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Hemingway once said there is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.  This task is simple but not easy. And it all goes back to our ability to not let the past control us anymore.  Imagine how many limits we put on ourselves when we were young and didn’t know any better. Think about all of those wonderful…

What if we deployed nano technology solutions for kitchen crunchies?  What if sports arenas hired crowd profanity police?  What if complaining made your pants fit better?  What if people who wore eye patches had their own baths?  What if we operationalized primal grooming? In this episode of Steal Scott’s Ideas, Ben, Danielle & Brittany gather in Brooklyn for some execution in public. **Sponsored by Baggit Execution Lesson 110: When we…

Love addiction is defined as a compulsive, chronic craving and pursuit of romantic love in an effort to get your sense of security and worth from another person.  It’s when we act out a misguided search for some kind of love at any price. Allowing the neurotic fantasy script inside our heads to be the arbiter of our reality.  It’s not clinically recognized as a mental disorder or addiction…

Here’s a personal mantra that helped me accept and accommodate my own codependent tendencies.  Hell isn’t other people, hell is trying to change them.  It works wonders on the ego.  Of course, there’s another side to that relational coin. One that can easily be overlooked. And that’s my willingness to accept people when they do change.  It’s part of the package, as my grandfather loves to say.  We learn to tolerate,…

Tell me if this sounds familiar.  You’re working on a train wreck of a project. Or managing the customer from hell. Or giving a presentation to an audience of crickets.  And there’s nothing you can do about it.  There’s no escape. A cold finger of dread hooks around your heart, panic soaks your skin and waves of anxiety start traveling up and down your spine. You’re completely trapped. Frozen…

Marx predicted that power would go to those who owned the means of production.  What he didn’t anticipate, though, was that technology would evolve to a point where the means of production, the instruments of labor, would become simple, free, fast and everywhere.  Thanks to the miracle of digital technology, now anybody can make anything for nothing. Anybody can share anything with anybody for nothing. Creation and distribution have…

Dilbert said that one of the downsides of interacting with other people is that they keep uncovering defects that we never knew we had.  It’s a frustrating and embarrassing and even painful feature of reality.  But then again, isn’t it better than not knowing? Isn’t any person or incident that shows us a truth about ourselves a benefit in the long run?  Besides, our egos blind our eyes to…

Quarter horses are strong, muscular and beautiful.  They excel at sprinting short distances, crushing the competition in races of a quarter mile or less, often reaching speeds of more than fifty miles an hour.  If you’ve ever gone to the tracks before, they’re breathtaking to watch. No wonder they earn tens of millions of dollars for their owners every year. Hell, quarter horses invented the term, right out of the…

People are going to do what they are going to do.  Even under the threat of consequence.  Even if they know full well that it’s bad for them.  Even despite any attempts to control their behaviors and emotions through pleasing, scaring or shaming.  People are going to do what they are going to do.  It sounds quite cynical and fatalistic and bleak. But it’s not necessarily a bad thing….

An addict can be anyone whose life is controlled by something, or someone, other than themselves.  Which means, the fixation doesn’t have to be a physical substance like alcohol or drugs or food or pornography. It’s something much more abstract and mysterious. Something you can’t even see or touch.  And that makes the addiction that much more more insidious.  The example from my own experience is approval. It’s the…