Perhaps I should make myself more clear. I refer to competition with yourself. My I beleif is that one should constantly be working to improve yourself personally and professionally. Basically, remain self aware enough to be able to evaluate yourself and make the nessasary adjustments. If you do this, you will constantly getting better. I never worry about what other people can or cannot do. I worry about what I can do or can learn to do.You seem to use competition as a synonym for survival. And "Survival of the fittest" certainly has an agressive tone, but it is commonly misunderstood and misinterpreted. You and I do not compete against the natural world, If we want to champion competition as the pure and glorious truth of human living
At both of my office jobs I have worked with all women, and I definately am a nice/shy//emotional/caring person. I cannot stand the "guy" champion attitude and working to stomp down others. That is not at all what I meant.
In fact, I would agree with you about cooperation. I was taught all about it in the dozens of teams that I worked with throughout business school. I learned from my mentors (the MBA and CPA) that PEOPLE come first. You can be as smart hell, but guess what? We're all smart. My teams will have people who are positive to be around and help the GROUP succeed. I will not let bad people be in my life.
One of my other quotes I live by is:
"The Brick walls are there for a reason. They're not there to keep up out but rather to give us an opportunity to prove how badly we want something."
I worked incredibly hard, but there were (many) people who helped me over my brick walls. Of course, we can't always pay these people back, but we can pay it forward and help other people achieve their dreams. Someday I intend to be in position to be able to help people get to where they want to be just like I was.
Sure, if you want to pick apart a motivational quote. It simply means to not let someone else ever discourage you from becoming what you want to be.So if we should follow your advice and "not ever let anyone tell you that you cannot do something" then we really shouldn't listen to anything you say about how 'life is' right? Because if we want a different world, then we should go get it. Period.
When in Rome act like the Romans.The place where your belief falls short is when you accept this human system as 'the way things are'. But america and the american system are not real things, they are cooperative values we (humans) accept and follow.
Where were these protests during the boom years against these "evil" institutions and horrible ideas? Surely, they've always been "greedy and evil"? Only when the bust comes and it stops working for these people do they become angered. When the economy eventually rebounds, as it always does(it might never get back to the irrational highs of the 90's), they will be right back on the bandwagon.And what I see from these occupy protests, or tea party protests, or arab spring protests, is a monumental gaze being leveled at those very institutions and values that have spent a long time casting themselves as 'natural' and 'right' and 'good' and 'immovable'; those values and institutions you seem to consider axiomatic of the American Way. But they are all fantasy, and what we're seeing happen across this planet is a slow recognition of the edges of that fantasy.
A lesson I learned, is to never feel sorry about where you are and blame others. The only thing that will change it is action. Always trend towards where you want to be. Their time could be better spend pursuing job opportunities, networking, improving their skill sets, volunteering, starting their own business, ect. Basically, competeing with themselves to get better every day.
What positive comes what they're doing? Maybe if they bring down the banks, wallstreet, and corporate America.....we can live like Africa and then they can REALLY have something to complain about. Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.
The fact is households are cutting back on their budgets because it's what's in their best interest. Corporations must also cut back in the same way. These two cycles and the liquidation and payment down on debt create a deflationary spiral. It's better to cut 5,000 jobs and stabalize a company rather than doing nothing and losing all 70,000 of them, wouldn't you agree? Or are these individual households going out and expanding their expenditures for no reason as well? If you owned a business, would you just start hiring people, buying more inventory, and building factories.....just because?
