Category: Inspiration

Cowardice is not so much a label as it is an operating basis. One of not looking and not saying.

There are a thousand levels of cowardice. It’s probably accurate, if unpalatable, to say the vast majority of us lack courage to some degree in some area.

The descent down the scale from courage to cowardice started the first time we decided something was too horrible to be faced.

So we looked away.

We did not fully confront it.

Not being able to face it, we fell out of communication with it.

Do that enough times over enough areas and we fall well and truly out of communication with life generally and, as a result, have more and more problems.

Welcome to the human condition.

Is there a road back from this?

Yes, there is.

The first step is to recognise that there is something that could be improved and that improvement is desirable. To what end?

Well, let’s look at the most desirable condition. That would be where we are willing to look at anything, observe it fully enough to see it accurately for what it is, correctly label it and, if appropriate, to communicate honestly to it or about it, regardless of vested interest, potential gain or loss.

That’s a pretty star high level of confront, courage and personal integrity.

So how do we move from where we are towards that star high level we identified?

The cheaper, potentially easier beginning, is to start noticing the things that we formerly did not confront and start looking at those things more fully. Then do this more and more, to a deeper degree over a wider range of activities.

An easy selector for something to confront is to make a list of areas where you are having trouble. If you are having trouble with an area that is the clearest sign possible that the area is not being confronted and you are, to a greater or lessor degree, out of communication with it.

For that with which you fully confront you perceive accurately.

Perceiving it accurately, you are in communication with it.

Being in communication with it means you can solve problems associated with it.

The other, more complete handling, is to do a course that teaches the theory of communication then do the practical drills that:
-improve your ability to be here, in present time,
-enable you to confront the environment without discomfort,
-enable you to confront the person in front of you,
-enable you to confront anything the person in front of you says to break your confront.

The subsequent practical drills then ratchet up your skill in the various parts of the communication formula.

The end result of the course is a person much better in communication with their environment and the people in it.

My eldest grandson did it in grade school and by the time he was half way through high scool he was the leader of his high school debating team.

If you would like an increase in your confront, courage or communication skill, let me know. Happy to point you in the right direction.

Tom Grimshaw
tom@tomgrimshaw.com

In 2018, MikroTik, a Latvian maker of networking gear, was dealing with a serious security flaw in its routers. A fix existed, but tens of thousands of devices around the world were still running old software, and criminal botnets were scanning the internet for them.

Once inside, the attackers put the routers to work mining cryptocurrency and joining coordinated attacks, often without the owners having any idea. A security expert who used the name Alexey watched this happen and decided the owners weren’t going to patch the problem fast enough on their own.

So he wrote an automated script that went looking for the same vulnerable routers, logged into them through the same weakness and changed each one’s firewall rules to block the ports the attackers were using. He didn’t look at anyone’s data, harvest passwords or install software of his own. Before leaving each device he left a brief note explaining the change and urging the owner to update.

Alexey said his only goal was to protect ordinary internet users, but what he’d done was still unauthorized access to other people’s equipment. The episode split the security world, with some praising him as a digital vigilante and others arguing that breaking into someone’s device without permission is wrong whatever the motive.

Life is rarely this pat but you would undoubtedly be surprised at the number of people you inspire when you do a good deed. If our combined existence is the sum of our collective deeds let’s make a conscious, collective decision and act to change the ratio for the better.

Act as if you make a difference.

You do!

Click to view the video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgTEeM5cVdM&t=125s

David Aguilar was born in Andorra, the tiny mountain country wedged between Spain and France, with a rare genetic condition that left him without a right forearm. Growing up, he felt the difference sharply, especially around other boys, and he wanted to look in the mirror and see two hands like everyone else.

The tool he reached for was the one he loved most. At nine years old he built a simple arm from ordinary LEGO bricks. When those turned out to be too fragile for opening doors and gripping objects, he moved on to LEGO Technic, the line built around beams, gears and axles.

Over the following years he dismantled helicopters, jets and cranes from his sets and rebuilt their parts into a series of arms, each one more capable than the last. At 18 he completed a version he called the MK-I, after the suits in Iron Man, with an elbow that bent and a grabber that could pick things up. Guinness World Records named it the first functional LEGO prosthetic arm.

Later models added electric motors, and one has five moving fingers. Aguilar went on to study bioengineering at university, with the goal of making working prosthetic arms cheap enough for people who can’t afford conventional ones.

The boy who once wanted to look like everyone else ended up building arms for other children who felt the way he had.

GQ sits down with the legendary movie star for his first GQ cover shoot and in-depth interview in two decades. See how Cruise approaches work, what advice he’d give to young actors, and why he’s excited about the state of moviemaking today.

Click to view the video: https://gq.visitlink.me/D3u4oq

Click to view the video: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14oaq9t4rua/

“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second, is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.”
Marcus Aurelius – Roman Emperor and Philosopher (121 – 180)