“You are a Beautiful and Unique Snowflake”

You are a beautiful and unique snowflake.

This is actually completely accurate of a metaphor. We?re all beautiful and unique snowflakes. Here?s the problem, snowflakes are actually small and insignificant frozen water molecules that collapse upon each other to make snow. No one ever really cared about a snowflake.

And just like snowflakes, we?re not all created equal. Some of us fall in the gutter, some of us fall onto the top of skyscrapers. Most of us melt away into drains, while others become packed and sculpted into ice castles.

The difference between us and the snowflakes? We can do something about where we land. We can move, we can take action, we can become a part of something bigger than just a puddle.

Like a snowball. Landing squarely on someone?s face.

Not so Secret

The Secret

For those of you who have yet to see the movie, I’ll save you the (outrageous) dvd price:

“Think positive thoughts to the ‘universe’ while demanding all the things that you want, and a nice universe representative will hand-deliver them to your door.”

That’s it. Seriously. No 5 am jogs, no putting away the donut, no actual work. Just think happy thoughts and all your dreams will come true. Doesn’t sound much like a secret, does it? Of course not, it’s not even a new idea. People have been broadcasting it since the dawn of mankind. It’s called prayer.

Not even good prayer, the kind that most religions suggest. Most religions say you have to contribute first, help the helpless, feed the hungry, pay your taxes. No. The secret suggests that the best kind of prayer is to whine (positively) in your heads and hope for the best. It can even get rid of your bigoted co-workers! The best part of the secret? You don’t have to take any personal responsibility for your actions.

The authors of the secret does know something you probably didn’t, though. They discovered the secret that if you redesign something people already do and justify it with a pretty enough package, you can sell millions of books and dvds.

Whether you think you can or think you can’t, it doesn’t matter.

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right”

I call bullshit. The quote suggests that if you think it, you can do it. Not only that, it implies that if you think you can’t, you’re powerless.

The biggest flaw in this argument is its core message: if you believe in something strong enough, you can accomplish it. The problem here is that “can” doesn’t really mean anything. Can suggests capability, which is quite inherently limited. If you’re morbidly obese and get a cough walking up stairs, no amount of positive thinking will have you running a marathon the next day.

These concepts in self-help are horribly misguided. They’re designed for one thing: to make you feel better. You know what else makes you feel better? Morphine. In fact, it makes you feel GREAT. It makes you feel like you can do anything in the world.

But just like narcotics, those who are high on self-help find out quickly enough that feeling great doesn’t get results. Concepts like “determination”, “self-esteem”, “faith”, “potential”, “passion” are all nice decorative masks covering the thing that separate those who succeed and those who don’t: action.

It’s the ultimate get-rich-quick scheme, isn’t it? The idea that changing your beliefs will make you into a sexy playboy millionaire the next day despite the fact that you’re currently overweight, broke, and haven’t any clue what you want to do in your life.

It’s time to rip off those blinders and face the music, because if you really want to get what you want, you’ve got to live dirty.