you try to take the best of me.. go away!

To all the negative people in my life... you act like your better than me, your not. we are equals. you make my mind race with self doubt when i have nothing to doubt about myself. I'm not perfect but neither are you. I learned a lot from you, I'm grateful that you've made me get a back bone.. but you have definitely overstayed your welcome. so go away!

I'm officially done dealing with you.


To all the positive people in my life... thank you for being you! you have made me who i am today and I'm so lucky to have such great people around me. All of you have made me want to be more positive and have good thoughts about life and me. You know who you are!

I officially love you!



This article is a great positive ending to making life better. lets do it homosapiens! lets make happiness happen!

UPGRADING DOWN - WHY “NEW” MAKES HAPPINESS IMPOSSIBLE

by Rock Today on Tuesday, January 18, 2011 at 2:53pm

We’ve accomplished everything nowadays but happiness.

We’ve made computers as thin as paper, apps that zoom from satellite views of Earth to pinpoint our locations in less than 1 second, cars that park themselves… And we haven’t, in the least, made ourselves any bit happier. Joy, it seems, is just perpetually a tad bit more elusive than the latest new toy. And for all our GPS-guided directional savvy, we might even be a little bit more lost as to how to get there.

What we have accomplished along the way, however, is an obsession with the concept of “new”. New - as billions of dollars of advertisements, fueled by our own modern day-induced ADD, would have us believe - is better.

If you think back, we weren’t born with that definition. As far back as I can remember, when my age was still in the single digits, my favorite blankie and teddy were the best things on earth, and nobody could tell me any different. Threadbare, color-worn, pilled fabric and all, it was extremely clear to me that there was no such thing called “New equals better”. My mom was out of her mind.

But society and popular culture pressed on, and somewhere between our 5th Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and our spiffy new iPhone 4G, we forgot. Not only did we forget, but we began to operate mechanically under the unconscious theory that anything new must needs be better than what we have.

There’d be no danger in this if not for the fact that the logic is structurally built to fail. When the qualification of satisfaction is determined by a factor that is definitively temporal, fulfillment is impossible to obtain. If new equals better, and newness is a value lost almost instantly upon ownership, there will always be something better.

And so the cycle goes on and on at a progressively more and more frenetic pace as we try to obtain the next “new” but never truly obtaining the “better”, and forgetting our real goal of happiness along the way. It’s a self-imploding foundation that many of us have built a lifetime of aspirations around.

The problem lies within the original equation. New didn’t always equal better. We made that theory up somewhere along our lives when it started to apply more times than not. And while my new Droid does web-surf eons faster than my old Blackberry Tour, my friend’s new all-touch Mercedes ML also broke down in an apoplectic fit in its first week - and the 2-yr-old BMW X5 he traded in was working just fine.

More importantly, imagine a life where the next apartment, the next profession, or (heaven forbid) the next significant other always looked like a much better deal than the one you have - simply for the unconscious collapse of “new” with “better”. Many of us are living it, and many of us have been the blindsided victims of someone else who was.

I’m not arguing here on any grounds of philosophy the sake of “appreciating what you have”, Rockstars. While that has its merits, I leave philosophical values to the individual. What I am doing is pointing out our own faulty reasoning that has set us up to fail. I’ve coached millionaires that still don’t understand why they aren’t satisfied. I’ve watched heartbroken as singles, even married men, perpetually try to “upgrade” from one to the next.

Somewhere in our quest for “new”, we forgot to look for “better”.

There will always be someone or something newer, Rockstars. It’s built into the definition. They may not even be prettier or more handsome, or have a more incredible personality. The “something” may not always have more to offer you, and sometimes less. The only guarantee, Rockers, is that whatever is new will be different in shape and form from what you have.

And so, it’s your turn to choose with clarity next time. Do you want something different or do you want something better? Chances are, without the “better”, the “different” may lose its appeal.

…You’ve heard the expression ad nauseam: “The grass is always greener on the other side.” True, perhaps. But that’s because your neighbor stuck around to water it every single day.

And maybe, just maybe, if you stuck around and did the same, he might just look back over at yours one day and say the same thing. =)

ROCK TODAY, and love like you only get ONE.

- ERICA O’YOUNG