Blog 637 – 05.19.2017

Watch Out For Crabs

And, no, I am not taking about bugs or really even the critters with claws that stroll the beaches, but the people who act a lot like them. One of the great secrets of living a happy, healthy, and successful life is surrounding yourself with loving, caring, uplifting people. In fact I think the best measure of whether someone truly loves and cares about you is whether they lift you up or put you down. My friend Bernie sent me an email recently talking about a bucket of crabs and how they cannot escape for crawling on top of one another and pushing one another down. Still the lie persists that the best and only way to get ahead in business and in life is to put and keep the other weaker less resolved to win at any cost guy down. It only seems to work, the side effects are stress, ulcers, heart attacks, a certain amount of guilt and paranoia, and mostly likely early retirement and a rich happy widowed or widowered spouse to spend all that pile of money.

I laughed when I first heard a comedian say, “It is not paranoia if everyone really is out to get you.” If you act as if you are out to get the best of everyone else don’t be surprised if that is what your world looks more and more like – all the world against you. Don’t be a crab, offer a lift, a little support and the people around you will love you for it and you will rise to the top not on the backs of those you have bested but on the shoulders of those whom you have blessed by being their hero. In one of my favorite movies with the lovely Sandra Bullock called, “While You Were Sleeping” She says to Peter, “You do something heroic everyday, you give up your seat on the train.” Every act of kindness, of trying to lift someone else up, makes us a hero in someone’s eyes and heroes are always destined to rise and to be carried off the field, not injured or for cheating, but on the shoulders of their team mates to the cheers of an adoring crowd.

But be warned if you do your heroic acts of kindness for attention or immediate praise you will get it but cheat yourself out of having the Universe pay you back in far greater measure. It is those acts of trying to lessen the burdens of others and lift them up that we do in secret that bring the best results and returns. It is a Universal principles that for what we do in secret we will be rewarded by the Universe in greater measure and openly – good or bad. The line comes to mind, “Nothing is done in secret that shall not be shouted from the house tops.” So do yourself and your reputation a favor, do your lesser, darker deeds openly for all to see and your good deeds secretly not for praise or reward but just because and you will find the true hero that lives inside of each of us. None of us has to be Crabby Appleton in our own story but we can with little effort and little acts of kindess be the hero that saves the day, the hero we always meant to be.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White