Manns Medium

It is true that there are those of a much higher level of intelligence than others but there is also another truth that runs parallel to that theory which many of us refuse to acknowledge.  Those of higher intelligence may own that space in many things but there is and always will be a space where those of higher intelligence are simply as dumb as a box of rocks.   Now what this simply means is, there are certain things that even the most intelligent is uneducated about. When you go to a car lot and drive away with a vehicle that you really didn’t want but the salesperson convinced you to take, it is said that the salesperson outsmarted you.  What is unknown and often times over-looked is the mindset of the buyer of that vehicle.  Let’s say when you woke up that morning, you had a mission to get you a car today and even though you were well aware that you had no good down payment and your credit sucked, it was something you decided you were going to accompl...

The world is going to hell in a hand basket  simply because of God’s children have grown far too big for their britches.  The arrogance of man has spread from father to son, mother to daughter for centuries, decades and eons.  It is passed down from generation to generation and diluted with a belief that to honor one you have to dishonor another.  The offspring’s fail to learn from the lessons of the parent. God is our one and only father, we were made in his image and thus are only a spirit.  The body our spirit occupies was made from dirt and clay so as the body decay, the spirit remains.  During our existence within this fragile shell, we can grow in spirit and become the child God knows us to be or we can choose to limit our expansion by following the selfish impulses of mortals. God’s one and only mistake was to attempt to govern the behavior of man with 10 rules.  He soon learned that his was not doable and rather than continue to risk t...

A parents number one concern is to try and prevents any harm, injury or death from coming to their children and to that end, we often rush to their defense considering that this actions proves our love but what if I tell you, it is not the action that you perform then but the actions you perform during the beginning stages of their lives that really shows your love.  Each and every time you step up and provide a buffer for your child, you are essentially setting them up for paying a heavier price of pain, injury or death because who will shield them when you are no longer around?  They have grown accustomed to you jumping in to save them and they have lost the fear of jumping in the deep in of the pool because they know you will jump in after them but what if there is a time they jump without thinking and you are not there to save them?  Do they now perish; do you now have to bury them?  The mistake your child makes growing up is the time to educate them and fin...

I often times am bothered by why all of us refuse to show our honest and sincere concern and compassion for others.  Why we often times wait until something bad happens before the true spirit of each of us comes out. We have seen who we really are like during  events like Sept 11, Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, Sandy Hook, the recent Louisiana floods and other disasters and so many more but we quickly revert back to a place where our differences seems more important than our similarities, so why do we do this.  I believe that it is because of the one constant embedded within all of us and that is called “self-preservation”.   Self-Preservation causes us to look out for ourselves before anything or anyone else and in order to protect ourselves, we choose to focus more on the differences between each other than the similarities because that would mean we must now truly care about strangers and because many of us see caring as a sign of weakness or an opening where...

Many people believe that the reason for living is to better their personal situations and give their children the things in life that they did not have growing up.  This is one of the biggest lies anyone can tell themselves and others who will listen.  The reason for life is not a selfish quest but a deep desire to better yourself and be that person you had always dreamed yourself to be.  It is to demonstrate to others who are watching how you have achieved this feat by setting the example by every single action you take or inaction that you don’t take.  Your children do not need material things to be the best that they can be, they only need a little of your time, your understanding, your love and your directions to have the tools necessary to live a full and rewarding life.  That should be the primary reason we work so very hard to accomplish that one feat that would grant them all these things in one single act.  That should be the primary reason we wor...

So many times in our lives, we look back and count the number of times that we made mistakes.  Some mistakes are obvious while others take a little more time to figure out but all of them may cause many a period of regret and we all know that regret is not a good feeling.  We also should know by now that regret can easily lead us into other directions which is far worse than simple regret.  Before we begin to cross the line between a regret and more other serious situations, let us consider using another word that may not cause us such a high rate of pain and discomfort.  Let’s try using the word miscalculation instead of mistake for no other reason than it hurts less and is much easier to fix in most instances. The definition of a mistake is an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong while the definition of a miscalculation is an error or misjudgment.  Both sounds quite similar but when spoken the word mistake sounds much more harsh and in many insta...

When we talk about the word defeat, it is often times in the realm of how it is defined as a verb.  The verbal definition of defeat is “to win a victory over (someone) in a battle or other contest; overcome or beat”.  But yesterday, I learned something new and created a new phrase which is the topic of this conversation.  Yesterday I learned that defeat is only possible with your permission.  Think about it. The definition says to win, overcome or beat but unless the person, place or thing that you win a victory over, overcome or beat feeling like they or it has lost, your defeat of it is only in your mind and not seen by anyone else or witnessed by history.  This may explain why so many of us tend to tout our accomplishments via a resume, personal conversation or over any media that we can get our hands on.  We use these mediums to demonstrate that we are winners because we have been conditioned to believe that the opposite is worse and no one likes t...

He burst upon the scene in July of 2004; prior to that Barack Hussein Obama the second was a little known individual who had recently won a seat in the Senate.  After that speech, many begin to see him as a potentially rising star in the Democratic Party.  They saw him as someone who could motivate and capture the imagination of many.  They saw him as a connection to that base of Democratic voters who had been feeling disenfranchised for so long and a bridge to bring them back into the fold.  They saw him as an advantage to stand on stage with and hold arms with for no other reason than to advance their own cause.  For those who were not of the Democratic Party, they only saw a black man who was articulate, well-groomed and would make a good preacher.  What none of them saw, except a few, was a man who stood for something, had a pretty good idea how to obtain it and was not going to let anyone or anything be the reason he did not achieve.  The only ob...

For those of you who may not know and ask the question who is Gordon Gekko?  Gordon Gekko was a character made famous by Michael Douglas in an Oliver Stone film called “Wall Street” in 1987 but what made Gordon Gekko more famous was his saying which many have embraced and swear by today.  The character said that greed was good and since then many have been trying to prove this statement.  Most dictionaries define greed as “an excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth” and in that regards many say this is what makes it bad and not a good thing.  They say greed makes one selfish and insensitive to the needs of others because they are so consumed with their needs only.  They say that greed leads many to risk their very soul to obtain that high again and again never getting enough of living by a means envied by others.  I must say I agree with many of these takes and know deep within...

As defined by Stop Bulling dot Gov, bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.  Wikipedia says it is the use of force, threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively dominate others. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception, by the bully or by others, of an imbalance of social or physical power. Behaviors used to assert such domination can include verbal harassment or threat, physical assault or coercion, and such acts may be directed repeatedly towards particular targets. Rationalizations for such behavior sometimes include differences of social class, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, appearance, behavior, b...

Contrary to all that you were told and wish to believe, any decision you make does have an effect on others, either directly or indirectly.  So many examples of this have been used in other articles before but I still don’t think you get it so I am here to try to educate again. Think about the laws made in our state houses and congress and please tell me how they do not affect other people.  Think about the decision that you make to speed which prevents you from stopping in time to avoid that child who closely follows that bouncing ball into the street and then tell me how your decision did not affect another.  How about this recent post by Jason Marcum which reads “the former Bengals receiver helped bring Christmas spirit to one woman who needed it most.  You may have heard about the sizable tip former Bengals receiver Chad Johnson left a lucky waitress over the weekend. The former Bengals great gave a $300 tip on a $351.92 bill, helping a woman on what he cons...

So many of us often wonder why a relationship that we thought would last forever fail and many times we are quick to point the finger at the other person instead of seeking the solution from within.  Here’s a suggestion on how to recover from or even prevent another failed relationship. First we need to embrace the fact that the only person we can fix is yourself.  Once we are willing to accept that premises, then we can honestly does a better job of self-reflection or what some call soul-searching.  If we are able to do this, concentrate on the mistakes we made in the relationship.  Owning our mistakes allows us to make the necessary changes which will help us become a better person and avoid these same mistakes in the next relationship.  Ever notice that the mistakes made in one relationship seems to follow us into others and soon we begin to create of pattern of broken relationships mainly because we failed to make the changes that we know was ours to ma...

Simply put, when we allow our emotions to spur us to make corrections to anything, we tend to travel to the extremes in order to do this.  There are millions if not billions of examples to prove this point and for the sake of brevity; we will only concentrate on two. The example is gun control in which many of us seek a complete end to guns being available for purchase and the opposite believes that they should be able to own any kind of weapon that man makes.  Somewhere in the middle is a compromise that we all could support but those who believe strongly on either side of the aisle will exert all the strength necessary to prevail in this battle.  One side will go out of their way to make it difficult for even law-abiding citizens to possess a weapon.  The happy medium, having a longer wait on guns purchase anywhere which allows all to be checked and re-checked before a permit is issued.  The wait time is nothing a criminal is going to adhere to so he/she ...

Some people believe that there is a very big difference between being dependent and being independent.  They also believe that people can be made to be dependent and only through sometimes, extreme means must we act to make sure that each of us stand on our own two feet and not become a burden on society or those who feel that they are the only ones who can represent society.  I must disagree with this point of view and declare that no one can be made to do anything especially be made to be dependent.  I also suggest that we are all both dependent and independent at certain times, in our lives and the primary cause of this stems from the choices we make as individuals.   I offer you this as proof of my point. As infants, we depend on our parents, guardians or caretakers to provide us all the things we need to survive and thrive.  We look to them for food to nourish our bodies.  We look to them for clothes to cover our bodies.  We look to them...