An Explanation of Me

8/6/2019 An Explanation of Me

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not been allowed to grow. I remember being very interested in many things in a library one

time during a research paper on Linus Pauling. I just looked at all the books and felt

overwhelmedlike why try,I am interested in so many things and I will never be able to read

all these books.just give up and float. I was told by people what are you doing here several

times across my retail career. Another comment was who are you? I see now that my speechand education drew a picture that did not fit. For as little literature as I read, I did read

periodical type literature and snippets on the internet. It is shocking how what little I did know

seemed like a fountain of knowledge to others. People saw this and saw something wrong. It

made them feel uncomfortable it seems. Possibly crossed some insecurity boundaryeven

among managers. I was teaching department heads GMROI, and when a district manager found

out, he chastised me, and said they dont need to know that. For the uninformed, in retail, that

is the key figure that needs attention and observation to effectively run a business. Anyway, if

you dont fit you dont assimilate. You are not like them. I used to read aphorisms at the

morning meetings as a pick me up, something to think about during the routine of the day. Only

later did I discover that there were some who did not understand them. A man cannot speak

but he judges himself. With his will, or against his will, he draws his portrait to the eye of his

companions by every word . Emerson

A further concept by Ayn Rand is listed below, which explains quite a lot about what I have

stated above:

Notice how theyll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They

recognize him at once. ... Theres a special, insidious kind of hatred for him.

They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie.

A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. Theyve got to force their

miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The

independent man kills thembecause they dont exist within him and thats

the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of

resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice

toward an independent man. ...


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But as soon as there is any departure from simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or good for me

that is not good for him, my neighbour feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as I have

shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine; there is war between us; there is hate in him and

fear in me.Emerson

Falseness is a real problem for me.

My childhood was filled with an example of a mother who was a fake, and I was an observant

person who saw a lot the sham of her life and grew to hate this type of behavior. I remember

the pride in her explaining how her children could shop/clean clothes etc. at such a young age,

but I knew it was more a manipulation to allow her to avoid the work herself. I hated this lie.

Praise for her and us under false pretense. I was young, six or so. I today still cant stand this

deception in people toward people. I always related to people at work best who were in lower

positions, that did not put on airs, and political behavior. They were real and did not need to ply

and higgle for the attention of others to advance the cause on politics rather than performance.

The sycophant is a real problem for me and they are rampant and abundant. What to do?

School for me, lacked this component. I performed the work, was judged on clear qualities

defined beforehand, and delivered. The work world was defined on performance to a degree

but on a sliding scale that favored what are you going to do for me. Clearly, my disrespect for

authority was an impediment.

Anger

I also saw my fathers great disappointment with who he was. Always talking about how bad

things were. My parents were frequently angry with each other. I, having a room next to them,

saw/heard more of the anger than my brother. Outright fighting with physical violence was

evidenced. On vacations the violence was insane and we had to endure it in such a confined

space of a car. It was a thick, visceral, palpable negative energy. I can remember it as clear as it

was yesterday. Screaming, red-faced yelling, storming off, wondering when she would come

back, if she would come back. The tension when we were all back in the car. Hours of quite

anger. I remember the touch of my father, and this was only to direct or make me do

something, as a burning sensation even before the hand reached my body. I would learn to shift


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my body to escape this horrible feeling. My mother made my brother and me fight till our

pajamas were torn from each other to get the fight out of us. We had apparently been

fighting and picking at each other and she had enough and did not mange us otherwise. No

doubt due to the wonderful role models we had. So we learned discipline by hating and hitting

each other. I remember a terrible summer when my mother was teaching my brother how toswim. I caught on to physical things quicker than my brother. Swimming was fairly easy for me

to learn. My brother had a hell of a time and my mother was so angry at teaching him it was

what I now know resembling concentration camp mentality. Yelling, forcing, punishing till

coughing up water, from exhaustion, and swallowing water while trying to catch his breath over

and over and over. It was embarrassing for him and me for other strangers saw this spectacle.

When I was bad I was put in a corner. I can still smell the paint combined with my breath. It

was pretty often. I was told until I behaved I was going to stay in the corner. I learned to

swallow the problem so I could have control of my life and do the things I wanted. So, I told

myself that I would get revenge later, turn on the smile and get released. I did later get

revengestole her precious watch. She never found it. Kids dont behave badly for no reason in

my opinionget to the bottom of itwhat behaviors are affecting this behavior seems logical.

This method was a destructive one in my opinion. On one occasion, I was cleaning the toilet. I

was 8 or 9 years old. My father came to check its cleanliness and saw a drop on the back side

of the seat on the porcelain between where the toilet meets the tank. He told me it was not

cleaned. I replied to him it was. He said then you are going to lick that drop up. If it is clean then

it should not matter. I told him it was a drop from the brush, but I would not lick it up. He tried

to force me. I escaped and my mother intervened. There was a separation between us for a

while. Another occasion to image destruction was when I got a new shirt. It was yellow. My

father saw it on me and told me that only girls wore yellow and pink. I was now somehow not a

male because I liked yellow and wanted to wear it. What was sure was that I was less because

of my choice in my fathers eyes. It may seem like something little and inconsequential, but I

still remember it well to this day with distaste.

More anger was visible in the relationship between my paternal grandmother and my mother.

It was clearly hate. Tension again on the vacation travels. One particularly bad one was the visit

to the Mt. Rushmore. There were raised voices, huffing, gritting teeth, clenched jaws. Then

there was the hate for my aunt by my father. So much and so bad was this hate that he would

not come on vacations here with us. Under protest he would come for a day or so and thencontinue for the rest of the vacation if it did not involve my aunt. The message between them

was clear, and glowing like neon. This lasted even to this day as far as I know. Then there was

the hate my father had for my maternal grandfather. He could be a pill at restaurants, as he

treated waitresses like less than human beings. Yelling, and demanding royal treatment while

he demeaned them. In private he was full of fire, but I saw respect for people in the house for

the most part. To put it in summary, there was a lot of anger and hatred among the adults


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closest in my life. My paternal grandparents also had a strained and distant relationship. On

one occasion, my mother told me that because of the power my grandfather held over his wife,

she retaliated by refusing physical relations for years on end. What a terrible existence for both.

You could see in both of them a sadness and hardness. They both were not seen with smiles or

laughing on a regular basis. A more accurate description would be to say it was a rare occasion.I did not see them much, except a few summer vacations, but that is what I saw. Despite this

environment, my brother saw it as a refuge from our family and spent part of the summer here.

I seemed to help. He seemed more at peace when we picked him up.

Money was and is always a representation of something else. Its never about the money itself.

Money is important only in what it represents. For the most part, it represents choice. What

drives your choice is the problem. Your makeup (innate temperament, environmental influence)

are the root of the success or failure with money and all else. When I was 10 years old I learned

something. I thought we were ok financially, but some things did not fit. It seemed like we were

scraping by in some respects, but evidence of enough money was visible in other ways. My

Mom seemed to have to really shop for food carefully, but some other purchases were freely

made. I learned at 10 that my parents had property. They had sold it and made a good amount

on it because we were moving to a much bigger house. One of my first inklings that things

were not as they seemed. I learned later that my father put my mother on a severe budget.

Held her hostage to his whims of generosity. Christmas was an example of how tight he could

be. Very light from him, generous from other family members. There was an agreement later

that I would be paid for the lawn since he would pay someone else and it would be my

allowance. Ordinarily a good system. An early introduction to the labor-for-money lesson about

how the world worked. The only problem was he would not pay. It was not the money per sebut the lesson I learned was his word was worthless, that he played with me, and ignored my

requests. Lack of respect immediately comes to mind. Of course now I know, he did not respect

himself. But, then, since I only related to things from my perspective, I f igured it was something

about me. Did I not deserve the respect for some reason? Why would he treat me this way? I

learned later that my mother, in order to have some independence and a sense of her own

control of her life, took from the budget for groceries and stashed an amount from the grocery

budget to a secret account for herself. Quite an environment to live in. I, after reading What is

Man, understand a lot more about peoples motivations. He clearly did not feel good about

himselfvisible by sleeping all day on days off, angry on the day off he spent awake in thehouse, taking lozenges all the time, vocalizing how bad things were. If you treat people badly it

is clear that you have a problem with yourself. It is how you see the world, so it is how you

relate to it. The observation is so clear to me when I look at people now. If only more people

knew to look at the actions of people from this perspective and this knowledge, I think a great

deal of misery would be avoided and possibly a few people could get right with themselves.

Toward the end of my existence in the house, one evening I was in the kitchen and my brother


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was also standing there. It was on this occasion that my mother started in on my brother. She

did it frequently. He had less fight back in him than I did. She was demeaning, harassing, and

hassling. I had enough of the badgering and lit into her verbally to stop. She resisted. I finally

exploded. She got incensed and stormed back to her bedroom. I managed to restrain her by

using one hand to immobilize her arms and the other to immobilize her legs. She was in effectstraight jacketed till she calmed down. My brother told me she never did talk to him that way

again. A minor success.but I did not know until 20+ years later. The last outrage was one

evening when I was being hassled by my father. The exact topic I do not know. I finally grabbed

his arms, did a backwards somersault, and used my feet on his torso to throw him over me.

Then I grabbed a knife from the kitchen drawer and told him to stay away from me. There are

few times in my life that this much anger came to a head. But I sure needed to get a message

through. It did work. But, like my brother told me recently, he said to my father, why does

everything have to get to a crisis situation for him to react. It paints a picture of what being a

partner must have been like. I can only imagine it must have been like Dantes ninth circle of

hell.

I also noticed disturbed (maybe OCD ) behavior during his time between work when he was

calling on the phone for stock/financial trading on a regular if not daily basis. He would always

reach down to his foot with his right hand as if to pull up his sock or touch this pants leg right

before a call. It was a weird behavior that I noticed. I had never heard of OCD then. More

recently his girlfriend has described similar tendencies of repetitive unusual behavior regarding

hand washing and dry towels. Seems like an obsession with cleanliness to some degree. To look

at something that is you, and deny that it is you seems like a ludicrous position. But, in fact it

happens all the time. We are just not aware of who we are until we visit with others andconnect with them. Another unusual behavior is breaking for green lights under the expectation

that it could turn yellow at any minute and he would be prepared. Some might say, well, safety

first. I respond, the system has safety built in, that is why you dont need to break for every

green light. There must be some irrational reasoning for this behavior.

A more recent example of behavior employed to reduce you is the following. We were sitting in

a restaurant. My brother and he were engaged in a discussion which progressed into an

argument. My brother started getting emphatic. His eyebrows were arched, his eyes were

enlarged, his arm raised with a pointed finger extending from his clenched hand striking out

upon points made. My father sat calmly, with the smile of a villain. He talked calmly, and

though neither point seemed to disqualify the other, my father, with his smile, that says, you

fool, look at you, losing your composure, you clearly have no standing as I am superior to you,

and since you look like you are losing control, you are not a winner in this discussion. I watched


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the defeat in my brother, as he retreated and the argument ended. Winners of wars are

perceived to be right. But, in fact, it only represents a more effective skill or achievement in

beating the other down. Correctness of position is not necessarily articulated by war or

argument. It is often a measure of something else entirely.

Authority needs to have trust with it to be an authority, otherwise it is something else. So, I

would entertain a mistrust and cautious observation of authority figures from very early on.

True to my parents, many authority figures do indeed manifest a clear disregard for trust in my

experience. In grade school I had a subscription to Discover magazine. I enjoyed the biology

sections most of all. I would read and absorb as much as I could. I became more informed than

my teacher. I found myself correcting and adding to her lessons. I remember her face. It was

puzzled hurt. She allowed me of course, to add, and the class was impressed, but she was

made to feel embarrassed. Today, I see the challenge to authority, and the need for self lift inthe action. She was a nice teacher and I knew she would not do anything about it. I sadly took

advantage. Eventually, the material left Discover Magazine behind and she regained her

position. Did this behavior change as I matured. NO. In fact, if I saw stupidity, indifference,

posturing, I let you know..in, for the most part, non direct ways you could not clearly define as

the target, or protected by company policy, but clearly an attack. The price was paid in a similar

manner.

While I am on the subject of authority, I would like to relay a story about dumb it down 101.At my first retail big box job this was not evident in the early years. Later down the road it was

clearly present. Dumb it down was a class taught to district and regional managers to offer

polite niceties to management and associates below the store manager to elicit a show of care

and concern. Then, they were trained to distance themselves from you to avoid conversation

that might offer opportunities to call into question operational issues or any issues you might

have, as this would delay company initiatives. I can tell you this is true. It was the Steppford

wives of retail management. A greeting that was exactly the same each visit from both parties.

Then a brush off and distance. It is clever, because you dont really know what is going on. You

are greeted, as if there is concern and care, but really, there is no concern. In fact, the concernis to avoid you on any level but a supremely superficial level. The reason it is called dumb it

down is because they think that all these people are dumb and that the concerns are nothing

but complaining and whining and if you do this they will not even know what hit them and they

are so dumb you can control them with this simple deflection. Most people dont clearly

identify it, but people dont need to intellectualize to know something is up. So who is really the

dumb character in the role playing?


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Distance

Seeing how they were both miserable people, and not comfortable with who they were, it is

not surprising that they were distant with their children. The Law of Attraction can be a cruel

thing. As an aside, PrettyWoman and Failure to Launch are great representations of this law.

This distance did not allow, also, for friends in their lives. I can hardly remember an instance

when they had friends over. This distance translates to children as disinterest and allows for a

great disability in socialization skills for the kids. They dont learn the skills of understanding

themselves by weaning away from the father/mother approval of things toward the learning of

many ideas from other people and books. Neither of us matured in this way to a healthy degree.

I fortunately had a soft side that women identify with and had girl friends that helped me

socialize more effectively than my brother. One girl in high school called me on my shyness,

believing it to be cockiness, and I learned how my behavior was understood. I did not learn

boundaries of social skills as clearly or as definitely as I should have. I was also lonely. I

remember in 5th

grade staring at pretty girls, hoping for a connection, being thought of as a

little weird. Still, I did it. Later, girlfriends were very important for me. More of a need for

connection to make up for distance I think now. I put an extraordinary amount of energy into

the relationships. To the exclusion of my friends to a large degree. This was not appreciated I

would find out later. At the time I had no clue that I had abandoned them. All I knew was the

fulfillment I felt from closeness with women.

Extreme behavior

My mother showed it numerous times. Playing the piano till her fingers bled was just one

example. This was week after week after week. I did not know different per say, but

somewhere I knew this is a problem. She bought diet sodas by the 25 case load. What was that

about?

Inferiority

I am sure part of me shut down due to the anger. I never had quite the memory for vacation

events as my father and brother. So, because I did not I was made to feel inferior as they would

regale each other with events and stories. I have a good memory for many things so I believe

there was a subconscious cleansing for me. Or, just a difference in makeup. Vacations were


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hellish due to the thick tension of hostility. Not less.different would have been a good thing

for me to hear, absorb and believe. I also did not have a chess mind or interest. My father and

brother did. So, for all the distance, at least in later years they could connect in this one way. I

did not. More distance.

Shame

My mother was overweight most of her life as I knew her. 250-300 pounds plus and only 5 3

or so. You could not go down the hall at the same time. She was too wide. Of course she had a

lot of shame. I did too from neighborhood kids. We were cloistered as children, I am sure due

to this to some degree. She exuded more extreme behavior when loosing this weight, being a

spectacle again, running around the neighborhood.actually speed walkingbut it lookedridiculous. More embarrassment.

Having seen how wrong all this was, I again have a tremendous distaste and sensitivity for when

I see something being done incorrectly, which seems so obvious to me. There were a few

successful mangers I clicked with, they ran good store operations, were connected with their

people, and friendly. Just the things I needed..and respected. Seems like they are a minority

though. Seemed like store managers often were in the position for reasons other than good

managerial skills. Seemed like Texaco had the same or worse system.

I graduated with honors from College, but had no real interest in the chosen degree. I did not

pursue work for a while and could use the downturn in the oil patch as an excuse. I was holed

up in my room for some time. Lost, isolated as much as possible. Finally, I submitted resumes

and pretty easily got jobs. But I did not fit. Reasons listed above. Disappointment.

So, what happened. I was constantly disappointed. I thought it was me as a failure and started

to hate myself like my parents did. I lost confidence. I became angry as my parents. I swallowed

it several times throughout the years. I remember not being able to put a finger on why. But, I

had no direction..no passion was ever developed. I had no one to show me or care enough to

point out the interests or expose me to enough to see what sparked me and guide me that

direction. I could do just about anything, woodwork, mechanic, weld, fix appliances, work with


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computers, teach myself just about anything I was interested in. But, these were just skills, not

meaningful things.

Years later I learned from intercepting emails from my mother to an old high school boyfriendthat she felt very alone all her marriage, that my father was distant, cruel to her in emotional

ways, that she never showed herself without clothes to him, that sex was a horrible duty and

dirty to her because love was absent, that her children were duties at most in her mind and she

did not even mention our names in correspondence. The overriding theme in the emails was an

extreme loneliness and desire for some kind loving connection. It is a heartbreaking reveal. I

learned of her distant relationship with her father especially, but also her mother. She saw a

close relationship with her sister and mother and was hurt by it. She spent many lonely years

married and the first years in Utah were brutally spent with lots of anger between them. She

finally had a nervous breakdown at my cousins graduation. Embarrassing the whole family asshe barked like a dog in at the ceremony. This was the beginning of a tremendous spiral down

through meningitis, going walkabout across the country without notice or information,

possibly having a girlfriend, finally becoming diagnosed with bipolar disorder, trying to self

correct, becoming diabetic, and finally after refusing treatment, getting in accidents from

blackouts during driving, and being institutionalized. Now if this is not enough to cause SHAME

in a child and not want to think about anything I dont know what is. Could this happen to me?

Is this genetic? I have come to believe the severely harsh lonely years with my father drove her

to desperate measures for affection and meaning. She searched many mystical solutions:

crystals, pyramids, Transendental Meditation, colonics, Chi Kuhn etc, etc. All to no avail. Shebroke..pure and simple. She is a twin, and while there are similarities, her sister is far more

stable and normal.

My last visit to see my mother was revealing. I hardly recognized her. The most shocking

observation was her eyes. They had lost the sparkle. They looked dead. She was still the

severely-consumed-with-hatred-and-misery-person she was before though. She always tried to

control people and even now, from a bed, she made my brother and father squirm by analyzing

body language. She said how my father was hiding something and uncomfortable by having hisarms crossed on his stomach, and he quickly squirmed and adjusted ( just like she wanted him

to). My brother was supporting his weight on both arms on the end of the bed and his face

looked strained. She pointed out his discomfort and he squirmed. I had a kind of peace at

seeing and hearing again what I had remembered as the cold , manipulative, hurtful person she

was. All my reason for coming back had been justified. The behavior was real, and as bad as

imagined. She made comments as to my value being very low since I was not earning money.


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She commented that I was not a success because I had not earned much money. There were

other demeaning comments. Top it all with my fathers interpretation: well shes still sharp,

her mind has not gone. Totally oblivious to the nature of the behavior and the intended hurt.

My brother did catch on though. He could see it.

So, back to the career, I entered the workforce at Texaco, and earned good money, but

discovered the job had changed from the degree, and I was not that enchanted any way. Now it

was worse, just a paper shuffle. Some creativity, in contract negotiation and preparation, but

generally non fulfilling. Scouting was good, but it was temporary and being phased out. So I got

great performance evaluations, but I was miserable. Long hours, commuting 1+ hours each way

to avoid the crime-ridden neighborhoods, we lived far out in civilized neighborhoods. What

time is left to develop yourself? None. On top of that you see your friends get pushed out

through layoffs. You watch the humiliation. People pack up in front of their friends andcoworkers and get shuffled out like some piece of trash in a hallway. During the process of

these several forced attritions you see people so afraid..talking to each other trying so

desperately to determine if they will be hit this time. Some contemplating leaving just to avoid

the embarrassment, should they be selected. Its a grueling process and it stays with you. It also

does not get easier with each process, like sometimes happens with experience to hard things.

Its probably a good place to note here that some repulsion to education would result from

seeing the kind of people my parents were, and make the connection they were educated.

Proudly educated as well. If this was what education was responsible for, I surely would not like

this. Education was touted as producing better people. An education turnoff was probably

initiated very early on. Childs World preschool, punished me early on by making me take soap

into my mouth and hold it until my saliva combined enough for it to leak out of my mouth with

the soap dissolved and a little foamy. All this because I wanted to talk and communicate, rather

than listen to the teacher and stop talking, or I just enjoyed talking to other kids. Further

repulsion toward books was the view I had of my brother who was always holed up in his room.

He read, but that did not seem like a good way to live. So removed from everything. I enjoyed

the outdoors, biking, walking in the woods, playing with our dog. A balance would have been

the answer. At the time it seemed like a really bad thing. Then top this off with a school system

that consistently ranked at the lowest end of the scale for many years on end.

Now that I did graduate, and made some direction to move on, my father directed me toward

Texaco. A place he was clearly miserable, not present as a father except for one day, and often

those days were filled with chores directed by an angry, overriding, uncommunicative,


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dictatorial, task master. The screwed up eyebrows with furrows above, the clenched jaw with

the lower jaw jutting out and a tightly closed mouth and the glare in his eyes. That was the face

we saw one day a week. Could this be the action and wish for a child of your own?

So, why direct your child to Texaco. To repeat your misery? What kind of parent wishes, and

pushes that direction? I can presume one that is stupid. I hope it is one who is misguided, or

lacks vision. Or is it one who rather delights in watching the pain he went through manifest in

his son as well. That would be the ultimate punishment and lack of care for his child. Being

uncommunicative, my father offered little in the way of advice or guidance. One line was

offered: Do a good job and they will pay you what you are worth. Clearly an aphorism worth

less than the torrid breath used to speak it. It is enough to say that this is not even 5 % of the

equation that I saw. Think about it. Most job duties are not so complex they cant be

performed reasonably well by most anyone. So, what separates most people, in the eyes of asupervisor? It is the personal attention you provide the supervisor. The suck up. Occasionally

there are opportunities to shine on performance alone but too many supervisors respond to

the personal attention as the differentiation come review time. Having been on the awarding

end of increases, I can tell you that outstanding performance gets a 1% to a maximum of 2%

increase above the average performance increase. Thats not commensurate with outstanding

performance. Fortunately, I ran across, for a short while a corporate CEO and local manager

that bucked this trend.. But I digress. So you jump on the treadmill with all the other rats and

watch those around you sacrifice their life for the company, put up the false self, posture, and

sellout. You could tell the few originals, very few, but there were some. You were friends withthem. But they were stagnant because they did not suck up. It appears that many are not

shown the right way to live. Part culture, part parents. Maybe the parental part is a large part

culture.

I never liked hearing I love you from my parents. It did not happen often. Living away I heard it

on the phone more. I felt really uncomfortable with it. It seemed fake. It seemed like something

was expected in return. It seemed like its meaning was not what it was intended to be from my

experience with those words. It came from a totally horrible place, so how could they

understand the words in the best way, the right way, the proper way. I submit they could not.

They did not live it.

There are at least 3 laws that people operate by from what I can determine: Law of Suggestion,

Law of Compensation, Law of Attraction. Through looking back at my life and observation of my

own and that of others, I can say they are true and proven by empirical evidence.


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Suggestion: we are more like lemmings than we ever care to admit. Look at the influence of

parents, friends, media on your behavior. Good, kind, caring parents produce good kind caring

children for the most part. Angry, abusive, unkind parents produce the same kind of children.

Often the exceptions are from other childhood influences of a good nature or bad nature. In

conjunction with suggestion is Consensus. This is acceptance of a trusted person/entity in their

appraisal of you in some way. One person can represent consensus and form in you an opinion

of yourself or your actions that can last a lifetime.

Consensus: If we look around, we determine the correctness of an action or observation, based

on others much of the time. Look at the true innovators and forward thinkers of our history and

we see the fallacy of this. They prove time and again that trust in yourself (confidence) is the

key. Confidence in being wrong as being just a stepping stone to success seems also a prevailing

attitude. If it is an attitude, that can be controlled by you. Nevertheless, law of consensus rules

most peoples lives and whenever we are ruled, the least of us is available, not the most.

Compensation: this is a complex one that Emerson wrote and is must reading for everyone in

my opinion. It is about how things work in the human relations world.

Attraction: we attract people like ourselves and what we think about. Plain and simple.

I survived the law of attraction with reason. I have a strong self preservation instinct (no doubt

from all the anger I saw) so I rationalized my mate attraction and luckily came across a gem.

This is not to say she was not physically attractive. She was/is. Attraction has a lot more to do

with other non physical and some indefinable things. I knew what I liked, what was good for me,

and what was not good for me now that I had dated a few women and a couple were for a term

of years. I found a woman who is a strong nurturer, with immense patience, a strong sense ofbalance and self, with a great mother influence and an intelligence and curiosity that was

similar to mine. Key to her is her strong self respect evidenced by hardly any moments of anger

in her life despite trials of immense proportion. So, I was able to break the cycle. I found

someone attractive, who is committed to growing, and capable of lasting love and commitment,

and strong in her own right. This was different from previous relationships. A true life success.


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So, to return to the work treadmill, my brother and I were lost without direction. We floated

along, getting raises, moving along, but feeling unfulfilled. I made a move to retail. At first it

was definitely a good move. It allowed more choice in where to live. I could get out of Louisiana.

My children could get a better exposure to education, environment, and family that was

balanced, and normal. My parents were the exact opposite of what I wanted them exposed to.

The retail I chose had good management and the leader of the company understood the

reward for respecting your people and showing it in many ways. Intelligent management was

the key to my success. I had a smart, people oriented, kind, and teaching kind of manager. It

was 9 months of bliss. I flourished under him. He hired smart people, driven to succeed and

paid them very well. The store worked better than a Swiss watch. Because I was happy, and I

had the autonomy to run the department as I saw fit, people were drawn to me. Mostly women.

Kind soft spirit I guess. Several of the women came to offer their help when there was downtime for them. The store manager called it a Love Fest that I had going on over there. This just

meant that they all wanted to help me. I was happy there, pleasant, and appreciative and

people were drawn to that. There was a stress in other department managers. It was a perfect

storm of the good kind for me. All things worked properly. I was promoted from that store, as

were every other department head in the store eventually. This is a remarkable feat. It was

entirely due to leadership, belief, and good support from management. This store manager was

an independent, rule breaking, kind of person. The current CEO provided fertile ground for this

kind of person. He encouraged independence and few rules to go by. After being promoted to a

problem store, which the management team fixed, we heard that the CEO was retiring and anew CEO was being sought. This was the beginning of the end. He changed so much so quickly

and for his pocket, it just destroyed the morale, the profit, the future, and your dreams. One

side note. It was well known and observed that many store managers were terminated within a

couple of years of becoming a store manager. The ones that did last longer, often, showed the

stress in illness, graying hair, and body injuries. They had to answer calls on their days off, come

in on days off, and it seemed like they never really had a break. This did not appeal. The closer

you got the worse it looked. It is important to note that the store manager that promoted me

soon thereafter, upon this new CEOs reign, became displaced. He no longer fit. He left a short

time later, but not without some fireworks. This company was his savior from a life of hard

times. It was also uncommon, as in corporate America, conformity and compliance was the rule.

He was a bit disenfranchised.

Skip to employment at a small hardware store. I met, after a year, a head cashier who

transferred in to our store. I liked her, she was friendly, but sensed some problems. No

particulars here. The point is that we clashed hard at one time over a presumed allowance of


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theft, then through my efforts, tried to reconcile. It was determined that theft was occurring

and company policy changed. She had a short career so far, but there were serious bumps

already.

Later I was directed to her Facebook/MySpace site by a coworker shortly after this effort. I

learned there was a quite different person from who was at work. This person did not seem so

angry. She had an interesting personality. She was involved in life and had passions. As I got to

know her and tried to offer her help with her socialization problems with men ( offering how

men saw the world and women), I soon discovered that she was actually helping me! There

were many conversations where I just listened to what she wanted to talk about. It seemed to

be something she really needed. I knew something about this girl could help me, but it was

really low level. I knew she was sharp and misplaced. I knew she was hiding something. Like me.

Law of attraction. I see this now but operated on instinct then. Turns out we have some

uncanny background and mental material. I learned her parents both had low opinions of

themselves. She had an abysmal opinion of herself. Her parents separated for a while and it

sounded like the mother needed religion for a personal soothing reason, and the father drank,

and considered himself at best the level of a dogbut not in a good way. Her siblings had image

problems as well, but seemed less serious. Her fathers greatest and most forefront thought on

his mind when I had the occasion to talk to him for just a few minutes was..concern for his

daughters anger. He cared deeply for her and did not want to see her so angry. I so fervently

agree.

It has been posited that marriage is a dead institution because of a failure rate of 50% or

greater. I propose that it is not the institution that is at fault but the happiness of the individual.If one reads the Meaning of Sex, by Ayn Rand, they will have the clearest view of happiness (self

esteem) and how it relates to relationships and their success. If you look at much literature,

news worthy life, television shows, and movies, the pattern is clear. The person who is unhappy

with themselves cheats to get a short fix of feel-good from a desperate need. He cannot get it

from the one he loves because he hates himself so much he feels like he is not worthy of the

relationship or closeness from the loving one. It is an answer to the behavior you see all

around you in such a clear and self evident, self proving description I think it should be taught

to all people for consideration. Forewarned is forearmed. Now, to make it clear, I did not

succumb to this action as I am sure some readers may interpret. However, it was a question

brought up, and I could not support an answer. One interesting side note. I have found it a

curious thing through life when asked how many medications I am on, that following my none

response, is a what, none, that is really unusual. This is quite a statement to the general

population condition. Many are medicated.


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Here is Ayn Rands excerpt for The Meaning of Sex:

Do you remember what I said about money and about the men who seek

to reverse the law of cause and effect? The men who try to replace the mind

by seizing the products of the mind? Well, the man who despises himself

tries to gain self-esteem from sexual adventureswhich cant be done,

because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a mans

sense of his own value. ...

The men who think that wealth comes from material resources and has

no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who thinkfor the same

reasonthat sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of

ones mind, choice or code of values. They think that your body creates a

desire and makes a choice for youjust about in some such way as if iron

ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind,

they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all

philosophers. But, in fact, a mans sexual choice is the result and the sum of

his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive

and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he

sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself. No matter what

corruption hes taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most

profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive

but his own enjoymentjust try to think of performing it in a spirit of

selfless charity!an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in

self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of

desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body,


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glory can there be in the conquest of a mindless body?

Anyway, she opened me up to books, ones that taught about people and behavior. Shop Girl by

Steve Martin, and Malcom Gladwells books. She was interested in Greek God Mythology, andpoetry. She identified so much with some literature it became part of her DNA. It was available

at an instant, and word for word. I saw how she used the Socratic method in questioning me,

and others, played like she was asking what if questions, in a non serious manner, but really

in search for deep meaning and getting into the lives of others to form her opinion of herself

and them. She really intrigued me. She could be the one who opens up the world for me. And

she did. She was a little too power hungry and used information to act as an informant to

bolster her position with the store manager. She was very insecure. Me too, just in a different

way. She was a master manipulator. I could learn from her though.. the positive things. One

occasion of manipulation on me was after an effort I made to allow me to help her move as itsounded like she was in a bind for time and people to help. I tried the kindness route, the

irritate route, the help-me-help you route. She would not budge and could not define for me

why she would not let me help her. She in fact said I dont know why. So I left it at that. I went

out to the sales floor and finished some duties and she came out a few minutes later and

offered a friendly reminder of a task I was going to do. Operating on the selfish principal I

figured that it was not the kind gesture it appeared to be. I was just beginning to read people

better, having read Blink and other articles on body language. She was in fact just trying to

misdirect me away from her as she went to the store manager to ask for his help moving.

Nevertheless, even through all the manipulative motions, we grew as people as she put it onetime when there was a mutual apology. I knew she was sharing information about me that I

told her in confidence. She was too insecure not too. And, I could read people pretty well and

watched their behavior. I could not take her exposing me as I gave her information about me. I

kept much information secret. She told me much about herbut refused questions that were

not of her free flowing choosing. I respected her privacy on all matters she relayed. She was

hurt by my holding back and dug and picked and observed. Quid Pro Quo was ordered. Now

that we were friends she could point out my various faults in angry or mean behavior more

freely. There were a few to be sure. I was an angry person. The assaults became too many, so I

had to leave when combined with my other disappointments. Here I was helping her, and there

was some resentment of me in some way, or maybe just power positioning, or just destructive

behavior. Who knows? It may have been that I did not share that much about my family or me

for that matter. It did not seem to be an interest with her, but later it became a high interest.

Of course, I could not share much. I was not proud of much and did not feel I could or should. I

surely would not want it spread and she told me clearly she did not keep secrets well. All this

was on top of many problems with leadership in the company, in the store, and above the store.


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The overriding issue concerning the company was the forced sale of ESPs and memberships.

For this you had to use your charm and relationship with customers to sell a product that was

to no advantage except the company in nearly all cases. This was, to me, in direct conflict with

my sense of morality to people I had a relationship with. I still have regret about those sales. I

feel like I used my best for the worst. However one defines sinsurely this would be the case.

Further motivation to leave was that at this point, I was on the right road as I had made some

behavioral changes at home and could see progress. Shortly before I left she vented about her

bulimia, and people being mean to her ( name calling about personal appearance) and about

her shame in school about them (her siblings too) smelling like smoke because they heated

with wood, etc. The anger during this episode was like Oscar Wildes Picture of Dorian Grey.

You could see the damage to her come through her face. I hurt so bad for her. She told me of

her life, so much like Kerry Cohen in Loose Girl. I watched her behavior in pursuing men. I hurt

for her so much I could barely take it. The anger over another head cashier, her equal in

another store that she replaced in our store.so much like her. Retail, as I look at it in my mind

now, has a preponderance of low self esteem people. The big box paid more, especially under

good leadership, and as a consequence, we hired a better, more secure, stationed person.

Although, as I look back there were plenty examples of low self worth people here as well, even

in the better environment. Studs Terkel wrote a book containing interviews with employees of

many walks of life. In particular he talked to manufacturing employees. One glaring standout

was that management had a different opinion (higher) of the work environment than the floor

worker. There was a clear disconnect. I find the modern retail environment has a lot of parallels

to the factory environment. The small box did not have this advantage of higher pay for

workers. But ironically, it allowed less anonymity. Propinquity, attraction by closeness, workedhere to my ultimate advantage. This was the start of getting past my faade and finding out

what my possibilities were.

Its a curious thing, confidence. It does not affect your entire persona. Its compartmentalized.

She had great confidence in her job duties, but when in university, where structure was absent,

no confidence and a meltdown. In line with details elsewhere in this text, she operated in

mimicry behavior when she entered the retail workforce and copied her friends behavior and

ran up lots of debt since her income did not match her friends. The law of attraction led her to

lots of other people who found comfort, or relief from sexual exploitation. She copied them.

She has a lot of confidence in manipulating men. I watched her work one manager through

sexual discussion. At one time he was making her feel bad about her appearance in several

ways. She was distraught by it. I offered that it was to get attention. She made a childhood

observationyou mean like pulling pig tails, I said yes.like that. She often reduced behaviors


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to childhood instances. Smart girlmore than she knows maybe. If someone is giving you

negative attention, it is still attention. For an insecure person this is a great way to operate. If

you show positive attention and get shot down it hurts. If you use negative attention you most

likely will fire him up and get attention back. If not, you save face and consider it a victory. Also,

negative attention, if you dont like yourself, can be a victory, as it supports your view. If youtruly dont like someone, you dont give them any attention at all. This may seem

counterintuitive but it stands to reasonto evidence.This to me is an example of the hate and

love being two sides of the same coin. At this point she worked him with sexual

discussionputting him in a place to be advising and he rolled over like a pup and smoothed

out. Before this, she was trying to get my buy in to make him stop and worked me on an

intellectual level, ( I had not responded in the same way to sexual discussion) and asked my

opinion about a paperwork issue. I offered a solution but you could tell she clearly did not need

or really want my idea. It was just to get support the way she thought I would respond. When

she thought one manager had given me information about a ploy she had planned to try

against me, she immediately confused him and knew just how to do it by shaking him with his

confidence in his memory. On one occasion she tried to see if I would take more cash during a

register payout. She had heard erroneously that I had done this to a cashier, and her method

was spectacular. An actress in full immersion in the role. She flipped her hair and acted with

abandon to indicate she was not paying attention, but fully aware all the time. I suspected she

was up to something and immediately put the $10.00 extra dollars she slipped me back in the

drawer. So confident in some ways, her ability to manipulate, her intellect at conjuring, her

structured work, but so little in other ways. Its a puzzle. Speaking of intellect, this young lady

also asked the deepest questions. She was a thinker, clearly. Although she would explain away

her interest as a way to pass the time during thoughtless activity, she clearly was thinking about

things. Here is a list of some topics discussed: Religion and/or Gods existence, sex and all that

goes with it ( power, pleasure, sado masochism, interracial, prostitution, immorality diseases),

determinism, socialism, communism, social ideology, theory of selfishness vs. altruism, self

preservation vs. the moral imperative of your actions, womens rights, judgementalism vs.

observation/communication, and the egos of men.

She had connection with books and all the comfort they allow, without the sincerest people

connection. I had the sincerest people connection without the book awareness that allows you

to define who you are, others are, and the interrelation of everything else. One without the

other seems to me is a disconnected existence. The value of both is enhanced by the other in

ways that are not possible to clearly explain satisfactorily. You just have to experience it. I make

an analogy: its like having tools, but nothing to work with, or having something to work with

but no tools.


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prompting. He did not think this related to him. He frequently professes to be a rationally

driven person. This specifically addresses tickets and rational mindedness. Yet, in his mind there

was simply no connection to how this related to him. I do not think this is unusual. I think

others see us differently than we see ourselves. And, I think, depending on the person, the

other vision, is bound to some accuracy we care not to admit. Further exacerbating the issue isthe reluctance of others to say something. This in my opinion is a great tragedy. I think a lot of

behaviors could be addressed and remedied if more people allowed themselves to talk to

people about behaviors they see that are missing the mark. The delicate approach must be

used though. If it comes across as judgmental it possibly becomes worse than nothing said at

all. I am certainly not the only one to arrive at this conclusion. I particularly like Walt Whitman.

This is a partial reprint of a poem he wrote that is particularly relevant. Poem of You, Whoever

you are:

You have not known what you areyou have

slumbered upon yourself all your life,Your eye-lids have been as much as closed most

of the time,

What you have done returns already in mock-eries,

Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do notreturn in mockeries, what is their return?

The mockeries are not you,

Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk,

One of the most valuable things to me has been hearing conversations not meant for my ears,

but specifically about me. It is here that the truth is spoken. Since you are not there, you are

hearing it as an observer, and it sifts into the mind a little differently. You dont get defensive,

or interrupt. You just think.is this true, are the comments accurate, why do I do this behavior,

is it motivated by aggression from another person, what prejudices does the other person have,

is this something I can change, and, should I change. The reality check this provides is eyeopening. People in my experience dont speak the truth, business or personal. It is a constant

protectionist attitude, that eliminates authenticity. Politics for power, money, treatment, and

attention rule the actions of adults misguided by a society that favors the image these things

represent. Its a false image. When they get there the atmosphere darkens. But the treadmill

keeps going, if not a little faster. Unfortunately, the information that is kept quite is both


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negative and positive. There is a similar parallel in families, at least my family. It turns out from

attending a school meeting that other parents have this same issue. One parent commented

that she did not find out information from her child, and that she had to talk to teachers to find

out what was going on. I find in correspondence, like emails, and school assignments that the

real condition of the soul is expressed. Here the relationship is held forever in a state ofdiscontent, rather than allowed to proceed from a mutual understanding. What pain is endured

for no other reason than not communicating I cannot even fathom. I can surmise it is great by

my own estimation of the looks, the lack of looks, and the lack of conversation. On a

philosophical note there is a statement that is appropriate here: The notion of secrecy is central

to western literature. You may say, the whole idea of character is defined by people holding

specific information which for various reasons, sometimes perverse, sometimes noble, they are

determined not to disclose.

Loose Girl and other resources point out a useful tool. If you hate someone, take a close look. It

is probably something in yourself you do not like about yourself. I have found this to be true. I

identified with her, enjoyed her brain, (for she challenged me to think about the things we do

every day and just accept it), and how much she was helping me understand myself. I could not

take seeing myself in her, and her damage herself.on purpose, yet without in her mind,

alternative recourse. What a pathetic set of circumstances.

The key moment for me was after I had exchanged some tidbits about smoking marijuana and

13 car accidents, (most very minor, obviouslyIm still here and undeformed of body) she said

so you had a bad childhood, huh? I of course immediately said what, no, I had a good

childhood. I believed then that I did. I had none of the news worthy poverty, or physical abuse.

I lived in the suburbs, had a car in high school, dated, had success in school, regular meals,

money and a job in high school. I did not know then the effect of my experiences. I was also as

the saying goes too close to the forest to see the trees. I have since learned through the

glimpse of this young lady and many books later that behavior we received was in fact

detrimental to development. I was always blamed for bad behavior as I was growing up. It was

my fault somehow that I was angry, got in accidents. The consensus of a parental statement is

powerful. I was screaming nonverbally about the messed up environment. I later screamed

verbally and physically. I think people really do behave according to the law of every action has

an equal and opposite reaction, with emotions as well. This is why kindness breeds kindness

and anger breads anger. I think maybe some magnification does happen though depending on

the personalities (sensitivities) involved. One note of interest was when I pulled out onto a road

about halfway.when I saw a motorcycle rider coming toward me. It was too late to move, and

he hit the front part of the car and flew across the hood and landed some 30 to 40 feet in the


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grass. He turned out to be relatively unscathed. Now, I knew I should feel bad for this. And, I

played the part. Moping, staying in the room as if depressed. But, I really had no connection to

this other than an observer. I did not feel bad. I still dont and wonder why? It seems

sociopathic, but I do have extreme sensitivity to seeing pain in my wife and kidslike cleaning

wounds, or minor physical therapy for my wife to aid in her recovery from an injury. I think thisis enough to offer evidence against sociopathy.

This is the tip of the iceberg really. There are many other incidents. To the party that says, tell

me more, which is nothing more than a veiled interest, but rather a way to discredit should

more anecdote be unavailable, I respond with this parallel. The iceberg is made up of many

days of inconsequential little layers of daily snow and ice. It builds quietly and uneventfully into

a massive object of immense weight and size which is as oppressive and as immovable as most

anything on earth. This is the effect of daily life on the person. He can hardly distinguish all thatoppresses him and the immensity of it all for its slow but consistent growth upon him. But here

is the really tricky abuse. They are intelligent people, my parents, so mind games happened as

well. These are the things you cant point to exactly, so you are defenseless in a way at a young

age. You just know you are being screwed with and all you can do is get angrier and angrier. It is

a cruel kind of torture when your mind is being manipulated and you cant see a direct path to

fight it or express and point to it directly. This really eats at you because now you feel helpless

at even fighting the hate and anger coming your way. Once you do, you appear as the instigator

of the assault, so now you are definitely the problem. Kind of like being put in jail when you are

innocent I think. All the evidence points to you, you know you did not do it, and you have nodefense against it, and you know you are going down for something you did not do.

Without going into much detail, I stole candy and deep fried apple pies at around 6 years old. I

was caught after a while. The punishment was to be fed out of a bottle like a baby and

restriction, yelling, and, spanking. I also played with fire, literally. I nearly burned down a club

house in the back yard. Both these actions speak to severe behavioral treatment and a poor

adjustment to it. It is not a puzzle now. I dont think it was then, but this is really not a matter

for now. It is just another piece to the explanation of me. There have been enough

autobiographies written that line the library shelves now that clearly indicate, without the need

of psychologists, that poor parental involvement leads to this behavior and it is almost a

guarantee if both parents are at issue. Usually, if one parent is involved to a healthy degree the

children manage well though with some effort.


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At 10 years old, I was in class in the morning period. I was sitting quietly as the children filtered

in. All of the sudden, there was a commotion at the front of the class. The children started

gathering around. I went carefully up as well. At this time there was pushing and shoving. Soon

it grew into fist throwing and finally one kid went down. Then, the kid standing took the hair of

the kid on the ground and with a swift motion jammed his knee into his face about three times.The kid was out. The only feeling I can remember is one of awe, and the consequent wish of

boy, I wish I could do that. The absolute power and victory was impressive. The problem was

he was suspended, maybe expelled. I better not do that after all.

One last anecdote of my behavior was in my teen years. I was 16 or 17. My friends and I were

pulling into a shopping center to listen to stereos at a high end stereo store. We pulled into a

spot and were immediately approached by an angry person in an old faded gold/brown station

wagon. He was wild looking, with hair slightly electrified, unshaven and a rough appearanceoverall. I couldnt swear to it, but a damaged Vietnam vet would be a good guess. We had

taken his spot. I immediately refuted him. He escalated to vulgarities. I intensely threw

expletives back and he was now going to his station wagon in a fast angry arms- flailing walk.

He was getting his car jack. The big ones used in the 70s. He started to raise it as if he was

going to come at me with it. I, in my angry youth, finally having a chance to release, threatened

him with his own action. I told him, go ahead, do it, you may hit me, but you will go to jail, Im

under 18!. Go ahead! Youll go to jail! Reasoning with this man was a 1 in a million chance. But,

somehow, he did reason it was not worth it. My friends thought it was an amazing display after

wards. But, now, I have a different view.

I am on a path to recovery. If it was not for meeting this outspoken head cashier with similar

background and personal makeup I probably would never have changed. This would have been

a travesty for my entire family, including extended. The effects this lady has had are truly hard

to measure. Its enormous and probably (hopefully) will affect generations. My brother is much

better now that he has a handle on why he was behaving the way he was. He was told several

times by his partner, but it did not sink in. The source and the way the words are put in context

matter beyond measure. Its the difference between acceptance and not.pure and simple.

I am trying to explain a way directly to rectifying the self image. I am studying the famouspeople like Oprah who have self image problems. They all still have self image problems, but

get some boost from fans. This is not a solution. I think it is a band aid not available, nor

desirable to many people. I am hopeful that intellectualizing the three laws and primarily the

law of suggestion will be an answer. I hope it is an answer for Kerry Cohen and others like her

or anyone with self esteem issue resulting from behavior that demeans. I must say at this point

I understand why House Speaker Boehner cries, while it seems a mystery to most people. I find


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myself tearing up or getting a tight throat and a strained voice when I see a sweet kindness that

is touching, especially toward children.

If, as Mark Twain posits, in his What is Man book, is true, and it seems to hold water based onmy observations of life, this is an answer. Therefore, as young people, (and older as well) we

are highly suggestible machines, and we are programmed as it were for behaviors by behaviors

seen. Furthermore, people operate in self mode all the time. All actions are from a self

perspective. Therefore, all actions toward you need to be considered before you believe it is

actually any real reflection of you. Take for instance a bully who picks on others. The person

being picked on is just a release for the anger in the other. We take it as a fault in ourselves

because we only think in terms of self. But, clearly the bully is just releasing his anger and that is

no reflection in any way of your value. The same is true of good deeds. This makes actions

toward us confusing. We see good actions toward us as a boostabout us. So, we see badactions toward us as a detriment. In fact, good actions frequently are really about how the

other person feels about themselves. If you feel great about yourself you release that to others.

If you have self- esteem, ( again it is about the self and if you rely on outsiders, you will never

get the self defined) these comments are mere comments and should be appreciated for what

they are.comments, not directions to how you feel about yourself. So, how do you get self

esteem. Seems to me the best answer is something like this. Read, read , read and get an

identity about how you feel about the important questions in life to you. To quote: the chief

importance of knowledge by description is that it enables us to pass beyond the limits of our

own private experience. I think parents can help, but this is the source of the problem in thisdiatribe so I dont approach this angle here. Spirituality has been defined as your relation to

the universe. I like this definition. Become an intellectual on what drives you. Get clear

definitions of marriage, morality, purpose, meaning, selfishness, human rights, and politics to

name several. It seems hard to imagine an intellectual with self esteem issues. This information

also allows connection to others in deeply meaningful ways that construct memories. This

certainly adds meaning and depth to the self.

The Latin phrase says it all to me: I carry all my things with me. That is a secure mindset, but it

requires a lot of intellectual pursuit.This concept is the essence of confidence, clearly defined

ideas and definitions of the important things to them and no need of others approval for self

evaluation. This is not to say that it is not appreciated, but rather their image is theirs and not

an evaluation of them from someone else in the form of compliment or derogatory comment. If

we rely on others for our image then obviously it will vary by the others we are in contact with

who project their own image on to us since we only see in others what we identify with. This is

no way to have an image and would be very confusing to adjust to since it will always vary from


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day to day and person to person. Think about a compliment.....you are a kind person.....I assure

you that person thinks they are kind at the moment and sees that in you. Meet an angry person

( anger has been defined as it is all about me...attention attention) and they will project that on

you. One outstanding feature of the great people of this earth was the well read nature and

often their documentation of their ideas in the form of a journal. The documentation cementsand confirms your ideas and thoughts and direction. Reference the neural/synaptic thickening

that occurs with repetition and the working in the mind of an idea.

Put another way is the following:

Definitions - it has become a running theme through reading that a clear problem for people is

definitions. If you don't have a really good idea of a definition of some ideas ( love, politics,

passion) you will assume the influence others have over you and accept their definition rather

than search it out for yourself and get comfortable with it. Reading is one way. This is talking

to people, working their view to what works for you. I saw an interview with Tim McGraw whohad as a definition of himself a father who was an alcoholic. You are defined by your parents as

a young person. We are mimickers. But in this case he saw his real father and chose at that

moment to redefine himself in those terms. He immediately got confidence. Definitions are

crucial to happiness or at least having a choice in the path you take. You have to have clear

definitions of who you are to be confident. Think about what makes you feel good.....it's when

you do something you are confident with.

Now, on motivation I have this to say.The motivation for any action toward you is never aboutyou. It is always about the other person. This is why it can never work to base your opinion on

others...it is impossible for it to be about you....although you think it is. Think about hateful

statement, practical jokes, mean behaviors, favors, kindnesses. They all stem from the other

persons motivations. Two great movie examples are The Reader, and Ordinary People. The

child in both assumes the blame for the parents distant, difficult behavior. Of course in both

cases as in life, it is not the case, but the condition of the adult from traumatic treatment. It can

be a vicious cycle. This is monumental to know and internalize in order to understand that

your value can only come from the comfort you get for yourself in gaining knowledge about the

things you think about that matter to you.

In Dr. OZs book, there is stated the ever increasing evidence of mimicry as the primary tool of

learning and the most effective in brain formation. A truly convincing show of the sublime

power of suggestion is laid out in the brown-eyed blue-eyed experiment performed in 1968 by

a school teacher where she turned students against each other in a matter of minutes and a


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leap to suggest there is monetary motive to let it be. Especially, since there is a great many

people that dont make this jump and stay in subservient, low wage, low intellect jobs that the

service industry ( our economy) is made up of. In effect, there is monetary reason to suggest

that we are perpetuating this behavior if not outright supporting it.

The following is from New Yorker Magazine. It addresses in a fresh manner many of the topics I

bring up here: suggestibility, education, consensus, law of attraction, and certainly the law of

compensation.

Occasionally, you meet a young, rising member of this class at the gelato store, as he hovers

indecisively over the cloudberry and ginger-pomegranate selections, and you notice that hissuperhuman equilibrium is marred by an anxiety. Many members of this class, like many

Americans generally, have a vague sense that their lives have been distorted by a giant culturalbias. They live in a society that prizes the development of career skills but is inarticulate when it

comes to the things that matter most. The young achievers are tutored in every soccer techniqueand calculus problem, but when it comes to their most important decisionswhom to marry and

whom to befriend, what to love and what to despisethey are on their own. Nor, for all theirstriving, do they understand the qualities that lead to the highest achievement. Intelligence,

academic performance, and prestigious schools dont correlate well with fulfillment, or evenwith outstanding accomplishment. The traits that do make a difference are poorly understood,

and cant be taught in a classroom, no matter what the tuition: the ability to understand andinspire people; to read situations and discern the underlying patterns; to build trusting

relationships; to recognize and correct ones shortcomings; to imagine alternate futures. In short,these achievers have a sense that they are shallower than they need to be.

Help comes from the strangest places. We are living in the middle of a revolution in

consciousness. Over the past few decades, geneticists, neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists,economists, and others have made great strides in understanding the inner working of the human

mind. Far from being dryly materialistic, their work illuminates the rich underwater world wherecharacter is formed and wisdom grows. They are giving us a better grasp of emotions, intuitions,

biases, longings, predispositions, character traits, and social bonding, precisely those thingsabout which our culture has least to say. Brain science helps fill the hole left by the atrophy of

theology and philosophy.

A core finding of this work is that we are not primarily the products of our conscious thinking.

The conscious mind gives us one way of making sense of our environment. But the unconsciousmind gives us other, more supple ways. The cognitive revolution of the past thirty years provides

a different perspective on our lives, one that emphasizes the relative importance of emotion overpure reason, social connections over individual choice, moral intuition over abstract logic,


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perceptiveness over I.Q. It allows us to tell a different sort of success story, an inner story to goalong with the conventional surface one.

To give a sense of how this inner story goes, lets consider a young member of the ComposureClass, though of course the lessons apply to members of all classes. Ill call him Harold. Hisinner-mind training began before birth. Even when he was in the womb, Harold was listening for

his mothers voice, and being molded by it. French babies cry differently from babies whoveheard German in the womb, because theyve absorbed French intonations before birth. Fetuses

who have been read The Cat in the Hat while in the womb suck rhythmically when they hear itagain after birth, because they recognize the rhythm of the poetry.

As a newborn, Harold, like all babies, was connecting with his mother. He gazed at her. Hemimicked. His brain was wired by her love (the more a rat pup is licked and groomed by its

mother, the more synaptic connections it has). Harolds mother, in return, read his moods. A

conversation developed between them, based on touch, gaze, smell, rhythm, and imitation. WhenHarold was about eleven months old, his mother realized that she knew him better than shedever known anybody, even though theyd never exchanged a word.

ILLUSTRATION: PHILIPPE PETIT-ROULET

Harold soon developed models in his head of how to communicate with people and how to use

others as tools for his own learning. Thanks to his moms attunement, he became confident thatif he sent a signal it would be received. Later in life, his sense of security enabled him to go out

and explore the world. Researchers at the University of Minnesota can look at attachmentpatterns of children at forty-two months, and predict with seventy-seven-per-cent accuracy who

will graduate from high school. People who were securely attached as infants tend to have morefriends at school and at summer camp. They tend to be more truthful through life, feeling lessneed to puff themselves up in others eyes. According to work by Pascal Vrticka, of the

University of Geneva, people with what scientists call avoidant attachment patterns show lessactivation in the reward areas of the brain during social interaction. Men who had unhappy

childhoods are three times as likely to be solitary at age seventy. Early experiences dontdetermine a life, but they set pathways, which can be changed or reinforced by later experiences.

For several months when he was four, Harold insisted that he was a tiger who had been born on

the sun. His parents tried to get him to concede that he was a little boy born in a hospital, but hewould become grave and refuse. This formulation, Im a tiger, may seem like an easy thing,

but no computer could blend the complicated concept I with the complicated concept tigerinto a single entity. As Harold grew, he was able to use his imagination to blend disparate ideas,

in the same sort of way that Picasso, at the height of his creative powers, could combine theconcept Western portraiture with the concept African masks.

Throughout his life, Harold had a superior ability to feel what others were feeling. He didnt

dazzle his teachers with academic brilliance, but, even in kindergarten, he could tell you who inhis class was friends with whom; he was aware of social networks. Scientists used to think that


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we understand each other by observing each other and building hypotheses from the accumulateddata. Now it seems more likely that we are, essentially, method actors who understand others by

simulating the responses we see in them. When Harold was in high school, he could walk aroundthe cafeteria and fall in with the unique social patterns that prevailed in each clique. He could tell

which clique tolerated drug use or country-music listening and which didnt. He could tell how

many guys a girl could hook up with and not be stigmatized. In some groups, the number wasthree; in others seven. Most people assume that the groups they dont belong to are morehomogeneous than the groups they do belong to. Harold could see groups from the inside. When

he sat down with, say, the Model U.N. kids, he could guess which one of them wanted to migratefrom the Geeks and join the Honors/Athletes. He could sense who was the leader of any group,

who was the jester, who played the role of peacemaker, daredevil, organizer, or self-effacingaudience member.

y from the issue

y cartoon banky e-mail this

One of Harolds key skills in school was his ability to bond with teachers. Weve spent ageneration trying to reorganize schools to make them better, but the truth is that people learn

from the people they love. In eleventh grade, Harold developed a crush on his history teacher,Ms. Taylor. What mattered most was not the substance of the course so much as the way she

thought, the style of learning she fostered. For instance, Ms. Taylor constantly told the class howlittle she knew. Human beings are overconfidence machines. Paul J. H. Schoemaker and J.

Edward Russo gave questionnaires to more than two thousand executives in order to measurehow much they knew about their industries. Managers in the advertising industry gave answers

that they were ninety-per-cent confident were correct. In fact, their answers were wrong sixty-one per cent of the time. People in the computer industry gave answers they thought had a

ninety-five per cent chance of being right; in fact, eighty per cent of them were wrong. Ninety-nine per cent of the respondents overestimated their success.


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Ms. Taylor was always reminding the class of how limited her grasp of any situation was. Sorry,I get distracted easily, shed say, or, Sorry, sometimes I jump to conclusions too quickly. In

this way, she communicated the distinction between mental strength (the processing power of thebrain) and mental character (the mental virtues that lead to practical wisdom). She stressed the

importance of collecting conflicting information before making up ones mind, of calibrating

ones certainty level to the strength of the evidence, of enduring uncertainty for long stretches asan answer became clear, of correcting for ones biases. As Keith E. Stanovich, a psychologist atthe University of Toronto, writes in his book What Intelligence Tests Miss (2009), these

thinking dispositions correlate weakly or not at all with I.Q. But, because Ms. Taylor put suchemphasis on these virtues and because Harold admired her so much, he absorbed and copied her

way of being.

By the time Harold was in his mid-twenties, he was well on his way toward a happy andfulfilling life, and the building blocks of his happiness had little to do with the lines on his

rsum. Theres a debate in our culture about what really makes us happy, which is summarizedby, on the one hand, the book On the Road and, on the other, the movie Its a Wonderful Life.

The former celebrates the life of freedom and adventure. The latter celebrates roots andconnections. Research over the past thirty years makes it clear that what the inner mind really

wants is connection. Its a Wonderful Life was right. Joining a group that meets just once amonth produces the same increase in happiness as doubling your income. According to research

by Daniel Kahneman, Alan B. Krueger, and others, the daily activities most closely associatedwith happiness are socialhaving sex, socializing after work, and having dinner with friends.

Many of the professions that correlate most closely with happiness are also sociala corporatemanager, a hairdresser.

Young American men are not exactly famous for being in touch with their emotions. But Haroldsensed that he was a social animal, not a laboring animal or a rational animal, and one day he

went on a blind date with the womanlets call her Ericawho would someday be his wife.Given the stakes, we might pause over this incident, to show in slightly more detail how the

inner processes of the mind interact with the conscious ones.

Harold and Erica got their first glimpse of each other in front of a Barnes & Noble. They smiledbroadly as they approached, and a deep, primeval process kicked in. Harold liked what he saw,

from the waist-to-hip ratio to the clear skin, all indicative of health and fertility. He enjoyed thesmile that spread across Ericas face, and unconsciously noted that the end of her eyebrows

dipped down. The orbicularis-oculi muscle, which controls this part of the eyebrow, cannot beconsciously controlled, so, when the tip of the eyebrow dips, that means the smile is genuine, not

fake.

Erica was impressed by him: women everywhere tend to prefer men who have symmetrical

features and are slightly older, taller, and stronger than they are. But she was more guarded andslower to trust than Harold was. Thats in part because, while Pleistocene men could pick their

mates on the basis of fertility cues discernible at a glance, Pleistocene women faced a morevexing problem. Human babies require years to become self-sufficient, and a single woman in


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her chest into view. She would have been appalled if she had seen herself in a mirror at thatmoment.

And through it all the conversation flowed. Youd think, if you listened to cultural stereotypes,

that women are the more romantic of the sexes. In fact, theres evidence that men fall in love

faster and are more likely to believe that true love lasts forever. Though men normally spendtwice as much time talking about themselves as women do, in this conversation Harold wasactually talking about Ericas problems. Surveys by the evolutionary psychologist David Buss

suggest that, for both men and women, kindness is one of the most important qualities desired ina sexual partner. Courtship consists largely of sympathy displays, in which potential partners try

to prove how compassionate they can be, as anybody who has seen dating couples aroundchildren and dogs can attest.

Of course, there are less noble calculations going on as people choose their mates. Like veteran

stock-market traders, people respond in predictable, if unconscious, ways to the valuations of thesocial marketplace. The richer the man, the younger the woman he is likely to mate with. A

mans job status is an outstanding predictor of his wifes attractiveness. Without being aware ofit, Harold and Erica were doing these sorts of calculationsweighing earnings-to-looks ratios,

calculating social-capital balances. Every signal suggested that they had found a match.

+

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++The greatest happiness love can offer is the

first pressure of hands between you and your beloved, Stendhal observed. Harold and

An Explanation of Me

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