Do What You Fear

When there's something fearful that I have to do, waiting for it is the most difficult thing as I tend to build up the fear for it.

"Do what you fear and fear disappears." -David Joseph Schwartz

The above quote is a rule I recently started applying and it helped with the process. Within 5 min of doing what I had build fear of doing, the fear is gone!

Pleasures - The Downfall of Civilizations

“In American today the popular word for good life is “happiness”…The American pursuit of happiness can often look like a compulsive, joyless effort to escape boredom… a people blessed with far more material advantages than any other society has ever enjoyed is not clearly the happiest on earth.” –Harold H. Titus & Marilyn S. Smith

The material advantage is a curse more than a blessing. Most of those things promises to make our lives easier by helping us or saving time. One would think that those improvements would allow us to focus on more important endeavors but it only “free us” to pursue more things.

Materials are a curse when the people buying it have no sense of values (as in what’s really important in life). When this occurs, the things he owns-owns him.
We buy things because it’s pleasurable and we too often confuse pleasure with happiness. Like Orrin Woodward said, “Pleasure doesn’t bring happiness, only an increased hunger for more pleasures.”

Happiness comes from following our values. Joy, which is the ultimate form of happiness, comes from being at peace with ourselves and is often attained through religion or spirituality (along with following values) – It’s a sense of belonging to something bigger than us.

Pleasure is like a quick burning fire, it often can’t be controlled even if we think we can. Pleasure is short lived and has been the caused of the downfalls of previous civilizations which will include our own if we don’t understand it and attempt to move away from it.

*This post can also be found on Men 2.0

Don’t chase Happiness

You don’t get happiness by chasing happiness. “The only way to get happy is to give happy.” -Chris Brady

You don’t get happiness from pursuing happiness. What most people pursue, when they say they pursue happiness, is pleasure and, like Orrin Woodward said, “Pleasure does not bring happiness; it only brings an increasing hunger for more pleasure.”

“The only way to get happy is to give happy.” –Chris Brady

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Revision Wednesday
Blog post originally created on November 8, 2010 and can be found here.

I Wonder What It's Like To Be A Bird

The guys at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, in London, attached a GoPro camera to the back of an eagle in an effort to protect endangered species. While I don't understand the relationship between a GoPro camera on the back of an endangered specie and the protection of said specie (to build awareness perhaps?) ... it's still pretty cool! Many London landmarks are shown like never before. Check it out here:

Video originally found on IO9.

Are Bad Reviews Illegal?

I've come across various post online about people who were charged extras, or been threatened, for giving a negative review of a restaurant/hotel etc. In the company's defense,there are false negative reviews out there just as much as false positive ones but to bully a costumer to get good reviews ins't the way to go.

But is it illegal to give bad reviews in Canada?

It depends on whether or not your review was based on your honest opinion. According to Wikipedia ""Defamatory libel" is a criminal offence under the Criminal Code. Subsection 298(1) defines defamatory libel as a "matter published, without lawful justification or excuse, that is likely to injure the reputation of any person by exposing him to hatred, contempt or ridicule, or that is designed to insult the person of or concerning whom it is published." Section 300 prohibits the publication of defamatory libels that the publisher "knows is false." Section 301 prohibits the publication of any defamatory libel, but this section has been found unconstitutional because it could criminalize the publication of matters that are true."

In other words, if the sole purpose of your review was to hurt the company - they could bring you to court for injuring their reputation. After all, you can't just go around saying everything sucks when it isn't true.
If, on the other hand, your experience was a bad one then you should be able to share it however you choose. A movie critic, who didn't like a movie he saw, can't be arrested for it.
With that being said, many will remove their reviews instead of going through the legal trouble if the company threatens them with it.

Personally, I don't want to do business with companies who pursue, or threatens, those who gave them negative reviews. A company should look into the negative reviews to get better, not to find ways to get back at the customer for what they did.

For more information, please read the Criminal Code of Canada or contact a lawyer.

*I'm not a lawyer, I just did some research online like you're currently doing. Please don't contact me with law related questions. :)

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_Canada