It pays to be Ignorant

Intelligence is a conscious form of common sense. – Werner van Tonder

Incompetence is capacious!  They appear on the radio, on the TV and we might even see them in our daily lives. I am referring to the ceo’s, directors and managers of today. In fear of stereotyping let me narrow the target group down.

Upon an interview on the radio, a certain CEO of a large corporation struggled to string two sentences together without either saying “ehhh” or stumbling over his own words while trying to think of the next word to place in the sentence. Another manager might always be on a permanent holiday not knowing what is happening in his department. While the staff works hard keeping the machine well oiled.

I always get amazed at how some people get to the top by selling their mouths. I know a lot of people that can do the job allot better than their superiors but yet somehow they always end up being the work horse. There is a logical selfish explanation for this. The people in most cases that are more capable of performing the tasks are kept at a grassroots or mid level because they do the actual work. Without them, the top will surely come crashing down?

I get irritated when I see a fat cat earning a big salary, and his I.Q. is smaller than his shoe size, and it makes me wonder just how hard you have to work to get there when the ignorant did it without breaking a sweat. I call these people the unobservant ignorant because they are actually unaware of their incompetent state.

Let me give you this example without sounding prejudice. A person gets the post of MD or Directorship because the company need to become compliant to the affirmative action laws in place. The only qualification needed is skin colour. How can this be an informed and intelligent decision in a business world? Or the person gets transferred from a division that was closed but because of the salary he/she earned, they have to place her as a manager in another totally different division, even though that person does not have any skills in that field. All the deadwood drifting on the top is what I call career killers. They stunt the growth potential of an organisation by demoralising the actual intellectual workers by not rewarding the right people for hard work.

Unfortunately this epidemic is a global threat to all companies and it is difficult to rid the organisations of this disease. I inspire to not let this get to me. I used to be the victim of a career killer and it affected me both at work and at home. It created a sense of being not worthy and not good enough. I was even told by my superiors at one stage that because of my lack of tertiary education, I will never earn a decent salary without working for peanuts at least for 10 years. I have proved them wrong because its not where or what you studied but your determination to learn and grow.

Money can’t buy you intelligence but intelligence can earn you money! – Werner van Tonder

No matter who you are, do not let anyone ever push you down and keep you from where you want to be. If you work hard enough and do it with passion, then you can achieve it.

The set rules of dictated by population is certainly not the recipe for success. Only by doing the extraordinary will you get to extraordinary heights.

Get out of the grove

Just another ORDINARY day


Sometimes I find it hard to obey rules. We all heard of the saying that rules are there to be broken, however, it almost seems like society does not like to break rules.

Take for example the morning coffee ritual. You might have heard people say that they have not had their morning caffeine fix or that they have to have that cup of coffee to get started. Is the coffee really a miracle drink that invigorates your body into a state of rejuvenation? I doubt it.

I tend to think that 90% of things we do to make us feel better is all in the mind. We tend to forget that our brains are very powerful. It is also strong enough to force people into a habit. Take for instance the monotony of everyday life. Some things we have to do... like sit in traffic, or to get to work and stick to the work hours.However some things are just a bad habit fooling you. The myth that If you don’t follow a certain sequence of events, then your day is going to go horribly wrong, seems to be the general rule of thumb amoungst most people.

We associate our days to be dull and boring because we already know how it will play off before we even started it, and thus we are already de-motivated. This is what I call falling into the grove. We are stuck in a grove and it is really not necessary. Just because everyone else says you have to do something at a certain time and in a certain manner, does not mean you must. These unwritten laws are things that make for a boring life.

We need to get out of the grove that we wedged ourselves into. Re-discover your day. Instead of following the exact same road to work, be more daring and take the alternative road. Eat your lunch for breakfast or compliment everyone for a day. Do something different every day. You will notice that the day you dread in the mornings becomes a little better.

I love to do things differently. People tell me that I can’t do certain things and when I ask them “why not?”... They can’t answer me or they tell me that well that is not how it is done. They condition their minds to stop thinking laterally.

I wish more people could get out of the grove, and live life.

Repetition

Repetition is part of the human anatomy

Repetition creates perceptions

Repetition blunts intuition

Repetition creates perfection

Repetition stunts progress

Repetition breeds monotony

Repetition is the gateway to death

Repetition is the lazy mans pillow

Repetition turns men into parrots

Repetition repeats until it becomes obsolete

Repetition usually gets replaced by repetition

Repetition forms a circle

Repetition is Dynamic’s worst enemy

Repetition will forsake you

Repetition is only as good as its previous repetitive cycle

Repetition is our success and our downfall

Arrogance

Arrogance emits the pungent smell of failure. – Werner van Tonder

It’s amazing how some people can actually boast how great they are when they actually just have a mask on to hide the failures that’s eminent to be exposed sooner or later. I often encounter people that are blinded by their arrogance. I think it is prevalent in all walks of life but I found that there is a common denominator amongst all the types of arrogant people. They all believe the lie.

They all know in the beginning that whatever they stand for is not the best stance to take but in order to achieve their goals they need to convince themselves that it is the best thing since sliced bread. Let’s take for example a CEO or owner of a company. In order to promote their company, they have to have faith in the product that you sell. Even though their product is antiquated and overpriced, they become blinded, and thus start believing that there is none better. This could be a fatal type of arrogance. Their empire will slowly come falling down and in the worst cases they would still question why it has failed amidst the absolute failure of their product.

I think what I want to get to is that some people just do not see their blatant failures. We all have failures but what makes a person arrogant is that they denounce it and they would rather steer clear of their failures and do the opposite and promote themselves as something better than what they could ever expect to be, this type of “ignorance is bliss” mentality is the stench of society.

It is an absolute failure to correct your mistakes and better the future for you and the people it affects. You might not be aware of your failures due to your friends / family being too scared to tell you about the big splinter in your eye. I would prefer to hear the truth, and better myself than be the arrogant fool that everyone despises, just because you are in a position that you do not deserve.

My encounters with arrogance were numerous. Managers that only got where they are because of people they knew and not the knowledge and reward of hard work, people that get paid for services only because they fooled the person into believing that they need them. We are often surrounded by these arrogant bigots but that should not let you get disheartened from your own potential. You might feel that you are in a situation where your arrogant boss/manager or senior actually does not deserve the pay and position to be above you...I know how that feels but we have to focus on our own strengths and abilities. We must rather learn from them and see where we can improve ourselves as not to fall into that cesspool of self righteousness.

We will only get to the top by being bigger than the biggest, taller than the tallest and humbler than the smallest.

Success

Success is when being content and achieving perfection reached a balance – Werner van Tonder

Walking past two people chatting away, I couldn’t help but to hear them using the words:” then he must be successful”... Did you ever stop and think that maybe your perception of success is totally different from another person’s perception.  We use it in sentences to state how we perceive the status of someone or the outcome of a situation or event.

When an event is planned and the outcome of the event was that profits were made or enough people attended or that it all went without a hiccup, does that mean that it went to perfection? Some might say that just that it went without a hiccup, it was successful but others would not regard it as a success because it was not perfect and thus falls short of being a success.

It has to be said that a balance must be struck between how happy you are with how good it was. Imagine you are retired (maybe you are), and you have enough to get you by for the rest of your life. Would you say you were successful in life? Most people would say yes. That is because they are happy where they are in life and they feel that they achieved their goal to a point where they are satisfied. They might not have perfected anything in life, but perfection can be sacrificed to be successful.

We often try to substitute our perception of success to accommodate other people’s perception. Why must you be rich and good in everything to be seen as successful? Why is it that the general population decide what your success is? Who gave anyone the right to determine your success in life?

Pressures of life, work, relationships and money push our boundaries. We run the wrong race. The goal should not be society’s success but your own personal success. People fall victims to drugs, alcohol or even work because they do not even know when they are happy. Keeping up with the Jones’s is not success. Your own happiness and the rate at which you are willing to compromise your lifestyle for that happiness dictate where your success lies.

Be an individual. Don’t let people dictate what your success should be. You alone have the right to reserve your success goal post. Never let another man’s race become yours. We all have different needs and potentials. It is so easy to get depressed comparing your life to other peoples successes.

Decide what makes you happy and go get it. Forget all the little nuances that wont contribute to YOUR success, because success is all you will have to show when you die.

I need you

We all need a person at the right time. I am not just referring to the emotional need. Take advertising for example. As I drove past billboards this morning I realised that you only notice certain billboards at certain stages in your life. We see advertisements the whole time. I find myself asking the question: How could some people make money. The services that they advertise seems like it could be the last thing any person needs, but then this would be very biased of me.

We all have different needs and just like advertisement we only see what we want when we need it. Our needs dictate where we are in life and what we want at that specific time and point. If your car won’t start, then you would need a mechanic. You will page past the garden services as you do not need them. Just like that I fear that the truth be told... we all use each other when we need something.

It is hard to believe that anyone has done it before. We attempt to create bond with those we see that can fulfil our needs. Some professionals call it networking and some might call it contacts. This is not a bad thing as long it is mutual. The problem i have is the notion that some people think they are too big to acknowledge that they need other people to ensure their independence.

Let me explain this. A boss needs his staff and equally they need him. This is symbiotic. But when the needs of one of the parties exceed the mutual agreement, then we might be pushing the relationship past the safe zone. An employee for example cannot expect to be paid the rates of a professional if they he cannot perform the same standard of services. An employer can also not expect the employee to work over and above the agreed terms that they established. We find ourselves compromising and sometimes sacrificing for the future benefit could end up to be a gamble.

The human race however does always overstep that boundaries and use people for a selfish purpose. We do not realise that we are selfish by nature and most times we only need one another in order to gain what will benefit ourselves even at the cost of someone else. I can understand this and I’m even tempted to say that is justified given the climate that we find ourselves in. Success is not an option and we step on one another to get where we have to be.

Just know that next time you complain that you do not get paid enough or you hate people that use you, and then look at how you treat everyone else. A culture of change is driven by opposites. You cannot fight hate with hate. We should strive to become a culture of helping and change the “I need you” to become “I want to help you”.