Legendary Blog

How do you know which actions are worthwhile and which are not?  Anyone who has an appetite for the taste of success thrives to take meaningful steps towards it, but what do those steps look like?

The most pivotal and overlooked component for success is its starting point.  Teddy Gross, founder of Penny Harvest, has helped raise over $7 million by collecting the tiniest denomination of currency in the US fiscal system.

But where did Teddy begin?  It started with one single penny.  Something so common and tiny most of us don’t even bother to pick one up as we pass it in the street.  And yet the collection of pennies has culminated into something truly extraordinary as millions of dollars have been raised for people in need.

None of this would have not been possible without that starting point, without that initial penny. And so one component to what makes actions so valuable is to not underestimate the value of our actions. What at first may seem as trivial and inessential could very well be the building blocks to an extraordinary breakthrough.

Our environment has control over our automatic thoughts.  How we act and behave can be directly related to the environmental context we interact with on a daily basis.

For example, a New York cab driver is out making his usual fairs.  Notoriously known for his can do attitude for getting people to their destination in the quickest possible time, he has a habit of...speeding.

So when that traffic light clicks from green to yellow, you will see no signs of hesitation as he steps down gas to beat the inevitable downward flash to red.

In Ohio, a daily commuter is driving through town on her way to pick up groceries.  Driving down a long, winding road she sees the light turn yellow.  Without thinking, she squeezes the break, slowing the car down as it stops at the cusp of the intersection.

Now, on a long awaited trip to New York, our Ohioan drives through the city streets admiring the massive building and observing the everlasting pulse the city seamlessly emits.

Approaching an intersection she sees a yellow light and begins to push her foot down on the break. Behind her is our fast-paced cab driver on his way to drop off his current fair.  Seeing the yellow light he speeds up and...crash!

Consider this.  Two people watch a speech.  Both hear the exact same words, and yet both come drastically different conclusions.

How does this happen?

Well let’s say this were a speech about politics, and one person was a democrat while the other a republican.  Each person would see facts reaffirming their preexisting views.

The brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants.

Awareness is more of a choice rather than a general knowledge.

It’s like a word search and we are looking for the 10 words listed on the side of the puzzle.  Even if there are other words filled in, we tend to only see the ones we look for.  We use tactics that hone in on the first letter of our targets or chunk a couple of the letters together as our eyes scan the page.

There is the common misconception that with the influx of information there is an increase in knowledge.

We live in a world of rationalizers. I am going to tell you right here and now that openness is the remedy to a fixed mindset.  Now let me momentarily diverge to give clarity to this idea of filtered conceptualization.

Politics.  The argument can be made that the acquisition of information can be directly related to decrease in partisan bias.  But knowing more about politics doesn’t necessarily accomplish this.  Voters tend to assimilate facts that confirm what they already believe.  They think they’re evaluating candidates, but what they are actually doing is inventing or ignoring facts so they can rationalize decisions already made.

It is as if voters twirl a cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want.

This filter effect, which is so prominent in politics, extends into every aspect of our life.  We tend to look for information that already confirms what we already believe.  We edit the world to fit our ideology.  Imperative as focus is, we must make the distinction between a focused mind and a disregard for certain possibilities.

Ever find yourself hanging on to the good stuff in life?  We just don’t want certain things to stop. Whether it be an amazing movie, a beautiful symphony, an exciting date, or some quality conversation, all share a common fate - we don’t look forward to them ending.

I catch myself doing this all the time.  In the midst of something good, I think, “Gee, I really don’t want this to stop.” Now, instead of continuing to enjoy this pleasurable event, I find myself in this paradigm of temporary good versus inevitable discontinuation.  I have directly withdrawn from maximizing the optimization of this event, by taking my focus off enjoying the moment, and placing it on worrying about it ending.

Take a look around. What does this world look like? It is yours to look at, see, and make opinions on, but how are you seeing it?  Anthony De Mello, author of Awareness, writes, “We see people and things not as they are, but as we are.”

What a brilliant and enlightening perspective.  For is that not the case.  What we see reflects ourselves rather then the actual external stimulus we are gazing upon.  This is the birth of perspective and the reason for the infinite amount of them.  Each person is their own unique self. If we see things as we are, then there are quite a few ways to see things.

But this thought process also has a part to play in why we don’t see a world of beauty and goodness.  When things are not going as we want, we want things to change.  But those things we want to change are usually people, things, or circumstances.  It is not common for us to think we are the ones who need to change.

But if it is our suffering, our dislike for the ugliness in the world that causes our unhappiness, then what must change?