Bob and Debbie Conroy - Enjoying the Journey Together!

Always lead with love. Self-actualized people can spot each other in a crowded room. Do you want my assessment of your unsolicited advice or shall I spare your feelings? If the other party in a discussion leads with their feelings leave the discussion with good-mannered expediency. Productivity equals self-esteem while a lack of productivity equals death of the human spirit. No government sponsored social program has ever created self-esteem. You are unique, just like everyone else. Expectations are critical: too low and your abilities are squandered; too high and your happiness is impossible. Apparently, every society has to try progressivism/socialism/communism at least once to see if it might work this time.

You can never save enough on a want to rationalize the purchase on price alone. What does the early bird do with all of those worms? Happiness takes effort and without effort the default is misery. Isolation and apathy are poor substitutes for contentment. When making plans the best tactic is to be flexible. If a task is not worth a 100% effort then give it none. Proficiency at prioritization is a prerequisite for progress. When in doubt use logic instead of emotion. Faith can be more powerful than logic but it comes with a price. Show me a broke person and I’ll show you a person without a life plan that has poor budgeting skills and a victim’s mentality. Our ability to rationalize a poor decision is both a virtue and a curse.

A “near miss” is actually a hit. Defining oneself by the type and brand of alcohol consumed is an example of effective marketing meeting low self-esteem. Everyone I follow on Facebook that is a runner eventually gets a serious injury–do they not notice the correlation? Atoms do not actually touch each other as their electrons repel each other and this force increases exponentially as the distance between them decreases. So when you sit in a chair you actually levitating above it- just not very high. It is your ability to transform your dreams into goals, and your focus on them, that will determine your happiness in life.

Some of the things that make me stop and think “Really”: License plates with stickers in multiple places besides the lower left corner. People that refuse to get a computer or use the Internet. Parents with children with more alcohol than food in their cart. Graffiti. Broke people driving new cars and living in big houses. Sports fanatics that can recite sports score and stats but couldn’t name a single person in the Cabinet, their U. S. Congressman, state legislator or state senator. Rap music with profane and violent lyrics. Computer viruses. People that say, “Don’t judge” since good judgment is what keeps us safe. Why it is called Happy Hour? “Reality TV” since it is anything but real. National Public Radio. People that define themselves by a brand of beer or a sports team. Real estate developers that go broke to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in little old Des Moines. Rekha Basu and the Des Moines Register in general. Professional Sports...

Some just have to be told. Here are my current offerings in a continuing effort to come up with an original thought that might be quotable hundreds of years in the future:  The hardest thing to endure is an obvious truth that others have decided to ignore.  Beyond “Fight or Flight”, when faced with more options, a person tends to freeze. Dust and smoke in the atmosphere create beautiful sunsets and then attack your lungs while you sleep. A well-timed kind word is a precious gift. Just when you have things figured out, it doesn’t matter. Time spent with grandchildren is the big payoff. In a rational world, the self-treatment of depression and anxiety by abusing drugs would only appear in fiction novels and the movies. We build truths out of the bones of those that defy conventional wisdom. Suicide is the ultimate method of reducing one’s carbon footprint, anything short of that is some degree of grandstanding or self-delusion. Ignorance can be replaced with knowl...

The size of the universe is limited only by our ability to perceive it.  A coat of paint can hide an interesting story or two. The hypotenuse of a right triangle is occasionally very handy. Your green light is an impediment to others. Multiplying two imaginary numbers together always results in a negative number and that is fine by me. A word can convey complex concepts but it is made up of letters that individually mean nothing. Debt is a tool only used by a fool. In measuring a bargain it is not what you “saved” but what you spent that counts. Sometimes motorcycle maintenance is just motorcycle maintenance.  The antidote to a riddle is earned knowledge.  If only the good die young there are a lot of bad people in Florida. It is easy to adjust a goal to match the results – politicians do it all the time. It is the exceptions that define a process.

From the mind of Bob: An apple a day is over 40,000 Calories a year. If we are stardust, it is a good thing that it cools down before we use it. Considering all of the things that could have gone wrong today but did not, it has been a good day.  An exception to an exception is a rule and all rules are created this way.  Making hydrogen into helium is quite simple if you start with a few thousand billion tons of hydrogen.  Did Pascal ever bet on the horses? Even Shakespeare made typos and grammatical errors but his became the preferred version. A significant event can happen at any moment but it can take years to recognize it happened. The greatest gift to give your descendants is a legacy of honor and integrity. A consistent approach, while good for a pilot, will grind innovation into the ground. A day spent golfing is lost forever.