Ahmed Bilal

With the number 28 firmly affixed in my mind today, I present to you 28 ‘suggestions’ or ‘values’ to use in your life. You can be inspired, be reminded, or just plain brainwashed, as long as you take something away from it.

These are in no particular order. Let’s go:

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Good men ask. So do weak men. Jackasses just do. So go great men.

The trouble is distinguishing between the good and the weak, the arseholes and the great. A general tendency is to respect those who do – so that even if you might follow some arseholes, eventually you’ll find someone great. Our systems are wired to aim for the big win instead of the safety bet that is ‘nice’.

It’s not a question of right or wrong, whether you should respect those who are nice to you or those who move on in their lives oblivious to your existence. It boils down to what you want to do, how you want to live life, how you want to be treated and treat others.

Chances are that you’ll prefer people to be nice to you but retain the option of just doing and asking for forgiveness later.

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A lifetime spent playing strategy games has given me a unique perspective on how ‘simulation’ games can often mirror real-life circumstances and choices. It’s easy to discard the hours spent playing Civilization (from 2 to 5) or a dozen other titles, but it’s not a total loss – you get a level of satisfaction that life rarely provides you and if you’re perceptive, you gain life lessons that will serve you well in the real world.

So what can we learn? Read on and find out.

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The other day I was talking with a friend about college girls – you know, the bubbly, naive, carefree, fresh, sometimes pretty, sometimes available, fun kind.

Funny enough we both expressed nostalgia about our college days, of how we lacked the awareness to make the most of our early college days with these young women, because you know, it isn’t the same once you’re out of college and everyone’s older and more cynical.

And it hit me – Nostalgia is self-perpetuating. You dream of yesterday today, and you’ll dream of today tomorrow – if you don’t have the courage to seize the moment wherever you are, every day.

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I wanted to talk about the positive powers of addiction – and it stands to reason that I should share the best advice on the subject that I’ve heard so far. Here are some excerpts from a chapter out of Michael Masterson’s book, “Confessions of a Self-Made MultiMillionaire“. The chapter is titled: “The Junkie’s Secret”.

Three habits of a highly successful drug addict

1. He works longer hours. Addicts hustle for money every waking hour.
2. He works with a single-minded purpose. Nothing matters except getting the money he needs for his fix. And so is never diverted from his goal. He can’t be.
3. Most important: He does WHATEVER IT TAKES to get his dough.

If you study the lives of the world’s most successful people you will discover that they all did the following:

• worked long and hard
• managed to be enormously focused
• did whatever it took to succeed

Something to think about, isn’t it?

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It’s not you, it’s me.

Sometimes advice on productivity, financial success, business growth, health, and just about everything else can get get too structured, too formulaic, too much about ‘following the steps’ as opposed to understanding what the root causes of your problems are and what the long-lasting, effective solutions are to your case.

It makes sense – catering to the lowest denominator (i.e. dumbing it down) means that you can reach more people, which means more money / more attention. But the side-effect – apart from the cookie-cutter approach not working for everyone – is that you are contributing to the global culture of ‘getting help’ instead of helping people ‘help themselves’. Self-help books are usually anything but – they are full of useful advice, yes, but it’s still someone else giving you a standard answer to a personal question.

So what to do? While the following idea isn’t new in business consulting, it’s not repeated as often in personal productivity / fitness / self help circles. Simply put:

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