Some Food for Thought

Often when I look at some of the messes that Britney Spears has gotten herself into, I just say to myself “what an idiot!” I look on her situation with contempt and disgust rather than compassion.

But this morning I find myself feeling sorry for her. She did not intend to throw her life away. That does not excuse her from her bad decisions, but she did not start out with the view of wanting to destroy her life. She is a young person with a lot of talent who is now pissing it all away. Classified as “greatly disabled,” it appears that she has lost the ability to function as an adult and to meet the responsibilities she was born with and that she created (such as taking care of her children). It is a powerful tragedy.

What is even more sad to me is that she is but one of many. She is one of the most famous, for sure, but her situation is not unique. My oldest granddaughter, who “worshipped” Britney 7 or 8 years ago while living with us, is in a similar mess. Vickie and I saw the potential for it, tried with all of our might to stop it, as did others, and to no avail. It is painful because I now feel powerless to help her. Just like with Britney, such a bright young kid whose life could have turned out to be such a blessing to others instead of another example of how not to live.

I am not sure why I shared these thoughts. This post was just going to be one where I shared some food-for-thought links with you. But, this weighs heavy on my mind. I guess I just needed to air my head out a bit. Thank you for listening.

Now, as to the links I mentioned:

First, from Tim Berry’s blog is his entry entitled No, Starbucks, Don’t Try To Please Everybody. I especially like his quote of Bill Cosby:

I don’t know the secret to success. But I do know that the secret to failure is trying to please everybody.

Another entry dealing with startup organizations is Jason Calacanis’ The Year-One Startup Handbook on “how to identify and deal with the slow masses, knowledgeable skeptics, and savvy dreamers.” He makes some interesting remarks on what separates folks like Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin from the masses.

Tim Ferriss wrote an article on depression recently, right after the death of Heath Ledger, in which he discussed how you label determines how you feel . A noteworthy quote from this article:

To paraphrase Dan Sullivan: the problem isn’t the problem. It’s how you think about the problem that’s the problem.

So true. How we think about things determines not only how we feel but what we can accomplish (or how much we can fail). No doubt that I do not remind myself of that often enough.