When you’re in a circle of people (dinner table, around the bar, corner of the function room), and you’re the only one talking, you might be making a fool out of yourself.

Talking too much is never a good idea. No matter how good what you have to say is, other people probably don’t share your enthusiasm. Instead of carrying on, ask leading questions.

When you’re complaining about an inconvenience or a set of circumstances that you’re not too happy with to somebody who isn’t a close friend, you’re probably making a fool out of yourself.

Your house burning down or loosing a limb is not what I’m talking about. Those are tragedies. What I’m talking about is the post office closing 2 minutes before you got there, or not having enough aprons at the kitchen where you’re volunteering. A bystander has much better things to do than listen to you describe how awful it is that the ATM doesn’t work or that the waiter hasn’t cleaned off the table yet. “A close friend” exception is there because, presumably, a) s/he probably knows enough about you to let this one slide and b) s/he will tell you when you’re being a whiner or acting like a spoiled brat.

When you rev your engine and try to do something showy with your car – take a sharp corner, drift through a curve, take somebody off the line – in front of on-lookers or other drivers, there’s a very high chance that you’re making a fool out of yourself.

Speeding tickets are expensive and concrete curbs hurt a lot. Save stunt driving for empty parking lots or race tracks. Seriously.

Whenever you write an angry email, leave a ranting voicemail, or complain vociferously about someone’s words, actions or personality, you’re very likely making a fool out of yourself.

No matter how good you think your intel is, you probably don’t know the whole story. You just don’t. Trust me. When something that seemed like a sure bet, something that you had completely figured out proves to be completely untrue, and the person ‘at fault’ turns out to have been right all along, you will be one red-faced fool.

Say it with me: am I talking too much? Am I acting like a spoiled brat? I better not. I probably don’t know the whole story. Repeat these to yourself when your spider-sense starts tingling, and you might just save yourself some serious embarrassment.

And lastly, in the interest of full disclosure, if you still haven’t guessed, most of these examples are personal ones. Hopefully, having others learn from my mistakes makes up for me being a buffoon oh, so many, many times.

Nevertheless, the American society is at a cross-roads today, as Carl points out in The Great Reset. The way we have been living (spending more than we earn, ever-increasing demand for luxury items, skyrocketing standards of living, increasing house sizes, etc., etc.) is simply not sustainable. People have been warning us about this, but the sound of the alarm was drowned out by TV/radio/Internet/billboard/print commercials. Then, 2008 happened. And now, in 2009, everyone, including the President, is telling us that this year will be just as bad, if not worse, as 2008.

The silver lining in all of this is that frugality, spending less than you earn, actually SAVING money are making a comeback. But the marketing departments have done such a good job in the last 2 decades that coming back to a sustainable way of life is not a sure bet. That’s why our society is at a cross-roads. Will we stop paying attention to ads, and stop filling our houses with stuff we don’t need? Will we start putting aside a significant amount of money for rainy days or retirement? Will we stop buying what we cannot afford (i.e. putting it on the credit card)?

It’s hard for me to say “I hope so, and I hope 2009 is so hard for the people of America, that the ridiculous lifestyle inflation is dealt a fatal blow,” because I’m not suffering the consequences of the economic downturn. I have a fairly secure job, and I can make the house payment. The thousands who have been laid off in the past weeks don’t have the same luxury. But, hard as it may be, I really do hope so.

I hope 2009 is a huge wake up call to everyone who thought that you can keep buying bigger and better things, and you can do it NOW, without waiting, without having to work hard for it. I hope that in 10 or 20 years, the end of the first decade of the 21 century is seen as a turning point for America, where wrong decisions are admitted to, and corrective steps are taken. When a new era of common-sense and ‘pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps’ attitude is ushered in. When entitlement finally gets flushed out of our systems.

It will be excruciatingly hard, though. As people who work with kids know, it’s one thing to train up a child, and it’s another thing to train up a child who has been spoiled rotten.

image by FadderUri

All this time, your thoughts are brewing and going through a range of emotions, from feeling misunderstood – “How could s/he say that?  Doesn’t s/he know how busy I am?” – to counter-attacking – “Oh yeah?  Well, we’ll see who’s on time to the meeting next week!  As a matter of fact, maybe I should follow him around and see how many of his meetings he’s late to!”

Think of an instance like that, when you were on a receiving side of a scathing comment.  Think of the author.  Is this person mean-spirited in general?  Does this person harbor any ill will towards you?  Was this person lashing out at you, for whatever reason?  If you can’t answer with a resounding yes to these questions, then it’s quite possible that you took the comment in the wrong way or it sounded a lot worse than it was meant to.

Now, misunderstanding is very much a part of life, and will be there so long as two or more people are interacting with one another.  What I’d like to get at is why the comment was so upsetting to you.  The likelihood is that you felt hurt, misunderstood and maybe even bitter because that comment touched a raw nerve or pointed out a flaw and you became defensive.  We don’t like it when our flaws are pointed out to us.  We’re not happy when a topic that we struggle with is broached, especially if our shortcomings/failures/inconsistencies could be exposed.

Maybe you are taken aback by the comment on your early arrival because you know that you’re late quite often.  Or you feel a little too much sting, when a comment is made about the the noises your car makes because you know you should be taking better care of it.  Or you are inclined to tell your classmates it’s none of their business, when they ask about the latest paper – the one you’ve been dragging your feet on.

So, the next time a friend or a relative unwittingly throws a dart and hits the bullseye, before you get upset or strike back, think about why the dart hurt – maybe there’s something you need to work on?

image by Heidi & Matt

What you do in life affects you more than anyone else. So, while it isn’t really all about you – see Biggie #3 – your actions don’t nearly have the same impact on others as they do on you.

Say there’s a classmate, a co-worker, or just somebody in your social circle whose words or actions make him or her not very popular.  The bad rap might be well deserved, that’s for sure.  But every time you ostracize that person – even if you’re fully justified – you are not being kind to another human being.

Say you roll through a stop sign at an empty intersection.  It’s largely a technicality, right?  Nobody was there, anyway.  Well, that’s true, but what happens is that now, you’re a tiny bit more desensitized to that stop sign and to all stop signs, in general.  So, when the same intersection is busy, will you brake hard enough and early enough to not cause other drivers to worry?

OK, what about something as harmless as filling our a survey?  The interviewer (or, alternatively, surverymonkey.com) is pestering you, and you’re in a rush, anyhow, and really, who cares?  They must know that half the results can be thrown out, because some people give random/false answers.  So, you decide that for today, you’re Pieter van den Hoogenband and make over $150,000, since you’re a big-wig at Vandelay Industries. The interviewer or surverymonkey still get paid, so nobody’s hurt, right? That’s true, and most people would categorize this as harmless fun.  But the fact remains that you were dishonest (even if comically), and now the needle between truth and lie has crept a bit towards the center.

These situations are harmless to others, but not so to you.  the classmate/co-worker and you will part ways, the intersection will get a traffic light, and the survey results will be forgotten.  The three choices that you made, however, will be added to the long list of choices that shape you as a person.  What kind of a person do you want to be?