That was good.  Thanks ファブリス.

I don't have much to say, except the other day in the shower 45 minutes passed in a snap and I was still standing there, so excited and thinking of all the possibilities of the new idea that popped into my mind for what I can do with my life.  So I agree with you, new goals and ideas can be really exciting.  But then it fades later.

I got out a pen and paper and wrote down everything he said in the checklist.  Hopefully I'll be able to implement it.

This kind of puts me off a bit, and it does so almost immediately when he sites 'experts' who weren't really experts about anything.  He could just be misrepresenting them, but more likely he is representing them correctly, and they just weren't very good.  Potential isn't something that we can quantify, so whatever experts he is sighting are just bullshitting their way along, saying we use 1% or 5% of our potential.   They are, in a way, the same mediocre peers that he mentions throughout his talk, that we all blindly follow and judge ourselves by.  Only, these mediocre peers have doctoral degrees implying in some way that they know more than these other mediocre peers, and the fact is that they don't.  He even uses the phrase “all the experts,” hah!

(See this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taEw97brZis  He touches briefly on what it means to be this sort of 'expert' at about 3 minutes in.  Incidentally, watch this from part one if you want an example of a man who is a lot more inspiring and has a lot more to teach us than any motivational speaker ever could.  Not to mention, he was a man who really was a genius himself, and really did lead a ridiculous life)

Nightingale's advice seems to make sense in many ways, and certainly you should spend your time trying to improve yourself.  But there are lots of individual points he makes, or information he uses, that seem to be silly or mistaken.

theBryan wrote:

Reminds me of a Jukugo I just learned.

自業自得 (じごうじとく)

Or you reap what you sow, your own conduct determines your own reward.

In Swedish it's "Som man bäddar får man ligga" which means "As one makes their bed, one has to lie in it" literally.

Tzadeck wrote:

See this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taEw97brZis  He touches briefly on what it means to be this sort of 'expert' at about 3 minutes in.  Incidentally, watch this from part one if you want an example of a man who is a lot more inspiring and has a lot more to teach us than any motivational speaker ever could.  Not to mention, he was a man who really was a genius himself, and really did lead a ridiculous life

Thanks for the link. With all due respect for the man (none else than Richard Feynman), he does tense up a lot when he talks about those "experts". So like in his story about his boy and his girl, some people want to hear the "scientific motivational speakers" and others like me, would tend towards something that speaks more towards your own inner experience.

I dont discredit what he says at all, but I feel that science todays continues to ignore our inner worlds, which have been explored for thousands of years by previous and current civilizations. In these aspects of course when he says "social science" it's not going to happen tomorrow that we will be able to put a formula on the interaction between men and women, say. So it's fairly safe for him to assume that all self-appointed experts in those fields will never match his criterias for being a true expert.

When I hear his talk, or see movies like "The Secret" I think of it as a kind of popularization of ideas that are way outside of a lot of people's lifestyle. So in a sense even if movies like "The Secret" have a lot of pseudo-science BS based on their views  quantum physics (eg. "law of attraction" "law of vibrations"), I think there is still a positive outcome for these talks. I think those self-appointed motivational speakers and experts in their fields should come clean with their exact backgrounds, so that we can decide if we want to listen to them, based on our criterias (yours and mine would differ then); ... but at the same time there is a place for them, and they have truths to say too.

That skit about "The Secret" is funny. There's been lots of talk about that movie and subsequent books. A huge commercial enterprise.. funny in a way that they DO seem to eat their own dog food. I.e. they reap an abundance of $$$ for their motivational movie and books. But what if you watch "The Secret" as a kind of popularization of old wisdom, perennial truths. Some ideas that are way out of the concerns of many people entranced in today's lifestyle. Perhaps it is wrong to use pseudo science to explain made-up laws such as the "law of attraction" or the "law of vibrations". If you look at it at 1st degree, you'll want to laugh it off like in this puppet video (yukkuri's link). But you can look at it from a deeper level.. Does your reality need to be constricted to a currently accepted world-view of what is scientifically true and what is not?

Sometimes when I hear these guy talk I wonder if they really believe what they say at 1st degree. Do they really believe there is a universal "law of attraction" ? Does a Yoga teacher really believe that the students are connected to the spririt of guru-ji (the guy who wrote down the yoga sutras thousands of years ago) at the beginning of the class when they chant some verses? Perhaps the teacher does believe it, or perhaps he knows that it means that by practicing yoga the students are in a way connected to the ideas and concepts, and so in a way are making alive today the mind of the long deceased guru-ji. It's not all black and white... So do these guys in "The Secret" really believe there is a "Law of attraction" that science could somehow describe in gorgeous details? Again I find it funny that  it doesn't matter so much... because perhaps there IS in fact such a phenomenon, but so complex and involving so many variables that you could popularize it as "law of attraction", and it's gonna work for some people. Or maybe it's all BS... but my point is, I strongly believe you should listen to your own truths and not accept things that the scientific worlds deems "true". Both the pseudo-science self-appointed experts and Richard Feynmann are wrong, in my opinion.

(yeah it's Sunday  ;-))

Incidentally, I do follow a lot of the ideals he outlines.  Thinking for yourself and non-conformity are ideals I share with him.  I also share maxims like not wasting your time watching TV and making definite goals.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2009 March 22, 9:04 am)