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Children ‘Get’ Sex, Money, And Fame Better Than You Do
Children are smarter about sex, money, and fame than you.
They are. They really are.
Well, maybe not you personally, but the chances are high, because kids understand these hot topics better than most adults.
How can we tell? The same way we can tell that anyone understands a subject, or at least understands what they do and don’t know — kids are comfortable talking about these things.
Children are very comfortable asking and thinking and talking about any subject.
They don’t become nervous, they don’t start tailoring their words in odd ways and euphemisms to please the people around them. They’re straight-shooters.
Read MoreWhy All The Advice On This Site Might Suck
It was a shock-value headline, and it also holds a kernel of truth. All advice sucks, in the wrong context. Advice on CPR doesn’t help a chess-player in the middle of a championship. Advice on art and success doesn’t help people who are focused on learning to cook. At least… not usually.
Everything Contradicts
Read MoreThe Most Difficult Thing to Do In Life
I was having a conversation with an Uncle this morning. The day before, he was training me in the art of dismantling opponents from what he had learned over 20 years of training in a free-style brawling Kung Fu gym.
He had a friend with an interesting situation in life. The doctors said that in 2 years, due to a disease, he would go blind, and the friend had seemingly run out of resources and opportunities, as he had trusted and given everything he had to his separated wife and baby girl, whom supposedly squandered the money he worked for in his government job, who had just recently stopped his pension.
With another close family member of mine, he proceeded to escalate and share in a misguided attempt at finding a solution for his friend, and after blasting his friend with various amounts of “loving thoughts” such as “he has no more hope”, “whatever shall we do for him” and “my friend is truly stupid”, a rampage of judging and finger-pointing went on and on… and on… until I sat down, having finished boiling water for the lemon tea I was making.
I said a few “kind words” about how much I appreciated people, anybody really, being labeled and judged behind their backs, without even the smallest amount of appreciation for who they are, what they’ve done and what they will do and shortly after, interestingly enough, it was only me and my uncle having the conversation.
We had a talk, which I won’t go over in too much detail, but in one particular instance, I asked him, can you, at this point of your friend’s life, say something good about him?
If there were crickets in my house, I knew they would be chirping right about then.
I then asked him, wouldn’t you be saying all sorts of wonderful things about the man, if he actually died?
“So on the day of his funeral, you would be talking about all his great deeds, about his love for his family, about his vision for a better Hong Kong and so on and so forth, on his deathbed. But before then, you absolutely refuse to say one good thing about the man.”
He simply agreed.
My Uncle loves my company. During his stay in Canada, he has canceled and changed several plans in order to take a walk with me and chat about various things, and I listened intently as he shared his vast experience as an owner of a Taxi company and a man with really, a very colorful history behind himself. So, he loves being around me.
I knew this, and I told him why he loved being around me:
I always thought good things about him. And I listed a few of these things to him, such as Uncle, you are a wonderful husband and father to your family, a fantastic Kung Fu master with awesome loyal students, I trust your natural genius and abundance, I know you to be at this very moment a world influencer at inspiring people around you to be more daring and more loving.
He simply accepted this, and was happy about this. And then I asked him, your friend is the same. Please start saying these kinds of good things about him. At least one good thing, I feel it would help.
{Insert long, awkward silence}
You can say it after me… if it helps. My friend is a…
He refused, very passionately! He missed an opportunity, to turn what he called a friend, into an actual friend. If you can’t even say one good thing about someone, can you really call yourself their friend?
I realized then, that to be a good friend to others, is to think good things about other people, and mean it.
This may be the easiest thing to do in the world for me, and I see everybody else as being able to easily do this in their lives, because everybody is truly, truly awesome.
Read MoreHow to Tastefully Judge and Label Others
Amusing. That’s what I find my title. Is it ever tasteful to judge and label others? Let’s find out by reading further.
The words one often uses in one’s daily life often shows an interesting side of one’s character. When someone reads what I write, as in this article, they get a glimpse of how my mind thinks. People who have read my words and give comment, some with genuine sincerity, others by some praise simply to be social, have had fun calling the words that flow through my hands: articulate, thoughtful, intelligent, emotional and all sorts of things based on what I write. I often reply to this, aren’t we all?
What does articulate even mean? What about thoughtful? …Intelligent? Emotional!? It’s subjective depending on the kinds of people one has met throughout one’s life and what one’s values are. And different people can use the same words and mean completely different things, depending on where they are at in life and who they are as a person.
For someone who is disproportionately logical to their emotional side, and a very fast thinker, they may find my way of writing as not concise enough or not useful enough to be worth reading (if their values are solely based on return of investment, increasing money, immediate social status, material goods).
For someone who is disproportionately emotional to their logical side, and takes more of their time to make decisions, they may only connect with some random aspect of a post that relates to them personally. If merely as a point, I wrote about family, one could state my “cheeky monkey” article as that “article on family”, and in the same article, another would congratulate or dismiss me on how much they liked/disliked the article on “smoking”.
People who are overly picky about word play in what they read may hold their appreciation back or 
quickly put an inordinate amount of focus on how one thing can be improved or changed. I appreciation all kinds of feedback, as it gives me a sense of what kinds of readers I have, and I get a feel from those who actually say something, their level of understanding of what I write… but this is besides the point.
This article’s focus isn’t about the types of people who read my articles, or how people criticize or appreciate them or whatever, it’s main focus is to detract people from using labeling and judging as a be-all tool in life, done in a wrong way.
Someone who goes through this article for example, and while reading the “disproportionately logical to their emotional side” phrase in an earlier part of the article and says “that’s me” or another who reads the “For someone who is disproportionately emotional to their logical side” phrase and says, “that’s me” may find that they often judge other people rather quickly, and to their own loss, creating a barrier to appreciating either the emotional side lurking just under the surface of what seems to be a logical person, or vice versa.
There are many, many different kinds of people that I have met and so far I feel I can safely say that there’s no one I’ve connected to that doesn’t have the potential to access a high level of all of the above mentioned traits, at any given point in their lives. That being said, I will use 2 rather extreme examples to clearly demonstrate the pointlessness of comparing and judging, when done poorly. And by “done poorly”, I mean with an agenda, not out of friendliness, in a manner that can be considered bad taste.
EMOTIONAL PERSON EXAMPLE:
As there existed a time when I was far more emotional than anything else… I recall often limiting my own thinking about myself, as a rather emotional person I often felt that I could not grow past my own history (perhaps a string of failures in one particular area of skill) and with this limited type of belief would not grow to overcome say, creating a piece of art elegantly, accomplishing a lot within a day, getting from point A to point B in any unknown and new given task effectively and so on and so forth.
The label that I as an emotional person may likely use would be “I’m just not that kind of person to do things quickly, or I’m not a logical person or I don’t like using logic” when confronted with a problem that obviously requires logic and some problem solving. There were many life experiences that I struggled with whereas if I was not constantly judging myself I would have sailed through and in fact enjoyed immensely.
For example, as a child I would go to these summer camps where there were these puzzles we had to solve for our crafts workshops. Making those little cars made me freeze up, as unlike playing LEGO, where I could freely create my own version of whatever struck my inspiration, I had to make a very specific object. My mind would just freeze up and I wouldn’t be able to put any passion or energy into making a quality little car.
LOGICAL PERSON EXAMPLE:
I can actually use myself again in this example, as there was a time where I completely forgone my emotional side and did everything super logically. I certainly was able to do certain tasks better than I did before, and could argue up a storm with my constant comparisons and labeling…
For a logical person, one may argue with others and oneself that one is simply choosing not to use emotion as a tool because of it`s ineffectiveness. You will often see these types of people with loveless relationships, introverted in such a way that they are comfortable with their misery, and living their life without much passion. Personally, as I was playing around with this mindset, I found myself manically depressed, bored to tears and felt that I was whittling down my own spirit, moving away from what I was truly meant to do in life.
In observing others, I find that people who choose to be logical to the point of secluding their emotional side pervert their own intelligence by not accessing the full potential of their own human organism, what nature has given them by way of intuition and do not connect with what they deep down know as best. These people often miss a deeper level of life, which they are often fine with, and many will live their entire life forgoing the opportunity to make the greatest difference in other people’s lives and their own. Joy gives way to a consistent yet accepted feeling of apathy. At the same time, some of these super logical people that I`ve met are extremely productive and in fact are successful at what they do. They simply hate their lives and don’t know what to do about it or have basically given up in trying to really change.
At a high degree of effectiveness, even a little subtle change of growth (which can be defined as having a more accurate feel of life and it’s many paradoxical truths, experiencing ones true desires and moving past one’s previous self in creating that which one used to feel impossible) may push one to move in such a way that has immediate and long term waves of benefit, which adds up in unknown goodness throughout all of one’s areas of life: social, financial, spiritual, mental.
Personally, after much growth, I actually compare and judge, people, places and things all the time. In fact, you will find this very article littered with them. I simply love to do it and pride myself in doing it well At the same time, it took me forever to learn how to do it in an awesome way. I know that when I’m doing these things with an air of playfulness, one of which I don’t really care at all and know that I’m only using these comparisons and judgments as a tool, and not as something I’m overly identified with, they can be appreciated by not only me but also everybody I use them with around me.
And there you have it, that’s how you judge and label others well, you simply do it for fun, without an agenda, in a friendly way; I guarantee that it will result in a manner that those around you will consider your words to be of good taste if not at the very least, much better.
Read MoreSunday Sports Is Fun
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All my life, I’ve had awesome people around me to spend time with. My siblings are all amazing, and as children, we would always play all sorts of things together. Made-up games, sports, video-games, whatever. And each of us would bring more and more cool friends over to our house. Our house was like grand central station. It was always open and welcoming to everyone, and people were in and out the place like a hostel.
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One thing that we’ve done for quite a few years, is something called ‘Sunday Sports,’ which as the name suggests, usually (but not always!) takes place on Sunday. The sports part of the name, is equally descriptive because that is what we play… ‘Sports.’ We’re never 100% sure what we’re going to play, and it doesn’t matter. It could be any sport: we’ve played soccer, football, frisbee, and whatever other standard games you might be used to. We’ve also played more creative games like zero-wall dodgeball, tandem-javelin, and pepper-your-friends-with-the-ball.
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Some of the major differences between Sunday Sports and most other sports league, is that it is completely based on how people feel. No one is judged if they don’t show up (we may make the occasional good-natured joke 
), anyone can sit in or sit out from any game at any time. Everyone is completely flexible and there are no egos involved. We play with wonderful family and friends, and even when new people show up, they’re into the vibe as well. We’re all there with no agenda, a playful competitiveness, and a desire to have fun.
How to be the Best Driver in the World
"The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it." – Dudley Moore
How much do you in-joy your driving?
I’ve never felt so warm as I did the other night, in my car.
Children, women and random guys all smiling at me as I was wandering the roads.
I’ve rarely taken up the wheel simply to talk about how it feels.
I’ve never been the guy that
who would make up reaonsons for writing. Looking back though,
I must have been guided to do so for the purposes of
sharing the unique experience of joyous driving through this post.
Watching the city. I was dreaming of a new way of
implementing driving rules for the city, or rather, removing all rules.
There’s an example in Europe where there are no traffic lights.
Where people trust, and the accident rate is approximately 0%.
One day a friend had said to me, happy is where I want to be.
I told him, "How do you feel when you drive?"
He smiled. He understood.
The Courage to Create
I love how Jason took that above piece of writing that took me literally 15 seconds to write and posted it, without asking me.
That’s how we roll.
While Jason was around yesterday, I wrote a list of about 25 things that I wanted to do. One of them, was to create art, poetry, blog posts, clients and so on, a million times faster than I was doing. This little push of encouragement is awesome. Sometimes that’s what we need, as human beings. A little push to flap our wings.
Osho has a really great story that I will share here:
MAN is not aware of what he is capable unless he comes to realize it.
It is just like a small young bird. The bird, sitting in the shelter the mother and the father have made, watches them fly, can see the delight of their flight. He himself would also like to fly in the same way, be on the wing in the infinite sky, under the sun. Seeing them going higher, moving with the winds, a great urge arises in him also. But he is not aware that he is capable of the same flight, the same delight, the same dance. He is not even aware that he has wings.
It takes a little time for the mother and the father to persuade him. And they have a certain methodology to persuade him. The mother may sit just a little higher on another branch and give a call to the child. The child tries to fly but is afraid he may fall. But the mother goes on calling him; that gives him confidence. Sometimes it is needed for the father to actually push him out of the shelter. There is fear, he is nervous, but one thing is certain: for the first time he knows he has wings.
He flutters his wings. He does not know how to fly, but the mother is not far away; he manages to reach her
-
the miracle has happened.
Too often, all we need to do is simply be simple. Do something and then run with it. Don’t make the mistake of everyone else, think so much that it ruins the authenticity of who you are and what you want to create. For what you want to do: Just think possible, and think that it’s possible… let the universe decide the rest.
Happiness is an internal thing. I read a story recently about how this famous philosopher (forget the name, I don’t really care about names), once visited a tribal village and became very jealous. They were very poor in everyway, and literally had nothing. They never judged, never compared, just were themselves and they were brilliantly happy. People in big cities with so much to do, like New York, are among the most bored and unhappy populations in the world. Yet, a lot gets created in New York, and in a sense there is a lot of abundance everywhere. The very best is to have the happiness and contentment of the tribal village, and the highest abundance that a big city like New York offers.
To give value to society by just being yourself in the truest form is like drinking a cocktail of Brandy Alexander, a creamy chocolate drink of brandy, dark creme de cacao and cream, topped with nutmeg.
I’ve never drank that drink (I will one day, simply because it sounds awesome). But it inspires me and makes for a good example of how to create without analysing too much, and give yourself a chance to get the best of the both worlds (happiness and abundance).
I’m sure everyone has heard of those who hold themselves back, thinking they will pursue their dream only when they "have enough money", "settle down with their family", "random excuse X" and "random excuse Y".
I’ve done it myself, but no longer. And my attitude is why I can call upon so many miraculous resources that seem to just come into my life whenever I need it. All the decisions are the easiest decision to me.
The Easiest Decision
I ask: What is the best decision that would help yourself, others and the entire world at large at the same time?
Those who completely focus on a task, mad-scientist-style may suffer from lack of hygenic grooming, cleaning their faces or cutting their nails. Those who focus on their looks vainly may suffer from lack of creative output, seeing themselves in a cubicle. Those who only care about "the world at large" suffer from ineffectiveness, picking up every dirty bottle they see and yet being unable to pay their rent on time.
I’m not the kind of person who creates yet doesn’t put my content out into the world out of fear that it will succeed amazingly. Ever since I’ve changed my attitude to the this way of thinking, I’ve found that I’m a lot more zealous, youthful, expedient and abundant.
I try to write in a way that feels right. Look at what’s written in published books or top blogs. Everything is above "average". If you’ve read or watched something recently, it’s probably been fine tuned and looked over with a sharp eye.
That’s why, you should only do things when it feels right. When it feels right, there’s a different quality to it. When it feels right, it goes above and beyond other people’s above average. When you create things when it feels right, you bring to others that fine touch. It’s been said that God is in the details, and that’s true.
Anyone can grind out 7.5/10 books and articles. But in order to get that 10/10 out of your heart and into play? You have to trust your inner feeling. So do what feels right, enjoy your play, and create from what’s really in your heart.
Then share it.
"For the first time, I can honestly say I am truly living. Thank you Jay for empowering me to live the life I have imagined." - Tori Mongrain, Artist
"Jason, an hour with you is easily worth $700.00, thank you. I asked everything and you answered me brilliantly." - Arthur Hung, Dancer
"Being around [Jason] is being around happiness and goodness, and everyone would do well to be where he's going." - Kheiran Khan, Gamer
"Jason is truly a visionary. He is what I would call a 'Master Motivator'." - Darryl Cole, Real Estate Agent
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