Commitment and Maturity

Driving back these thoughts kept creeping to my mind – what do they mean? Bottom line it is the reason why some people achieve great things and others fail. So often people play at relationships regardless of whether they are business or person. They seek playmates instead of partners and wonder why things do not work.

If life is short should we not?

• Treat children like children
• Treat adult like adult
• Let your yes be your yes
• Let your no be your no
• Say what you mean
• Mean what you say
• Let your actions match your words
• Let your words match your actions
• Respect others
• Behave in such a way others are required to treat us with respect
• Make constructive use of our time
• Not allow others to waste our time and respect the time of others

Let’s look deeper

• A playmate is someone who entertains you and does what is in their interest at the time because it is fun to them your thoughts and feelings are of little consequence
• A partner is someone who believes in and compliments you and does what is in your best interest at the time both short and long term because they care about respect and want what is best for you

Which type of people do you surround yourself with?

• Playmate - A companion in play or recreation (excitement or entertainment)
• Partner - One that is united or associated with another or others in an activity or a sphere of common interest, especially a business partnership or a spouse

In business people often wrongly believe business people do what they do to take on risk and excitement – while this may be true for some it is largly a misunderstanding – a business person has a vision – a mental image that they are willing to work to make a reality.

How do we fail?

We do not believe people when they tell us who they are – examples:
Business:

• Someone tells you they do not respect you and you keep allowing them to use or take advantage of you
• Someone steals from you and you allow them back in your business to continue to liberate items at your expense
• Someone lies to your face to allow them to do so

Personal that can be applied to business

• Someone tells you they plan to use you and you convince yourself they did not mean it
• Someone tells you that they will be unfaithful and you dismiss it as a joke
• Someone tells you they are in love with someone else and you continue to stay with them
• Someone only comes around when they want something from you
• Someone curses you out and you allow them to do so repeatedly

So what is commitment?

• Being true to yourself
• Knowing that you have value and making sure you are treated with the respect and courtesy you deserve
• Making statements and sticking to them
• Respecting your time enough not to waste others nor allow them to waste yours

Quotes on Commitment and Responsibility:

• I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen - Frank Lloyd Wright
• I can't imagine a person becoming a success who doesn't give this game of life everything he's got - Walter Cronkite
• We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort - Jesse Owens
• We are not here merely to make a living. We are here to enrich the world - Woodrow Wilson
• Whatever happens, take responsibility - Anthony Robbins
• Whoever renders service to many puts himself in line for greatness - great wealth, great return, great satisfaction, great reputation, and great joy - Jim Rohn
• Within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and sickness, to riches and poverty, to freedom and to slavery. It is we who control these, and not another - Richard Bach
• You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today - Abraham Lincoln
• Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame - Erica Jong

So here are the real questions:

1. Can I trust you with my life and livelihood?
2. Can I believe you when you tell me someone?
3. Are you willing to sacrifice to achieve your goals?

If you answered no to any of these questions – I would reconsider entering any serious relationship especially if it involves starting business.

Also ask yourself these questions:

1. What do you want?
2. Who do you place first?
3. Who are you (Are you a child seeking a playmate or an adult seeking a partner)?

Adult Behavior | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

How many adults do you know who act like this


So what to achieve - here is something to consider


What is the bottom line?
If you are wanting to stay the same - not grow and change then respectfully you are not even committed to yourself so how can you be committed to another person or a business?

Why - because insanity is doing the same things over and over again expecting different results. If you want different results you must do different things!




For far too many a painful negative or unproductive known is better than an unknown even if that unknown is better - why - people confuse comfort with health, growth and change with pain, and allow fear not faith to dictate their lives.

What do you bring to the table?

So often people focus on what can be done for them. Some people even believe businesses and corporations exist to employ them. What people miss is businesses exist not to make money but to bring value to all involved albeit their stock holders, owners, employees and customers/clients. Additionally as entrepreneurs and business owners we must focus on what value we bring - this is true of employees also.



What are your thoughts?

Ethics and Technology – Part 6

This post will end the series on Ethics and Technology. Last week on Lets make sense we discussed a singular portion of Ethics – being authentic. The quickest way for me to separate from someone or lose respect for someone is for them to lie or in some way appear inauthentic. I look for a person’s virtual personae and their real life to have a high level of correlation. 

With the death of my friend Dr. Trent (on a personal note: I was an air force brat and buddy was a FBI brat) I guess this seems a more salient topic. Some years ago Buddy was injured in a automobile accident so he relied heavily on technology to communicate. His mind was a sharp as it ever was he simply had trouble expressing himself. We would hang out and go to go to plays and occasionally solve all of the problems of the world over a meal. After the accident he had trouble expressing himself but was a no less brilliant man provided you gave him enough time to express himself and find the right words. He would often shock me with his ability to regurgitate the information from the medical books he studied in school. Technology allowed him to express that aspect of who he was along with his humor (somewhat dry) with the same ease he did prior to the accident. 

Technology allows us (when used properly) to be more of who we already are. In fact it could be argued that technology can only accent what already exists in a person or can even be used to create an illusion of a person based not on who they are but who they wish to appear to be. So if a person is deceptive in the virtual world or disrespectful – chances are even though they appear civil in the real world given a chance to conduct themselves without some level of accountability they would prove that their true core ethics aligned more properly with the virtual presentation of themselves. 

Technology is nothing more than a tool, no different than a fork – it is an extension of self. Some use this lack as awareness to their own advantage. A classic example of this fraud maybe the lottery or dead relative. Imagine if a person walked up to your door who you never met and said, you have a dead relative in the UK. To get their money what we need you to do is set up a bank account. We will then transfer money into that account. For administrative and handling we will charge Y% as a broker fee, the rest is yours to keep. While some would fall for that most would dismiss as a scam and yet in the virtual world because many do not understand they fall for this con and often end up on federal charges of thief and money laundering. I bring this example up because this is one of many conversations we had as he started using his PC. 

As a person coming up in the information age you have access to a breadth of knowledge that generations before did not have as easy a time getting to meaning you actually know more than your ancestors. Yet, that knowledge does not imply you have the wisdom to use it only the sheer information and this is why you must be careful. You do actually know more even in some cases than the people or businesses you are interacting with – the issue in question is do you have the values and ethics to be able make constructive use of this information to help people as well as show loyalty to your client or friend? 

Let me elaborate:

• Knowledge is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as (i) expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or (iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.
• Wisdom is knowledge, understanding, experience, discretion, and intuitive understanding, along with a capacity to apply these qualities well towards finding solutions to problems.
• Information as a concept has a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage to technical settings. Generally speaking, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation.
• The Information Age is an idea that the current age will be characterized by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have previously have been difficult or impossible to find. The idea is heavily linked to the concept of a Digital Age or Digital Revolution, and carries the ramifications of a shift from traditional industry that the Industrial Revolution brought through industrialization, to an economy based around the manipulation of information. The period is generally said to have begun within 10 years of 1990, with the development of the internet seen as a key part of this change.
• Morality from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior"
• Ethics is a word for a philosophy that encompasses proper conduct and good living. It is significantly broader than the common conception of ethics as the analyzing of right and wrong. A central aspect of ethics is "the good life", the life worth living or that is simply satisfying, which is held by many philosophers to be more important than moral conduct 

Ethics of technology is a subfield of ethics addressing the ethical questions specific to the Technology Age. Some prominent works of philosopher Hans Jonas are devoted to ethics of technology. Technology itself is incapable of possessing moral or ethical qualities, since "technology" is merely tool making. Thus, "ethics of technology" refers instead to two basic subdivisions.

 

• The ethics involved in the development of new technology -- whether it is always, never, or contextually right or wrong to invent and implement a technological innovation.
• The ethical questions that are exacerbated by the ways in which technology extends or curtails the power of individuals -- how standard ethical questions are changed by the new powers. 

In the former case, ethics of such things as computer security and computer viruses asks whether the very act of innovation is an ethically right or wrong act. Similarly, does a scientist have an ethical obligation to produce or fail to produce a nuclear weapon? What are the ethical questions surrounding the production of technologies that waste or conserve energy and resources? What are the ethical questions surrounding the production of new manufacturing processes that might inhibit employment, or might inflict suffering in the third world?

 

In the latter case, the ethics of technology quickly break down into the ethics of various human endeavors as they are altered by new technologies. For example, bioethics is now largely consumed with questions that have been exacerbated by the new life-preserving technologies, new cloning technologies, and new technologies for implantation. In law, the right of privacy is being continually attenuated by the emergence of new forms of surveillance and anonymity. The old ethical questions of privacy and free speech are given new shape and urgency in an Internet age. Such tracing devices as RFID, biometric analysis and identification, genetic screening, all take old ethical questions and amplify their import. 

Let me close by sharing some information on various things to be aware of in this new age. This series started with a simple question – has technology outstripped our ethics – my opinion is they have not but in many cases do not see the correlation between real world and virtual worlds to make the connection to see how the situations apply: 

• Cybersecurity chief resigns amid turf battle
• E-mail scams get makeover for recession
• NTSB official sees threat in cell phone use
• Government warns of stimulus Internet scams
• EU forms coalition to fight online child porn
• Stalkers turn to cell phones to 'textually harass'
• Obama budget eyes boost to cybersecurity
• Stop thief! Software lets stolen laptops speak up
• Didn't you know? Facebook is forever
• Facebook gives sex offenders the boot
• Detained Egypt blogger whereabouts unknown
• University of Florida reports computer breach
• Tax season prime time for predatory scams
• Wikipedia, Google show Obama racial slur
• Maine police credit Facebook in solving crime
• Part 1: Privacy eroding — does anybody care?
• Part 2: Survey: Talk and action are poles apart
• Part 3: In Europe, privacy is different
• Part 4: Driver's license requirements spur debate
• Part 5: Is the price of fame too steep?
• Privacy Lost: Complete coverage
• Pricey home is rich place for potential predators
• Do potential predators think they'll get caught?
• Man on probation shows up at house
• 'Predator' New Jersey full of firsts
• No day at beach on Jersey shore
• Reflections on the series
• Hansen's new book
• Online 'safety kit' for parents, teens
• Images from the broadcasts
•  Read more on Chris Hansen's series of reports on men who target young teens over the Internet.
•  Talk to your kids about online safety, 'predators'
• Tips from the Polly Klaas Foundation
• Warning signs on kids' risky online behavior
• Experts answer frequently asked questions
• Share: What do you and your family do to stay safe online?
• Why are kids still surfing in the bedroom?
• For parents: Tips for kids of different ages
• Online safety contracts for parents and kids
• What you don't know can hurt your kids
• Abduction protection: Be street-smart
• Talk to your teens before getting them tech toy gifts
• FULL 'ONLINE SAFETY KIT'
• Online background checks can mislead
• Who's buying cell records online? Cops
• Few takers for free credit monitoring
• Are people warming to outsourced privacy?
• Military thumb drives expose larger problem
• Hidden cost of illegal immigration: ID theft
• How private are your tax records? Surprise!
• The real threat to the Internet
• How can someone in Moscow take your money?
• ATM theft investigators eye software flaw
• Even torn-up credit card applications aren't safe
•  PINs no obstacle for debit card thieves 

What am I trying to say in all of this – simply practice common sense – the same principles apply regardless of virtual or real. If someone told you that they are 210 and 5 foot and you are looking at them and they are 6 foot and 300 lbs they are lying. Pay attention to the facts and do not talk yourself out of the obvious – do not ignore what you see and trust your gut and instincts. Also remember ask question and request documentation – if they cannot supply it then chances are it is a scam. Also if their words and documentation do not align chances are it is a scam.

 

I will end with a quote by Maya Angelou – “If someone tells you who they are believe them” – it does not matter whether “real” or “virtual”

Here are the videos referenced in the show