After watching Barack Obama on Barbara Walters last week, I realized even the hopeful have to use some negative thinking and look at reality to move forward. From Anatara News (yes, I had to go outside the US to find these quotes!) via ABC News:

As a young boy, Barack Obama had different dreams about what he would end up doing as an adult, but they did not include taking over the White House, the president-elect said in an interview broadcast late Wednesday.

As a little boy “I had a bunch of different schemes,” Obama was quoted by AFP as telling ABC television.

“For awhile, I thought that I might end up being an architect. I liked the idea of building things. I don’t know what happened to that.”

Then he thought he might play basketball “until I realized that I wasn’t good enough to be a professional basketball player,” he said.

“I thought I might be a judge, but then I decided after going to law school, that I was probably a little too restless to sit on a bench all day long.

“So the one thing I know I didn’t expect that I was going to be was president of the United States.”

“If you have to find some use for yourself, this isn’t a bad way of doing it,” he said, smiling.

So instead of pursuing a dream of playing professional basketball, which in his own estimation would not have happened, instead of becoming a judge, which he admits he wouldn’t have liked very much, he ended up President, something he never expected. We all have dreams and hopes, but taking a realistic look at what we can’t accomplish sometimes opens doors to great things we never knew we could accomplish.

Posted in Architects, back-up plan, Barack Obama, Barbara Walters, basketball, disappointment, Expectations, goal setting, goals, humor, Humorist, inabilities, inability, interviews, judge, making choices, motivation, motivational, negative, negative thinking, negative thoughts, negativity, planning, politics, positive thinking, President of the United States, problems, strengths, weaknesses      

Seems the baby boomers, for all their self-professed wisdom, have screwed up their children. I’m sure you see it all the time, young kids, cocksure and full of self-esteem proclaiming themselves more evolved than us mere mortals who have already lived longer than they have. Just when you though your nephew was a smug bastard, looks like his entire generation may be and it won’t end well. Someone needs to step in and teach this new generation the benefits of some negative thinking. From The Telegraph:

The young people of today are more sure of themselves and the fact they will make excellent parents, partners and employees than their parents ever were.

But researchers, who studied the self-assessments of the Millenials, or Generation Y, warn that instilling children with such confidence could be simply setting them up for a fall.

They warn that many young people could sink into depression when they are confronted with life’s harsher realities.

Professor Jean Twenge, head of psychology at San Diego University, and lead author of a report about young people’s self-confidence and views about the future, said: “Boomer parents are more likely than any group of parents before them to praise children - and maybe overpraise them.

“This can foster great expectations or perhaps even smugness about one’s chances of reaching the stars at work and in family life.

“Their narcissism could be a recipe for depression later when things don’t work out as well as they expected.”

Prof Twenge and her team compared the 1975 and 2006 results from an annual US survey called Monitoring the Future which polls high school students about their views on life.

They found that a third more 17 to 20-year-olds today believe they work harder than their parents did and will be better than them when it comes to being parents, spouses and work colleagues - earning them the nickname the Smug Generation.

Many teenagers appear to think that future success will be handed to them on a plate: They claim to do 20 per cent less school homework than their parents said they did in 1975, said the report.

Professor Twenge, who has written a book about young people today called Generation Me, said that modern culture appeared to be teaching the young to be over-confident.

She said: “A growing body of research shows that today’s young generation is highly individualistic and has very high expectations. It will be interesting to see if their expectations are met as they enter adult life and the workforce.”

Fellow researcher Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, said: “Previous generations had more realistic ambitions. Today’s teenagers have been taught to shoot for the moon without being warned that many of them will not make it.”

That last sentence is the key. It’s not that you can’t tell your children to shoot for the moon, but you need to prepare them in case they don’t make it. When I did stand-up for years in Houston and then New York City, traveling the East Coast, I was always told to find a “real” job in case this stand-up thing didn’t work out. And it didn’t. But at least someone was letting me know that while I pursued my dreams, I may not make it. It wasn’t in a condescending “You’ll never make it!” reminder. But a reminder based on sheer facts.

I hope someone does the same thing for the next generation. I hope you are doing that for your kids.

Posted in accountability, baby boomers, Balance, confidence, disappointment, Expectations, experience, failure, Gen X, Gen Y, Generation X, Generation Y, goal setting, goals, humor, Humorist, improvements, making choices, motivation, motivational, negative, negative thinking, negative thoughts, negativity, obstacles, parenting, parents, planning, problems, self-esteem      

It’s not necessarily good to see, but it is a bit comforting to know that China college students are just as stupid at times as our own college students. Take the story of this idiot’s lack of foresight, overly positive attitude towards wild animals, from CNN:

A college student in southern China was bitten by a panda after he broke into the bear’s enclosure hoping to get a hug, state media and a park employee said Saturday.

The student was visiting Qixing Park with classmates on Friday when he jumped the 6.5-foot (2-meter) high fence around the panda’s habitat, said the park employee, who refused to give his name.

The park in Guilin, a popular tourist town in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, houses a small zoo and a panda exhibit. It was virtually deserted when the student scaled the fence surrounding the panda, named Yang Yang, the employee said.

He said the student was bitten on the arms and legs. Two foreign visitors who saw the attack ran to get help from workers at a nearby refreshment stand, who notified park officials, the employee said.

The student was pale as he was taken away by medics but appeared clearheaded, he said.

“Yang Yang was so cute, and I just wanted to cuddle him. I didn’t expect he would attack,” the 20-year-old student, surnamed Liu, said in a local hospital, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Liu underwent surgery Friday evening and was out of danger but will remain in the hospital for several days, Xinhua said.

Yang Yang, who was flown to Guilin last year from Sichuan province, was behaving normally on Saturday and did not seem to suffer any negative psychological effects, the park employee said.

He said it was not clear whether the facility would add more signs around the enclosure or put more fences up.

“We cannot make it like a prison. We already have signs up warning people not to climb in,” he said. “There are no fences along roads but people know not to cross if there are cars. This is basic knowledge.”

Pandas, which generally have a public image as cute, gentle creatures, are nonetheless wild animals that can be violent when provoked or startled.

Last year, a panda at the Beijing Zoo attacked a teenager, ripping chunks out of his legs, when he jumped a barrier while the bear was being fed.

The same panda was in the news in 2006 when he bit a drunk tourist who broke into his enclosure and tried to hug him while he was asleep. The tourist retaliated by biting the bear in the back.

Didn’t anyone see Kung-Fu Panda? Don’t they watch The Colbert Report?

Bears, even Pandas, are godless killing machines!

Posted in accountability, attacks, bear, China, college students, danger, humor, Humorist, idiots, Kung-Fu Panda, making choices, mistakes, motivation, motivational, negative, negative thinking, negative thoughts, negativity, optimism, Pollyanna, positive thinking, problems, security, Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report, zoo      

The new workforce of Gen Yers (born after 1981) has a opposite view of how to network to find jobs. Instead of finding someone high up in a company, they’re doing a grassroots campaign. From the New York Times:

WHEN Christine Huang graduated from college in 2005, the last way she wanted to look for a job was by attending a networking cocktail hour where she would feel pressured to ask strangers for job leads and contacts.

“The idea of having to schmooze with people I didn’t know was unappealing,” Ms. Huang said.

“But then I realized the idea of networking was about reconnecting with people you know from elementary school, high school and college. It was just like asking your friends for favors.”

And that’s exactly how Ms. Huang landed a position as an arts and culture writer at SH Magazine in Shanghai. When she moved to China in 2006, a friend from high school invited her out with a group of his friends, one of whom was an editor at SH Magazine.

Ms. Huang could be seen as a poster child for how some people in her generation look for — and land — jobs. The old guard way to find gainful employment might have included reading the want ads, joining an industry-specific networking group or applying through the company or a second party’s Web site. Today, some young people say they are eschewing those practices and making the lateral network — their circle of friends and friends of those friends — the first stop on their job search.

Tamara Erickson, a researcher on generational differences in the workplace, found that more people in Generation Y — those born after 1980 — use a bottom-up approach to job searching.

“Boomer parents will tell me that they offered to introduce their son or daughter to a high-level person, but they don’t want to approach it that way,” said Ms. Erickson, who is also the author of “Plugged In: The Generation Y Guide to Thriving at Work.” “Getting in at the top is more of a boomer strategy, and the Y’s are using more of a peer-infiltration approach.”

The article continues on but it shows how much more Gen Yers trust each others judgments and methods over “traditional” ways. As an employer looking for good, young talent the first place HR should look is not outward but inward. Reach out to the younger employees and let them know jobs are available. Let these twittering, plaxoed, LinkedIN networkers find the talent for you.

Posted in baby boomers, Facebook, Gen X, Gen Y, Generation X, Generation Y, Human Resources, humor, Humorist, jobs, LinkedIn, making choices, marketing, motivation, motivational, negative, negative thinking, negative thoughts, negativity, networking, planning, problem solving, problems, recruiting      

Sometimes, being the lone negative thinker in the room can be a bit rough. When you’re the only one looking at things logically and rationally. Peter Schiff is one of those negative thinkers who, through sound reason and looking at the facts, was laughed off as a pessemist when it came to the stock market. Look at this compilation of videos from 2006-2007 and see who was the only one who knew what was about to happen, they only one willing to say something negative and factual. Pay close attention at how smug and condescening the other so called “experts” react and say to Peter. Also notice how utterly wrong they are.

Sometimes, the downer (as idiot Neil Cavuto portrayed Peter as) has some valid points. Just because he’s saying things people don’t want to be true, doesn’t mean you don’t listen to what he has to say.

Keep up the good work Peter!

Posted in capitolism, catastrophe, credit cards, crisis, criticism, debt, economy, humor, Humorist, idiots, interviews, judgements, making choices, media, money, motivation, motivational, negative, negative thinking, negative thoughts, negativity, Peter Schiff, planning, positive thinking, problem solving, problems, recession, skepticism, stocks, stupidity