Persistence is the Secret

The wildly popular book The Secret is a sugar coated fallacy that over looked by the reader.

For example the logic goes that if you believe, visualize and have a positive attitude that you are going to win the lottery you increase your chance of winning the lottery. Or for example if you do the same thing about your career prospects and money you will eventually get the outcome you want through the magic of universal good will. While this statement is technically true it is not true for the reason stated.

The more times you play the lottery the greater your chances of winning become.

The more interviews you go on the greater your chances of being hired and so on.

It is a mathematical outcome based on number of attempts divided by the number of possible outcomes. The more attempts the greater the chance of a chosen outcome.

While someone might say that a person with a positive attitude will take more attempts, so it is a positive attitude that equals success, is missing the underlying logic and misleading the reader.

While that statement might be seem plausible. A person with a cynical attitude that take the same number of attempts will in general get the same outcome as a universally open person.

If you want to teach someone how to succeed you should be telling them that persistence is the key to success.

But I suppose that a book that only has one sentence that says try, try, try again is probably not going to sell many copies, but in my opinion it beats sitting around thinking good thoughts alone are going to change anything.

My book called Brians Secret > Try > Modify > Repeat>

Try, learn from what went wrong, make adjustments, try again. I am going to start having seminars around the country charging $1000.00 per day but you got it right here first for free.

Dream Job

So I went home for lunch and as I was sitting out sit with the dog eating some lunch. I noticed a crew cab pull up on the corner a guy got out and lit up a smoke and walked at a nice leisurely pace up and down the street looking up at the trees. When he walked by me I noticed the back of his shirt said tree inspector.

He walked nice and slowly back to his crew cab got a can of orange spray paint and made a ring around a tree. Got back in his truck and read for a bit and then went on down the street to do it all over again.

I thought that was awesome. I always assumed you had to take a sample, test them and that some advanced biology degree was required to be tree inspector but I guess not.

He seemed totally at peace. Plus I bet he gets a little cash on the side from the crew that comes to cut them down for marking a few extra ones.

I wonder if he could bring his dog along with him if he wanted to?

This definitely is something worth looking into.

I thought about getting a can of orange spray paint and practicing putting rings around all of the trees in out neighborhood but somehow I think the neighbors would get kind of pissed. Maybe I will put an orange ring around their cars and see if someone comes and cuts them in half?

I wonder if I sell tee shirts with an orange ring around them if someone would buy them. There has to be some kind of political statement in that?

If I ever go into hospice care I am going to wear a tee-shirt with an orange stripe around it.

Weekend ReCap

Friday

Went to a summer celebration party @ a friends Condo downtown. Ironically this summer party occurred on one of the coldest July 17th dates in history, but we keep it hot none the less.

P.S Sorry for anything the Sailor Jerry forced me into doing/saying..lol

Saturday

Dog Park

Boat Cruise on the St. Croix for New York Life kick off party. I was pleasantly surprise how fun this turned out to be.

Went to the Local and had a blast how many big gingers can one man drink.

PS great to see you MB and AH :)


Sunday

Woke up went back downtown and had one of the best bloody mary's of my life.
I am not going to lie I am totally going to steal your recipe.

Went to Punch Pizza for lunch.

Went to the dog park

Went to our last class of dog obedience class and yes Bentley passed all his tests with flying colors:)

Celebrated with some cocktails and Twins baseball at the house.

Melting Away

Very quietly I have lost 18 pounds in the last 3 months.

With just a few simple tweaks.

I have been eating salads for lunch every day. No fast food, no meat, just vegtables, latley bought at the farmers market.

I switched my mixer to Crystal light.

Tons of ice water throughout the day.

Twice a day I walk up and down the stairs at my office.

Nuts and popcorn instead of chips.

Walking the dog two times a day definiatly has it's plus side.

Ten more pounds to go by November first :)

Not immediately available for comment.

Not immediately available for comment.

I have always had a problem with this line in a news story. I wish they were more specific about the efforts they went through to get the comment cause there is a lot of wiggle room in not immediately available.

I think journalist should have to explicitly state what they did.

I called his house and he did not pick up on the first ring so I immediately ran the one sided story.

I left him a voice mail, went to pee and saw that I had no returned calls so I immediately ran the one sided story.

I left five messages over the course of two hours...

I knocked three times on his door every hour for three days etc...

I would like to know specifically what you did to give the person a chance to respond to allegations before you printed their name.

Firsts

I was sitting at the counter and I was asked my birth date as I have been millions of times in my life...and I drew a blank!! I had to think about it really hard for a second and then I remembered as I was going to get my wallet out. Fried....I guess.

Here are a few firsts that I do remember..

1st time someone told me I should be wearing deodorant - Music class: Field Elementary School: Grade 4: We were doing this African Dance thing that is kind of like jump rope where two people click long poles together and one dances in the middle. Well I must have been been one dancing fool because after the class the music teacher pulled me aside and told me to invest in deodorant. That's right up until the next morning when I stole some from IGA I was the stinky kid and didn't even know it.

1st time taking a shower - Grandmas house 4th grade also: Up until I went to live with my grandma we only had a tub in our house so I had never showered. Anytime you wanted to get clean you took a bath, probably contributed to me being the stinky kid. I got super dirty doing something and when I came in the shower was running and my grandma told me to get in. I can remember her shutting the door getting undressed and looking at the shower running for quite some time before I manage to get in and when I did I thought it was the most fantastic thing in the world. I have never taken a bath since.

String Theory

The distance across the cosmos is the space between my ears.

My Name Is Brian Johnson

I am a string theory
A worm hole that bridges the past to the future
I am a culmination of time past that never ceases
I am potential for time not yet realized that is expanding and contracting at the same time
I am further down the hole then when I started typing this
Yet I am bring more substance
I am multidimentional
I am the unified theory
I just didn't know it until now

There are people who won't understand these words
But don't worry

My mind is the string
Just like yours is...

Clean-Up on Aisle 6

Something about peer groups.

There are lots of groups of shoppers
For example group A goes up and down every Aisle regardless if there is something in the aisle they need.
Group B just sticks to the outer ring of the store getting just fresh produce, meat etc.
Group C just goes in for one item and gets out.
Group D sticks to the list.

Depending what group you are you tend to travel through the store with people of the same group who arrived just before or just after you. You might never see someone in your same group who arrived a the store say twenty minutes after you.

You might interact with people from other groups as you bump into them at the end of the Aisles but usually you are so consumed by your predetermined routine you just keep moving in your groups herd until the entire event is finalized.

Your entire life predetermined by your predisposition to belong to one type group or the next and the random chance of being surrounded by people due to nothing other then timing and random set of events that let you to start your shopping at that moment.

That is life..unless....something fucks up... You missed something in your cart. You broke a bottle. You saw a deal and got off the track. Suddenly you are with and entirely new set of your group or you are bee lining it back to get something and you become part of a whole new group. A group with different people with different attitudes. A group that makes you think about shopping differently.

Then you see a bigger picture. Once you know something can be different then what it is there is this stretching of the mind.

I can see the panoramic better.

This is probably just mumbo jumbo but there is something to the random collimation of events and the predisposition of life that can be bent...and altered with just the awareness that it exists.

Weekend ReCap

Friday

Alfie back to the vet for a kidney re-evaluation

Mojitos in the backyard with fresh mint from our herb garden:) Yum

Dog Park

Some cleaning - Vaccuming, Laundry, Sheets

Saturday

Farmers Market

Read: The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson - Great history book for anybody in Finance or jusy wanting to understand the Global economy and its roots.

Brits for some pre-game cocktails

Twins Game ...dam if they would have come back that would have been awesome.

Tailgate.....Frenchmans:)


Sunday

Tailgate for a little lunch.

Napped

Dogpark

BNN

Brian News Network

Our kickball team pulled our record up to 3-1 after our team Repersenting Cuzzys "Pink Balls Are Better The Blue Balls" beat "Sneaky Petes - Sneaky Pitchers" Last night in a hotly contested 3-2 win at Basset Creek.

It is Friday and I am remarkably tired. I guess that is what no coffee in the morning will do to you.