I realy need an iditor.

I really am alot better at this than I use to be.  I try to read what I've written out loud after stepping away from it for awhile.  But I notice things still slip through. Please let me know if this confuses the message or just makes it hard to read.

Thank you for your patients.

Part 1 of The Tao of Josh - Personal Responsibility

What is Personal Responsibility? To me these words mean taking ownership of ones own actions. I will not expect nor is it anyone else’s duty to take care of me! I will not whine or blame others if things do not go as I plan.

The first responsibility of the individual is to oneself, now this might sound selfish to some, but if you think about it; it’s really not. If you take care of yourself first you’re not a burden on your family, society or anyone else, and you can help others in times of need. Now this doesn’t mean putting yourself first at the expense of others.

Let me give you an order of importance to the responsibilities in your life: your first responsibility is to your self; then family, friends, acquaintances, local community and the world at large.

Now you might be asking why family isn’t first. Let’s say you put your family first and give everything to the family. Say a family member needs some money, so you just go into debt to get the money, because you’re not worried about yourself. Now you get so far in debt that you can’t pay your own bills. You are now a burden to your family.

If you had kept your responsibility to yourself in minded, and said, “How can I help this family member support him self, so we can both prosper?” You would be keeping this principle in mind.

So, if the individual is strong then our families, friends, acquaintances, the local community and the world at large will be strong.

Now there are things that happen that are out of our control. Let’s say, a natural disaster comes along and destroys my house. It’s not everyone responsibility to insure that I get my life back exactly like it was before. It is my responsibility to plan for the future and part of that future is uncertainty and Mother-Nature. It’s my responsibility to ask myself, “What could happen and what should I do if it does?” and plan accordantly.

We can band together to help each other start over, but it’s not mandatory. I do believe in teamwork. You wouldn’t ask a teammate to do something and then stand around doing nothing with your handout? Teams work together to accomplish something for the benefit of the group. If, you do have to except someone’s help don’t fall into the trap of always relying on others. You should try to do things yourself first and if you really can’t do something then ask for help; while still doing what you can yourself. You will be surprised at what you can accomplish on your own. No freeloading, after you recover from what ever you needed help with pay those who helped you back in full; plus a little extra. There should be no free rides.

If you do rely on the government and others to take care of you, you are weakening are society, because you will put-off doing things waiting for someone else to take care of them.

So, if something bad happens pick your self up, dust yourself off and start building your life over. There are no guaranties in life, so plan accordingly.

Keep Death in Mind.

The introduction to "Bushido Shoshinshu" by Daidoji Yuzan is all about keeping death in mind. Death can find you at anytime, so give thanks for this time with your loved-ones on this day of Thanksgiving. We should keep and show the spirit of this day all year long. What would you do today if you new that you wouldn't have tomorrow? What words would you take back? Time is precious use it wisely as you might not get tomorrow. We shouldn't need a single day to remind us to appreciate and give thanks for this life.

Intro to The Tao of Josh - Why having a code of Ethics and Conduct makes life easer.

My dad once told me, “Josh, for every decision and action you make there are consequences: some will be good and some will be bad. So every time you make a decision or take action, you need to ask yourself, ‘what will the consequences be and can I live with them?’ If the answer is no then don’t do it. If you decide to do it anyway and the consequences comes to pass don’t whine about it, don’t make excuses and accept it like a man. You will have no one to blame but yourself.”

Now this wasn’t the first time my dad had told me this, but this time for some reason it stuck with me. Maybe, this was do to me realizing that my dad wasn’t always going to be around to bail me out and make things better. You see, we had just moved to Wyoming and by “we,” I mean it was just my dad, my brother and me; my dad and mom got divorced when I was four. My dad worked in the Oil Field and put in about 100+ hours a week and would be gone for days at a time. We had been staying with my grandparents, but now it was just going to be the three of us. So, you see if I got in trouble it was up to me to deal with it. Oh, and by the way, I was twelve, and my brother was ten.

Now you might be asking yourself, “Why are you telling me this,” because, even if I didn’t know it my dad was helping me build my own personal code of ethics and conduct, a code or “Tao of Josh” if you will. Now fast forward 20 some years, I’ve tried to live my life by this code. Some of it I got from my dad and some I got from books. I never wrote it down, until now. It was just these ideas floating around in the back of my head. “Again why are you telling me this?” It's simple, I see so many people making the same mistakes over and over. These same people complain that “life is hard,” and now I can say, “No its not. It’s just you making it appear that way. Here is my code of conduct and lets help you make one of your own, because the hardest part about life, in my opinion, is making decisions; if you have a code of conduct making decisions becomes easy. You see with out a structured way of looking at the world we tend to make decisions haphazardly and in the moment. We might do something one way one time, and then in a similar situation do it another way; this leads to inconsistency of results, and we scratch are heads and wonder why.”

There are four guiding principles I try to live by. Three of them are Personal Responsibility, Respect and Honesty/Integrity. I will go over them in following posts.

Now you say, “But you said there were four guiding principles and you only mentioned three?” This leads me to the first and overarching principle of my code, “The Tao of Asking “Why?” In a nutshell the Tao of Asking “Why” is if you ask the question ‘why something is the way it is’ or ‘why did something do what it did’ you engage your mind and you are telling your self this is a problem to be solved. By asking “Why” you will never stop learning, because as soon as you stop asking “Why” you start believing that you know everything. If you come up with an answer to why something is the way it is you will better understand it and know how to use it. We as children know this intuitively. How many of us drove our parents crazy asking “Why?” As we grow up, we stop asking “Why,” we just start excepting everything that we are told as fact. (I will go into why I think we stop asking “Why?” later.)

So, keep this in mind as you read this blog. Don’t just take my word for it; just ask “Why.”

Here goes nothing.

I have decided put my thoughts into writing as this will better help me organize and look for inconsistencies in my thought process'.  I want people to look at the things that I post and see if they make sense and for any inconsistencies in logic.  Feel free to correct my grammar and forgive any spelling mistakes.  If my writing is unclear or confusing, please let me know and I will try to make my point clearer or attack the problem another way.  Don't worry about hurting my feeling as the point is self refection and to get as many points of view on the subjects as possible.  Please don't make thing personal; attack the post, thought or idea not the person.  I will do the same.