I heard from my sister this morning – she has just had a baby girl. Obviously it’s something that you know for a long time before it happens, but now that she is born it has hit me – I’m an uncle, and I’m really excited about it.
I can’t wait to help out my niece when she needs me – this is long term! It might not be any time soon, it might be 20 years away, or it might be never, but I will always be there for her.
I browse a lot of Internet forums – Mountain biking, cars, property and so on. You wouldn’t believe how many people are talking about the 90 million dollar Oz Lotto tomorrow night.
“What cars would you buy?”, “Where would you buy a house and what sort?”, and so on. I was talking to the guys at work about it last week and I’m convinced that nothing “amazing” like winning 90 million will ever happen to me, but I take comfort that along with that I don’t believe anything terrible will happen to me in my life either. I’ll just ride the wave, enjoy it to the max, and then die one day.
Australia is the new America. Rampant consumerism, and while I like my “stuff”, it’s insane to think that my life could be that much better just with more money. In fact you only have to look to the “stars” to see how the money ends up owning them in the long run.
For instance – I am relatively healthy, in a good career and with my fiancee who makes me so very happy. I am lucky enough to know my passion – bikes. I love the outdoors and my freedom. Obviously I’m not going to say that money wouldn’t make some of these things easier to acquire – bikes for instance – I could have hundreds if I was loaded, but what is the point? Where is the satisfaction in having a few hundred bikes when in reality you will only ever ride maybe 5 of them regularly? Being rich is a false economy. I’m not going to love my fiancee any more if I’m rich, I’m not going to get any healthier if I’m rich, and I’m not going to feel any more free if I’m rich either.
I’m sure if you think about it in your life too, the benefits will be limited as well.
Winning a lump sum of money like this will just throw all frugality out of the window, and before long you will be “two steps back”.
Maybe I’m just sour about others winning, maybe I’m in denial, but I honestly think that people bank on money (no pun intended), that bit too much. If money is the thing that will make you the happiest in life, it’s time for a reality check. There is so much out there to make you smile, make you laugh, or give you a rush that doesn’t cost a cent!
Last weekend started off pretty average. I had a massive hangover despite how much I don’t want to drink alcohol any more. Go figure. It was an average night in the end, and I paid the price for it on Saturday.
Come Sunday though, the boys and I got together early in the morning and drove up to our local downhill track – Fox Creek. Fox Creek has multiple downhill trails, that you can “shuttle” with a car and a trailer. While I love my fitness, pushing a downhill bike up a hill is just too hard, and leaves you with no energy to barrel down it again.
We got around 12 runs in, and I had an absolute ball. While I’m well and truly rusty at doing jumps and drops at speed, it didn’t matter. I did what I felt comfortable doing (and from time to time what I wasn’t comfortable doing) and got such a rush all I wanted to do was hit it again and again!
About 3/4 through the day we took a break and I had time to think – “This is what I want from life!”. Every day we do such mundane tasks to pass the time, but getting a solid dose of adrenaline just removes all of the negativity in our life. Doing things that make us feel alive is what helps us to break the mold. I personally want to go to the grave knowing that I have truly enjoyed my time on earth. I’m not saying that it has to be to the “extreme”, but just doing things that you genuinely enjoy.
Everyone has their own hobbies that give them something. For me, riding makes me feel alive, and gives me a sense of freedom. Freedom is so important to me. When I’m barelling down a hill, I can choose my lines, hit one of the three jumps, and so on – freedom in a sense. Whatever you need from life – just do it.
For me, I live to ride, and ride to live.
Don’t you love it when things just fall into place? Without any planning whatsoever, it all just works out nicely?
Well maybe you are like me – I’ve always been the sort of person that seems to have everything coming their way. I “got the girl” when I was back in school. I had the nice flashy cars when I wanted them, and have never had much trouble finding work.
Up until about 6 months ago I just assumed that I am a lucky person, but after being enlightened by my life coach it appears that I put more effort into my decisions than I realise, and as a result most things in my life tend to work out well.
On my second meeting with my life coach, let’s call her C, she asked me whether or not I “often find that things always just go your way?”. She caught me out – up until that question I thought the whole concept of life planning was going to be a joke.
How did this woman know that things always go my way?
She explained that I am the sort of person that spends a lot of time planning and preparing for each decision that I make in life, and up until now I didn’t really realise what I was doing. I was just doing it without giving it much thought.
For instance..
Planning and preparation is relative to most aspects of our lives. From basic things like what product to buy, or to life decisions such as who to marry and so on.
We are in a world where we are encouraged to make quick decisions, without much consideration. While a little spontaneity is healthy, too much and you’ll find yourself with just no direction and little reward.
It’s been something that obviously comes naturally to myself, but even if it doesn’t come naturally, it’s something that is at least worth trying. Next time you are about to make a decision, think about it a second time before committing.
Last night was a late one for my fiancee. I have probably mentioned it before, but she is a teacher. She currently has a student teacher in her class, and had to write his report last night (on top of all the work that she already has to do). I spent last night doing what I usually do – researching anything and everything.
When I had the chance to catch up with her for 15 minutes before bed, we just talked about everything going on in the world and how people handle this information. While she is just too busy to research “the truths” of the world, she hears most of it from me. I always try to provide unbiased information, and let her form her own opinions. She is oblivious to most of lies and deceitfulness of the world, although when I do give her information she takes it on board and processes it as she sees fit.
Others however, just don’t want to hear it. Intentional ignorance? I don’t know.
There’s a hundred different examples I could pick, but to name a few:
They are probably the two most important to me, but even small things like Internet censorship I fear is for the wrong reasons.
Like most people, I have a fairly diverse group of friends. I went to a private school and have some VERY well off friends from there, but after working and spending more time mountain biking, many of my friends are now from the lower socioeconomic side of town. I know people from all sorts of different backgrounds, and with differing life stories. Regardless, a good 90% of them, appear to simply not be able to use their brain. Their life is purely about money, possessions and all of the ridiculous issues that go along with it.
I have mentioned in the past about how I try to get people to think. Trying to tell someone that eating meat will give them cancer is unfair. Not only will your average meat eating Australian bite your head off and disregard what you were trying to tell them, it is only my opinion that our diets will give us cancer. Until the World Health Organisation states that eating meat will in fact give you cancer, you can’t expect people to believe it. Rather, I try to produce the facts and let people do with them what they please.
My main aim is just to make people consider things. Whether it be about diet, or property values or whatever. Just consider it, and then research it. Better your life with the truth!
From the Global House Price Crash Forum, “maveri” wrote:
As we grow up we leave behind our childish view of the world and form our own opinions and source our own data for ourselves – we move on from our parents view and form our own.
What our parents told us about the world is viewed in a different light than what it used to be. We realise that their perspective is limited and designed to portray a certain aspect only and at times, the view that they portray is for their benefit in large measure, either for control or for protection or worse, for harm.
I find that the majority of my friends, and specifically my best friend (who just about disregards everything that I say as a conspiracy theory, even when the statistics are there to prove it) who have trouble “believing”, usually hold the same opinions of their parents. They are the sort of people that vote how their parents vote, and couldn’t tell you why, they eat how their parents eat, sleep how their parents sleep, and work and live and everything else – just as their parents do.
So talking to my fiancee last night, I said “either I have some uncanny ability to be able to open up my mind, and consider the extremes (not necessarily believe them, but entertain the idea), or others are extremely close-minded”. This probably sounds very arrogant – it’s not intended to be that way, it’s just born out of confusion from myself. I genuinely don’t know if others are ignorant because the truth is so scary, or if they just genuinely are oblivious to everything going on, because they just can’t compute it all.
Either that or I’m just going insane and everyone else is right. 