Tag: rambling

Wasn’t Expecting That…

A couple of months ago during the height of the bush fire season we wrote about the apocalypse, we didn’t go into detail or discuss the four horsemen but we did discuss what apocalyptic event could potentially wipe us out, which then turned into a little preppers guide to the end of the world. Little did we know that the specific blog would be read by family and friends and the following events would ensue and thus the great people of this country would react the way they have causing pain and heartache for thousands of their fellow countrymen. Well ladies and gentlemen we (not this fine blog) but the nation of Australia have officially lost the plot. We’ve officially gone off the deep end and look it’s a little troubling if we are honest. As we dive into this week’s blog and change tracks like a runaway train we’ll hit you with yet another double punch as we had already started another piece to provide you with when we decided that we needed to weigh in on matters at home.

Let us take you on a little journey to discover the facts and figures around why Australian’s are currently duking it out in the middle of their local Coles and Woolworths. Why panic is beginning to grip the world, why conspiracy theorists are having a field day and why if you own shares you are losing money hand over fist at a rapid rate. In order to do that we’ve decided to look at a chronological order of events. We’ll give you the who, what, where, when and how in the hopes of giving you a little more information and dispelling some of the myths. It might even calm people down hopefully but we’ll see what happens. We may have the opposite effect on the masses and we’ll have riots in the streets inspired by the words from those idiots over at the A Mind of Its Own Blog. So without further distraction or segways we’ll crack the egg of this week’s topic and let the issues of CoVID-19 simmer in your minds while we tap away at our freshly sanitized keyboards in our air conditioned offices where people can easily spread disease.

CoVID-19 or the Coronavirus as it’s better know came to light in late December 2019 when the little, we say little but when there are roughly 11.8 million inhabitants it’s far from little, city of Wuhan in the Hubei province of China, reported a pneumonia that was sickening dozens of people. It wasn’t till the 31st of December that the World Health Organisation (WHO) finally caught wind of this. According to reports Novel Coronavirus (nCov) was identified in early December with the first case diagnosed on the 12th of December. Eleven days later the first death from what would become known as CoVID-19 was recorded. Now depending who you listen to and what articles you read the time lines are little skewed, the number of deaths is inaccurate and the virus was released by the US to kill off Chinese and Iranian’s. Fast forward to the 21st of January and other countries are now reporting their first cases of the Novel Coronavirus. The US, Japan, South Korea and Thailand all recording their first cases. All the people diagnosed had been to Wuhan and all of them had visited a live animal market according to all reports.

By the 23rd of January the Chinese government had decided to impose travel restriction into and out of Wuhan. This could well have been 23 days too late, in an attempt to restrict the spread of the virus they shutdown flights, trains, buses, ferries and ringed the city with checkpoints. By the 30th of January the WHO had declared a global health emergency for just the 6th time in history a designation reserved for extraordinary events that threaten to spread internationally. If you weren’t watching the news on the 5th of February the cruise ship the Diamond Princess was quarantined off the coast of Yokohama, Japan while crew and passengers under went screenings for CoVID19. 700 cases would be later confirmed making it the largest outbreak outside of China. February 11th saw the WHO renaming the novel coronavirus to CoVID-19 with the Co standing for Coronavirus, Vi for Virus and the D for disease. The 19 tacked on at the end is the year in which it was identified. Health officials purposely avoided naming COVID-19 after a geographical location, animal or group of people, so as not to stigmatise people or places.

Yet people are avoiding anyone of Asian descent as they are ignorant, somewhat racist and most of all ill informed. There was even a case in Chinatown, Sydney where a man suffered a heart attack and no one wanted to help him for fear of catching CoVID-19. Our first case was diagnosed on the 25th of January with three other cases being diagnosed by the 27th across two separate states. On the 28th January Australia’s chief medical officer Brendan Murphy makes a fatal mistake in telling the nation there is no need to wear masks as there has been no human to human transmission in Australia. By the start of March there were 27 confirmed cases across the country the number would rise quickly as the first cases of human to human transmission were confirmed. To date there have been 91 confirmed cases, only 3 deaths reported in elderly. But what is CoVID-19?

To break it down for you all, CoVID-19 is the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Like our two headed Tasmanian friends from down south it’s a little strange. Coronaviruses are a large group of viruses that are common among animals. In rare cases they are what the smart white coat wearing ladies and gentlemen call Zoonotic, meaning they can be transferred from animals to humans. But how do they transfer you ask? There are 5 main ways in which Zoonotic diseases can transfer from an animal to human.

Direct contact: Coming into contact with the saliva, blood, urine, mucous, feces, or other body fluids of an infected animal. Examples include petting or touching animals, and bites or scratches.

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Indirect contact: Coming into contact with areas where animals live and roam, or objects or surfaces that have been contaminated with germs. Examples include aquarium tank water, pet habitats, chicken coops, barns, plants, and soil, as well as pet food and water dishes.

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Vector-borne: Being bitten by a tick, or an insect like a mosquito or a flea.

Foodborne: Each year, 1 in 6 people get sick from eating contaminated food. Eating or drinking something unsafe, such as unpasteurized (raw) milk, under cooked meat or eggs, or raw fruits and vegetables that are contaminated with feces from an infected animal. Contaminated food can cause illness in people and animals, including pets.

Waterborne: Drinking or coming in contact with water that has been contaminated with feces from an infected animal.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is a betacoronavirus, like MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV. All three of these viruses have their origins in bats. The sequences from global patients are similar to the one that China initially posted, suggesting a likely single, recent emergence of this virus from an animal reservoir. The science is a little hard to explain and we’ve had to do a lot of research in order to understand what it is but to paint you a tiny picture they are called Coronaviruses due to the fringe they have which is reminiscent of a crown or of a solar corona. The name “coronavirus” is derived from Latin ‘corona’, meaning crown or halo, which refers to the characteristic appearance of the virus particles (virions), they have a fringe reminiscent of a crown or of a solar corona when viewed under two-dimensional transmission electron microscopy, due to the surface covering in club-shaped protein spikes. From what we could translate into our tiny non-scientific brains it’s these protein spikes that attach to cells in the host body and begin replication of the virus. We also found out that the common cold is also a coronavirus, don’t believe us Google it!

So there’s a virus and a disease but what’s the difference? A virus can’t survive without a living host and the disease occurs when cells in your body are damaged as a result of an infection. So the virus in this case is SARS-CoV-2 and damage it causes to your cells resulting in disease has been named COVID-19. Coronaviruses cause colds with major symptoms, such as fever and sore throat from swollen adenoids, primarily in the winter and early spring seasons. Coronaviruses can cause pneumonia – either direct viral pneumonia or a secondary bacterial pneumonia – and may cause bronchitis – either direct viral bronchitis or a secondary bacterial bronchitis. If you aren’t up to date with your doomsday virus and what will kill you the symptoms you need to look out for are fever, cough, shortness of breath and in some cases diarrhea.

How could you get it you ask? Well it is most likely transmitted from human to human via respiratory droplets from either a cough or sneeze, the impact or blast zone is usually around 6 foot, it is also possible that indirect contact via contaminated surfaces is another possible cause of infection as viral RNA has been found in peoples stool samples who are infected. What does that mean for us? Well the usual cover your mouth and nose when coughing and sneezing and wash your hands after using the bathroom or spraying your DNA over them through your mouth or nose. The stats state that at least 60% of the world’s population will be infected with SARS-CoV-2 and mortality rate is something like 3% so there is a good chance if you get it, you will survive. If you are older you are more at risk of the symptoms being more than just mild. Those under 20 seem to be the safest group, representing the smallest percentage of those who have been infected globally.

Ok so you know the who, what, where, how and when now but the burning question for us is why are we having to use rough as guts paper towel to wipe our derrieres because Australia has gone into panic mode and is stocking up on toilet paper? We kid you not, supermarkets can’t get the stuff on the shelves quick enough and the people stocking up like the worlds about to end can’t explain why? We’d kill for just one roll of 4 ply, that quilted goodness against one’s rectum feels so much better than the paper cut razor blade of death paper towel we’ve been using for the past week. Like the potato famine of 1845 to 1849 the supermarket shelves are bare of the number one bathroom product, bogroll, dunny wipes, loo roll call it what you like it’s in short supply or non existent and to make matters worse people are even buying all the paper towel, sanitary wipes, tissues anything they can get their hands on to wipe their bums they are buying in bulk. It’s got to the point we have people throwing fisty cuffs in the isles just to get some dunny roll. We even checked out several supermarkets to see for ourselves, standing in the isle we couldn’t help but laugh at just how far the prepping some people had gone with the threat of SARS-CoV-2 and contracting COVID-19.

Like all crises there are those who are keen to make a quick buck off the misfortunes of others. The fact that we have countries closing their borders and restricting travel and supermarket shelves are left bare of pasta sauce, pasta and toilet paper shows an evident fear in the Australian populace. Check out eBay or Facebook marketplace and people are selling packs of toilet tissue for well above the recommended retail price. The memes that have been generated are both hilarious and disturbing at the same time. There are even cases in which people are stocking up with 14 days worth of food and supplies in case they need to quarantine themselves or hide out for fear of catching the world’s latest Coronavirus.

Viruses mind you which have been around for centuries and will continue to be around for centuries to come. There is some psychology behind why people have chosen toilet paper to stock up on opposed to any other item. It’s an everyday necessity in the modern, western world and therefore the fear of being without it or missing out runs high within the community. Don’t forget in some countries they are still squatting over holes in the floor and hoping for a clean break without having the luxury of toilet paper and here we are punching on in the isles over it. Is it that people have not researched what COVID-19 is, enough to understand or is it just a knock on effect to our already fragile minds after the worst bush fire season to date. There is no doubt some psychologists, looking at the causation and effects of this and the science community, are working double time to understand the virus and whether or not a vaccine can be developed.

For now though we just need to take a couple of deep breaths and chill out when doing the grocery shopping, there is no reason to punch on with your fellow Aussies over bog roll, after all the old saying sharing is caring rings true and last time we checked toilet paper will not protect you from catching a virus despite wrapping yourself to look like an ancient Egyptian mummy. So maybe you don’t need the 3 packets of 24 rolls that are taking up your entire trolley or the whole box of hand sanitizer. Like you do every flu season, wash your hands after using the bathroom or coughing and sneezing, if you are feeling sick stay at home and if pain persists please see your doctor. Chances are you’ve had a coronavirus in the past and just not known about it. That’ll just about do it from us here, we’ve given you an overview of the virus and yes it’s a close relative of the SARS virus and MERS virus, go google them we don’t have time to explain what they are if you haven’t heard of them.

Until next week don’t hog the bog roll, be kind to your neighbours, cover your mouth when you cough and sneeze and most of all just be a good human being. From all the crew here at A Mind Of Its Own, look after yourselves and avoid public areas where large groups tend to congregate if you are that worried about catching the coronavirus and for all our slow mind friends no you can’t catch it from drinking the beer, the poor company have suffered enough over the past couple of months with American idiots Googling if they’ll contract it after a hard night on the Coronas. With that said it’s time to sign off for another week… Take it easy!

Heels Over Head…

In an attempt to get some normalcy back into this here blog we are attempting to do the double and if we are lucky potentially the triple this week, we know our adoring fans have missed having something to read each week and our mental health has missed having the writing escape each week that allows us to research each and every topic we write about. That includes bin chickens and bush turkeys folks, two of Australia’s best birds and almost becoming more iconic than the galah or the cockatoo. Unlike most of the blogs we write though, this week’s doesn’t have a lot of science and or research behind it but has more gone with a gut feel, views and those old arseholes, opinions. So without further adieu we’ll crack on into another addition of A Mind of Its Own.

A couple of weeks ago we wrote about online dating and the ins and outs, the pitfalls and the disappointment it can often bring or how it just makes a lot of people feel rather shallow and self conscious. Just like a lot of social media these days. In a follow up to that piece we decided to look at something that has always baffled us, something that just seems to be the norm, something that society has yet to really challenge and those that have, would no doubt have been labelled or even worse put down and ridiculed for their views and opinions. But it does tie in with not only dating but most facets of life, particularly where things have been spelled out for centuries. Maybe not so much in black and white but in that shale grey colour that interior designers tend to love so much these days.

No matter where you look there are rules that govern our lives, some of them are written and passed through parliament becoming a law or legislation, others are more suggestions or have become the social normal throughout the centuries, they aren’t written down but more passed on as things that just are and should be done. It’s these so called social normalities or “unwritten rules” that we want to take a look at and try to get an understanding of the how, what, where and why behind them. How did they become something that everyone did, what happened for that to even become an unwritten rule? Where did it happen? And why did it happen? That’s a lot happening in one sentence. We’ll focus on dating as that’s where most of these unwritten rules seem to exist but we’ll throw in some other examples as we go that just pop up in everyday life.

This all came about as we discussed dating with people after the posting of “I’ll Be Your Man”. Through sharing their personal experiences and leaning on the Boss man here for his unedited thoughts on the world of online dating we were able to get an understanding that there are perceived certain rules in which men and women need to abide by in the dating world. We say rules but some people will say guidelines, either way they are there and they often govern how people interact with each other in the dating world. An example of this is the first date and how long you should wait before you contact someone after. Is it 24 or 48 hours and why should you have to wait to wait at all, to tell someone you had a good time with them and would like to see them again? Because someone made it a social normality that a lot of people have followed throughout the years?

Correct that’s exactly why, someone with an opinion and soapbox to spruke it from suggested that it could be perceived as needy or too keen if you interact too soon after meeting someone in which you may want to pursue something more than just a friendship with. Overtime it just became dating advice and slowly an unwritten rule that you gave it time before contacting them and making a second date. If you didn’t contact them it was understood you weren’t at all interested and that has now taken on the term ‘ghosting’. So we know ghosting isn’t a new thing that men and women do, someone just put a label on it and gave the millennials something to grasp on tightly to while they rock themselves to sleep in the corner because Ted or Tamara just disappeared without an explanation. Our Human need for closure and want to understand everything that comes into play there.

Forgetting all the rules for a minute and standing on the edge of the philosophical lake with the rule book in hand ready to fling it to the depths of the water. What if you did meet someone who you wanted to break all the rules for?. What if that person ticked a lot of your boxes? You know the rules we are talking about, the unwritten ones, ladies and gents, we don’t condone the breaking of statutory rules that govern society to keep us safe unless they are archaic and need to be torn down like a derelict building poisoning the skyline. There is a freedom discussed and whispered in circles that men and women talk about. Freedom that allows us to make decisions and not be governed by unwritten rules. That allows you as an individual to throw the social normalities into the lake and never have to worry about them ever again.

The rules that say you shouldn’t talk about certain topics when you getting to know someone, the rules that say if your marriage falls apart you shouldn’t date until you are divorced, the rule that says sex before marriage is a sin. The rules that say you should follow those rules and not jump in feet first. But ladies and gentleman you wouldn’t go and buy a cow from the market without trying the milk before taking it home would you? It’s the exact same with sex and a lot of things in life. That’s probably not one of the best analogies we’ve ever used but you get the point. Life is full of unwritten rules in which we’ve allowed ourselves to be governed by because they have become the societal norm over centuries. If evolution has taught us anything it’s that we should be breaking the mold and bucking the trend is good for us. It took a world war for women to be allowed to vote and work in traditionally male dominated roles. Yes it’s still going on today but we are evolving (ever so slowly).

In a world full of rules there is something liberating about not following them, something internally inspiring about following your heart, head and gut. Some might even say there is something enlightening about going your own way and doing your own thing when it comes to breaking the social normalities. If we aren’t challenging things what are we doing? Are we just becoming more sheep in the proverbial flock ready to follow around a Shepard? Surely not, as intelligent beings we have the ability to choose, to make decisions and to stick to our convictions and values. As the kids say you do you. We aren’t saying that you shouldn’t follow all the unwritten rules as some of them are just part of being a decent human, what we are saying is that you have the ability to pick and choose. When it comes to dating as people that like to wear our hearts on our sleeves all we can say is follow your heart.

There is the age old story of the Hare and the Tortoise to take into account though, you know the saying ‘slow and steady wins the race’ but there are also the internal factors and feelings that you can’t often be explained and or ignored. Yeah take things slow but the one thing that will always be a saving grace is communicating. And lessons learnt tell us that communicating everything as well as setting expectations early is paramount. Even if it is ugly, bad or makes you feel a little ashamed and less of a person. Don’t show up just because you feel that it’s expected, the path to authenticity is paved with good intentions that often find us in pitfalls doing what we feel we should rather than being truly authentic with people we care about. That’s not just dating that’s through all facets of life.

So what are some of those other unwritten rules that we should follow? We’ll there are the little subtle ones like keeping left on an escalator or chewing with your mouth closed, because no one really wants to hear or see you chewing. Or not being on your phone whilst being served at a checkout and making people wait in the line behind you to finish your call or always letting people out of a door before you enter, particularly lifts, buses and trains. There are some weird ones that are more for personal comfort more than anything else like leave one urinal in between you and the next person where possible. There are also the consideration rules like giving up your seat on the bus or train to the elderly or a pregnant woman. Or replacing the toilet paper if you are at the end of the roll. It’s courteous and just a decent thing to do, it’s all part of taking that empathetic path.

Maybe that’s just the answer, maybe the whole solution to unwritten rules, that are societal norms is to just be empathetic in your approach to life, put yourself in the other people’s shoes and think about how it would make you feel before acting. Flick the rule book out the window and just approach life with an empathetic attitude. When dating if you want to call someone after the first date place some empathy in your thought process and sometimes you just need to take a blind leap of faith and know that no matter what the outcome you are going to be OK. Everything we do in life has a lesson there for us. A teaching in which we learn a little about ourselves and the world around us and if you aren’t learning or are opposed to learning you might need to check yourself on the way out the door. And do everyone a favour don’t let it hit you in the arse on the way out.

Some would argue that more and more we are breaking those unwritten rules as society becomes more self involved and selfish on an individual level. In some regards this is true and we’ve argued before that the youth of today lack respect. But in all fairness it’s not just the youth we all get caught up in our own little worlds and with social media and everything in the palm of our hands it’s easy to overlook little things and other people. In the eyes of this here blog it is just that, a lack of respect for those who have been there before them, to wear in the path through the jungle that can often be this world. Lack of respect does not necessarily mean challenging the rules or even breaking them, it’s a naivety in which our youth have that they are entitled to everything. Technology is partly to blame and society can take the rest of the fall as we’ve allowed them too much freedom and with freedom comes choice. Too many choices results in a lack of commitment hence the vicious cycle that is often online dating.

What have we learnt? Other than hindsight is a beautiful thing that we can learn from? Well, as always, communication is key, be open, be honest and most of all be authentic. If that’s not you as a person then don’t try and be someone you are not. Life is too short to wear a mask to the majority and show the real you only to those in your inner circle. In terms of the rules to quote Josh Brolin’s character Matt Gravers in Sicario “Fuck it All”, rules are there to guide us but some of them need to be challenged and often broken or rewritten. We are big proponents of following your mind, body and soul. Yeah we might sound a little hippy saying that but intuition is something we should all take a little more notice of and follow. If it fucks you, learn from it but most of the time it’ll steer you on the right path and put you where you need to be, doing what you need to be doing at that point in time.

Just because the rule isn’t written down doesn’t mean it’s not a rule, there are many of them and to reiterate what we previously said some of them are just polite and some of them just help to make us decent human beings. Some of them are old fashioned and need to be torn down like the Berlin wall, some need to be challenged like America, would a despotic dictator and some of them we can just keep as they make sense. Like all things in life everything is interpretive and can be taken and interpreted differently by everyone. Maybe take that empathetic approach as we suggested or just continue to accept them as the social normal. Whatever you decide all we can urge is that you follow what you want, there are enough sheep in the world already without adding more to the flock.

Until next week we’ll leave you with some wisdom and words for the wise. If you find yourself in a situation that socially dictates you follow some archaic rule whispered centuries ago think about it before you follow it. If it doesn’t sit with your values then don’t follow it, plain and simple. Unless it’s an actual law then follow it, unless you feel you look good in an orange jumpsuit. Then go for it we say, but don’t start complaining when your new cellmate Trent starts spooning you without consent. From the team we wish you all a happy corporate card day or valentines day for those that like to celebrate it. We like to celebrate love every day here at a mind of its own, not just on days we are told to by large corporations looking to fill their pockets. So until the next one all the best cobbers…

Like Toy Soldiers…

Remember in school when you were told you could do anything you want if you put your mind to it? Well to some degree that is true, hopes and dreams are in reach and if you work hard enough you can certainly follow those dreams, however, sometimes life gets in the way and stops you from reaching those dreams and goals. Take the A Mind Of Its Own team for instance they all wanted to something else when they were children. Some of them followed their dreams and some of them came to their dreams later in life. Then there’s the genius behind A Mind of Its Own who is working on his dreams as a side project but before he found his love of writing he had a couple of other dreams that never came to fruition. So does that mean you should just give up on your dreams when you hit a few little speed bumps in the road? Nope, not at all…

Asking around we all went from dreams of being superheroes, ninjas, wrangling unicorns, being a cowboy, a spy, a ballerina married to Michael Jackson who drives a Mr Whippy van, an assassin. Ok so not everyone has dreams of becoming an imaginative, impractical professional when they grow up. Some people actually have dreams of becoming doctors, lawyers, nurses, police officers, hairdressers and other reputable career choices. So how and at what point do most of us go from imaginative creative hopes and dreams to practical, mundane careers that take us through to retirement. At what point in life do we mature enough to know that what we once wanted to be will no longer be within our reach.

For some of us it’s not until you receive the final rejection notice to say because you beat your body up playing sport when you were younger, that you will not be accepted into the service of your country despite passing all the requirements. Or the fact that you gave up on a potential career as an athlete because you weren’t driven enough. But at some point it clicks in that you can and will do great things in the world but it’s going to take some work, hard work that will often make you question the why. University isn’t for everyone and not everyone will go on to higher education and earn a degree or certifications for that matter. What’s good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander as the old saying goes.

And so to the home of research for answers, no we aren’t using Wikipedia for answers this time we are heading to a place that is bountiful in resources and books that will hopefully answer some questions we have burning away in our little brains as to how we become mature. Not since university have we set foot into a library and there is a reason why, firstly librarians whilst this one was easy on the eye and not your stereotypical librarian but she was still very grumpy and very unhelpful. In her defense we really weren’t too sure as to how or what we wanted to research regarding this week’s topic. Did we start with maturity or did we start with hopes and dreams, were there books on hopes and dreams. To the stacks we wandered and peered at row upon row books with titles that were somewhat ambiguous.

The first big book we opened was a psychology journal that we then had to go and find a dictionary in order to understand. We learnt a few things about people that we didn’t quite understand as well as confirming a few facts about the next generation that we really wanted validated. Yes ladies and gentlemen all your thoughts and fears have been confirmed the youth of today whilst being apparently intelligent are well behind the curve when it comes to emotions. According to studies, the science variety from the ages of 11-14 we lose connections between cells in parts of the brain that enable us to think clearly and make good decisions. So on that note maturation must happen in most people after the age of 14 or 15.

Pruning the brain, or synaptic pruning, What happens is that the brain prunes itself, going through changes that will allow a young person to move into adult life effectively. “Ineffective or weak brain connections are pruned in much the same way a gardener would prune a tree or bush, giving the plant a desired shape,” wrote Alison Gopnik, professor of child development at UC Berkley. According to Ian Campbell, a neurologist at the U.C. Davis Sleep Research Laboratory. Mood swings and uncooperative and irresponsible attitudes can all be the result of these changes. Sometimes, we can’t explain why we feel the way we do. Our brains are changing from a child’s brain to an adult brain.

So we now know that our maturity is affected by changes in the brain and that it prepares us for adult life. So perhaps it through these years that we lose track of those hopes and dreams that just aren’t quite realistic or impractical as we go through maturation and those weak connections are pruned away to create adult ideas and adult hopes and dreams. It’s strange how we go from being carefree and footloose to having to be an adult on a daily basis. As we continued to search for connections as to how and why we grow and mature as people we read a lot of journals, articles and even a magazine or two on the science behind the psychology of why we develop intellectually and make changes in our lives. We aren’t saying that people follow their dreams from a young age but the majority of people change what they want to do.

A lot of us fall into jobs that we don’t necessarily want to do, we work away until we become so good at what we do there is no other path or we get paid a decent salary and have become accustomed to the lifestyle we are keen to keep. There are still plenty of people between the ages of 30-50 that don’t know what they want to do with their lives. A couple of the writers here are in that boat. Heck the bossman would love to write books for a living and the dogs well they’d love to be free range puppies that could do what they like when they liked. But as some point we all have bills to pay and people to look after so we all work and our hopes and dreams go off to die in a field of shattered dreams with most of the other adult population.

Where does the inspiration come from for those that know what they want to do for a living, what makes their brain pruning different to everyone else’s that they continue to carry those hopes and dreams into adulthood. Now there are always going to be elements or environments that influence and impact those final decisions to make sure we are truly dedicated to the path we are walking. It’s like all things in life, you know you are truly focussed and dedicated to a dream you’ll make it come true or die trying. Take athletes for example they are dedicated to their hopes and dreams following them through to the very end of their career but what about when their bodies give out? Do they have new hopes and dreams, do they continue to hold onto the life they formally had or do they create a new one after they’ve achieved as much as they can on their road to glory.

Diving into articles on the wonderful world of the interweb we came across several on why athletes are so driven to achieving their hopes and dreams. In one such article posted they explained that athletes have skills that are transferable to everyday life. These skills are gained through years and years of playing their sport and navigating through daily challenges of life. Traits such as Grit, Persistence, Competitive and Confidence are valuable throughout the various aspects of life.

Athletes usually endure failure better than anyone else because they experience so much of it throughout their athletic careers. By nature, athletes are goal driven; they often set high, specific expectations and goals to obtain awards, as well as championships. At one point or another, they are unsuccessful at achieving the goal(s) they set; which can be considered a failure. All athletes handle failure differently, but almost all eventually learn through it in some way. They persevere and continue to perform, despite experiencing failure. After all, it is said that the true measure of an athlete’s character and ability, is in how they handle themselves in the face of adversity or failure. Every single person experiences failure no matter the circumstance, but like Rocky said: “It is never about how many times you get knocked down. It’s about whether or not you get up afterwards.”

Below are several things that we can learn from athletes failures:

  1. Failure allows reassessment and feedback. It’s life’s greatest teacher. Successful athletes who experience a lot of failure in their career, are often some of the most successful because they are able to re-evaluate why they didn’t reach their goals, change direction and move forward. Failure is simply just feedback for what you need to do next time in order to be successful. It helps you analyze what went wrong in any given situation and take measures for getting it right next time. Babe Ruth, one of the greatest baseball players of all time, set the record for the most home runs in a season. In the same season, he also struck out more than any other player in Major League Baseball. According to the Seattle Times, he struck out 1,330 times over his career; however, he was able to rise above his failures to hit 714 home runs. For Babe Ruth, failure was just feedback, telling him what he needed to do in order to be successful in the long run.
  1. Failure brings about resilience and mental toughness. Resiliency is the ability to bounce back from any type of adversity or how to adapt in a disruptive situation or occurrence. Mental toughness is the ability to consistently perform toward the upper range of your talent and skill regardless of competitive circumstances. In athletics, these both can refer to trials due to injury, critics or fans, weather conditions and other uncontrollable variables. Most often it implies experiencing failure in some type of way. Resilience and mental toughness instill that “Never give up” attitude in athletes and pushes them through to reach their goals. The greatest athletes continue to be resilient and mentally tough despite the obstacles they face. Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, were down 3 games to 1 to the Golden City Warriors in the 2016 NBA finals. Although, the series seemed out of reach, they gained resilience and mental toughness, coming back to win the series 4-3 and ending the season as the 2016 NBA Champions.
  1. Failure is the only way to succeed. We only grow or reach success out of being in uncomfortable situations and that’s exactly what failure is. Failure is downright uncomfortable and never feels good. It certainly hurts a lot to lose and fail, but regardless of the emotional toll it takes on you, it is the quickest way to learn how to win. Take legendary NFL coach Tom Landry, for example. As the coach of the Dallas Cowboys, Landry led the team two Super Bowl victories, five NFC Championship victories, and is one of the most winningest coaches of all time. He is also widely known for having one of the worst first seasons on record, not winning a single game. In each of his next four seasons, his team also recorded five or fewer wins. He failed repeatedly and that is largely why he is known as one of the greatest coaches of all time. Even Michael Jordan is quoted by saying: “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Athletes who fail over and over, only to eventually succeed, are the ones who resonate the most in our hearts. They are the ones who we cheer for the hardest and the ones who give us hope that anything is possible, regardless of how unachievable the goal might seem. When these types of athletes succeed, it shows us that failure is never fatal and that it is okay to not get it right the first time. We may not always realize it, but athletes inadvertently teach us about how strong we are and what we are able to accomplish if we keep pushing on. Most of all, athletes teach us that even if failure is in sight, going through it is the only way to reach the plateau of success.

It’s safe to say that we should and often do look up to athletes as a source of inspiration or guidance when it comes to following our hopes and dreams. They set examples of what we should do and more importantly they show us that it’s ok to fail every once and awhile. But they allow us to hold onto those hopes and dreams while showing us that things take time and hard work. You can have hopes and dreams but they’ll remain just that if you don’t have a little spunk about you to fight for what you want. That’s the extra drive that those athletes tend to have over the rest of us, those extra skills that we don’t seem to be to possess until we’ve failed once or twice.

So until next week we’ll leave you with this, follow your dreams, keep your hopes and most of all work towards them even if they take your entire life to come true you hold on to them. Keep on working and make it happen no matter how long it takes, stay the path, stay true to yourself and never stop dreaming. Oh and always dream big, without big dreams this little blog would never have happened and the people who write it wouldn’t be where they are today. So we’ll leave you be as you continue to pursue your hopes and dreams and we’ll get to work on the next installment of A Mind of Its Own. Adios amigos…

You’re Crashing, But You’re No Wave…

Whilst there are those of us who look at dreams from a spiritual perspective the team here tend to look at them from the Psychological aspect. We thought since everyone dreams, despite the fact that over 80% of people don’t remember dreaming or more than 5% of their dreams, that we throw on a nightcap and sleeping gown to explore the dream state and look at the psychology behind them. If we have time we might get some spiritual mumbo jumbo for everyone to have a look at, you know to give you both sides of the proverbial coin. Clearly we’ve landed on the psychological side of the coin having watched it spin through the air for several years. Yes there are still things that science can’t explain but for most things there is a logical explanation available.

For the rest though there is always the whack job conspiracy theorist to help brighten up our days. Forward to dreamland we march. We would have liked to do an immersion study into Dreams however someone had to stay awake in order to write this blog for you. A screen full of Zzzz’s whilst looking quite interesting isn’t a very good read, last time we checked. So where does one start a dream blog and what is the appropriate response when someone asks you to interpret their dreams? Hopefully we’ll be able to answer that for you and more in the coming paragraphs. And if not well at least we’ve managed to somewhat entertain you for a couple of minutes with or unique blend of silly fact driven dribble.

Well firstly they say you learn something new everyday and if you haven’t for the day we’ll share with you what we just learnt. The study of dreams, more importantly the scientific study of dreams has its own name. Yep it’s got a scientific term, Oneirology (pronounced On-ear-ology, well at least that’s what the lady on youtube sounded like) which, yeah means the scientific study of dreams. So if you didn’t already know that you now do and potentially learnt something new for the day. Don’t say we’ve never taught you anything here at A Mind of Its Own. After all, sharing is caring as they say and we are all about educating our readers and promoting discussion of our topics. What is knowledge they say? That’s right its power!

According to reputable online forum Psychology Today, the most important scientific findings about dreams can be summarized into 9 key points. They could have made it an even number it would of looked a little tidier. Before we go into those though maybe we should answer the main question burning in our little brains. What is a dream? Well according to the not so reputable website where a lot of university students go to get their information these days. Wikipedia. A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Why we dream is a little harder to explain and is not yet fully understood from a scientific standpoint. But it hasn’t stopped the shrinks around the globe coming up with theories around dreams and we’ll cover some of these off a little later.

The catalyst for the blog was a conversation with one of our close friends who has had some weird dreams and well the team being who they are the research light bulb sparked and we thought we’d try and help everyone understand why they dream and how dreams happen, why we dream what we dream. So the team will embark on a journey through the synapses to understand the how, what, where and why of it all. After all the whole premise of this here blog to answer questions and create conversation isn’t? Or are we just writing for the fun of it and people have slowly started to join in and read the rubbish that gets post each week while they are sitting on the can voiding their bowels?

A little graphic from the writers but we are trying to paint a picture here and speaking of pictures did you know that not everyone dreams in colour? Studies have found that people who predominantly grew up watching black and white TV tend to dream in black white, what colours they do see are said to represent feelings. Those who grew up in the 21st century tend to dream in colour and rarely have black and white dreams or colours that represent feelings. Speaking of thoughts and feelings it is believed and scientists are working on proving it that you dream when your thoughts and memories are being reorganised. You also tend to express your hidden desires when you dream. Your mental schema is also modified when you dream. Most dreams we witness things happening through visual or auditory perception.

And yeah someone asked the question Do Blind people dream? Silly of course they do, their dreams are more auditory than visual and they images they “see” have been described as a blur or non-existant or even created from their memories that have been built with touch and sound. It made us wonder whether someone could input images into a blind person minds and they would then know what a lot of things look like and be able to experience and see colours for the first time. Science has no doubt had a few things in the pipeline for years, heck he CIA used to experiment with mind altering drugs in the 70’s. It’s not a far leap to think they may have started experiments to make the blind see and experience in their dreams.

For those of you who wish to understand the meaning of your dreams well that’s dependant on what you link your dream images to and how you wish to interpret them altogether. There is no science behind how to interpret your dreams it is purely up to the individual to work out their own dreams. The surprising fact that has been scientifically proven is that the average person spends around six whole years of their lives dreaming, on average that’s two hours per night. Early studies led to the belief that we only dream during the earliest phases of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. However, more recent studies have shown that we dream through all the various sleep phases. When it comes to remembering our dreams though that’s where the lightest REM phase comes into play. According to scientists anyway and we tend to trust those guys given they do these studies for a living.

The anatomy of the sleep cycle is actually quite interesting and helps to explain why we remember dreams during the various phases of REM and NREM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement). Over the course of the night the body goes through the five stages of sleep 4-6 times spending an average of 90 minutes in each stage. As we spend so much of our lives sleeping it’s no wonder that we dream and dream often. It’s our dreams that can inspire others or lead us to individual greatness. They say dream big, or to go big or go home and well we have to agree with them. Whilst dreams are often our subconscious coming through and pulling with it the things we want and need in our lives.

Ok now that we know sleep is broken down into 5 phases or four phases depending on which school of thought you come from, we now know we dream throughout those 5 or 4 phases. We can now take a deeper look into the breakdown and psychology of our dreams. Yes we’ll try to answer the questions for you as to whether your dreams are a presentation of the future, past of present, our just our hopes and dreams playing out in the dreamstate? Hopefully we can answer that for you in the next couple of paragraphs before you fall asleep and start dreaming about the day we write a blog that keeps you awake and doesn’t bore you to sleep. We are kidding we know you can’t stop once you pick up our blog each week.

Ok so we thought the best way to do this would be to pick out some facts that have been scientifically proven, queue the anti-vaxxers, flat earthers and conspiracy theorists to argue the point just because they can and they will. They are a little like a mosquito flying around your room when you are trying to sleep. Ok, we kid, we kid they are ok and they are entitled to their opinions, even if they go against science. So some of this we have covered already above and some of it is new to us but we thought we’d give you some of the psychological effects and reasons behind our dreams. We picked thirteen to be annoying and because the boss keeps telling us that everything has to be an even number and it’s annoying us.

1. In Our Dreams, We Only See Faces That We Know

When you first hear this fact, you might think it surely doesn’t sound right… But in our dreams, the faces we see are faces that we know! Experts insist that our brains cannot invent new faces to feature in our dreams. This means that any face we see in our dreams is one we’ve seen before. This doesn’t mean that you personally know that person. Since most of us encounter “extras” in our dreams, this information may come as a surprise.

However, consider that we constantly encounter faces that we don’t necessarily log as important. So, a newsreader on a TV segment and a stranger on your commute to work can feature in your later dreams, and we may not recognise them as people we’ve already seen.

Most of the major players in our dreams are likely to be people we know quite well, or at least used to know. In some cases, our brains can also present a strange hybrid of people we know and those we don’t. For example, you might believe you’re interacting with an old friend in a dream, and their personality may fit perfectly. However, when you wake up you, might suddenly notice that they were “played” by a person with a different face, sometimes someone you’ve only encountered in passing.

2. Not Everybody Dreams In Colour

Surprisingly, not everyone dreams in color. In fact, a full 12% of sighted people will dream in black and white. Studies which were conducted from 1915 to the 1950’s supported that a majority of dreams had been in black and white. However, after the 1960’s the numbers did shift over to color. Further, the number of people who dream in black and white is dropping as the years’ pass. Research suggests that this could be linked to the fact that this was around the time that TV switched from black and white to color, so there may be a correlation.

3. Your Mind Is More Active During a Dream Than When You’re Awake

Most of us associate the idea of sleep with a slowing down of the mind and body. This makes sense, given that being asleep is all about resting, recharging and getting ready for a new day. Plus, a good sleep is profoundly relaxing and refreshing, giving you the impression you’re your brain has been working more slowly. However, don’t assume that your mind is less active during dreams. In fact, it’s more active then than it is when you’re awake! You can see this in the concrete data provided by sleep studies that track electrical activity in the brain. The above fact may not make sense to you at first glance, but it has a lot to do with the variety and significance of waking life. This appears to be because your brain is busy learning from what you did over the preceding hours, processing problems that remain, and making sense of everything you’ve seen and felt during the day. Some research hints that the brain is even more active during sleep when you’ve had a novel experience in the last 24 hours, or when you’ve been through a major change of some sort, whether positive or negative.

4. Animals Dream Too

Have you ever noticed that when your pet is asleep, they sometimes make noises, or twitch their paws as though they are running? This is because animals also dream. Studies have been conducted which showed that when animals are in the REM stage of sleep, they all show the same brain waves as we do when we are dreaming. The studies have included chimps, dolphins, dogs, and cats. It’s fair to speculate that most mammals (at the very least) dream, just like we do. This means that they can also be unsettled by their experiences of dreams. So, keep an eye on your pet after sleep to make sure they aren’t feeling out of sorts after a nightmare. We can all relate to that feeling of discomfort and disorientation after a dream!

5. Blind People Can Also Dream

It’s not only people who can see that can dream. Blind people can also dream. Those who had become blind after birth can still see in their dreams, however, those who have been born blind cannot see in their dreams. Those who cannot see in their dreams, still experience dreams in a different way: through smell, sound, touch and other senses.

6. Dreams Speak Through Our Subconscious

Now, if you’re like most people, you’ve probably wondered “What do dreams mean when you dream about someone specific?”. As mentioned at the outset, there’s still a prominent school of thought according to which dreaming of someone or something can tell you something useful about how you feel, and about what you want from life. So, what does it mean when you dream of someone repeatedly? Psychological facts about dreams of someone suggest that it can indicate a range of things. In some cases, you repeatedly dream about someone because you care a lot about them and have some kind of unresolved issues with them. This could be a romantic interest, or it could be about losing touch with an old friend. It could just as easily indicate an ongoing conflict under the surface of your dynamic with a family member.

7. Dreams Are Often Forgotten

Everyone has dreams when they sleep, it’s just that a lot of us don’t remember them when we wake up. It is simply not easy to hold onto the bulk of the content of your dreams. Up to 60% of people do not remember their dreams at all, especially after the first 5 minutes of waking up. In addition, for the average person, 90% of the details from dreams have vanished within a mere ten minutes. This means you can really only remember a fraction of your dreams. The exception to this is if something ways you during the rapid eye movement stage of your dreams (i.e. REM sleep). When this happens, you’re typically more capable of recalling dream information. The downside is that you will also feel startled, and will miss out on one of the most important, healing parts of the sleep process. Of course, dreams are also more likely to stick with you if they repeat or have emotional resonance. However, if you have a general interest in remembering dreams, try keeping a notepad by your bed and noting down an outline as soon as you wake. This means you can regularly come back to your dreams and see if you notice overlapping themes or can figure out any potential messages from your subconscious mind.

8. Sleep Paralysis

Sleep paralysis is where you have a temporary inability to move or speak. This can occur either when you are waking up or when you are falling asleep. Most people will experience sleep paralysis once or twice in their life, whilst others can experience it more regularly.

Sleep paralysis does not feel like you are in a dream, it feels real. Some people have said that during their experience, they feel a sensation that someone or something is in the room with them. Sleep Paralysis normally lasts from a few seconds to several minutes.

9. Some Dreams Could Be Premonitions

There have been some cases where people have claimed to have dreamt things that turned out to actually happen later. Some say it is coincidence, while others say they can see the future and experience premonitions. The cases recorded include: Abraham Lincoln dreaming of his assassination, many victims of the 9/11 had dreams warning them, and there have also been 19 verified precognitive dreams about the Titanic, to name a few.

10. You Can Act Out Your Dreams When Sleepwalking (And Worse!)

Sleepwalking is known as an extreme form of REM sleep disorder. For some, sleepwalking can be mild and for others, more serious. Some cases could be where you walk around your room or talk to others, whilst sleeping. However, there have been cases where people have left their homes, or drawn gorgeous paintings that they cannot paint when they are awake.

11. Dreams Recharge Your Creativity

You may have thought that apart from any subconscious messages they contain, dreams must be quite useless. That’s not so much the case. They can actually improve your performance in seemingly unrelated areas of your everyday life. According to research reported by the American Psychological Society on the psychology of dreams, they work wonders for your creative faculties in particular. If you’re an artist, you might have already spotted this, but the type of creativity we’re talking about here also applies to things like creative problem-solving. Apparently, this is because the process of dreaming is a lot like using your imagination to be creative. When your brain analyses and tackles problems during your sleep, it’s activity parallels that witnessed when you’re being creative in waking life. This means that no matter what your preferred artistic mode of expression might be, you’re likely to be better at it after a night of vivid dreaming. And, as a bonus, you may find direct inspiration in your dreams. For example, if you dream about a fantastical scenario, go through a challenging experience or revisit a moving aspect of your past, this can help you “tune into” the types of intense emotions that boost creative output.

12. Men And Women Dream Differently

When women dream there are normally an almost equal amount of both men and women that are involved in their dreams. However, for men, around 70% of the people in their dreams are other men. As well as this, men have been known to have more aggressive dreams than women too. Women also tend to have slightly longer dreams.

13. 50% Of Dreams Are Negative

Research has found that most dreams include negative emotions. 50% of all dreams are normally negative. In a study that was conducted, the common emotions that people experienced during their dreams were sadness, anger, fear, and anxiety.

So we aren’t too sure as to whether we answered any questions or all questions or just wasted a lot of our time and your time this week as we dreamed away 5 pages of what would no doubt be some of the most boring material we have come up with to date. The adventure into dreamland wasn’t as exciting as we had hoped it was even a little mind numbing and boring to us which is probably why it took so long to write and edit. That and we’ve actually been busy at the job that pays the bills so we thought rather than getting sacked and sitting around coffee shops all day writing books and blogs we should make some actual money and stop eating two minute noodles. Ok to be the struggling writer when you have nothing to actually do but it’s not ok when you have a job that pays you quite well.

Anyway that’s enough from us for another week, we’ll leave you in peace and wish you a fond farewell until the next piece of literary genius hits your inbox and dances across your screen like a burlesque dancer at a show on a friday night in northern siberia. Like always we’ll love you and leave you, thanks for being the ever faithful fans and supporting us like you have from day one on this amazing journey into the blogosphere. Yeah we just dropped blogosphere after saying we never would. And on that note we’ve been A Mind of Its Own and it’s been our pleasure have a good day or night wherever you may be.

Timberwolves at New Jersey…

It’s funny how people will come in and out of your life. They drift from one Dunbar number to next and often back and forth between the various different social groups in your life. If you are wondering what we are talking about you’ll need to go back to last weeks post and have a read. But it does help us lead into this weeks A Mind of Its Own, yep plug an old piece and get a segway into this weeks blog well played by us. Anyway, we used to have a mate and this week’s blog goes out to him. Yep we had a mate just one! I’d say he sat most of the time in between our clan and tribe level on the Dunbar matrix. He was never a really good close mate that we’d confide in but someone that we hang out with on regular occasion when we were younger.

We’ll call him Abe because it was the worst name we could come up with and he was often a bit of a knob to people in his younger immature years but who wasn’t right? Abe had this argument he’d bring up whenever he’d had a couple of beers and was well on his way to being obnoxious and annoying. The argument we’ve presented before but we’ve never really gone into detail and explained the why or how. So the premise of the argument is that it’s not a sport unless it involves a ball. Over the years it has provided hours of fun and conversation around the pub, club or bar as people try to disprove the theory that it’s not a sport unless it involves a ball.

Already the cogs are ticking away in your head as you think about so called ‘sports’ that don’t involve a ball. It’s at this point that obnoxious Abe would start shooting down peoples suggestions of sports left, right and centre. Like a gunslinger from the wild west he was first to draw and quick to blow a hole in his challengers arguments no matter how good a point they made that their sport was indeed a sport. It’s usually a lot of the individual sports that were the first to be shot down in flames. From there things progressed to some team based sports that even as sensible human beings we struggled to comprehend how they had become sports. But if it can be commercialised you can guarantee our allies in the US of A will have turned it into a money making scheme.

According to the definition, A sport is an activity that is competitive and athletic, and which requires some particular set of skills or physical abilities to be carried out. But good old Abe could never be swayed on his sports stance. The man even had a book planned but quickly gave up on the idea when he realised the title “Balls and All” was already taken and that he’d actually have to write it himself.

So what’s a sport, well the following is a list of some sports according to Abe:

  • Baseball
  • Basketball
  • Volleyball
  • Dodgeball
  • Football (Soccer, Gridiron, AFL, Rugby Union, Rugby League)
  • Tennis (Including Table)
  • Quidditch
  • Lawn Bowls
  • Lacrosse
  • Polo
  • Field Hockey
  • Bowling
  • Billiards
  • Cricket

The list goes on and there are so many derivatives of sports that we could literally list pages upon pages of them. But we aren’t here to talk about what is a sport we want to focus on what isn’t. If it doesn’t involve a ball it’s not a sport, plain and simple. What’s that athletics is a sport? No sorry it isn’t athletics is a bunch of life skills we all need and here is why. In the wild you need to be able to run away from big game so running is not a sport. Huddles is not a sport, when you are running away from the police you need to be able to leap over fences without stopping and high jump well that’s just even bigger fences. Javelin you say, nope another life skills that’s just hunting skills. Discus is just a heavy frisby, the only two athletics events that are actual sports are shot put and hammer throw. Yes the hammer is a ball on a chain a little like paddle tennis in your backyard.

Swimming is also not a sport and the most easy to argue. If you don’t swim you drown! It’s really a no brainer. Most water sports fall into the it’s not a sport category and can be classified as recreation activities. That includes synchronised swimming, diving, fishing, surfing, water skiing, wakeboarding or water pistol fights. Boxing, MMA, wrestling and any of the martial arts are not sports they are additional survival skills you may one day need when and if the zombie apocalypse comes or your country is invaded. Horse racing, motor racing and boat racing are not sports either they are activities, recreational or otherwise and none of them involve a ball unless its car soccer that’s a sport. The prevalent rise of gaming is also another recreational activity that is not a sport even if you are playing a sport on the screen.

We then move on to all the adventure sports like rock climbing, base jumping, hang gliding, street luge, white water rafting or kayaking, snowboarding, skiing, mountain biking, kite surfing and anything else that has a high likelihood of injury are all not sports. Rock climbing like tree climbing is something you did when you were a kid, cliff diving with or without a parachute is just silly. Laying on a skateboard and flying down a hill is also not a sport and something you did when you were 12 years old. The rest all just fall into recreational activities or modes of transportation.

Then there are those sports that just become questionable like hockey, played on the field it’s a sport, on ice the argument becomes a little dodgy as it’s a puck and not a ball however many a bar brawl has almost started over this one and apparently it is a sport because the ball was originally used however some genius came up with the idea to slice it in half as it travelled better over the ice. Over the years the ball was just flattened down into the puck we now know. So Abe’s argument on this one is that it’s just a squashed ball. Badminton is another questionable sport but again it’s a ball shaped object with wings a little like the golden snitch from the Harry Potter invented game of Quidditch, which has geeks running around on broomsticks across ovals all around the globe.

Anything that requires firing a weapon that was once used to kill other humans can not be classified as a sport on the premise that if it kills it’s not a sport. Archery, shooting, ice skating are all hunting skills and help put food on the fire when the world goes to shit or you just don’t have time to make it to Coles or Woolworths. Like fishing is not a sport, if you don’t catch a fish you don’t eat. What’s the saying ‘Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime’ It’s a part of the survival skill set that we all need to have in our lives. Heck you can combine it with as many other activities as you like and it still doesn’t make it a sport, yeah we are calling you out Biathlon, skiing and shooting has been done to hunt and kill in snow covered countries for centuries that doesn’t make it sport.

Dancing is something that you do in nightclub and therefore is not a sport even when you add ribbons or some batons and call it rhythmic gymnastics. Even when you throw in a pole and the man or woman does some acrobatic stuff on the pole and gets paid money to do so, it’s not a sport despite the guy having balls. And there’s another group of activities that aren’t sports. Gymnastics isn’t a sport either, except for that one floor event where they throw the bowling ball around that’s a sport. The balance beam, rings, uneven bars, trampoline and other floor events are all things that belong in a circus or a children’s jungle gym. Some of those skills could be used for survival though. Another so called sport to rise over the past decade is CrossFit and even the smart people here at A Mind of Its Own question whether that’s a sport.

We’ve decided that CrossFit is not a sport unless there is a medicine ball carrying event that is the only portion of this so called sport that is actually a sport. The rest is a bunch of fitness fanatics jumping over boxes, lifting weights, climbing ropes and doing all the things the military seem to do. To take it one step further it’s not a sport but do people try and classify bodybuilding as a sport? We know there is a lot of doping in professional sports but professional modeling competitions where you need to look like a triangle seems to have more Anabolic Steroids than the Bombers medical unit before James Hird was sacked. It’s a peptide party and only Essendon are invited but the coach didn’t know a thing about it… Hmm we think not!

As you can see there is an argument that can go with every example and if we wanted to we could take up a lot more of your time with what isn’t a sport but we’ve provided you with some of Abe’s best examples of what isn’t a sport. The man has an argument or come back for every example of a sport that he would have declassified from being a sport and the whole Idea started over a beer or two which funnily enough has now become part of a sport that has its own world championships. And yes ladies and gentlemen it’s a sport, Beer Pong the sport in which drunk men and women throw, you guessed it a ball into plastic red cups to make the other team get drunker and drunker. Run out of cups on the table and you lose. It’s a simple sport but nevertheless it is a sport.

Abe has been arguing for at least the last decade and no doubt has started a campaign or two for the rights of real sports. The problem though with Abe’s argument is that a lot of real sports are starting to die. With our interconnected world more and more children are staying inside and playing video games or chatting away to friends on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or any other online instant messaging system available. Heck even text messages are instantaneous these days unless you are on network Vodafone oh noooo. But in all seriousness, where did the kids go that had great imaginations and would play outside for hours on end until they were called inside for dinner. Oh that’s right the world changed and creeps roam the streets praying on women and small children like the monsters of myths, legends and fairytales.

So no matter where you fall on the great is it a sport debate, just remember the words of Abe the great. If it doesn’t have a ball it’s not a sport, if you can drive it, ride it or kill with it, it’s not a sport. The great sport debate will rage on throughout drinking holes around the globe for years to come. The Future of sports is unknown but we’ll no doubt see more and more technology involved in our favourite sports. From drones for viewing to GPS and heat mapping of players movements around the sporting field to no doubt robots taking the place of humans at some point in time throughout the future. It’s a scary new world for sports, those with balls anyways.

Yet another chapter to be filed away in the A Mind of Its Own chronicles. As the sun dips beyond the horizon on another day we’ll close this blog by saying the following. If you are a professional athlete and have taken offense to this because you don’t have a ball in your sport, take it up with Abe you can find him at the Raiders club in Canberra. The gungahlin one just FYI, for those looking to spark up the great debate over a beer or two and a slap on the pokies. I hear he’s a big fan of Where’s the Gold these days! On that note and the no doubt several calls we may get from Abe we’ll say goodbye and wish you all a pleasant week wherever you may be in this wonderful world.

Oh and if something doesn’t make sense there is a good chance Google can answer it for you, it’s helped us to research a lot of the things we write about here.

She Wants My Money…

Another week and another dollar into the taxman’s pocket. Speaking of tax it’s that time of year where we look at what the government took from our pays shudder a little, palm our faces and start a return in which they no longer make it easy for you to claim the minimum amounts back without receipts. And so the saying “you’ve got to spend money to make money” becomes true because if you want a good return you need to have some things you can claim back. The team here are just hoping to get a return and not a bill this year…

Speaking of taxes the world has gone a little mad lately with equality taxes in the business world. As always we’ll provide you with some examples and to be honest we are not for or against them but it did get the old rusty cogs in the noggin beginning to turn as we thought about the future ramifications that movements like this on the small businesses level could have and furthermore is it actually helping or just doing more damage to society and the future generations who will need to attempt to fix any damage that is done.

Where to start, well let’s just put it out there, we are all for equality and believe that everyone should be treated equal. It would certainly make the world a better place for everyone. So when we take matters into our own hands and decide that we are going to put in places taxes or rules against one portion of society it doesn’t make us any better than the group that was originally being suppressed and so the vicious cycle continues over and over never to be settled. Society just hasn’t learnt and perhaps it’s human nature for one group to rise up and hold another down.

A cafe in Melbourne recently started charging men more for their coffees in an attempt to bridge the wage gap between men and women. Whilst we don’t have an issue with this and are quite happy to be charged an extra 50 cents to a dollar as long as the coffee is good that is. You can start to see that there would be those who would have an issue with it and surprisingly it wasn’t just men who had an issue with it. Women were against this particularly when getting a coffee with there husband before work or during the day. The extra charge to there bill was unexpected and when explained to them it was essentially a “man tax” there were a few deeper conversations had about the total of their bill.

Another example was a festival company in the US who decided to charge white people more for their tickets. Essentially it was a white person tax. Several African American performers spoke out against this sighting it as “racist” and threatening to boycott the festival altogether unless they made ticket pricing the same and equal for everyone. Safe to say the event organisers are seriously looking at a change of heart around the “White Man Tax” but for the time being if you are white or have a white persons name you will have to pay an extra $100 dollars on top of the already expensive $300 ticket price for the two day festival. Again we question the sanity around this decision and why you would want to insight further divide the community.

Whilst we support movements, ideologies, religious views as long as they are not against gay marriage or the community and peoples opinions. As we’ve stated before though opinions are like arseholes everyone has one, some people two. Freedom of speech is encouraged, ranting on social media is encouraged, heck standing in the street holding a sign is even encouraged but what’s not encouraged is people thinking their opinion is more important and valuable than others. That’s not showing equality or being equal with your fellow human beings. It raises more questions than we actually have answers for at this point in time. What it is doing, is pitting women against women, man against man, same sex partners against same sex partners, communities against communities and so on and so forth.

As we scoured the internet for further information and articles on equality, gender pay gaps, racial equality, religious equality, hell any equality we could find we did come across several articles questioning whether we were going too far the other way. One article sighted that we are now being unequal towards stay at home mothers. Or women who leave the workforce to have children. Unfortunately women are still the only ones able to give birth and yet there is a stigma around women who are on benefits choosing to stay at home and look after the child or children. The stigma then tells us that those mothers then have further children to keep those benefits coming and often find skeezy men who hang on their coat tails for said benefits.

Now before anyone gets upset this all came from an article written by a woman, yes a woman and titled ‘Has Feminism Gone Too Far? Or Will We No longer have a place for Mothers in Society?’ by Olga Levancuka. While Feminism is the fight for women’s equal rights, the article questions whether this has backfired as much as it has in the last decade. To quote the article, the women in question are those who want to work, and don’t mind to be equal…but once they decide to have children, they just want to be a stay at home mum. Not the most respected respected task among the career minded professionals, or amidst the men who are tired of being the workhorse for the preservation of their offspring and expectations of their not so distant future where the kids fly the nest and they are left with neurotic, controlling women who have lost their positions of strength with the children gone.

Often what used to be considered caring rather than controlling is now directed at their husbands. Men, given that they have finances coming in, are still in control, often feel free and do divorce the women who fail to become anything else but mothers. Alas, their maternal services not only are no longer required, they are also suffocating to the male who wants to feel manly and respected. Instead their balls are constantly grinded and are blamed for related and unrelated misfortunes to the mother in question. As a result, many men or sons of such men, stay further and further away from the desire to marry. As for women? Women stay further and further away from the perspective of being married and with children.

Is there something, perhaps, the feminists or people fighting for women’s equal rights neglected? Perhaps the right to be a mother? Or is the situation worse for the women who want to be equal and have kids? In a sense that men no longer treat them with a required gentleness and only see them as a restricting harness for their future life? It is no longer a secret that the UK’s demographic would be in shatters just as Japan, Italy and other countries, if not for their high birth rate among their immigrant community. The majority of which are either on benefits or their women do not have as many rights? Or perhaps they are not even interested in equal rights, given they do just want to be a stay at home mums and they expect, yes expect for men to be a provider and always a provider.

Meanwhile more men use the excuse of feeling pressure that she just wants marriage and children, should they have a desire to break up. The article further sights that women are scared to be genuine about their motives in the relationship. It’s not they just need a male for love and a relationship. Biologically women are programmed to give birth. Though lately, it seems to be a punishable desire. While on one side, the campaign for women’s rights is flourishing, women, on the other side are drowning in confidence issues. If they don’t get married and have children by 38, the apparent age of desperation, has been pushed so much further, there must be something wrong with them.

Just while the feminists were fighting for equal rights, men had found an opportunity to fight for their freedom. Why commit when you can have your cake and eat it too? We reached out to the author of the article for a comment, she has yet to respond to the team but reading through some of the feedback on the post their was both positive and negative feedback from the majority of female respondents. Another article in the Irish Times published on international women’s day by yet another woman and titled ‘Feminism has become obsessed with victimhood’ the articles author goes on to speak about how Feminism has turned inward and she feels it is disempowering women because so much of it is speaking about what women can’t do as opposed to what they can do and what they have achieved over the past decade.

It seems that in the last decade the push for Gender equality has out shadowed and in some cases overtaken the push for equality in core areas of basic human rights. Religion still often shadows over gay rights. War crimes and atrocities shadow over the basic needs for food and water. And at the core of all of this we are still battling with each other equality but pushing one side of the equation down while the other rises up and takes the place of the oppressor rather than suppressed. But why?, Do we stop and question that at all? Do we stop and ask ourselves why we are trying to swing equality back the other way rather than wiping the slate and building a foundation on equal footing, together, men, women and children.

So when we look at adding taxes that single out one demographic of our community we are no better than those who have come before us and created inequality in the first place. It made the team scour the internet in the search for further evidence that it’s a need of people within society to create inequality. A thought provoking paper written in 2017 by three Yale scientists argued that is not inequality in life that really bothers us, but unfairness. According to the paper over 10,000 papers have been written around “inequality aversion”, people seemingly have a natural aversion to inequality and there are plenty of laboratory studies to back it up. In said laboratory studies when people are asked or subjects as they are often referred to in studies divide resources among unrelated individuals, they tend to divide them equally.

If a previous situation has led to a pre-existing inequality, people will divide future resources unequally in order to correct or minimise the inequality between others. It’s seen as a moral good when resources are divided equally and often express anger towards those who benefit from unequal distributors. Even studies done with children showed they would rather throw out additional items than have them distributed unequally amongst the other children even if the other children would never find out about the unequal distribution. So if kids and work out the whole equality thing why can’t adults and why can’t we bring the laboratory studies into real world application.

A recent study by Norton and Ariely received a lot of media attention that people underestimated both the amount of inequality in society and prefer a more egalitarian society to the one they think they live in. The summaries were accurate, all participants in these studies did prefer more equality than the current situation. The results also suggest that they were not particularly worried about large inequalities. Subjects claimed that in a perfect society, individuals in the top 20% should have three times as much wealth as individuals in the bottom 20%. When given a forced choice between equal and unequal distribution of wealth and told they would randomly be assigned from the richest to the poorest group, over half of the subjects explicitly rejected the option of equal distribution.

So the data would suggest that when it comes to real-world distributions of wealth, people have a preference for a certain amount of inequality. This preference materialised in a study conducted in 16 other countries across people from both the left and right sides of the political spectrum. So how do you go about reconciling the studies with the real world. One politician tried that by promising to close the wage gap altogether not just between men and women but between on all sectors and roles by bringing everyone down or put to around the $70K regardless of the role you perform or how many years you went to university to obtain a degree to doctors. We could just ensure that everyone doing the same job is paid the exact same regardless of age, sex, race, religion etc.

Perhaps in our generation we will never see true equal rights across around the globe nor will we see equal pay but we are working towards it and we are working at ensuring a brighter future for everyone but that will take everyone and if we are too busy squabbling rather than trying to help each other there is a certainty, we will never achieve any equality whether it be gender equality, wage equality, age equality, you name it we’ll not see it unless we work together. But until we can put the past aside we’ll continue to go around and around in the vicious circle we are currently caught in where one group rises and pushes another down so they feel what the other has almost like a vicious revenge.

So we’ll close the door on yet another chapter that certainly took on a mind of its own as we looked at taxes, implementation of taxes against certain groups within society and then went on to discuss equality or lack there of in our society and try to explain why it happens. Unfortunately we don’t think we accomplished anything we set out to do but hey it isn’t the first time and probably won’t be the last time. So as we bid you another farewell all we ask is that you be a decent human and as the kids say, you do you as it seems to be the thing to do lately for all people in this world. So without further adieu adios amigos until next week…

Boys On The Docks…

Welcome back, we are halfway through the year and on track to deliver you another exciting piece of writing. We think we’ve finally found the answer to why those Mexicans south of the border are officially the worst. Aside from being the home of great coffee, Australian Football and Australia’s underbelly of crime. So slowly you are starting to get a picture of why Victorians are the worst Australians. We say that in jest having lived there for a short period of time however and it would go against all our morales to tar everyone who lives down there with the same brush but we just can’t escape the evidence mounting up against the southern state of Australia.

You know by now the team here like to read and we like to be as up to date on recent events as possible. We are big fans of free press and appreciate a good investigative journalist article. Hence why when we were doing a quick social media scan an article on Vice caught our interest. The guys over at Vice have been doing some of the most hard hitting, insightful and explosive journalism for years now. They are the guys that will bring you the pieces that people don’t want to know about but will read and left wanting more at the end. So getting back to our mexican friends with a little help from the lovely folks at the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC). We were quite interested in a couple of reports written by the commission regarding waste water. You heard right wastewater and we bet you didn’t know they were testing your toilet water for drugs.

Might make you think twice about what you are putting in your body as well as what goes down your toilet. But then again if you are putting things into your body that aren’t really meant to go in their then you are obviously not too worried about what’s coming out of you and going into the sewers beneath our cities. So let’s backtrack as the sampling of sewer water has us intrigued and we wonder how long it’s been going on right under our noses or in this case our arses. And just FYI they are only testing the water not your poo. Why don’t we start from the beginning because after all every story needs a beginning, middle and end. We have the end, that’s the toilet water that contains all your drug infested urine and feces but where did it all begin? And no we aren’t talking about the jungles of Colombia or Peru, or a caravan in some trailer park with a pill press or myth lab in it.

We are talking about the waste water testing scheme. Starting in 2017 the scheme tests wastewater. The studies and results are shared and sponsored by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission. Now in it’s 7th iteration the reports ran twice a year provide ACIC with a wide range of information regarding the drugs and alcohol being consumed and used throughout Australia. The program provides statistically valid datasets of drug use and distribution patterns across a large number of sites in capital cities and regional Australia, which are being used to build a comprehensive and increasingly detailed picture of national drug consumption. That last sentence was directly lifted from the ACIC CEO’s forward in the report. The aim of the reports and the data obtained is for ACIC to explore how they can use the data in the long run to combat the war on drugs.

What statistics are pertinent to the average everyday joe blow aussie you ask? Well considering the report covers over 54% of the nation, roughly some 12.6 million Australians, wastewater has been sampled. Spare a thought for the poor men and women who had to stick a vial in the shit infested wastewater to get a sample. That’s a job I don’t think we would want but someone has to do it. The statistics will surprise you, well we think they will surprise you, we were certainly surprised by some of the statistics. Surprised but not shocked because let’s be honest the war on drugs is somewhat of a failing. Governments try to fight the cartels and syndicates across the globe but at the end of the day money speaks to those in power and corruption riddles every government from the lowest levels right through to the top.

Here in Australia whilst we are somewhat lucky to be so isolated from the rest of the world, we also have our friends in the five eyes community to help us fight the war on drugs. From our customs and border protection teams to our navy patrolling the waters in which we are surrounded right through the police working at the street level working to stop the spread of drugs. We guess the teams at ACIC are also involved now with their shit water samples and universities who test said samples to see what Australians are shoving into their bodies on a daily basis.

There are 25 countries involved in sharing data from the wastewater and well guess what ladies and gentleman our fine land ranks quite high on the list despite our isolation from the main continents. When it comes to beating everyone we may as well be last because like Ricky Bobby said, “If you’re not first, you are last” and well ladies and gentlemen we only come in 2nd behind the US for combined use of stimulants behind the United States and well they are on the doorstep of Mexico who we all know love some feed and cocaine so they should be first. So what’s our excuse oh and if you wanted to know our number most used stimulant of choice around the country after alcohol and tobacco which we all know are both legal is Methylamphetamine.

After Meth its cocaine followed by MDMA so really that isolation isn’t helping us but keep in mind we are number out of the 25 participating nations, most of which are European and Canada. So if you included South America and Asia we may not rank as highly but we still take a lot of drugs whether that started out as band aid solution for people and morphed into a full blown addiction or you got caught up in the wrong crowd. Or you just do them recreationally when you are out and about or to relax from time to time, the long and short of it not is that your toilet water is now being tested and given the scientific advancements of the last 5 years it won’t be long till they can track it right to your toilet and the arse that drug residue came from.

Looking at the states it safe to say that our friends in NSW, Sydney in particular are paid too much as they seem to be doing the most Cocaine, while South Australia took out the Methylamphetamine award,Tasmania does the most MDMA, Northern Territory does the most MDA, the dirty mexicans aka Victoria has the highest consumption of Heroin, Tasmania make the list for a second time with the highest consumption of Oxycodone. The banana benders and South Australians share a love of Fentanyl. Northern Territory gets a second hit with it’s people consuming 5-7 cigarettes on average a day and if you are looking for who consumes the most booze stay in the top end because those mother fuckers love a drink in both their capital city and regional areas. Sorry for swearing kids, out bad.

We aren’t done yet, the South Aussies love the Mephedrone better known as Bath salts, drone, M-CAT, White Magic and meow, meow. We had to google its a synthetic amphetamine. New South Wales and Queensland share a love of synthetic psychoactives in Methylone recording the highest averages. And once again the South Australians love a bong or joint or two recording yet another high in the intake of Cannabis. Safe to say that Australia is a country that likes to sample a variety of legal and illegal drugs. Our cities tend to do the majority of them but the regional areas aren’t too far behind.

What can we take away from this little insight into Australia’s drug intake? South Australians love drugs, Sydneysiders do a lot of blow and Queenslanders love prescription drugs and well the Northern territory loves cigarettes and drink. The two really go hand in hand and big tobacco would be loving life should the industry not be in a steady decline already due to killing hundreds of millions over the centuries just as alcohol has. The only difference is they are both now regulated and heavily taxed in most countries but particularly ours. One thing the report doesn’t go into detail about is how law enforcement and the government are going to combat the war on drugs with their new data and information.

We did get some sweet acronyms out of the report though and a new love for the people that come up with these acronyms. Like SCORE which is short for the Sewage Core Group Europe, the group of countries that wade through their peoples wastewater to come up with the results for the continent. Which are then shared with the other participating countries who also share their shit and piss results contaminated with drugs. The next report from the ACIC is due out in the 3rd quarter of the and we are hoping that it’s just as fascinating the last seven reports have been. Will there be an increase or a decline across the states in drug intake will South Australia still be a hotspot on the map for drugs and alcohol?

We’ll have to wait and see and no doubt we’ll keep you in the loop and our friends over at Vice will no doubt have something to say about it all. We are always interested in seeing what our fellow Australians are doing along with the rest of the world when it comes to all things illegal. We’ll watch on with baited breath as we wait for the results and research the next steps to the war on drugs. It’s been one of the more interesting topics we’ve looked into over the years since we started A Mind of Its Own and we are appreciative of the fact that the ladies and gentleman over at Vice brought the ACIC report to our attention. We hope they continue to enlighten us and provide the intelligence needed to combat the war on drugs.

Below is the link to the ACIC wastewater report as promised by us:

https://www.acic.gov.au/publications/intelligence-products/national-wastewater-drug-monitoring-program-report

If you are enjoying the blog please leave us a comment or hit us up on social media, we’re on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and yes we don’t mind shameless plug every now and then plus besides you our fine fans, how are we supposed to spread the word and grow the following for A Mind of Its Own and bring you more and more pieces that fill the void in your week and allow you to escape. Yes we know its not the same for everyone and that we each have our reasons for reading this fine blog but we know that for most of you it’s a little bit of a time waster and we enjoy writing it for you.

As we close on what has been yet another piece of time wasting, toilet reading material we’ll leave you to think about the ACIC report on your toilet water and the drugs. Until next week we’ll leave you with a riddle, what black and white and read all over? Yeah you know it, you know the answer and it’s a great place to start if you want to understand what’s going on in the world. There are plenty of things we are always unaware of until we read a paper or watch TV, most of the time the details are polished over. The world around us is full of education and answers you just have to open your eyes, ears and most of all your mind. So without further deliberation we wish you a warm week and you’ll no doubt hear from us again shortly.

Everybody Here Hates You…

A rant to end all rants… to every Chief Executive Officer, that’s ever collected a bonus bigger than $500,000 dollars we urge you to pay attention, not yourself (pun intended). This week we looked at the wonderful world of the high powered corporate CEO. The team went undercover as employees of an IT firm and attended several Business Updates and meetings to really gauge how much influence these million dollar men and women really have. Yeah most of them are men, how’s that for quality, that’s not a tick box that’s getting checked very often at the top of the corporate ladder when we are all about empowering the females of the world. Still often very much a boys club up at those lofty heights of the ivory towers. There is a reason the saying isn’t shit flows uphill.

Sitting in a CEO roadshow talk we wondered why he would feel the need to talk about buying a car with cash and not needing to test drive it or paying for first class tickets for his son to fly to Europe in a room full of people where some of them may never get to experience first class or pay cash for a car. Furthermore to discuss how much money the company has in the bank and yet put a hold on pay increases to the staff seemed a little careless and somewhat insensitive to us, but then again we were imposters in a room full of disgruntled employees who were too afraid to voice their frustrations and complaints to a man who seemingly managed to get paid his bonus every year. Was it fair no, did he work as hard as the staff who ensure the profitability and existence of the company probably not, did he deserve his bonus definitely not but did he get paid his bonus? You betcha he did as do all good CEO’s when it comes to getting their yearly bonus.

Nevermind the already large salary they take home every year for steering the ship in the right direction they’ve earned that inflated salary just like they’ve grown their massive ego over the years and that sense of entitlement. They’ve worked hard and kissed a lot of rings and arses to rise to their lofty position. Don’t forget the careers of others they brought down in flames over the years so they can rise above the proverbial ashes as the hero the company needs. These are all stereotypes of the narcissistic men and women who hold down the position of Chief Executive Officer. There are no doubt many, many more but are they at all true and how many people had to work under the reign of a narcissistic CEO? Well if you asked the writing staff here who have all held down a corporate gig at one point or another throughout their lives they’d say a lot of them are true and there would be plenty of disgruntled staff in the workforce across the country.

Hitting up our old friend Google we thought it best we did a little research into what it takes to climb the corporate ladder in most organisations (The legitimate way without knifing your fellow employees) and what makes a good CEO. We didn’t have to go far before we came across an article in the Harvard Business Review. Being one of the top business schools in the world it is surely a reputable and well written article one would assume. But as all good mothers teach us “Assumptions make an Ass out of you and me” so we were relieved when we began reading through the article that it was factual, well written, evidenced and therefore reputable. It pointed out there has been a longstanding link between narcissism and leadership as pointed out by both Schopenhauer and Freud and many others over the years. The article went on to point out that despite the fact that self-aware and humble individuals make better CEOs companies continue to hire Narcissists steer the ship.

With facts pointing out that narcissism has been on the rise for several decades now which to put it plainly means that the world we live in is becoming increasingly self-centred, overconfident and somewhat deluded. These increases seem to also appear more exacerbated among leaders since those in charge of judging leadership potential often mistake confidence for competence. Which raises the question of how much of the blame should be shouldered by society and how much is on the individual for creating this inflated sense of ego and narcissistic society we find ourselves in. According to the Harvard Business Review there is a natural tension between peoples selfish and prosocial drives. They then related humans to hedgehogs in winter. Apparently we need to get close to warm up bet when you get that many hedgehogs together it can become a little prickly.

The tension between our desire to get along with others and our desire to get ahead of them represents a fundamental conundrum of human affairs. The main role of leaders is to manage this tension within their teams. A lot of this is done through their authority, vision and higher sense of purpose. The idea is that a leader provides a meaningful mission to the group that erodes the individuals selfish instincts.Thereby everyone works towards a common goal in this instance it is obtaining the companies targets for the year. The more profitable the company is the more it should equate to cash in your back pocket. It never does though so don’t get too excited and start buying that new car or planing that extension on your house.

What you can take to the bank though is that when it comes to company performance there is more of a likelihood of you being retrenched than the CEO not taking home his bonus ending in six zeroes for the year. Speaking of retrenchment there will no doubt be some creative accounting to ensure that bonus as well. We’ve often questioned what goes through the minds of the men and women that run multi billion dollar companies. Do they empower their staff or do they micromanage down to the fine details? What we’ve found from our research is that you will often get a mix of the two. They will however have a stronger leaning one way or the other which will become apparent when they are either hovering over your desk or have one of their cronies doing it for them.

If walls could talk we are positive they’d have some stories for us that would almost be unbelievable but unfortunately with hollywood bring to light some of the worst things CEOs have done throughout history. Nothing is unbelievable these days nor is it a stretch of the imagination to see someone like Kevin Spacey playing the role of your current boss’s

Boss. Maybe we are being harsh towards the men and women that run the companies that keep the global economy churning over and over. Maybe it’s hollywood that jaded our view of the corporate high flyers. In one recent Gallup study conducted in the US of more than 7,000 employees over 50% had resigned from a job because of a bad boss or CEO.

Several articles pointed out that the pay gap between the CEO and the average employer has increased significantly since the late 1950’s often to the point where the CEO has taken home the average employees salary within the first couple of weeks of the new financial year. And they question why there staff think they are corrupt and greedy, so maybe it isn’t just Hollywood that’s painting them in a bad light. I mean when employees read things like that or start to question why they can’t get the tools or support they need to be successful in their roles and yet there’s money in the budget for the CEO to fly away on some junket.

Of course the more greedy the CEO the more the investors, stockholders and higher level executives get in their pockets but it doesn’t necessarily translate to employee satisfaction when the higher ups are lining their pockets and the employees who are doing all the hard work are struggling to make ends meet. On top of that the only thing they seem to care about is increasing revenue to increase their pocket change. It’s a world that most of us will never understand and more than likely never be a part of. Whilst we don’t like to judge what we do like to see is the little guy being given a go from time to time. We in every sense of the word a fan of the under dog. The typical Aussie battler, the guys and girls who actually make the Australian economy tick over those are the guys and girls we support.

So where did we land on the CEO’s of this world? Well we are sure that outside of the office most of them are good people. But in the confines of the work environment there might be some who are supportive and all about their staff and growing the company while the majority are quite possibly on the other end of the spectrum and only care about making cash and don’t really care about how it’s made or who they have to step over to make it. That’s part of the reason they make it to the top, they have ambition, drive and motivation to succeed and the narcissistic part of them will do whatever needs to be done to get to where they want to go, they won’t mind stomping on a few people as they climb the corporate ladder a few rungs at a time.

At the end of the day everyone is different and every CEO is no doubt different, there will be good ones and bad ones and no doubt some ugly ones. There will be the greedy ones, the needy ones and the downright dirty ones we guess you could say they are a lot like partners. You’ll like some, love some and absolutely loathe some but it’ll all depend on how much you enjoy your role and how much you are willing to take from the money men. It’ll be a slow climb but if you want it enough you’ll get there and that salary will increase over time. Maybe not to the level of your CEO but enough to have the future you want and deserve. After all the key to happiness is ensuring that you have just enough to get what you require. After all too much is waste and not enough leaves you scrabbling month to month to pay the bills and keep a roof over your head. It’s all about earning just enough to provide for your family and live comfortably.

If you ever get into a position of power remember this blog and remember to look after the little guy. Remember not to be a jerk and money hungry. Empower your people, give them what they need and be humble. You were once in there shoes and once had the exact same thoughts about your CEO so don’t be that guy or girl. Just be the person you wanted your CEO to be when you were working. Be the good guy or girl that people always knew you to be as you were coming up through the ranks. That’s all people will every ask of you, that you are true to yourself and true to them. After all as the saying goes, the truth will set you free and pretending to be something or someone you are not will not instill a lot of faith in your leadership abilities with those looking up at you from below the ivory tower.

They say money is a killer and literally things that lead to money have certainly killed a lot of poor souls over the years. As have the men and some women who have been in charge of large operations that run money or make money. Heck even leaders of countries can be viewed as CEOs who are often corrupt and megalomaniacal to the point of being needing to be retired early by some special forces team from a foreign nation or overthrown in an internal power struggle. The common thread here being that most people in power have a narcissistic streak within them that makes them feel like they are kings of the world.

So whether you want to stand at the top of the ladder or bottom and peer up while shit flows down you will no doubt have to deal with a CEO at some point in time throughout your life. There’ll be layers in between but quite often they will be just as bad as the CEOs above them. So as we close yet another chapter in the Mind of Its Own chronicles we’ll leave you with this little tidbit. Not all people are the same and you can’t always judge a book by it’s cover. These are all part of life’s lessons though and you’ll learn them for yourself. You’ll also understand a lot more, the older that you get about how the world works. The little ins and outs. Until next week, take it easy, look after yourself and as the kids say. You do, you!