“Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.” - Author Unknown

A decision is a final product of a specific mental/cognitive process by an individual or group, which is called decision making.

Decision making is the process of sufficiently reducing uncertainty and doubt about alternatives to allow a reasonable choice to be made from among them. We all make countless decisions each day, from deciding what to eat or wear to figuring out how to spend our free time or disposable income. Many of these decisions require little effort or thought, but at times we face circumstances that require more consideration.

Studies have shown that most people are much poorer at decision making than they think. An understanding of what decision making involves, together with a few effective techniques, will help produce better decisions.

Napoleon Hill – in his famous book, “Think and Grow Rich” – stated that 98% of people are in the jobs they have through indecision

Bobby Voicu recently tagged me with the “Find me online!” tag and I thought this might be a good time to respond to it. It would be wise thing to do, as this will increase the networking potential in the blogosphere.

The purpose of this tag is to share the internet network places where bloggers – in this case I – can be found. So without further ado, here are my profiles of various networking sites:

• StumbleUpon
• Digg
• MyBlogLog
• Netscape
• ShoutWire

I probably have some profiles on more sites but I can’t remember them – because I rarely use them…

From the list above the only site that I’m active on is StumbleUpon. If you want to “connect” you’ll catch me there.

As usual, here are some other victims for offtopic the tag: Shine, Sophie & AlexNa.

That’s all for this post. Stay happy everyone!

This is a very controversial subject as the opinions about it differ like night and day from one person to the next.

In the following lines I will present my viewpoint of the situation.

A school is an institution where students (or “pupils”) learn while under the supervision of teachers.

I’ll begin by saying this: the current public school system is destroying many lives. Of course, there are schools that make an exception from this, but the general system is designed to do just that, to destroy lives and to create mindless servants. I know this first hand, because I’m young and I’m part of the public school system.

What determines me to have such a negative opinion about it? There are a couple of reasons:

1. The current school system forces children to grow absurd.

“It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety, indeed it cuts you off from your own part and future, scaling you to a continuous present much the same way television does. [...] Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.” – John Taylor Gatto

2. It doesn’t teach the children anything about themselves. And self-knowledge is the only knowledge with a long lasting value.

“‘Self-knowledge’ is commonly used in philosophy to refer to knowledge of one’s particular mental states, including one’s beliefs, desires, and sensations.” – Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy

The absurdity of the schooling system

I’ve been a “good” student for only 4 years out of the total of 12 years of schooling that I’ve followed until now. Only for four years I’ve obeyed the system and did my best to achieve a high “rank” in it. Then it came to me that what the system was teaching was irrelevant for me. Worse than that, it was irrelevant for my whole life. And school is supposed to help children do good in life. How can it do that when it is irrelevant to it’s purpose? Scientists aren’t trained in science classes, politicians aren’t trained in civics classes, writers aren’t trained in English classes. School has become a big mechanical institution without a conscience. I see it as a big swamp through which many are forced to pass in order to end up many steps behind their starting point. When a child goes to school he’s at the A point in life and heading towards B. After getting out of the compulsory schooling system, he’s at -A.

Before a child goes to school it has an ability that is more valuable than anything he could learn in there. The child has his imagination, his most prized possession which Einstein considered to be more important than knowledge. What happens after the child enters the compulsory school system? His imagination is punished, restrained, slowly replaced with filler knowledge. He is taught to obey rules and orders, memorize facts that make no sense in the world unfolding around him and then graded for his ability in those disciplines.

What do grades represent? They represent that a certain unique child had his mind in a certain place at a certain moment of a certain day. This is just as relevant as drawing a conclusion about my personality from the way that I pressed some key on my keyboard while writing the second character of the third sentence in my 50′th post on this blog. It’s both irrelevant and absurd.

“It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want to learn to construct buildings, or to sit with a stranger discussing the construction of buildings when you want to read poetry.
It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your natural youth in an institution that allows you no privacy and even follows you into the sanctuary of your home demanding that you do its “homework”.” – John Taylor Gatto

Regarding the invasion of privacy I must say that I’ve done my homeworks only until the fifth grade. After that I almost never did my homeworks again. I know, I was a “bad” student, but as strange as this may sound, now I’m happy that I was that way! My life would have been completely different if I chose to be the obeying type. It may have been different for better or for worse, I don’t know that, but considering that I love what I am doing right now I think I’ve made the right decision and chose the right path.

Everything that I’ve learned about life, universe and pretty much about everything, isn’t knowledge gained in school. It has been a self teaching process, I did it because I enjoyed it, because I chose to engage in it. And it is this self teaching process that really educates and adds to the value of an individual. This makes you independent.

The lack of opportunities to gain more self knowledge

All my years in the compulsory school system haven’t taught me a thing about myself. I needed to break free in order to discover and learn what I truly liked. I believe that the children who do good in school and manage to discover themselves are exceptions of the school system. The main purpose of the school isn’t that, it is to mechanize thinking and leave the children without a sense of self – which derives from self-knowledge.

Robots think mechanically, they don’t have a sense of self and are easy to control. School children are programmed much the same way.

I always loved what Mark Twain had to say about schooling and education:

“Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.”

Instead of a conclusion

The purpose of this post is to try and raise yet another small alarm signal in the world. As much as some of you might respect the school institution, so far I think it has created more useless and dependent individuals than performing and independent ones.

These are only a few of the effects of the poor schooling system worldwide.

However, it’s a good thing that today many private schools have emerged and people have the possibility to send their children to school systems based on other beliefs, with different values than the ones “experts” agree on.

For more information about the topic you should read the “Why Schools Don’t Educate” speech held by John Taylor Gatto while accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990.

I’ve been into DJ’ing for a while now and I thought that this might be a good time for me to think about the lessons that I’ve learned…

I’ve always been into quality music. I remember that in high-school I never listened to the mainstream music that all my colleagues were into, I simply couldn’t stand it; it simply seemed stupid to me.

There were only a few tracks that I slightly enjoyed listening to, but the vast majority of the music that was floating around disappointed me.

I wanted to listen to a more mature and inspired music.

After spending several years searching for my kind of music, a music that would resonate with me, the answer came to me in my early teens. The music that would vibrate with me was the queen of the Electronic Dance Music (EDM) genre, Trance.

I won’t get into details about what I like so much about trance music because it doesn’t make the subject of the post, but the energy it produces is amazing!

So 4 years ago (in 2003), when I was sixteen, I managed to obtain residency at a local club. Every night, for a few hours, I got the chance to share my passionfor quality music with hundreds of other people. And even though the vast majority of them didn’t “understand” most of the tracks that I played – trance is harder than the mainstream electronic music, the resulted energy made them feel amazing!

That is the first lesson that DJ’ing has taught me in respect to life: good music is an universal language; it doesn’t matter if you understand it or not, it doesn’t matter if you can consciously connect to it or not, it will make you feel good by putting you in a positive vibratory state. The high volumes only accentuate what’s already in the music, they can’t replace the missing energy. Good music remains good music even if it the volume doesn’t make you deaf.

The second thing that I learned from DJ’ing was the ability to read people. This is one of the core qualities of a good DJ. If you can read your crowd, you can control it. Just like in the ordinary world.

This skill is gained after hours of carefully selecting the right tracks to play and noticing the crowd reaction to them. It’s a skill learned in time by trial and error. I now have gained and learned so much about how to read the reaction of a crowd that I just know when to play the right tune and also in what order to mix the tracks that I play. Each track has a different energy to it, a different vibe, and I can just feel the vibe of the crowd and play them the track that matches it while challenging them to expand. Just like Dr. Wayne Dyer wrote in “The Power of Intention”, it’s a match game.

The skill of quickly reading people isn’t helping me only in DJ’ing (it’s a sensational feeling to be able to play the perfect record at the perfect moment and send the people crazy on the dance floor), but also in my ordinary day to day life. I can instantly feel the energy of a crowd or a person and play the according “tune”.

DJ’ing has also taught me how to keep life fresh and exciting. While mixing, I try not to play the same type of style all night as this becomes too repetitive and boring. I like to keep the sets fresh and exciting by adding different accappellas and mixing different sections of the records. In life, this translates in living on the edge and being open to new experiences and ideas.

I’ve also learned an important lesson about interests. In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, “if you are interested [in something], you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.” A big truth contained in these phrases. It’s my interest in music that led me to start studying philosophy and to start this blog.

For the DJ side of me, each mix is a blend between my musical influences, my mixing past and my ever adapting ability to incorporate new skills and technology to create new sounds. To make an analogy between this and life: the results of each moment that I live are the results of a blend between education, old paradigms and the ability to adapt to the ever changing environments around me. Isn’t it beautiful how it all fits together?

Even if I’m doing it for four years, I’m still feeling the same enthusiasm that I felt on the first night. It didn’t wear off a bit! The power of doing what you really like does that to you. Always do the things that you have passion for, never do something just because you intellectually think you can.

A DJ is an artist that paints vivid images in peoples minds by mixing different sounds, just like a painter paints his canvas by combining different colors.

Each of us is an artist, each individual is responsible for painting the picture of his own life.

To summarize, these are the things that I’ve learned as a result of DJ’ing for four years:

• I’ve learned that beautiful music is universal;
• I’ve learned to read the energy print of a crowd;
• In the day to day life, I have learned when to play the right “tune”;
• I’ve learned that living on the edge is the real living. A monotone life is a boring state of hibernation;
  
• I’ve learned that if I genuinely have an interest, I don’t have to search for others. Other interests will find me;
• I’ve learned to do what I like even if I don’t know how. I almost never do something just because I think I might be able to;
• I’ve learned that we’re all artists;
• I’ve learned not to judge anyone by how better they are when compared to someone else. I’m the only target of my judgment and if I’m a better person today than I was yesterday, I’m happy!

Stay happy, keep learning,
Here for you,
Armand

Today is the last day of the Great Motivational Videos series and as a result I want it to be a bit more reflective, I want it to make you think deeply about life.

The video isn’t a speech by some great personality, it isn’t a seminar, it isn’t a workshop, it is a simple video slideshow with gorgeous images, beautiful music and inspiring quotes. And because you and me think visually – by painting pictures in our mind, this video will prove to be much more uplifting than watching any seminar or speech!

Some of the quotes in the slideshow in it are written with very small fonts so I’ll write them here for you.

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“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.”

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“Always do good. This will gratify some and astonish the rest.”

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“Nobody will believe in you, unless you believe in yourself.” – Liberace

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“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

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“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” – Lao Tzu

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“When you build bridges you can keep crossing them.”

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“What we must decide is perhaps how we are valuable, rather than how valuable we are.”

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“A problem is a chance to do your best.”

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“Direction is more important then speed. We are so busy looking at our speedometers that we forget the milestone.”

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“The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best that you can become.”

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“If you run after two hares, you will catch neither.”

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“Life is like a staircase. You have to go up each stair to reach the top.”

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“There is power in simplicity.”

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“They can do all because they think they can.” – Virgil

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“The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.” – Walter Bagehot

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“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas Edison

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“A minute’s success pays the failure of years.” Robert Browning

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“A joy shared, is a joy doubled. A sorrow shared, is a sorrow halved.”

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“The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.” Sven Goran Erksson

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Very beautiful and inspiring words. If you carve all of them into your subconscious there is no reason left in the universe why you can’t become successful at whatever you want to be!