Owning Up to Your Mistakes

Some people go to extremes in order to not take the blame for the mistakes that they've done and it doesn't make them look any better through the eyes of everyone else. Honing up to your mistakes makes you a better person.

Justin Trudeau, the current Prime Minister of Canada, has apologized for some of the stupid things he has done in his younger years (such as "black face" costume). By apologizing, he calmed his critics, showed the world that the leader of the free world is a human being that acknowledges his mistakes and want to be better.

Self-Improvement is the name of the game here. We can only change the things that we acknowledge as being problematic about ourselves. If we go to extremes to avoid taking responsibilities for our mistakes then we also become powerless in changing these short comings. 

Save Money to Retire Early

A few years back, a manager of mine, who had saved millions up to that point, said to me that I should enjoy myself with the money that I have rather than save it all like he had done. 

Recently, an older woman admitted to me that she had no savings for retirement as her philosophy was to, in-fact, enjoy her money in her youth while she still could and not wait until retirement to do so.

My questions to these people are the following:

• To the manager - Why were you still working at the time you told me this? If you have millions saved, and you're sharing with me that you're regretting not having enjoyed yourself more in your youth, why didn't you just quit your job and enjoy the money you had acquired up to that point while you still could?
• To the older woman - Why aren't you saving money in order to retire earlier to enjoy yourself without the constraints of work?

I save money not because I plan on spending it when I'm retired but because I want to retire earlier. While I love what I do, I increasingly want it to become a choice the older that I get. I would find it stressful to not have anything saved up for my future.

We live in a society that's all about "buying now and pay later" but that's such a bad way to live. Why would you sacrifice future time for something now? Isn't that how people get stressed out? 

No.

Don't sell your future. Save money now in order to buy future time.

"Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants."

-Epictetus

Those that Can Play with the Law

I like to believe that an innocent person is less likely to go to prison than a person guilty of a crime is allowed to be free. The reality seems to be that the more money someone has the less likely that person is going to prison regardless if a crime was committed or not. 

If you take the case of Bill Cosby, where upward of 60 women have accused him of assault, you can see how a good lawyer can make all the difference in a case. Of course, this isn't to say that all of those 60 women were trustworthy but last I checked Bill Cosby spent but a few months in jail before being set free even though it was proven in court that assaults did take place for some of those women.

The most extreme of cases has to be Trump who's lawyers, as I understand, spends a considerable amount of time in court for one thing or another. When Trump is ordered to provide such things as tax documents, he counter sues, delays, or expertly plays the laws as to not need to do it. When Trump is ordered to provide his phone as evidence in a case, he says he lost it further delaying what ever conviction this could of brought to light. I'm absolutely convinced that if Trump had done the crimes he's accused of, and didn't have the millions of dollars to defend himself, he would be in prison right now. I mean, there's got to be something that he's guilty of otherwise why would anyone be spending so much time in court? Not cooperating with a court order is a crime in itself.

While money doesn't buy happiness, it does allow someone to play the law enough to get little to no sentences for crimes. Canada/US are countries that like to think of themselves as "justice for all" but it often favors those that can afford it.

Read the Product Labels of Processed Food

Some people close to me are quick to point out the adverse effects of eating too much "Spinach" or "Broccoli" or what ever other fruits/vegetables I eat a lot that they happen to notice. While I can certainly understand that eating a lot of a good thing can be detrimental to someone's health those same people don't seem to see their eating habits as being problematic. I've had people tell me that eating a bag of cherries was bad for me yet they were averaging 2L of "diet" pop a day. How can eating a bag full of cherries be worse than drinking multiple liters of Pop?

I've first notice this sort of problem roughly 10 years ago when I was part of a health/wellness MLM business. The product offering included such things as plant based protein, fruit based energy drinks, freeze dried anti oxidant products... the entire lineup of products consisted of things to help with someone's health or at least was heavily marketed as such. 

The first thing everybody did, when handed such a product, was to read the label which is something you should do but I've always wondered how many people that read those labels also read the labels of pop or processed food products they purchases from the store. 

When's the last time you saw a commercial for Broccoli? Raw ingredients don't typically need commercials but processed food does. The reason why some people don't see a problem with drinking multiple litter of pop is because marketing makes it look like it's an inoffensive product. When's the last time you saw a diabetic, or someone overweight, do a commercial for pop? 

Every processed food commercial tries to associate happiness with their products. It's always about people having fun, smiling, while consuming the product which makes it appears like it's not poison in a box/can.

Generally speaking, for food and beverages, the more ingredients it has the worse it is for you especially if the list includes ingredients you can't even spell out properly. What I've noticed in recent years is some ingredients were introduced with inoffensive naming, such as Splenda, that makes the product seems better than it is. While Splenda sounds better, as a sugar replacement, than "Aspartame", it's still suffers from the same problem - what the hell is it? We know what sugar is and what problems it can cause if we eat too much of it but what will Splenda do when we eat too much of that? 

Read the labels and consume and put greater effort in buying single ingredient products.

The Every Day Stranger

"Have you ever had a stranger remove your clothes?" was something I was asked recently by a nurse who shared the struggled of caring for patients with Alzheimer's disease. She said that some people can be difficult to care for because they simply don't remember you even though you've been caring for them for months/years and every day is like a stranger coming in their lives to invade their privacy.

I knew Alzheimer was about forgetting things yet I never thought about it from the perspective of the carer. If a stranger came to me with the intention to remove my clothes I would become violent which is likely the response some, if not all, Alzheimer's patients have depending on how far into the disease they are.

It saddens me to think that this is the struggles my grand mother is likely going through with her carer and its going to be the fate of many of us as 1 in 9 people will have Alzheimer in their lifetime. I can only hope that one day Alzheimer will be added to our list of treatable diseases. Until then, I guess the only thing we can do is try to live such a lifestyle that minimizes the chances of getting the disease even though there's never any guarantees that we won't have it.