JMikePatt

 I heard a commercial about building relationships, and it got me thinking back to how I used to be. For a long time, I would say or do just about anything to be helpful and establish a connection. I thought that was the goal. But in these last six years, I finally met my true self, and I realized that relationships and friendships are two totally different things. Relationships are fine for business, but they are usually just about what you can do for someone else. When you are the one standing at the front of the room, and everyone is there to hear you speak, you can still feel more alone than you ever thought possible. That is because a relationship will leave you behind when things get hard. A friendship is different. A friendship is what stays when you are at your lowest point and have nothing left to give. The problem is that most people are so caught up in the image thing that they never find themselves. They want to be a legend in their own mind, but that is just a trap. Wh...

 There is a specific kind of weight that comes with maintaining a routine while watching a daily decline. It is an odd position to be in, acting as the anchor for someone else’s world when you can see the tide pulling them further out every morning. Most people might see the repetition and the physical work as a burden, but I’ve come to see it as a genuine honor. This experience has been revealing and educational in a way that forces a perspective on the past, the present, and the future. It has brought the word reality into heavy play. When you realize that your reality is not the reality others see, it brings into question what is actually real. I have started to see truth as what a person believes based on their own interpretation and perception. Fact is different. Fact is what is seen or observed. Once those facts pass through a human filter, they become that person's truth. When you realize the difference between the two, reality becomes a totally different word. In a world th...

 A lot of people are going to want to know who this contractor is, but I am not going to fuel the division. Social media is great for advertising, but it is also great for creating a negative situation out of something we might not fully understand. One person thinks the best move is to talk badly about a company, while another thinks the opposite. If someone talks badly about you because of a personal situation that was affecting your judgment, that is something that can ruin lives. I want to see about changing lives. We don't know why that contractor did what they did or what is going on in their life to push them to make that choice. What is trust? In my opinion, trust is something that is established just like respect. These two items are not determined by who a person is, but who clicks with the buyer. One can appear to be trustworthy, but it is that sense of trust that one feels when having a conversation with someone. I consider myself a trusting person, but I have also made...

This idea first showed up clearly in the world of multi-level marketing. To climb that ladder, people are taught to mirror a mentor perfectly. A person does not just learn a skill; they adopt that mentor's persona, vocabulary, and values until they stop being an individual and just become a duplicate.  This is a blueprint for control that goes way beyond business. Whether it is a church or a corporation, the longer people listen to a leader, the more they become who that leader wants them to be, until they start seeing someone else's expectations as their own identity.  Some people say we are born as either leaders or followers, but that is wrong. People may be born with a purpose, but they are taught their rank. The machine wants everyone to believe leadership is a birthright or a genetic trait because that justifies keeping the elite at the very top. It makes you question the word leader entirely.  Looking at the life of Jesus, a true leader lived a peaceful way of life...