Tom McMahon

I Evaluate Things Differently Now That I'm Older

When I Was Young:

The first question I would ask: Does this make sense?

• If it didn't, I would stop right there. No need to go further.
• If it did, I would go on to ask: Is it true?

Now that I'm older:

The first question I ask: Is it true?

• If it isn't, I stop right there. No need to go further.
• If it is, I go on to ask: Does it make sense?

Friendship Should Not Be Unconditional

An excerpt from (gasp!) Dr. Laura:

I responded all relationships should be conditional - not “hair-trigger” conditional, but conditional nonetheless. I don’t want to be Mel Gibson’s friend, for example. I am certainly willing to be supportive and helpful, but I don’t want to take up time in my life with yo-yo drama. I consider the other individual has the responsibility to do the work to make themselves healthy and my support is there lovingly when that is, indeed, the case. Getting one’s life on a healthy track is difficult, and I am certainly there to support my friends during that journey. I am not there, however, when intentional, self-defeating steps are taken to get back into the problems.

This is the philosophy I espouse on the air. Otherwise, giving support unconditionally is making oneself a patsy and/or a contributor to the ongoing drama and filling one’s life with unnecessary turmoil.

Relationships require the honor, integrity and effort of both individuals. That should be the condition.

The Road to Success Motivational Poster, Published in The Etude Music Magazine in October 1913

The Road to Success Motivational Poster, Published in The Etude Music Magazine in October 1913

And a slice in more detail:

Click Here For The Full Size Poster

via Dark Roasted Blend

The Important Difference Between Simplicity and Humility

An excerpt from Charlotte Allen:

The problem with the simplicity movement is that its proponents mistake simplicity, which is an aesthetic lifestyle choice, for humility, which is a genuine virtue. Humility is an honest acknowledgment of one's limitations and lowliness in the great scheme of things and a realization that power over other human beings is a dangerous thing, always to be exercised with utmost caution. The Amish, as well as monks, Eastern and Western, cultivate humility because they know they have a duty toward what is larger than themselves. Leo Babauta of the foregone grooming products cultivates simplicity because it makes him feel "happier," as he writes on his website. For humble people, their own happiness or other personal feelings are secondary.

via aldaily.com

The Number One Factor in Success

Marty Nemko:

When I think back on my 3,000+ career counseling clients and my successful and not successful friends and colleagues, it's clear to me that the #1 factor in success is focused drive: the willingness to work hard and be focused, not dabble around.

Whether in trying to land a job or succeed in one, unlike in Hollywood portrayals, the hard worker usually prevails. Of course, sometimes despite hard work, one fails, but focused drive usually is necessary.

For example, when I give talks to unemployed people and ask them to raise their hand if they're a procrastinator, 80 to 90% do. When I ask the same question of a group of successful people, for example, executives or college presidents, only 10-20% do.

You Cannot Accumulate A Fortune By Taking The Road That Leads To Poverty

Advice from P.T. Barnum:

That we are born "free and equal" is a glorious truth in one sense, yet we are not all born equally rich, and we never shall be. One may say; "there is a man who has an income of fifty thousand dollars per annum, while I have but one thousand dollars; I knew that fellow when he was poor like myself; now he is rich and thinks he is better than I am; I will show him that I am as good as he is; I will go and buy a horse and buggy; no, I cannot do that, but I will go and hire one and ride this afternoon on the same road that he does, and thus prove to him that I am as good as he is."

My friend, you need not take that trouble; you can easily prove that you are "as good as he is;" you have only to behave as well as he does; but you cannot make anybody believe that you are rich as he is. Besides, if you put on these "airs," add waste your time and spend your money, your poor wife will be obliged to scrub her fingers off at home, and buy her tea two ounces at a time, and everything else in proportion, in order that you may keep up "appearances," and, after all, deceive nobody. On the other hand, Mrs. Smith may say that her next-door neighbor married Johnson for his money, and "everybody says so." She has a nice one- thousand dollar camel's hair shawl, and she will make Smith get her an imitation one, and she will sit in a pew right next to her neighbor in church, in order to prove that she is her equal.

My good woman, you will not get ahead in the world, if your vanity and envy thus take the lead. In this country, where we believe the majority ought to rule, we ignore that principle in regard to fashion, and let a handful of people, calling themselves the aristocracy, run up a false standard of perfection, and in endeavoring to rise to that standard, we constantly keep ourselves poor; all the time digging away for the sake of outside appearances. How much wiser to be a "law unto ourselves" and say, "we will regulate our out-go by our income, and lay up something for a rainy day." People ought to be as sensible on the subject of money-getting as on any other subject. Like causes produces like effects. You cannot accumulate a fortune by taking the road that leads to poverty. It needs no prophet to tell us that those who live fully up to their means, without any thought of a reverse in this life, can never attain a pecuniary independence.

Penn Jillette on Fire-Eating and Fire-Walking

An excerpt:

I'm a fire-eater. There is some technique to fire-eating, but most of the practice goes into learning that one's mouth is wet enough, most of the heat goes up enough, and cutting the oxygen leg off the fire triangle (it's now a fire tetrahedron, but I learned fire-eating a long time ago) with one's mouth really does put the fire out.

It took watching a professional whom I trusted do it -- a lot of trust and a lot of practice -- before my first reaction, when my mouth started to burn from the lit torch in my mouth, was to put the torch deeper in my mouth, close my mouth around the torch and put it out.

Handling fire seems like a superpower. There are whole seminars and self-help jive centered on fire-walking, which is hustled as "mind over matter," or "empowerment" but is really just counterintuitive physics. As long as the fire walk is set up right and you keep moving, you can even hope and pray to be burned, while yelling counter-self-help slogans such as "I do not have any power to do this" and "universe, please burn my little piggies," and you'll be fine.

Yukon Wilderness Survivor Helen Klaben On Planning vs Doing

From Helen Klaben's book Hey, I'm Alive! :

Travelling alone seemed out of the question to everyone else but me. They tried to persuade me with facts about expense, loneliness, and safety for a girl all by herself. Although my friends were willing to talk about how exciting it would be and the adventure of it, when it came down to action, no one was ever there. They said it cost too much or they couldn't afford the time. I've met so many planners in my life it's disgusting. From these people I've learned to keep my mouth closed until I am ready to do something. There's nothing so boring as having to listen to someone's futile plans.

P.T. Barnum's 10 Rules For Success In Business

Here is one of them:

9. Avoid extravagance ; and always live considerably within your income, if you can do so without absolute starvation! It needs no prophet to tell us that those who live fully up to their means, without any thought of a reverse in life, can never attain to a pecuniary independence.

Men and women accustomed to gratify every whim and caprice, will find it hard at first to cut down their various unnecessary expenses, and will feel it a great self-denial to live in a smaller house than they have been accustomed to, with less expensive furniture, less company, less costly clothing, a less number of balls, parties, theatre-goings, carriage ridings, pleasure excursions, cigar smokings, liquor-drinkings, etc., etc., etc. ; but, after all, if they will try the plan of laying by a "nest-egg," or in other words, a small sum of money, after paying all expenses, they will be surprised at the pleasure to be derived from constantly adding to their little "pile," as well as from all the economical habits which follow in the pursuit of this peculiar pleasure.

The old suit of clothes, and the old bonnet and dress, will answer for another season ; the Croton or spring water will taste better than champagne ; a brisk walk will prove more exhilarating than a ride in the finest coach ; a social family chat, an evening's reading in the family circle, or an hour's play of "hunt the slipper" and "blind man's buff," will be far more pleasant than a fifty or a five hundred dollar party, when the reflection on the difference in cost is indulged in by those who begin to know the pleasures of saving.

Thousands of men are kept poor, and tens of thousands are made so after they have acquired quite sufficient to support them well through life, in consequence of laying their plans of living on too expensive a platform. Some families in this country expend twenty thousand dollars per annum, and some much more, and would scarcely know how to live on a less sum.

Prosperity is a more severe ordeal than adversity, especially sudden prosperity. "Easy come, easy go," is an old and true proverb. Pride, when permitted full sway, is the great undying cankerworm which gnaws the very vitals of a man's worldly possessions, let them be small or great, hundreds or millions. Many persons, as they begin to prosper, immediately commence expending for luxuries, until in a short time their expenses swallow up their income, and they become ruined in their ridiculous attempts to keep up appearances, and make a "sensation."

I know a gentleman of fortune, who says, that when he first began to prosper, his wife would have a new and elegant sofa. "That sofa," he says, "cost me thirty thousand dollars!" The riddle is thus explained:

When the sofa reached the house, it was found necessary to get chairs to "match," then sideboards, carpets and tables, "to correspond" with them, and so on through the entire stock of furniture, when at last it was found that the house itself was quite too small and old-fashioned for the furniture, and a new one was built to correspond with the sofa and et ceteras ; "thus," added my friend, "running up an outlay of thirty thousand dollars caused by that single sofa, and saddling on me, in the shape of servants, equipage, and the necessary expenses attendant upon keeping up a fine 'establishment,' a yearly outlay of eleven thousand dollars, and a tight pinch at that; whereas, ten years ago, we lived with much more real comfort, because with much less care, on as many hundreds. The truth is," he continued, "that sofa would have brought me to inevitable bankruptcy, had not a most unexampled tide of prosperity kept me above it."

Whodathunk P.T. Barnum would give such sensible advice?

No One Is Coming To The Rescue

An excerpt from Turtle Progress:

“No one is coming” —Nathaniel Branden

Do you long for someone or something to rescue you from the deep dark hole you’re hunkered down in? Are you pinning all of your hopes on a white knight? A winning lottery ticket? A mysterious but knowledgeable stranger? A crash diet?

Despite the desperate times we’ve endured by toughing things out and taking care of ourselves, part of us still wishes for an easy way out of life’s difficulties. Over time I’ve discovered, however, that this kind of thinking isn’t easy at all. You get to feeling victimized and hopeless and lonely and bitter.

No one is coming to save me. Or you. Deus ex machina is in the shop for repairs. Permanently!

And that’s good news.

It’s good news because it means we can take action and build our own bridge to our goals. We don’t have to sit around waiting for the magical construction company to materialize. We take the risk of building an imperfect bridge—that’s how DIY projects are, you know—but every quirk of its construction will only remind us of how far we’ve come, and who we are.