http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140421230152-75054000-career-curveball-how-i-learned-to-tame-the-ego?trk=prof-post


Thought you guys might get something out of this article. I connected with it. I thought the way Mr. Chopra stood up for himself was brave and that maybe sometimes in life you have to stand up for yourself in order to consider yourself worthy of leading a life.

The inner child is something that I think is still alive and not necessarily separate from yourself to be examined because, after all, you're still the person you were as a kid. I think emotions drive motivation and more basically, thoughts. It's hard to manage your emotions alone (without friends or people who know you) I think, but thinking is something that is cold and calculating. If you think without feeling you could become a heartless automaton and eventually go insane. For instance, like I was saying last night in response to David saying people who want to get rich are simply more honest.


If you were to say, well I enjoy going out to eat every night, and I enjoy gambling, (I only enjoy excess), so that's what I will work for, and I'll simply completely focus on getting rich and put everything else in my life on hold because when I am rich everything will be so good it won't matter how much of a self absorbed heartless person I was while making the money (or how old I am when I finally get rich). However you would probably quickly realize that you were miserable in the meantime. That's why its difficult to get rich, because everyone needs to enjoy things a little to stay sane and productive, but you don't have time to enjoy things when you are constantly working to get rich. Apparently doctors spend 10 minutes per patient to make a diagnosis. I know this because it was on the news today and my uncles girlfriend is a doctor and my uncle said that's what she does.

This is alarming to me for a couple of reasons.

One: Are doctors today so much better (more knowledgable with better insight and understanding) than doctors twenty or more years ago when you could actually have a relaxed conversation with a doctor?

Does it actually benefit anyone other than the insurance companies to have such short interactions with patients?

Obvious disadvantages:
Errors due to misdiagnoses
Errors because the patient can't express what is wrong with themselves in that amount of time
Errors because the doctor is so stressed and befuddled about the previous 6 patients in one hour that they can't focus on what the new patient is even saying, let alone concentrate enough to figure out what's the matter with them.

Does being highly educated mean that you are able to understand patients more quickly, or more thoroughly?

This may come back to what I was saying before: How can one think and act logically while feeling empathetically? Are the two related? I think they are in that if you trust your feelings and end up being correct about where they lead you you can also trust your logical mind and where that will lead you. But maybe not.

I'll put it this way: If you can't trust that you are meant to have the emotions you have, can you trust that your brain is telling you to eat when you are hungry, or sleep when you are tired? I have heard that mental disorders stem from dissociation. If you or something else doesn't allow yourself to live in the moment and feel happy or sad or angry, you're not going to be able to think logically or rationally about anything else either.

Dan and Dave. I wanted to follow up on our enlightened evening with my thoughts. I totally agree with what Dan said about "instantly feeling superior to an ignorant person". I also have the tendency to do this. Maybe part of the problem is that instead of feeling superior to this person, we should be calling them out on their ignorance, thereby treating them as an equal with an opportunity to change. Taking a "holier than thou" attitude doesn't really accomplish anything except make you feel more secure in your own (perhaps ignorant in their own way) beliefs, and leaving this ignorant hillbilly to rot.

If all the non-ignorant people never took the time to attempt to enlighten ignorant people, the world would soon become black and white, and things would stagnate. This actually does happen a lot I think. Some examples of this can be seen with the misconceptions about drug addicts and alcoholics as well as misconceptions about criminals. There's no saying that a "ignorant" person doesn't have some valuable insight into something that you are unaware of, making you the ignorant person in this other circumstance.

Anyways I really valued you's guy's conversations, because you guys debate things with me and make me feel challenged to question my own motives and ideas. Which hopefully will help me grow.

Ta Ta for now,

-Leon

P.S the picture is on top of a mountain in Maine in Acadia Park. Me and some camp counselor friends went there on a weekend off. We should all hike it this summer.

This blog is all about posting whatever the hell we feel like. Pictures, articles, beliefs, observations, values, emotions are all game for content. Enjoy