If You Cant Beat Them, Join Them!

When you bury your head in the sand, the only thing people see is your ass.

Is positive thinking a technique used to bury your head in the sand? I have had a love / hate relationship with the positive thinking industry for over 20 years. I am never quite sure about its philosophy - is it wishful thinking, a kind of self hypnosis, or a tool for successful living? Well, this is the year that I am going to find out.

My project for the next 365 days is to write in my blong one positive thing about living in South AFrica every day for the whole of 2010 in order to build psychological capital of 365 positive thoughts and change my energy.

Why?

Simply because the negativity that I am immersed in is drowing me! I am completely overwhelmed by a number of fear factors:

1. The first and most important fear factor is the violence - this is real - we have the highest violent crime rate in the world - there are many reason given for the high violence but the single overriding reason is because they can.

2. The second fear factor is that of increasing poverty. Everywhere I look I see corruption and mismanagement. In my recruitment business I come face to face with pure greed, stealing and plundering, people whose only aim is to get onto the gravy train and accumulate wealth for their own satisfaction - people who use up more resources than they need or can provide. They are slowly but surely depleting the country's resources.

3. The third fear factor is that there are only 4 million registered taxpayers (submitted returns to SARS in Octover 2009) contributing for the upliftment 50 million people (more likely 70 million). No amount of positive thinking can make me believe that this is possible.

In order to build my confidence and belief in a prosperous future for South Africa and become a fully contributing member of my community, I need to find out whether positive thinking has any real power to change my life.

My one and only New Year's resolution for 2010 is to find the self discipline to write 365 positive thoughts about South Africa and publish them in my blog in the hope that I will start focusing on the possible.

South Africa's transition from a Nat Government to ANC Government was indeed a miracle. And Nelson Mandela was the angel that prevented a blood bath. Now it is up to me to create my own miracle. My miracle begins today!

So here goes....... check me out tomorrow for my first positive post of 2010.

The Abolition of Work

Bob Black wrote that work must be abolished. This article has stirred some pretty strong feelings in me. When I look back I cant help but ask myself how much of my life have I wasted on doing work that I hate, squandered it on meaningless tasks just to pay the rent and the school fees. 'Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world' says Bob hitting the nail on the head. He goes on to say that 'In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working' but 'we dont have to stop doing things'. This I dont understand. He explains that we carry on doing things only in the form of play. Does he mean that if we dont feel like doing whatever needs to be done, we just dont do it? How would that kind of system play itself out? (excuse the pun). How would we feed ourselves and our family? Or provide for our needs? Does this mean we have to go back to the stone age and live in caves hunting and gathering for food? It is a great concept - to stop working - but what happens to all the goods and services that we produce whilst working? Has anyone out there know of an alternative system to the current system of production and consumption that requires us all to work?