Make up your own mind

I remember so often my mother would lecture me about the people I used to associate with and date. To her credit she was right about the people I dated but wrong about the people I associated with and call friends. My mother and Aunt would lecture my late cousin Richard and I about dating beneath us and not being more discriminating about the people around us. However while I love mother there are issues best left unsaid as to why I did not head all of her suggestions. People who know me know I do not use the word love lightly and it is rare I say I love someone and people I respect have earned it over time.







My mother is a brilliant woman. I remember growing up she worked on her MS and though she never has done dissertation she has everything else she needs for a PhD. Watching her I learned you can approach life one of two ways – do what is easiest short term and pay for it long term, or do what is challenging short term to benefit long term.

That aside the benefit of not listening to everything my mother told me is that I have friends and associates ranging from age 15-80 who I respect and admire. My friend and associated bridge every gender, gender preference, ethnic group, profession and country and range from HS dropout to PhD and MDs. I know I can trust them and listen to their advice and believe me most of them will freely share it. I have couples who are now divorced that I am friends with both still because I refused to pick a side.

How did this happen – simple – I make up my own mind. I do not let someone else’s opinion or even my old baggage dictate who I associate with or who is my equal – in fact everyone starts and is spoken to as if there were my equal in all things and they by their words and actions decide if I am a person of value or not. For those who decided I was not of value the lesson learned was a person can hold you in no higher value than they do themselves and if they are not willing to sacrifice for themselves or respect themselves enough to challenge themselves to grow and change or prefer to meet the status quo and be entertained then they will not hold you in any higher value and often discard you as soon as you become inconvenient.

One of the things I do is listen very closely to what is being said and I ask

• How does what they are saying affect them?
• Does it make someone else look bad?
• Does it make someone else look good?
• Do they have a need to control others and tell them what to do and how best to do it?
• Do they have a superiority or inferiority complex?
• Are they telling me about someone to help me or so they do not have to share me?
• Does what they are saying benefit me or benefit them?

I also watch how they treat animals. children and people who can do nothing for them very closely!

I have learned that my friends were the ones who more often than not

• Tell/told me about the good things others (not themselves) are doing!
• Are quick to admit their failing and shortcoming!
• Do not place blame on others!
• Will say things that are sometimes upsetting to me!
• Tell me things for my own good which sometimes are to their own detriment!
• Are humble and listen!
• Are secure in who they are and the choices they made in life!
• Offer suggestions that usually revolve around how I can better respect the thoughts and opinion of others!
• Do not believe there is the best or only way nor have a great need to control others!
• Believe they have a full time job working on themselves!
• Often have experiences great loss or tragedy in their life!
• Are not vary materialistic (despite some of them being comfortable financially)!

In college I remember a young lady I dated. Her friend told her all kinds of bad things about me and what I was doing – she listened – what she never realized is that her so called friend did that so she would break up with me and once she did that same friend hit on me – so what was her motivation?

Some time more recently I had a good friend who told me you are pissing these people off, while what you are saying may be right and true you need to shut up and stay far away from them. Pissed me off. There was no benefit for his telling me that – I listened – those same people eventually self destructed but they did not take me with them.

Here are the questions for the day to ponder

• How secure are you with yourself?
• Are you willing to grow into the person you need to become to progress in life?
• Do you think for yourself?
• Do you let fear control you?
• Do you have an open or closed mind?
• Do you let the past cloud your present?
• Do you allow others to dictate your life choices?
• Do you make excuses to justify your not achieving?
• Do you rejoice in the achievements of others or do you wish It was you?
• Do you function within a comfort zone of what is familiar that you feel you can control?
• Do you look at the facts and make objective observations from which you draw conclusions based what repeated behaviors through first hand experience or do you make up your mind first and then quickly find the circumstance to let you say "see I was right!"

Why do I bring this up – because I have more than one friend/associate who blew me off and later came back to make peace with me because they followed the people who told them what they wanted to hear at the time and they paid a price (my friendship aside).

What I am hoping is that this will cause some of you to think and if nothing else not repeat my mistakes or theirs! Also I share this because if you want to be a business owner (an entrepreneur) you must if nothing else have your own mind and not be afraid to totally abandon your comfort zone!

Double Standards and Systemic bias - What do you think?

• Life is a mirror - What do you see?

I think I will start out with a little humor (albeit with a message) before getting into this post

Today a someone attempted to commit a robbery of a local store. The description given was "black man" driving a vehicle like mine. As a result today I was pulled over and questioned 3 times One time I was cleaning out my vehicle minding my own business an officer drove by then came back around and approached me from the rear. Then another officer came hand on gun. Sure after they spoke to me they decided I was not this person. I asked why and their explanation was that description and the words - we had to check you out to be sure.

Here is my though - with technology being in the state it is now would there not have been some sort of surveillance footage that if nothing else would have shown what that person was wearing so that a cursory visual inspection would have ruled me out. Next would be did the person have a beard and was it the same color as mine? Sure after quested and being determined it was not me the officers were polite enough but it reminded me of many bad experiences in the past and the fact that we as a society still have a long way to go.

I know there are some who are saying the officers were just doing their job - people I am not disputing that rather I am the systemic bias which exists in our society that affects how people do their job in every aspect of life. Consider these discriptions:

• caucasian male in a blue car
• asian male in a red car
• hispanc male in a black car
• etc

Now be honest - which of these pairing do you think would have resulted in the leos stopping every vehicle that matched the description?

My solutions were simple

• Always be polite and respectful when addressing leos
• Come home to remove myself from any further chances of exposure

Here are the thoughts that today inspired

• We live in a society that is not equitable or fair and a bias toward ethnic minoirties exist
• Knowing a bias exists we have a simple choice - allow this bias to affect us negatively and internalize their chortcomings causing anger or knowing this exists conducting ourselves in such a way where as much as possible it is obvious their misconception regarding me are extremely misguided

What lessons can we take from this that can be applied to business knowing there is a bias:

• Always conduct yourself with dignity
• Always work to give your best
• People will assume the worst of you - do not allow their expectation s of you to define you
• Listen critically to what people are saying them work to remove their excuses
• Let your actions speak for you
• Keep i mind no one is any better or smarter than you so conduct yourself as their equal and treat them with the dignity you expect from them
• Anyone can react and allow others to define their actions, it take a mature person to excercise self control and not allow others to control or define them
• Remember bias and prejudice as much as people and society try to mask its are nothing more than projected self hatred and fear - people trying to push and deny their own shortcomings and issues by blaming you because you can only dislike or hate another when that hatred has taken root in yourself - so you cannot give what you do now already have or own.

Most of you know know me already know my thoughts on the myths of race and its design as a control system to create arbitrary separation where none exists to distract people from focusing on the real issues of importance - but that is a topic for another time.

I will post these as a closing thought

I did some serious but as I started ended using humor (with a point) and then with some serious food for thought!

• What do you think?
• What would you do?
• Have you by your action or inaction perpetuated this?

Here is my closing point:

• People's opinions of you are like any other gift (ties at Christmas, the strange sweater, etc) - you can choose to accept it and make it your or you can decline it and say no thank you!

Systemic Bias (Do you know what you think you know?)

Society conditions people whether they believe it or not. Sometimes this conditioning is positive and sometimes it is negative. I have posted some pictures I would like to know which country do you think it is?

• Did you guess South Africa?

Too often people take anecdotal information - take from it only the parts that support the assumptions they have made and then build elaborate constructs which are at best flawed and often dead wrong. These often elaborate exercises in cognitive dissonance without researching the facts as a result making erroneous decisions based on inaccurate information is behavior that should be stopped.

Perception and decision making

Have been in a few discussion on innovation as well as watching some shows. One of the shows I watched Kamen Rider Dragon Knight - which is a variant of the original Kamen (Masked) Rider Ryuki. While it is an adaptation the American version aside from costumes, props and some (not all) characters actually shares little with the original but the special effects are way better. The assumption for some would be same show so aside from English must be the same right - this is an example of a perception that if we do not verify we wrongly assume an incorrect premise to be accurate when it is in fact false.

Do our perceptions and preconceived motions affect our decision making:

• Are we aware of how they affect us?
• Can our short term decisions have long term ramifications?
• If we qualify the criteria used to make a decision do our biases cause us to make better or worse quality choices?
• If our goal is fun and entertain or dazzle and spectacle can that cause us to make choices and pick items that in truth are less effective than if we make objective quantified decisions based solely on empirical fact?
• If our motivation is merely short term in nature can that cause us to make decision and choices which are strategically bad for us in the long term?

The million dollar questions:

• How does perception affect the quality of your decision making process?
• Are you aware of the affects your biases have on your decision make processes?
• Can this bias cause you to make emotional vs strategic choices?
• Can this bias cause you to pursue self destructive goals believing they are productive?

What are your thoughts?

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