You are right, supe. I really didn't want to delve into all of the 'whys' for self/body abuse. It's just that was one aspect of motions post.

Have you seen he movie "Limitless"? ...it's all about burning bright and fast; but for a very long time. iirc the protagonist (guy with all the brain power) figures out it's best to keep a low profile. --surprise. ;)

I was going to say before Nostatus beat me to it...It depends upon what interests me or what I find to be important..to devote the time and effort or just make do.

I have lived by the following rule since I was 20 years old, WHAT DOES IT GAIN A MAN TO GAIN THE WORLD ONLY TO LOSE HIS SOUL. To that end I have had a singular unrelenting purpose.

When one resolves ones internal conflicts then one can make a determination if the stress is internal or external and then one can take the appropriate measures..(this one is for you Nostatus)


.

My personal Mission Statement:

I strive to TRY.............

Horse Manure....

What a RUSH it is to jump off the top of the Empire State Building...

Everybodies perceptions about reality let alone the pursuit of life, liberty or happiness is skewed in either the major or minor. Everybody has their opinion.

One can get it down to to the level of whether or not one likes Peanut Butter or some other trival thing. It is a fools errand to try and go beyond that level as it is like asking wheher one likes breathing or not. It is only when we give up this life that the veil of misperception falls away and we get to see things as they really are..some call it seeing the light...

Absolutely (as long as you have a good BASE rig on your back). :cool:

Just because some people think the actions of others to be crazy/stupid/reckless (or that said folks have a "death wish") doesn't make it so. Could you die BASE jumping off of the Empire State Building? Possibly. Not likely with proper preparation/planning/skill/experience though. You could also die by choking on a chicken bone at the buffet. Again not likely, but possible. However the "life reward" for successfully negotiating a chicken leg without choking on the bone pales in comparison to the "life reward" of successfully BASE jumping the Empire State Building. Yes, one could argue percentages/probability, bit I hope you can connect the dots there (risk vs. reward).

Sorry man, someone had to do it:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1332627632.jpg


:D :p

Push hard when needed.....enjoy the rest.

Things, skills, learning have all come easy for me. It may be a blessing or a curse. I believe blessing.

I have a livelihood so I can enjoy my life, not the other way around.

I promote the slow burn. It allows me the time and energy to enjoy and engage the people, places, philosophies, arts, personal thoughts and feelings of others and myself.

Without time to give each its due, you are stealing from your own being I believe.

I charge - just as hard as I can!!!

I own my own business and do a lot of the work myself as well as overseeing everything that happens on my projects.

I have a plethora of positive testimonials from satisfied clients which of course fuel my drive. I don't advertise so most of my work comes from word of mouth and I'm always busy with several projects going at once in some stage or another.

I also take a lot of pride in my work which fuels me even more.

When I was working in corporate sales I routinely won sales awards and my store was always a leader in gross profit % and dollars - busting my budgets every year. I did that for 10 years and learned a ton from it.

My personal life is a bit mellow these days - haven't really gone on tour for about 3 years now but hoping to get something going this fall. In the meantime I always have home projects going on so I guess that's a form of ambition away from my day job. Plus I still surf and cycle as much as possible.

I haven't lost any of my drive to exceed current levels of workmanship and production. Why slow down as one gets older? Life gets way more interesting with age. It how one handles adversity - and also the positives - that shapes one's soul I've always felt.

Great thread Motion....stay hungry! ;)

It has been my experience that too many "champions" only know what it takes to win and haven't a clue about what it takes to do the right thing.

For me, it is all about balancing achievement with stress and quality of life. I was on my way to be a University professor on the east coast. In fact, I had just been promoted associate research Prof. at Rutgers when I decided to drop out of the rat race. I did not want to write research proposals all week-ends long, we had no quality of life, took few vacations, paid a big mortgage for a not so big house.

When a senior scientist job poped up in my field, but in the private sector in New Mexico, I jumped on it. It is slightly below my previous position, but lots of room to grow. I am always home by 5:30, never work on week-ends, have a bigger house with smaller mortgage payments, take vacations...The quality of life has tremendously improved.

I want to grow some more to bigger roles in the company, but in a natural way. I am not pushing for it, still learning the ropes. And I will never do things that push my stress to unmanageable levels, that is the bottom line.

As closing argument, I have never heard of anyone on their death bed who wished they had spent more time in the office...

Push.............................................. .......................-without comprimising time with my Son.
Do all my sweat at the job during the week and breaks so the boss cannot ***** about anything when it comes to my Son.
THIS IS WHY I HAVE TO PRODUCE MORE THAN ANYONE.

Awesome post, thanks.

I am always going WOT both professionally as well as in my spare time. I have had about a dozen hobbies where I reached expert level only to get bored with it and try something new. I have at least a couple of dozen hobbies left before I may get too old for them so I continue going! I work in high tech and have been blessed with exciting and mentally demanding jobs. I am not getting rich in the process but when you work hard, the money will be okay too. Life is great and short, so you have to go full bore!

G

Braggart.

Just Kidding!http://forums.pelicanparts.com/suppo...leys/shake.gif

"When I look back, what drove that? For me, mostly fear. Some was fear of being poor and homeless. Fear of being perceived as a failure or "mediocre." McLovin

Boy does that hit home. I grew up poor too and I never wanted to live that lifestyle again. Even if I had to be poor, I didn't want to be mediocre.
Post #22 is a great story. Thanks.

I have to use cliches here because it describes it for me best. It is the journey that counts as much if not more than the destination. Now I am retired I can do what I want(with occasional direction from my wife) and there is no work schedule on the fridge. However there is beer in the fridge. I just have to find a way of staying out of the old folks home on a permanent basis. Retirement is a different kind of journey. Don't have to push hard. Life is great at this pace.

I push, and hard, when the situation calls for it. When it does not, I coast in neutral and enjoy life as it happens. As I get older, I enjoy the coasting more.

That's an old saying that I've given much thought to over the years.

Implicit is an assumption that work is not enjoyable. And that time at work was at the expense of time spent having fun, with family and friends.

Work can be enjoyable, fulfilling, challenging, rewarding - fun.

I see my work as a large scale project, not unlike the model hobbiest that spends years completing a model. The hobbiest is not driven by the ownership of the completed model, but instead enjoys the challenge of the build. I view my work as the challenge of the build.

Perhaps the people who drive enjoy what they do, the others not so much.

The flip side - I've never heard of anyone on their death bed saying they wish they had accomplished less.

Good point.

I'm definitely going to regret the amount of time I've spent on this BBS.

Weird. You just acknowledged receiving a positive idea by being on this BBS. But Then you essentially say "but this is not worth my time."

Yeah, I -get- that there is a lot of "noise" here, but there is a lot of "signal" as well.
So make a decision about the cost/value and move on w/o regret.

Not weird at all. The internet is infinite, yet I spend most of my time on one site that is like a saloon full of regulars. You get a nickel's worth of wisdom for every $1000 you spend on Corona goat piss.

This is a very interesting, compelling thread. I read all the posts and I have been impressed with the level of honestly, insight and life-style choices.

One size doesn't, never will, fit all.

Late in arriving at this thread but it intrigues me.. Must say that I went...and go...all out on some things...mostly my creative side, not that it's superb but it is fulfilling.

Professionally I must admit to being disillusioned with the day to day of it. I now really wish I had tried much harder to excel as many of my present day colleagues have. I have a lot of sadness about that. I never put lives or welfare of my patients at risk, mind you, but always thought I should have done more, been better and more knowledgeable.

True confessions...oh well, maybe next time around. :confused:

I've always been in competitive pursuits, all my life. School was a competition for grades. Law was a one-vs-one competition to win each case and beat the opposing party. Current career is a one-vs-many competition to beat the market, beat other investors (zero-sum), get high in the decile rankings.

Competition helps keep things interesting and sometimes correlates with compensation. I like it.

However, I distinguish between competing to win, and pursuing perfection. The first means you want to beat the opponents of the moment, which may require a strong performance from you, or maybe not. The latter means you want to do each element of each task as well as possible, regardless of whether it is necessary to, or makes any difference in, winning. These are related but not the same.

Personally, I compete to win, but don't necessarily try for perfection or even very good. If I can win without doing a good job, that's fine with me. If that happened all the time it might be soul-destroying, but it'd be nice if that happened more often than it does!

Why? Because I've got other things going on. My kids don't care if I achieve perfection in some aspect of my work. Neither, I suspect, will I, when I'm at the end of my life.

I have to push hard just to do enough; otherwise, I do too much, which is way more than enough

Well said, Doc SmileWavy

Hey - I am having a good weekend! ;) A positive attitude is half the game ...

G

Actually, a positive attitude is the whole game. If you think your live sucks, then it does. If you think you are the luckiest man on the planet, you are.

I've always thought that I did my best not just enough to get by. My efforts to be successful have grown over the years because I wanted more and better things for my family. As I'm retired, sort of on the downhill slide right now but still working on maintaining an excellent quality of life.

You just jokingly stumbled on the major factor of doing a good job at what ever you are doing... A good attitude.

My wife, and I love her, is a defeatist and I battle that in her all the time...trying to get her to be more positive.

My last g/f - man she was unreal in so many ways but that glass half-empty routine got new real fast. Ultimately that is what turned me off from pursuing anything more than what we had.

I've always been a problem-solver - was raised that way (thanks Mom and Dad!)

I mean who goes through life without challenges? Might as well dig in and enjoy the fight....

We have a saying in sales......there's no such thing as problems...just opportunities! ;)

Men being problem solvers gets in my way all the time. She complains and I wanna fix it...that's what men do ! "No...just listen"... No "That's what your girl friends are for"... exit left to doghouse..:rolleyes:

I must be good at that then because currently I no longer have that "problem" in my life.....:D

She was really something though......too bad it didn't work out....

Ok since everyone else is being honest...
I've always driven myself very hard, and it has made me successful but at a price. I get out of the shower some days and my heart is racing from the feeling of already being behind. I lose my patience quickly sometimes with my girls. I've always told myself it'll get better later, after school, after residency, after the board exams, but I'm happy for a bit but it comes back. I'm working on it though.

And that sums it up. Everything else is just noise. I don't look forward & I don't look back - and I never have. I live for today. Tomorrow you can deal with whatever life throws at you & as long as you don't automatically default to worst case scenarios (the infamous . . . "but what if . . ."), you can weather it.

The Life of Brian's 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life' is my theme song.

Ian

You are slowly killing yourself....sorry to be so blunt. Medicine is a hard career to deal with but it can be done. Get some help. Just sayin'

Hi Mark, looking at it I think the post before was a bit melodromatic. Sometimes I feel like that, esp after a bad string of call (like the last few weeks) but all in all things are pretty good. I'm trying, don't want to go thru some of the stuff my older partners have. Anyway, tnx man.