The measure of a person’s real character is what they would do, if they knew they would never be found out.

T. B. MACAULAY

What would you do, if you knew you could never be found out?

For many people, there are many different answers to this question.

Obviously, at the root of the question, is the fundamental understanding of whether or not, your morality is truthful to the core.

Contemplating being within the vacuum of being able to do anything without a repercussion, brings massive temptation to almost anyone.

Somewhere in the dark recess of everyone’s mind, lies one or two things that they wish that they could do without fear of punishment.

For some, the temptation lies on the personal side, and for others on the professional side. Would you rob a bank if you knew you could not be caught? Would you have an extra marital affair? Would you cheat on your taxes? The crime is entirely incidental in the examination of the moral principle. Once a person is willing to do something against their own personal morality, that line of demarcation has been crossed, and the new territory of doing that which could not be discovered, is awakened.

As we grow older, and we learn upon which people we may rely, and upon whom we are less likely to trust, we are also potentially unearthing part of that deep internal psyche that tunes in to the vibrations of other people.

When the circumstance becomes solely an unspoken confidence between ourself and our reflection in the mirror, the true test of our internal resolve is brought to full measure.

It is a great litmus test for each of us to leverage, such that we might gain deeper insights about qualities within ourselves that we admire, versus qualities that we may wish to improve upon, predicated upon that which we have learned.

Happy Tuesday!

Please follow and like us:

The greatest gift you can give someone is your kindness, because it makes someone feel right at home even when they’re not.

CAROL RIFKA BRUNT

How do you choose to exemplify kindness?

Kindness is such a broad category, demonstrated through countless overtures. To presume to qualify kindness is to immediately categorize every form of courtesy and genuine act of compassion, empathy, friendship, across the entire spectrum of ways that these and other kindnesses are manifested.

Have you ever been traveling in an area in which you do not speak the language and you are reliant on a stranger for directions, guidance, rules, and resources?

In those moments, we find ourselves at the mercy of a third-party, who may opt to go out of their way to help us, or turn a blind eye, and leave us to our own confused resources.

The opportunity to demonstrate kindness is a divine right that is given to all of us in our arsenal of tools, from which to navigate our place in society. We are all the more enriched in our own personal growth and fortitude, by extending of ourselves on behalf of others… for no other reason than they need the kindness, and we have it to offer.

What is it specifically about kindness that is so universal in language and understanding? Is it the notion that another party is willing to be gracious and help us through whatever it is that we are working through? Do we sense something deeper in the other party that is being communicated? Is there a mutual respect system that is being generated through these very simple overtures?

Somewhere in the dynamic of the kindness experience lies a much deeper, much less clearly defined component that all living creatures appear to be sensitive to.

In the act of a kindness being expressed, or demonstrated, many of the apprehensions of a strange third-party can be diminished, if not reduced entirely, through such a simple, benevolent action.

Is kindness, always altruistic? I don’t believe so. I believe that the generosity of character, soul, relationships, and other variables, deepens our own human experience, such that we continue to evolve into an ever more sentient being.

Watch how you feel the next time you go out of your way to be kind to a third-party…especially when that third-party is a stranger. You have opportunity to discover that in your own actions, you are releasing something deep within your own framework that is vibrant and a nutritious to our internal being.

Happy Monday!

https://brianweiner.com

Image created by AI

#ai #opportunity #experience #growth #help #respect #empathy #kindness #society #language

Please follow and like us:

Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself. 

MOHSIN HAMID

When you see a living being going through something extraordinary, do you internalize and transpose what you are seeing?

What is it specifically that causes us to feel empathetic?

Is it our ability to recognize what another living creature is going through and to juxtapose those experiences, feelings or emotions into our own life predicament, such that we can relate to what they must be weathering and therefore share some of the anxiety, fear, grief, pain, or disappointment?

Empathy is a very interesting, emotional quality that is not always readily present in everybody. In fact, there are many people who do not feel empathetic, whatsoever. Does this mean that empathy is not necessarily biological, but rather taught?

If it is biological, and readily prevalent, as it appears to be, would it not stand to reason that a majority of people would experience this? Many animals in the animal kingdom most certainly experience it. Is empathy, a variable that is randomly distributed like a sense of humor or intelligence?

And if it is taught, how precisely does that take place?

When we are witnessing another party going through their gyrations of emotion while processing a particular experience or situation, I do believe that we see reflections of our own being caught in the other party’s circumstance, and for a brief minute, the pangs that we are feeling deep within, are our own emotions, trying to process what we might be dealing with, were we the ones who are experiencing such a tumultuous situation.

The transposition of the experience of a third party onto our own beings is the core tenet of all fiction, theater, and media. Humans voyeuristically assimilate experiences and grow through that process.

Empathy is a cornerstone of civilization. If people did not feel empathetic towards one another, there would be overall apathy towards any misfortune, illness, disappointment, injury, or loss that another party is processing.

Our innate ability to transpose our own feelings, atop a third-party’s circumstances, gives way for civilization as a whole, to mature.

In this communal experience, we are that much more capable of building a society that has laws and protections that preclude others from potentially weathering similar misfortune, and cumulatively protecting the society as a whole, from disintegration and demise.

When you experience empathy, ask yourself what is really going on inside your mind, and you will discover that you are transposing those circumstances onto your own and having a sympathetic reaction in which you, yourself, are weathering some of their pain, fear or discomfort.

Happy Sunday!

https://brianweiner.com

#empathy #empathyinaction #empathyatwork #empathyinleadership

Please follow and like us:

There is no such thing as death, only a change of address.

DOUG IVANOVICH

Do we have any awareness of anything after we die?

Since the dawn of humanity, there have been countless suppositions about what happens to us after we pass away. Almost every religion or belief system has posited various explanations for their followers to hold deep within themselves as comfort and consolation towards the inevitable end of our life on planet Earth.

In my musing here, I very much wish to not offend any belief system, so if you have a defined thought process about this, please do not take exception to my supposition.

I have spoken with more than 10 people now, who have died on the operating table and returned back into their bodies. Almost all of them share a similar explanation of feeling detached from their body and rising up into a tunnel of light. As I have listened to these stories, I have often wondered, whether or not prior explanations of this experience had influenced what they thought they were feeling. The truth is, how does anybody ever really know?

Having some sort of a believe in an afterlife, whether that involves a place like heaven, or whether that involves some form of reincarnation or other explanation, helps people cope with the fact that, at some point in time, this journey of our physical body will come to a conclusion. 

When my dear friend Doug, shared this aphorism with me, it really resonated, because at the end of the day, we are all working to process these fears and compartmentalize them. 

Whether we are thinking about ourselves, or whether we are missing a loved one, it is unquestionably, one of the most unsettling topics of all. 

By framing the thought process as transitional, as opposed to final, it alleviates a large volume of the fear. 

I distinctly remember as a child, trying to comprehend that after I died, I would have no concept of anything that would continue past that date. 

I found that incredibly unsettling, and it took a long time for me to find answers that would give me comfort and diminish this fear. 

In the end, no one truly knows. But allowing ourselves to reduce the anxiety that stems from feeling apprehensive about our own mortality, enables us to more readily savor the tremendous opportunity we have to make every single day count. And in the end, that is what we would all have wished for ourselves at the point of transition.

Happy Saturday!

Image created by AI interpreting this aphorism.

Please follow and like us:

You cannot change the way all of humanity is going, you can only pick the lane that you’re going to be in, as it changes.

BRIAN WEINER

Do you know what your place is, in the pantheon of humanity?

It is easy to stand on the sidelines, presuming and judging like an armchair quarterback, but does that ultimately serve you?

It is true that we are always trying to anticipate how and where the cumulative societies of planet Earth are leading us, but those assertions do not ultimately lead to any major shift in those evolutions, except on very few rare occasions.

Given that, we are continually plagued by the fear that what we are doing is remaining passive and hoping for the best. 

And in some cases that might actually be true. It is incumbent upon all of us to clearly recognize the changes as being what they will be, such that we might ultimately determine to the best of our ability, how and where we belong within that changing infrastructure.

You might look at the continual wave of disruptive variables, be they economic, climate, sociological, governmental, medical, scientific, or technological, and within the each of those verticals, feel wholly incapable of bringing any impact to bear upon all of them. Even if you are akin to my frame of mind in which you believe that one person can change the world… No one person can change all of the world.

Concurrently, it is not only pragmatic, but essential, that we might clearly identify these issues, and figure out what we are going to do for ourselves, our friends and family, in order to sustain.

This has been a factor that humanity has dealt with, since the outset…various circumstances or neighboring tribe circumstances, impact the flux of humanity, causing us all to continue to operate as best as we may, with the information at our disposal.

For all intent and purposes, this still remains an integral component of survival for the human species.

So whether you are trepidatious about artificial intelligence, human cloning, nuclear energy and weapons, or any other cutting edge, technological variable that potentially brings confusion and danger to our species, you are still ultimately facing the same criteria… What will we do to survive and how are we going to allow this to impact our lives or are we willing to potentially dissociate ourselves from any of this knowledge and instead recognize that if we have no power to impact those issues, are they really our problem to solve or fret about?

Happy Friday!

https://brianweiner.com

Artificial Intelligence has kindly interpreted my concerns about it and provided this metaphorical image to sate my curiosity.

Please follow and like us:

I AM 

Two of the most powerful words; for what you put after them shapes your reality.

What are you?

When you complete a sentence starting with “I am,“ you are shaping all that you are potentially headed towards.

When we are capable of projecting our own being, via true combinations of language, intention, focus and aspirations, we find ourselves in a position of mentally sculpting our true essence.

Buddha said, “what we think, we become.“ This is, at essence, an identical perspective on this particular thought process.

We are an open book, a clean slate, and our future is entirely predicated upon that which we are myopically focused, and determined to achieve.

It surprises me that such an important lesson is really not ever taught with frequency. We might pick it up through a meme, or a blog or a podcast or similar, but in the traditional annals of education, there is generally not a focus on the mental ramifications of making intelligent choices within the topics of which we are willing to focus throughout the course of our lives. And then cementing those choices through daily mental intention.

Perhaps, if this were much more rudimentary in the formative stages of our lives, so much more of what we might choose for ourselves, would be more readily contemplated, calculated, planned for and ultimately anticipated as it manifests in our daily lives.

We only have one shot as a three dimensional being walking this planet, so it is all the more imperative to truly make it count.

Our opportunity for that arises through our determined focus, paired with our continual reacquaintance with those thought processes that facilitate our ability to ultimately prevail in life.

So let me close by asking you again, when you complete the sentence, “I am,” what will be your answer?

Happy Thursday!

Please follow and like us:

I hope that all of us, or none of us are judged by the actions of our weakest moments but rather by the strength we show when or if we are given a second chance.

TED LASSO

If you were judged by your actions in your weakest moments, would you have cause to be trepidatious?

All of us have had weak moments. It’s part of the human experience.

That said, for those to be the metric by which we are ultimately judged by others, is an entirely different set of circumstances.

Everyone wants an opportunity to have the freedom in their lives in which to navigate each and every choice, based solely on the metric of that particular choice. Some of them prove to be stellar, while others give us cause for consideration, growth, and sometimes even repentance.

But all decisions aggregate collectively into the whole that we have become at that moment in time. In that collection of good and bad experiences, we find the core essence of whom we truly are, for all of our strengths and all of our weaknesses.

When we are honest with ourselves, and we are able to look back on all the choices that we have made at our weakest moments, we are left with either the choice of forgiving ourselves for being human, and growing past those negative repercussions, or continually punishing ourselves, for a mistake made in the past which potentially can never be rectified.

In our options at that moment, we are either looking forward or we are looking backward. Given that the present is all that there is, continuing to look backward with remorse, only diminishes the stimuli for growth. The option to remain stuck in such a confusion of priorities of our time and energy is a waste of a great life that should be continuing to be lived and appreciated.

Only in our understanding and self forgiveness, followed by purposeful growth from those experiences, can we ultimately take complete control of our future, and ensure that those mistakes are never made again… and hopefully return ever better outcomes for our having learned these lessons.

On a final note, if you have not been watching Ted Lasso, you are missing one of the best television shows of all time. The writers, actors, directors and producers of this show have encapsulated so many of the tender and poignant moments of humanity.

It truly is worth your time!

Happy Wednesday!

https://brianweiner.com

Image created by AI using MidJourney

Please follow and like us:

A heart filled with love is like a phoenix no cage can imprison. 

RUMI

Does your love know any boundaries?

When we truly love something, or someone, the love is infinite. Nothing can constrain it, nor restrict it. 

Love is one of the most undefinable, delicate qualities in life. When you have multiple family members, you love them equally. When you have multiple passions in life, there’s room for you to love all of them without any one of them feeling shorted. Love is amorphous and accelerates beyond any boundaries by perimeters that threaten to constrain it. 

Love can continue to deepen over time. It can also reduce over time, depending upon circumstances. But the true love of something galvanizes feelings deep within us that are indescribable, and whose qualities are only partially known until the moment that it is truly known. 

As an adoptive parent, I only found out that I was going to be Christopher’s father 12 days before he was born, so there was tremendous excitement, trepidation, fear, and intense anticipation, leading to the event. But I distinctly remember taking a shower after being up all night in the hospital during his birth and thinking to myself, “I’ve only held this creature in my arms twice, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if it was him or me, I would throw myself in front of a truck or similar to save his life. How is that possible that something that you have known about for 12 days and who has only been alive outside of his mother’s womb for a couple of hours, could mean so much to me, that my life was secondary in comparison? 

That is the power of true love. It creates a bond that defies logic, defies description, and even defies understanding. When we watch a video of a mother animal, working desperately with people to save her imprisoned, or endangered child, we all feel those pangs of longing and heartache for that mother wanting/hoping that she will prevail, and that her baby will be delivered from danger. 

Love is clearly unquantifiable, and our relationship with love must ultimately be a gentle form of surrender, for nothing else describes how we truly allow love to overtake all of our common sense, and logic, and replace it with a higher sense of valor, duty and honor. 

Happy Tuesday! 

https://brianweiner.com

This artwork was made in less than one minute, by typing Rumi’s exquisite aphorism into artificial intelligence and allowing AI to interpret and express this as one of four possible visualizations. It took me 5x longer just to add the text, logo and save my work.

Please follow and like us:

Be an encourager. The world has plenty of critics already.

POWER OF POSITIVITY

Are you more likely to encourage or to criticize another person? 

Why do you suppose that is?

Statistically speaking, someone who is more likely to be criticizing others is most likely suffering from deep insecurities in which they increase their own feeling of self-worth by diminishing others. 

There are constructive criticisms, which are imperative for everyone to learn from, but there are also those who criticize because their parental upbringing bathed them in criticism, leaving them more readily desirous of doing the same to others. 

A person who is more likely to be encouraging and complementing others, is considerably more secure about their own personal worth and, as a result, they are much more likely to be generous with their praise and open about their admiration of others. 

A person who is encouraging looks for glimmers of hope in the person that they are encouraging and they work to help that person to see those opportunities and build upon them, such that they will be that much more successful over time. 

When we encourage another person, we are validating hard work that they have leveraged to get to the position that they are currently. In this validation, we provide them one of the most necessary components of success, which is the knowledge that their success is recognized by others and their accelerated skills or capabilities are very much appreciated. 

These details could not be more important for the way that people get along in life. It facilitates the necessary stimuli to encourage other parties to apply themselves to difficult tasks and enables them to feel as if they are not alone in their quest to achieve them. 

If you find yourself being mostly critical of others, I might invite you to search deep within and ask yourself why, specifically, this is important to you? In this exploration, you will find deeper revelations of yourself, than you might have previously imagined. 

Happy Monday!

This artwork was created by artificial intelligence from the aphorism above.

Please follow and like us:

Artificial Intelligence is not the monster you think it is.  It’s worse.

BRIAN WEINER

Do you think humanity will lose to artificial intelligence?

I can give you two very convincing, opposite arguments to that question. But they are both irrelevant, because A.I. is here to stay and it is spreading rapidly. 

I played with it and expected AI to be brilliant. And it was and it was not.

As it turns out, MidJourney A.I. wants you to be much more descriptive and clear about what you are creating, so it can create things that you think you may want. This is akin to what Illusion Factory has done for 44 years, we must get into the mind of the client to ensure that we are delivering beyond their expectations.

So MidJourney Artificial Intelligence forces you to be more creative on your end, using language, such that you spell out what is in your mind’s eye, enabling it to deliver as you might expect. This use of language cultivates growth on our end… Unless…

You use ChatGPT Artificial Intelligence to write your creative prompts for your MidJourney usage… and then, once again, you do not need to be creative. You can ask AI to do it for you… and it is pretty darn creative. And with every image that comes out of it, like today’s dragon, can be made with countless permutations. So if MidJourney delivers an image that is close but not quite, you have the ability to make variations.

In the end, I believe that AI is an amazing prototyping platform in which you may visualize countless permutations from which to learn and glean your final concept. I think a human is still required to assess what is being generated and to apply that certain je ne sais pas quoi to take the concept to brilliance.

In using the ChatGPT to write the creative prompts, I discovered more about use of language, and absorbed the style and process that both of these AI systems afforded me.

People say AI will replace us, and the truth is, it will. I have always had to stay ahead of technology, because what I was doing yesterday is obsolete today, in ever decreasing windows of time. It forces you to continue to evolve.

Should people be concerned? Yes. Very.

What should they do? 

Learn how to use as many A.I. systems as your interests allow. Study the systems, and innovate. You cannot possibly defeat A.I. It is not going away. So you must get out in front of it, rather than pretending it is too complicated. It is not. It is very easy. You just need to learn how. Search YouTube.

Lastly, will A.I. destroy humanity? From a logical perspective, it will. Humanity is a virus-like entity which has elevated its position in the hierarchy on Earth as to put entire systems in jeopardy. When humanity encounters something like this, like the Covid virus, it works to exterminate it. Same with Lion Fish, locusts, mosquitos, and more.

What is the solution? Easy. Stop giving A.I. a reason to destroy humanity by humanity stopping acting like an out of control, self-entitled virus. Then the A.I. logical conclusion will change.

Happy Sunday!

I watched this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf4z8A-OWBY

You need a free account on Discord

https://discord.com/

ChatGPT is found here

https://chat.openai.com/

MidJourney is found here

https://www.midjourney.com/app/

Please follow and like us: