Years back Luke Bryan released a song called “why most people are good” that song is absolutely bogus and this article will explain why.

“I believe kids oughta stay kids as long as they can

Turn off the screen, go climb a tree, get dirt on their hands”

If kids should just be kids then why should they climb trees and get dirt on their hands of all things? Perhaps they want to watch YouTube videos and play XBOX all day? shouldn’t they get to decide how they as kids play not Luke Bryan? I’m sure there was a parent at one time somewhere saying kids should stay kids as long as they can by working in a factory and getting rust on his hands because that’s what he did growing up. 

“I believe we gotta forgive and make amends

Cause nobody gets a second chance to make new old friends”

Yeah I absolutely agree with this one. There was this guy named Adolf Hitler who a lot of people were really upset at, but little did they know all they had to do was to forgive him and they could have a new friend, perhaps take a fun ride on his train and join him for a fun vacation at camp. 

Also sarcasm aside what’s with the grammar on this one? He needs a second chance to make new old words. 

“I believe in working hard for what you’ve got

Even if it don’t add up to a hell of a lot”

I could point out that working smart beats working hard every time, or the hypocrisy of this multi millionaire talking about “hard work” when most of his success comes from other people, but the dumbest part of this lyric is that it can be applied to almost anything, including free labor, yes you in the audience will get luke Bryan’s support if you are a deadbeat who decides to work for just your room, board and food for fifty years when a job paying $1,000,000 an hour is right down the street, all because you worked for every penny of the first

“I believe most people are good

And most Mama’s oughta qualify for sainthood”

Most people are not good, Most people are assholes. If somebody is dying on the side of the street and there’s a crowd of people around the person, due to our great social psychology the crowd would rather let the person die because someone else will handle it than actually save the person.

“I Believe most Friday nights look better under neon or stadium lights”

What is he talking about a strip club?

“I believe this world ain’t half as bad as it looks

I believe most people are good”

By percentage crime is lower than it’s ever been, there are less wars, starvation and disease than ever. However there are more people – were nearing 8 billion on this wet rock we live on – And this equates to a higher total number of assholes. Most of our societal and global problems are caused by all of these assholes, whether it be various cancers, drunk driving, or the inevitable mass migrations and deaths caused by global warming, and nearly all of them are inevitable because people aren’t good, they’re dumb.

“I believe them streets of gold are worth the work

But I’d still wanna go even if they were paved in dirt”

Isn’t this from the same guy that talks about booze, and fucking a bunch of women? I’m sure he’s next in line for sainthood.

“I believe that youth is spent well on the young

‘Cause wisdom in your teens would be a lot less fun”

I remember reading a story about a couple of teen boys who murdered their neighbors. Fuck all that wisdom nonsense, boys will be boys amiritght?

“I believe if you just go by the nightly news

Your faith in all mankind would be the first thing you lose”

Nightly news sucks, news in General is a dumb and dying artform. I get my news from the onion, it’s probably equally valuable but much less likely to stress me out

Disclaimer: this is not financial advice just how I interpret the song ten crack commandments

Biggie smalls is considered one of the most influential rappers of all time. He has influenced countless people through generations across the world. Perhaps one of his lesser-known songs is “The 10 Crack Commandments”. This song applies not only to drug dealers but to everyday Americans like you. These are ten lessons to help you get your finances in order.

Rule number one:  “never let them know how much dough you hold”.

People typically get jealous if you have more money than them and will do what they can to get some of it; that’s the reason many lottery winners get sued after winning. This rule applies whenever you succeed and make money – don’t tell others how much money you’ve made, or what you’ve bought with that money. If you’re asked you can say “I like to write” instead of “I’ve written a bestseller and have made millions”, but don’t ever bring your money up, especially unprompted.

Rule number two: “don’t let them know your next move”.

If you tell people your plans they have the ability to stop you and can steal your idea for themselves. Take Nikola Tesla as an example with the lightbulb – his idea was stolen by Thomas Edison. If he’d just kept his ideas to himself he would’ve rept the rewards of his labor. This idea is fundamental to nearly every strategy book out there including “The 48 Laws of Power” and “The Art of War”. By keeping your plans to yourself you eliminate other people as variables from the equation.

Rule number three: “don’t trust nobody”.

By putting your trust in people you’re giving them control over your life and giving them the ability to make terrible decisions. If you trust people with your money they have the ability to steal it. If you trust people with the keys to your car they have the ability to drive off. It’s better to trust yourself with things that are important. You wouldn’t hire someone to go out on a date in your place, so why hire someone to do the important things like manage your money?

Rule number four: “never get high on your own supply”. 

You shouldn’t use money that’s supposed to go to bills, savings, investments, etc. for personal use. Sounds simple enough, but most people violate this rule and use credit cards to buy personal things and never pay back the money. People also fail to budget their money, so they end up spending money that should be going to bills on personal things. An easy way to avoid these mistakes is to

1. only spend credit cards if you have the physical cash to back it up 
2. Create a budget. This will be explained in depth in a separate article
3. Separate your money in different funds, ex: a fund for house payments, a fund for car payments and a fund for investing so you can keep track of it.

Rule number five: “never sell crack where you rest at, I don’t care if they want an ounce tell them bounce.”

If you’ve ever heard the expression “don’t shit where you eat”, you know it’s a bad idea to mix your personal life and your business. You should use personal time for personal things and business time for business things.

Rule number six: ” that goddamn credit, forget it.”

Don’t ever loan out money, PERIOD. If you want somebody to have something, give the money to them as a gift. This applies to yourself, as much or more so than anybody else. Never give yourself a loan, and never take out money to pay yourself back later- because it’s not gonna happen. The old rule applies: if you loan out money, you have two options: sue the person to get it back, or forget getting it back.

Rule number seven: “Keep your family and business completely separated”.

Don’t hire your family, don’t work with your family, and don’t use your family at all. The two just don’t mix. You’ll end up biased in favor of one, and the latter will suffer as a result. Nepotism is a bad idea.

Rule number eight: “Never keep any weight on you “

Make sure to never use cash. It’s better to use a Credit or debit card, that way you have less physical weight, but you also have less to manage, accrue interest, prevent losing money to inflation and won’t get literally robbed for your cash because you have none. 

Rule number nine: “Stay away from the police”

This applies in general to authority figures. You should handle your business directly with the person. Remember back in elementary school? Whoever told the teacher was considered a tattletale. The same rule applies to your money and your business: by not telling on the other person, and by handling an issue with them yourself, you’re not only gaining their respect but you’re also increasing your own self respect because you’re a boss who handles his business.

Rule number ten: “a strong word called consignment, strictly for live men, not for freshmen, if you ain’t got the clientele say hell no, cause they gonna want that money rain, hail, snow.”

This rule is the most complex so it will be broken down into two parts

First:

“Never trust a skinny chef”, “Never trust a fat exercise trainer” and “get your own room in order before you tell someone else how to clean theirs”. What do these three phrases have in common? You need to make sure you not only have experience in doing something before you tell someone else how to do it, but you should be able to do it well and should be doing it regularly. 

You need to establish yourself as a person with skills before you can succeed. If you want to open an ice cream shop you should know about ice cream, management and business. That may mean working on yourself by getting a job selling scoops. If you want to get married and join finances, you should know how to manage your own finances well first before you try and manage the finances for two people. 

Work on yourself, and get your own life in order before you try to take bigger steps.

Second: 

Never borrow money or spend money you don’t have the capital or the assets to repay, it’ll cause a lot of stress and unnecessary complications.. If you’ve ever played monopoly you know it’s a bad idea to spend money you don’t have because of an issue pops up you’ll be left with your pants down unable to do anything about it. The issue gets worse when you then borrow money you don’t have, because now there are serious legal consequences on the table, all because you started spending money you didn’t have.

Disclaimer: this is not financial advice, this is just the results of an online calculator using past historical trends – I cannot guarantee the future will work the same way and there is no guarantee by following this advice you will be a millionaire.

Saving $100 a week for retirement may seem like a lot of money, and it’s a decent number but is possible for every american with proper budgeting. If you save that amount from the time you turn 18 – due to the miracle of compound interest – you can retire a millionaire and live a comfortable life. 

I’ve chosen to invest in the S&P 500 as it has a great historical return of 9% per year (rounded from the actual rate of 8.9%) which is excellent. There will be a 2.5% inflation rate as is the average. I’ve decided on a 22% tax rate as is the same for the average american.

I’ve set the goal of $1,000,000 to live a comfortable retirement – this equates to a $40,000 return every year off of the interest, enough to live comfortably on.

1 year in:

Congrats, you’ve made $5,500 adjusted for inflation. This is a great milestone to start your investing career off right. You’re only 19, but miles ahead of your friends. Only a lifetime left.

5 years in:

Congratulations, you’re $28,200 in and this is a great number; you’re probably entering the workforce after graduating college, and that’s fine as now you have more money to spend on the things you want to do because the $100 stays the exact same even as your paycheck increases.

10 years in:

So, you have $60,000 invested… excellent, especially since you’re not even 30 and most of your peers are nowhere near that. In fact most of your peers don’t have $1,000 saved or invested.

The best news is that it seems like you’ve found that special someone finally and your parents will hopefully like them… right???

20 years in:

$140,000 dollars invested, it may seem like a while left to go, and it is considering you’re almost 40 and hate work. You’ve reached the peak in your field, and your body is past its physical peak also. Your marriage isn’t going great… it’s tough raising kids, but you know it’s close to retirement time – especially now that compound interest is kicking in. The good news is you still only need to put in $100 every week – It’s manageable.

30 years in:

$250,000 invested – just in time for your midlife crisis to take effect. You’re almost fifty and you can find some grey hairs on your pillow. Your kids are nearly off to college, and you have the money to help them out, you’re still working after all – and you only contribute $100 a week to your retirement, irregardless of whatever you make. Your parents have both passed now and that’s tough for you to deal with, luckily you still have a supportive family to get you through it.

40 years in

$415,000 in and you’re almost 60 years; the kids have all graduated from college themselves, in fact your son is going to live and work on a Martian colony – to avoid the increasing effect of global warming and climate change. You stay put in your little house that you finally have paid off. You’ve got 12 more years to work, as they raised the retirement age to 70 a decade or so ago. Sucks for you, but you understand. 

50 years in:

$660,000 invested although you’ve still got another 10 years until retirement as they raised the retirement age to 78 (author’s note: this is more story based than number based, if I stopped at 68 for benefits I could’ve added $100 from the social security check as the payment, so since It’ll hit a million either way so I decided to wait). Your kids never talk to you anymore because they’ve got kids of their own. You have a falling out with your siblings.

60 years in:

$1,000,000!!! Congratulations, you’re not even 80 and you’re a millionaire. You make enough that you can reinvest $100 of the dividends back into the pile. There have been some ups and downs on this road, but you’ve gotten here.

Epilogue:

I’m going to 130 (assuming modern Medicine holds/best case scenario)

88 years old: $1,600,000

98 years old: $2,500,000

108 years old: $3,800,000

118 years old: $5,400,000

130 years old: $10,000,000
you’ve hit a massive number before you died, the good news is there’s a bigger stockpile for your kin to spend, and even better is it’ll all be gone in a flash.

Have you ever felt unmotivated, trapped, or stuck in life? Are you searching for a way to better your situation in life? Some people will say to focus on yourself, yet don’t provide a guide on how to do that. This article will serve as a compass for you to navigate the waves of life in the direction of mental, physical and emotional improvement.

This article and blog, in general, are a guide to overall wellness and should not be used as a substitute for any serious medical emergencies. If you have a real issue in your life – mentally, emotionally, or physically – please seek treatment. In an ideal world the author would like to NOT see a man in a black suit knocking at his door with a court date, because he’s not an expert just someone with an opinion.

“There is no knowledge that is not power” – Ralph Waldo Emmerson. There were two trees in the biblical story of creation – the first was the tree of knowledge over good and evil. God commanded Adam and Eve to not eat of the fruit, as they would die. This prophecy came true, because as we humans have eaten of the fruit of knowledge we have died. Our mortal form has been dispersed and we have become like gods able to create or destroy at will, able to go to the heavens, and we’ll develop our own Adam in the form of A.I. soon.

Not all humans are meant to change the world like Einstein, but you can take steps in your everyday life to become a bit more mentally sharp, have a better quality of life, and be a bit more like those gods in the stories. You have the capacity to be greater than you are right now. Knowledge is power, so you need to learn more. Here are some examples:

1. Reading – If an average book has 20 chapters, by reading just 1 chapter per day you’ll read seventeen books per year. That’s thousands of thoughts and ideas that you’ve never conceived of before, being adopted by your brain. If you don’t have the time to sit down and read, audiobooks are a great alternative.
2. Crossword Puzzles – these are an excellent way to get your mind in a problem-solving mode. Crossword puzzles also help with your reading comprehension and overall language skills.
3. Learning a foreign language – There are countless people out there for you to connect with; separated only by a language barrier that you have the ability to break.

Money is also important and companies are more likely to hire applicants who are bilingual, than those that aren’t. It’s not difficult; just a few minutes a day with a language learning app will change your life in a year. The author is in the process of learning french and russian. For an example of what learning a foreign language is like: Picture the word “hello”- what are some synonyms? Hi, hey and ‘sup. Now imagine you’re in a room with three other people, each person can say hello, and one of the syllables (hi, hey or ‘sup) but none of the others. Because your multilingual you can say hi to one, hey to another and ‘sup to the third and have them talk to you while not knowing what any other one is saying. Pretty cool right?

1. Keeping track of the stock market – The author is of the firm belief that the stock market is a goldmine anyone can excavate given the right knowledge and skills. A great place to start is just by watching the stock market each morning. You don’t have to look at fifteen hundred stocks with spreadsheets, but you can look at just one stock- Apple for example- and predict whether it’ll go up or down by the end of the day. Not only does this give you a base to become a millionaire, and who doesn’t want to do that, but it also allows you to become better at pattern recognition -which is the basis for IQ.
2. Getting your finances in order – Budgeting is something everyone should do, as stated before “knowledge is power” and wealth is a reflection of knowledge. The smarter you are, the more likely you are to make money, and having enough money to retire young and enjoy your life seems like a smart thing to do.
3. Keeping track of dreams – the subconscious mind is active while we dream. Keeping a dream journal will give us a peek into our subconscious mind, and figure ourselves out better. By keeping a journal by your bed and writing down everything you remember as soon as you wake up, you’ll have a better picture of how you think and why you do what you do.
4. Taking courses to learn social skills – Social skills are correlated with better success in getting a job. More than that, the author believes better social skills equates to better success in life – whether it be in negotiations, persuasion or selling yourself they all require social skills.

All of these are steps you can take in your own life to provide tremendous positive benefits. In that way they’re all equal, so by doing any one of them, you’ll be helping yourself out.

Physical fitness is vital, to not only the duration but the quality of your life. It’s the preference of the author, and it’s something everyone should strive to be great in.

“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.” – Socrates.

Some people say physical fitness takes too much time, too much discipline and is just too complex to know where to start. These complaints are valid, so this article will simplify the concepts so you can do them yourself.

Some simple ways to be more fit and healthy are as follows:

1. Jog a mile every morning – You don’t have to train for the olympics to leave your house in the morning and jog for fifteen minutes down the street and back. A great way to run is with some music, hard rock, rap or your favorite theme song will help you zone out and zoom. According to a study by harvard running even a bit a day will improve heart health, mood, and life expectancy.
2. Weightlifting a few hours per week – Would you like to have the muscles you see on social media? It probably won’t happen, but you can try weightlifting a few sessions per week. Whether you want to get abs, or a nice butt, everyone can find a use for weight training. Some girls think that if they start lifting weights, they’ll get “too muscular”. Yes the thought process is solid, but no, it’s not something that you have to worry about. A simple way to start weight training is a total body workout every other day for around an hour or so, for example.
3. Keeping track of your calories – If you want to lose weight, or just eat healthier, it’s a good idea to know exactly what you’re eating so you can change what you’re doing. There are plenty of good free apps out there like myfitness pal, where all you have to do is log as much of what you eat as possible.

Doing any one of these things will increase the quality and quantity of your life. Any of these things can be done for less than the price of a cup of coffee per month.

Emotional stability is a very difficult goal to achieve but is perhaps the most important and undervalued of the three aspects highlighted in this article; it leads to success, happiness, and love in our society.

Most people don’t practice enough self awareness to reflect on their emotional state at any time during the day, so by completing a few simple steps you’ll already be better than most people. Practicing emotional stability will have tremendous benefits on the rest of your life.

1. Meditation – There are numerous benefits to meditation including better decision making, decreased stress, and more discipline.
2. Yoga/breathing – The pina coladas guy isn’t much into Yoga, but it is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Deep breathing works very well with yoga, so it has been included. Both deep breathing and yoga are major stress relievers, and help to increase overall mobility.
3. Making Your Bed – Making your bed each morning makes your room nicer, puts your brain into a problem solving mindset, and, whenever you clean, you feel amazing due to the “feel good” endorphins released.
4. Motivational Videos – Every morning when you wake up you can watch a motivational video to kickstart your day. It’ll put you in a positive mood to tackle any situation you have to handle, and it’ll give you motivation to get a workout in which you need to do.
5. Journaling – Understanding how you think and feel is key for you to correct any behavior that may be holding you down, and one way to do that is through journaling. Taking a few minutes at the end of the day to write down whatever thought comes to mind. This will give you, not only a better understanding of your thought process, but WHY you think what you think.

There are many steps you can take to improve your overall life, many not listed in this article, but, this article is a great starting point to be the best version of yourself- mentally, physically and emotionally.

Knowledge is power, but it’s powerless if you don’t act on it. This article is filled to the brim with knowledge, but it’s up to you to use the information to affect your life in a positive direction, so don’t keep waiting – get out there and do it.