Alan Fox

Is the glass half full or half empty?  That is the proverbial question.

My dad raised me to be a contrary thinker.  When the stock market has been going up for three or four years he’ll say, “Be careful.  Nothing goes up forever.”  This is why, for me, the glass is not half full.  But it’s not half empty either.  It’s just a symbol.  There is no real glass.  Your perceptions are in your mind, not in the glass.

This brings me to my favorite quotation which is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

The glass itself is not good or bad. What’s in it is neither good nor bad.  Nor is the fullness of the glass good or bad.  It merely is what it is.

So why do we talk about a glass as “half full” or “half empty”?  Because we believe that if we are optimistic (and perceive the glass to be half full) we will get more of what we want, and if we are pessimistic (and see the glass as half empty) we will get less of what we want.

I agree with both. Why not? And if our perceptions can influence a potential result then we should choose to be optimistic. I still remember Herman, a friend in high school, who said to a female classmate, “I don’t suppose you’d like to go out with me.”  Talk about a negative self-fulfilling prophecy! Needless to say, he got no date.

I follow another adage in my life.  “Expect the best, but plan for the worst.”  By doing that my outlook and expectations are positive, and I feel positive about the future.  But if something goes wrong I’ll be ready.

One of my own business sayings is, “Avoid disasters.” If you see an iceberg on the horizon you need to be ready to change the course of the ship. I believe you can remain optimistic and still course correct as needed.

Enjoy the coming holiday season, but remember things go better when you make plans.  It won’t always “just happen”.

I’m planning to fill my glass with eggnog.

Alan

What will you eat for breakfast in the morning?  Or is breakfast a meal you skip entirely (along with the thirty million other Americans who don’t eat a morning meal), because it isn’t a priority?

Actually, at the moment I’m not really thinking about breakfast.  I’m thinking about choices.  And when I think of choices, I automatically think of priorities.  Consciously or not, we all have them.

Suppose you’re having a great conversation with your teenager.  Your cell phone rings.  Is it more important to answer the phone or to continue your conversation?  What if their cell phone rings?  Same answer?  Or do you expect your teenager to have a different set of priorities from your own?

Suppose I arrive home from work and my wife wants to go out for dinner.  I’m a little tired and would rather eat at home.  (This has actually happened.)  Should my priority be to please my wife and go out to dinner, or to please myself and stay at home? Generally my priority is to please my wife, but would that change if we’ve eaten out for the past three nights?

For most of my life I’ve been a fervent member of the “live to eat” club. While eating breakfast, I started to think about what I was going to enjoy for lunch.  And then after that for dinner.  No wonder I weighed 207 pounds when I graduated high school, and even more as an adult.  A few years ago I changed my priorities.  Now I eat to live, and as a result I’ve lost more than fifty pounds.  Maintaining a more reasonable weight is easy because I never feel deprived.  I no longer think about when or where or even if I will be eating dinner tonight.

It is a given for me that my priorities always center around other people.  My wife is my number one priority, other family members my next priority, and close friends or business associates my third priority.  Of course, my priorities are also situational. If a close business associate is having a life-threatening surgery, helping them would be at the top of my list.

Years ago my brother consulted me about his finances.  I asked him, “What do you want to be doing in five years?”

He said, “I don’t know.”

“Do you have any financial goals?”

He thought for a moment.  “No, not really.”

In other words, he didn’t have clear and conscious financial priorities.  This is not uncommon.  If next Saturday I want to visit my daughter in San Jose and yet find myself in San Diego instead, it would indicate that my priorities were not clear and conscious.

Meanwhile, I would be happy to elaborate, but I have an appointment across town in forty minutes, and being there on time has now become my first priority.

Alan

I was introduced to Shakespeare in my ninth grade journalism class when we studied the play Julius Caesar.

I still remember the famous “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” oration by Brutus, but the speech that sticks most in my memory was the one spoken to Brutus by a nobleman.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

“The fault…is…in ourselves.”  Hmmm.

This means it makes no difference if the dog really did eat your homework.  You, and you alone, are responsible for your responsibilities.

I say this out of pragmatism, and not as a moral judgment. If other people, or dogs, are responsible for your life, then you have no power to make any changes, and your life is completely subject to the whims of other people (or to the plans of your dog).

Another way of looking at this:  you can change a great deal of what happens to you in your life, all by yourself.  You can lose or gain weight, wear formal or informal clothes, or binge watch TV shows all day and all night on Saturday.  You don’t need approval or permission from anyone else.

But if you would rather hand over control of your life to someone else, I would be happy to eat your homework.  No salt, please.

Alan