I made a girl cry over the weekend. It wasn’t on purpose, and I frankly don’t know what I said to upset her, but I was told what the gist was and I don’t feel bad. My position, according to her, was that living in the suburbs was for losers. If I strongly believed that internally, I could see me crushing human spirit 10 beers deep, but it’s a ridiculous position that I’ve never even thought about for more than this paragraph. For this to happen, we have two personalities clashing and I didn’t leave in tears.

I respect the truth and don’t shy away from it. If you’re engaging in a conversation with me, especially when I’ve had some drinks, it’s not going to be about the weather. I tend to dig and this can come across as an asshole and I’ll be the first to admit people will not like me because of it. That’s ok. This is where I’ll bring to the attention of preserving one’s self worth vs catering to other people and there are fine lines.

I have 6 hours left of Atlas Shrugged and am equipping for John Galt’s speech. I skipped over this speech in my 20’s and am re-visiting it to more fanfare in my 30’s. The book equates a personal, workmanlike, level of achievement as the ultimate goal in life with major overtures of capitalism. Considering my position in business, I’ve found it to be an excellent companion to achieving success. I mention this because this will 180 from another book I like to reference, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

I’ve often said 3 books have helped distinguish my business career and they are the aforementioned Carnegie book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and The Law of Success by Napoleon Hill. These books create a you first mentality to achieve your goals which I believe are fundamental to moving through business. You must acquire and understand these traits before you can graduate to the level which makes girls cry.

In order to be a good friend and person, you have to be considerate of the other person. But how can you be considerate if you need to be true to yourself? If I appease you by completely dismissing my personal values, who is winning? This is the fine line that I’m writing about that I continue to refine, and mostly fail.

You hear all the time not to listen to anyone but yourself. This is a ridiculous misconception because it’s not all or nothing. I’ve written posts before that explains how to manipulate the principals in these self help books and then you become a complete phony, which is slightly better than an asshole, but not better than who you are. So this balance, and I swear to god I hate these buzzwords, is critical to growing as a human. I must point out that I will not feel bad for people who can’t handle the harsh nature of life. You are either are in the game or you’re a bystander in the bubble.

I write these posts for multiple reasons. One is to document myself in personal points of my life. I rarely go back over my old posts, but every so often it’s funny to look back. I also write these because I like sharing with my friends how I think. By being a reader of this blog, you already know more about me than I know about you. And considering you read this blog, and if you’ve gotten this far this post, I already like you more than I like random people off the street, even if you disagree with every single point I make.