wrong.
These are the mistakes of making mistakes.
Not forgiving yourself
When we make a mistake and realize it; to make things better we often seek forgiveness from others and from a higher power. But you may be missing the most important person; yourself.
It is extremely important to attempt to heal the pain you may have caused someone else, but you shouldn’t have to live in pain the rest of your life either. If others can find forgiveness and move forward, then you should too.
How do you forgive yourself?
- Look at where you were in life and in that moment when you made the mistake. Was that really how you act? Was it really you?
- Don’t look for excuses when looking at where you were, look for reasons that you’ll do better in the future and learn from your mistakes.
- Be patient – It’s going to take time and work to learn from mistakes and reach self-forgiveness.
Blowing things out of proportion
From time to time, we all get hung up on one mistake that we forget to look at the bigger picture. Look at your entire road in life and focus on the positives of yourself. You may find that your mistake was a small bump or pot hole in the road.
Feeling you’re alone
As I wrote earlier, we all make mistakes. There’s not one person alive today who can say they’ve never done something stupid or wrong. There are however, plenty of people who think they’re better than others and love to point out the flaws of others as if they’re perfect.
Considering giving up as a solution
Giving up can take the form of refusing to learn from your mistakes and believing the mistakes define you, to the extreme form of giving up; suicide.
Giving up should not be a solution for you because it doesn’t accomplish anything. If you want to “fix” the past, the best thing to do is have a better future.
Thinking that your flaws make you a bad person
It’s not necessarily the flaws that make a bad person, but the lack of realization, lack of remorse, and the refusal to learn from the mistake and avoid it in the future.
Considering all mistakes, “mistakes”
Sometimes they happen for a reason and many times you can give them reason.
These are just a few of the common mistakes we make after we’ve made a mistake. So what are some personal mistakes you’ve made after making a mistake? Or what are some you’ve seen others do? Please share in the comments below so we can all learn.
Photo by KevinLallier
Luck needs you
When thinking about your life, dreams, and success, it’s hard not to think about and question luck. “Does luck exist? Are there people that are luckier than me and there’s nothing I can do about it? Are my successes going to end up coming down to luck?”
Luck is a tricky thing to understand and may seem like an even trickier thing to obtain. Luck appears to be driven by chance, but really your luck needs you to exist.
For luck to happen to you, you have to meet it at least half way. It’s a mutual search; it’s looking for you and you’ve got to look for it.
For example, take the story of Peter Buffett. In a previous article and interview I did with Peter Buffett, I wrote about how he took a big gamble at 19 and left college to pursue a career in music. He moved to San Francisco where he lived frugally and worked odd jobs to keep his music dreams alive. Then one day he was outside his apartment building and struck up a conversation with another apartment tenant. The neighbor asked what he did and Peter mentioned how he was a struggling musician. This neighbor just so happened to know someone in the industry who was working in a little startup TV channel called MTV. He referred Peter and he got a job. This basically launched his career which led to Peter moving into films, TV, owning his own record labels, and living his dreams and passion.
Was this pure luck for Peter? Sure, it’s odd that Peter just happened to be outside and struck up a conversation with a neighbor and the talk led to Peter’s music career. But here’s the most important and compelling thing about this situation; if Peter had never taken that giant leap and moved to San Francisco, none of this luck would have happened. The luck needed Peter.
So if you feel you need luck, remember luck needs you.
Does luck exist?
Now that you know that luck needs you, does “luck” really exist? I feel that it’s just a simple word we use to describe something very complex.
What do you think? Does luck exist? And also, do you have a personal story where you met luck halfway and achieved a dream? Please share in the comment section below.
Photo by kaibara87
1 man, 1 year, and 52 jobs in search of passion
Here’s the standard path of young adults today:
1. Pick a college and a major by the time you’re a senior in high school.
2. Graduate high school.
3. Go to college for four years.
4. Graduate college with a degree in the subject you’ve majored in and are passionate about.
5. Go out in the real world and find a job in your field.
6. Live happily and fulfilled…
Sounds good on paper, right? Well how many of us can choose what we want to do with the rest of our lives when we’re in our teens or early twenties? Not many. But unfortunately the system is set up for the few.
So what is one to do to keep from getting stuck in a job they hate and to find what drives them and what they’d enjoy for the rest of their life? Perhaps you could take a year and work a different job in a different field every week, for 52 weeks?
Sound unrealistic? Well Sean Aiken did just that.
In 2005, Sean Aiken graduated college with a degree in Business Administration, but he didn’t really know what he wanted to do with his life. Instead of just accepting it, getting a job in a cubicle, and “living” his life; Sean set out on a unique journey. A journey in search of passion instead of a career. He called his journey “The One Week Job Project.”
Here’s a video clip from The One Week Job Project website that describes the idea.
Sean, along with his friends, produced a documentary of the project and Sean has just released a book telling the journey entitled The One-Week Job Project: 1 Man, 1 Year, 52 Jobs.
Sean has graciously given Lyved the opportunity to ask him a few questions about this project and passion.
What advice do you have for those who can’t make a living out of their passion?
I learned that we don’t necessarily need to make a living out of our passion in order to be happy at work – there are many other factors that contribute to our job satisfaction. When I asked my coworkers what they liked most about their job, the common answer I heard was the people they worked with. It wasn’t so important what they were doing, or if it was their passion, but far more important was who they were doing it with.
Another factor I observed was that those who were the happiest in their careers were the ones who had a vision of how they were contributing to something greater than themselves. It mattered that they showed up to work each day because they contributed something valuable, and something was made better because of their work. For example, I worked on an organic dairy farm with a guy named George. The job demands long hours, very hard work, early mornings – after a couple of days I thought, “How can anyone enjoy this job?” But George seemed to love it. To George, he was providing food for thousands of people while contributing to the environment with his organic farming practices. He understood the significance of his job and that’s where he derived his job satisfaction.
I’d say if you can’t make a living out of your passion look for other ways in which you can fulfill your passion outside of work. I think it’s important to take a good look at your passion and think about different ways in which it could be fulfilled at work. For Week 22, I was a Radio DJ. On my last day I sat down with the radio station’s program director, Scott. I asked Scott, “How did you get involved in Radio. Did you always know that this is what you wanted to do?”
He said, “If you ask most people in radio where they started out, we’re all kind of failed musicians really. Truthfully we’d rather be the people making the music, but to be involved in music in some way, that’s where the passion lies.”
Even though Scott is not what he originally thought he wanted to be as a rock star, he loves his job. He still works in the same industry, deals with the same people, and is still able to cultivate his passion for music. We can’t all be rock stars, but it doesn’t mean we have to end up in a completely unrelated field – maybe we’d be just as happy being the person who hands the rock star their guitar.
The economy has changed a lot since you started this project in 2007. Do you think young people are forgetting about passion and are just finding any job that pays enough because of the current economy?
I think that a lot of young people don’t realize that it takes a lot of work to find a career you’re passionate about and still earn enough money to pay the bills, especially in today’s economy. There’s no problem with taking a job to pay the bills, the important thing is to not lose sight of where you’re heading, to continue developing your skills, and taking steps toward achieving the job that best suits you. I heard many stories over my year of people who took jobs for various reason, sometimes financial, and then 10 years later they realized that they are still in the same position that was supposed to be “temporary” and they’d lost sight of their original career goals.
Most college graduates have a ton of student loan debt, so do you have any tips on how they can find a balance where they can explore their passions but also earn some money to pay back their debts?
I think it’s more important to uncover the characteristics you need in a career to be happy then it is to uncover your passion. We do this through gaining experience, so merely by entering the work force we start to learn about the things that we like to do, the things that we are good, become more valuable to a future employer, and begin to pay back those nagging student debts.
What advice do you have for parents that aren’t too sure about their daughter or son trying to make a living out of their passion and by blazing their own trail?
Leave them alone. Support their decision. I think if someone has a genuine desire to pursue their passion, blaze their own trail, and yet they don’t go after it whole heartedly at some point in their life, they will undoubtedly experience a pang of regret. The younger we are when we do this the better.
Trying a bunch of things that seem interesting is probably one of the best ways to find a passion because of the hands-on experience. However, not everyone can try 52 jobs. So are their some other ways that people can find new passions?
Continue to develop your self-knowledge, try new things, volunteer, speak to people in different professions that interest you…
Even though you’re tried 52 different jobs, are there any more you’d like to try?
By the end of the year I had a lot of different offers, but I’m happy with the ones I chose. There was one job offer with bestselling author Seth Godin that I wish I was able to accept, but unfortunately the logistics didn’t work in my favor.
What kind of criticism have you been faced with during this project and how have you reacted and kept going?
I’ve received some cynicism towards the project but I try and remember that any unjustified criticism is likely rooted in their unhappiness with their current situation, and that it has nothing to do with me. I know why I’m doing what I’m doing and that’s all that matters – if people are able to learn as a result of me sharing my experience, great, if not, then that’s okay too.
Of the 52 jobs you did, what was the most nerve-wracking and why?
Yoga Instructor. I’d never stepped foot inside a yoga studio until that Monday morning, and then to be faced with the challenge of teaching class the Friday was extremely nerve-wracking. I attended 6 hours of classes a day, sometimes participating, sometimes taking notes about the instructor’s techniques, and then stood up and taught my first class on Friday. Very nerve-wracking, yet also very rewarding.
So Sean, what do you want to do with the rest of your life?
You’ll have to read the book to find out! 
It’s called The One-Week Job Project: 1 Man, 1 Year, 52 Jobs, published May 4, 2010 by Random House.
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The project is ambitious, exciting, and inspiring. I recommend that you please check out The One-Week Job Project book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, IndieBound, or Random House. And please connect with Sean, on The One Week Job Facebook page and by following him on Twitter.