Control What You Can Control

Okay, I’ve got some good news and some bad news.

The bad news is that you pretty much control nothing that goes on in your life. You can’t control what other people say or do or believe. You can’t control your genetics, the circumstances you were born into, or whether your mom was depressed and your dad was an alcoholic when you were growing up.

You can’t control the weather, the year you were born, the cultural values you inherit or the people you grow up around. You can’t control almost anything that happens to you — freak car accidents, lightning strikes, flash floods, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, solar flares or meteor strikes.

You cannot fully control whether or not you contract cancer, diabetes, lupus, Alzheimer’s or Hashimoto’s. You can’t control whether your kid dies. Your sister dies. Your friend dies. Your friend’s friend dies or that guy you slept with in college dies in a freak ice fishing accident.

You can’t control how people feel about you, what they hear about you, how they think about you, the way they see you, hear you, smell you, or even touch you.

You cannot fully control basically anything that goes on in this crazy ass world around you.

But here’s the good news. The one thing you do control is far more important than all the others.

You control your thoughts. You can always control your thoughts.

The Buddha once said that when you get struck by an arrow, you are injured twice. The first injury is the physical injury, the arrow piercing your skin causing you to bleed. But the second arrow is our beliefs and thoughts around the injury. We decide that we didn’t deserve to get struck by the arrow. We think about how much we wish we didn’t get struck by the arrow. We wish the arrow had never happened. And for those thoughts, we suffer.

This second injury is purely mental. And it is optional.

Psychologists often talk about something called “pain catastrophizing.”8 Pain catastrophizing is when someone takes something small — like someone disagreeing with their point of view — and blows it up in their mind to the point where they believe their whole life is over. I’m sure you’re familiar with it, because in the age of social media people do it all the fucking time. 

There are a few reasons people can be motivated to catastrophize. The first reason is simply that they’ve become so coddled and lazy and have nothing meaningful happening that the slightest inconvenience strikes them as a legitimate crisis.

But there are other reasons we catastrophize. One reason is that we can be socially rewarded for it via sympathy, attention, and a sense of importance. Many argue that social media has created a “victimhood culture” where people are emotionally rewarded for their grievances; therefore, people unconsciously try to be as aggrieved as possible.9

Catastrophizing can even be adopted as our identity — look at us, we’re that person who always has sOmeThInG cRaZyyyy going on! That’s how our family knows us. That’s how our co-workers know us. That’s how we know ourselves. And, like any identity, we become attached to it and protect it. It provides us a sense of security and knowing.

The problem is that catastrophizing fucks us all up. It’s making Buddha’s second arrow far larger and more painful than the first. When the Buddha’s point was that there is no second arrow — that it’s invented in our minds — we’re like, “No thanks, check out how many likes I can get on Facebook if I turn this into the biggest fucking brouhaha the world has ever seen!”

One thing I try to remind myself is that there is nothing in this life that I have suffered that millions (billions?) of other people have not also suffered and survived before me. Pain catastrophizing, much like obsessive rumination, conceals a narcissistic core. It operates on the assumption that your experiences are singular and special, that no one could possibly understand the pain and hardship you’ve endured, that somehow the world has conspired against you and only you.

You cannot control your pain. But you can control how you think about your pain. You can control whether you believe your pain is insurmountable or whether it’s a trifle. You can control whether you think you will never recover and be the same again, or whether you think you will bounce back fine.

Because pain is inevitable, but suffering is only in the mind.

Holy S#!+ COVID-19 Is Wiping Us Out

 Hey if you haven't heard, you better pray to whatever God you worship, say your hail Mary's and try to get one the musical chairs in heaven cause your going to die in a month. That's pretty much the  consensus going around about the Coronavirus, and surprise surprise the people are freaking the fuck out. Cholera(1830-60), Yellow Fever (1878), The Spanish  influenza(1918), Polio(1952) HIV and AIDs(1980). You know what all these are 5 of the most deadliest virus we ever seen, and guess what, here I am, sitting before you, writing a fucking blog.  That I hope you'll enjoy by the way. now I know many of my readers probably wasn't born when half of that shit came out, but I didn't even mention a common cold or the common influenza that we deal with seasonally every year, which by the way has killed way more people than this. However don't let me ease your fear I want you to be scared of shit too, I want you buying up all the toilet paper, I want to buying up all the ramen noodles, and god dammit can I get a pack of chicken breast. Honestly, I'm just need you all to get a  grip. I also need everybody to go back to work, so yall can make money and buy shit  so my stock portfolio falling. 

WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON HERE?

Look I'm not trying to make light of the situation. I understanding the servity and that this is real world stuff but I like to think of myself as a realist, and the fact of the matter is the numbers are not adding up, neither is the news. I know what you're going to say, "this is just the beginning, the testing isn't out there, other countries had it before us and everybody's dying over there." Blase blase blase. One of the greatest lessons I was taught in life is to never outsmart my common sense, and nobody has made this makes sense to me, so excuse me if I'm not freaked out, climbing in the dog's cage and quarantining myself, especially when I go to my local grocery store to see there's no toilet paper, but you go to the vitamin aisle, the stuff that can actually build your immune system and fight off illness and viruses and you can get that shit for a BOGO discount. Please believe me I really do want to take this serious, so serious that I have watch more news in the last 2 weeks than I probably have in the last 2 years, just trying to grasp the severity level of what we're dealing with. Another one of my greatest lessons in life was to control you intake on certain things. One of our greatest failures, in my opinion as a society, is how much of suckers we are for the media, how much the media controls and sways our emotions and outlook on life. Like seriously people what every happen to principals and values. I've never considered myself the smartest guy in the world, I award that title to Amazon sellers who's attempting to price gouge and the people who's buying up all the sanitizer and selling it for 20 times what it's worth, you guys also get the biggest asshole award as well. While not being the smartest, I thank God for my ability to decipher from whats real and all the bullshit the media try to sell me.

FEAR-MONGERING

 Okay I was a little mean to the American hustlers in the last few sentences. I mean how can we be so upset with them, There just doing what they were taught by the US government. I have a few questions for you, last I checked it was about 680 deaths due to coronavirus in the US, why is the US people talking about the death toll in Italy? I'll tell you why because that number is so much bigger and it's a lot more scarier? This is what fear-mongering is. Oh but wait I have another question for you, at 680+ everybody says that we're on our way to be like Italy. Germany on other hand, out of all their outbreaks(16,000+) just 44 deaths, my question is why can't we be on that trail why must we be on Italy's trail? Oh but John, Germany so small it's not even bigger than some of the states in the u.s., this is very true but if we we do it off a percentage basis which again, I'm not the smartest, so I don't know the exact #'s, it don't matter how big or small the place is. This is what fear-mongering is. Oh but please give me one more question, why is the US the richest country in the world, but have such of a shortage to access of test for Coronavirus? It makes it really hard for us to hear the outcry and worry about our health care workers, when we can't even worry about our own health and health care. 

REALITY AS I BELIEVE IT TO BE.

I think we all know this country became the richest country in the world because it was built upon and ran off money. No matter what virus came about, that's always been the case and even with Coronavirus that still don't change. So regardless of how much fear you live with everyday, regardless if you don't want to go out in public, regardless of you neglecting your relationship with your parents, your grandparents and your older siblings and family members out of fear, the fact of the matter is that this economy has been suffering and suffering bad, state and local officials everywhere around the country shutting things down, sports has stop, which here means the world has stopped, businesses are hurting many small business will never recover. How long do you think this is going to last? How long do you think Donald Trump is it going to let this last, do you really think in an election year he's going to let the economy crash under his watch?  Do you think the top money getters in the United States, The top companies that make the country go, sports teams,  do you think they're going to continue to miss out on all the money; millions and billions of dollars they're missing out on while operations are shut down? They saying 3 to 4 months, well let me tell you, wait to see, it will not be three to four months of economic shutdown. Reality is The economy won't make it that long, the world wouldn't last. Moralistically I know it seems wrong, unethical, inhumane, and cold. But as my friend who worked in baseball as a president, David Sampson always tell his players, " it was never personal, it's just business."

The truth about viruses people, there are so many out there, I need an entire separate post in order to name, describe and give you the effects of every virus that's out there. Even more scarier, there's so many out there that we don't even know about, that we haven't discovered. It's not something you can control, or stop. How many different timelines is out there about when and where coronavirus started, nobody knows, folks probably been walking around out here with it, didn't even know it, thinking It was the common cold or even the flu. The symptoms that it carries is no different, there is no way to know the difference between what you got unless you go get tested but as I mentioned before in the US, unless your a professional athletes, or big person in Hollywood, or a government official your going to have a hard time getting tested for it. Ironically we paying for our own doing and inflation in our health care but that can be another post in itself. What's also ironically the way you avoid the viruses, is by doing this shit you should be doing everyday. Wash your hands, cover your mouth when you sneeze, keep your hands to yourself, ah you get the point you know the etiquette. For every virus there has been we never found a cure, you know why? You don't cure virus. So it makes me question what is all this for, what is this economic shutdown for and all about? Ah it's the ways to flatten the curve.... How do you flatten a curved when you can't even get people test to know where the right number is, literally where do you start? Because I'll tell you this, shutting down economy where people can't work, trying to keep everybody in their house you're not flattening anyting, if anything you merely just delay in it. H1N1, SARS, swine flu, all these viruses, they balanced themselves out, and so will Coronavirus. It's time to get a grip people because if you quarantine yourself long enough you're going to get to the point where coronavirus is the least of your worries.

Hey friends, i'm a lil late but I did something pretty cool! I made my first appearance on sports radio and you all should check it out, had a lot of fun with it. Tell me how I did, and if I should follow my plans of doing it again...

Listen to S1E5 2/10/19 by Suds N Sports #np on #SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/user-997345383/s1e5-21019

Hard lessons learned on the market(Stocks)

https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/93p3j4/what_i_absorbed_from_my_mistakes/?utm_source=reddit-android

We Get Why You Stand, This Is Why We Need To Continue To Discuss

In the last month or so, as a nation we all came together to raise millions of dollars in hurricane relief money, why was everybody sensibilities ignite then? Cause it affects everybody, mother nature can give a damn about your race, status, rich or poor. When it come to this racism stuff and the reason the protest are happening- which we are not even talking about by the way- everybody is not affected, so sensibilities aren't ignited the same. Oppression only effect one demographic and that's the demographic that try to take a stand to fix it. I don't know. You tell me.... any body who don't believe this is a real problem, is in denial. Look man... Oppression is a real issue here. And it being cover and smothered by white people because it an ugly reality they don't want to face, I get it. I understand when it comes to race, we're categorized and all lump together in our respective races. A 6'2 230 pound black man, TRUST ME I'm very familiar with the stereotypes that come with race. I know it not all of you, I know all white people ain't races or oppressive, and when you have to take accountability for something that's not your responsibility, and don't represent your views, it's HARD I get that too! However, for as long as we keep pretending like the elephant ain't in the room, change CANNOT occur. While I'm aware all white people ain't bad, when you deny people of their experience how they experiences things, when you not only shun and deny people of their rights and freedom of expression, but also try to tell them what they should and shouldn't do, at that very moment you become part of the problem. People say they stand for this country, the flag, military and first responders, but this ain't about the flag, military and first responders, it's about racism and social injustice in this country, that's what this protest is about. So I discuss and I'll continue to discuss, for blacks, brown and the oppressed. Quiet is what everybody want; people, media, conservatives, everyone wants quiet on this ugly truth and this ugly reality, but quiet ain't got us nowhere clearly! Why do you think we keep ending up here, it sure in the hell ain't by coincidence.

Why We All Need To Die Alive.

Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently, we kid ourselves about death. For example, I know many of you reads this and wonder "why the hell is he talking about this and where is it coming from."  But there’s a better approach. It's just been able to see things for what they are and To know you’re going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That’s better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you’re living.

Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live!

Why is it so hard to think about dying? “Because,” most of us all walk around as if we’re sleepwalking. We really don’t experience the world fully, because we’re half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we "have to do.” And facing death changes all that? Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently.

The only negative to the realization is you short of lose ambitions when you realize you are going to die. All of a sudden the things you spend so much time on—all this work you do- might not seem as important.

Letting People Go

I hate having to let people go. As an empathic person, who cares, it a terribly demoralizing thing to do. Letting go of some relationships are easier to do than others, because all the relationships you have in life, some you simply value more than others.

Even if letting a person go is the right thing to do, it not what we built a relationship for. Regardless of the type of relationship,  rather it be companionship, association-ship, friendship, intimate relationship, We don't like to lose, and letting go, feel likes a lost.

However, it is vital to your quality of life to know and understand that In life You train people how to treat you. With that said If you allow people to manipulate, deceive and abuse you in any way or form, they will continue to do it. You have to let your feelings count. And sometimes that simply mean cutting ties. Growth happens in many ways and form,  good and bad,  we all grow, every day,  and many times in growth, we grow in different directions than the people dearest to us.

In the words of my auntie Iyanla "Baby, you got meet people where they are,  you have to meet people where they are, but sometimes, sometimes you have to leave them there."