I've moved to Medium

I've got 3 publications there so far. Medium allows me to be freer then I am able to be on either my own website blog or here on LinkedIn. There are other writers there who write great stuff, so I'm learning much more too. It allows me to have different publications, it feels a bit like having a book there, the book of me. I really enjoy being on Medium. Hope to see you there. https://medium.com/@stayingaliveuk

Typewriting

This is a daily blog post, quite short and to the point. It's basically about stuff I notice across the digital and the physical, which makes me want to make a statement.

https://medium.com/typewriting

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Michael and Josh

This is our daily cartoon series. Well we publish on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I try and look out for topics in the daily news and take some sort of spin on it.

https://medium.com/michaelandjosh

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Staying Alive UK

Well this one was basically a copy cat from this blog, so not been updating that much lately. Will have to think where this one goes in the future.

https://medium.com/stayingaliveuk

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Hope to see you all there!

https://medium.com/@stayingaliveuk

Michael

DC Hyperloop

Elon Musk by Michael & Josh #dailycartoon series

Elon Musk allegedly has received “early and vague” government approval to start work in a DC parking lot. That’s Washington DC!

Musk has a mission and vision to build an underground ‘hyperloop’ that transports cars underground to avoid the enormous congestion that exists and will only balloon in decades to come.

An incredible and very brave idea for sure.

This cartoon shows that Musk will be able to tunnel through to Donald Trump’s bedroom from a Washington DC car park.

[embed]https://youtu.be/8LXV68rNxIA[/embed]

Michael de Groot

Fear

All of our lives are rooted in fear at some level. We wouldn’t be so obsessed and addicted if we weren’t in fear so much.

Fear is a good thing isn’t? We often don’t think it is but actually if we didn’t have fear we would be jumping of a bridge believing we can fly and that wouldn’t get us very far.

As humans we have an operating system already programmed to keep us alive at every single step of the way. If we didn’t have fear as part of that operating system we’d be at death’s door much more often.

But not all fears are equal.

Photo by tertia van rensburg on Unsplash

Sure we have an operating system to keep us alive but we also continue to program that operating system with our thoughts and feelings as soon as we arrive here on planet earth. We also get help from the lovely folks around us. Bless them!

I believe we focus a disproportionate amount of time on just 7 major fears that govern our actions, our emotions and keep our operating system from releasing a new and better version. It’s like being stuck with the first IBM computer and never upgrading the computer chips.

She here they are, fear of;

1. Getting Hurt
2. Not being loved
3. Being abandoned
4. Not being successful
5. What they will think
6. Not having enough money
7. Getting sick

Can you relate to any of those, maybe you can think of a brand new category I missed?

Happy fearing!

Michael de Groot

University Tuition Fees

Theresa May by Michael & Josh #dailycartoon series

Theresa May, UK prime minister announces a year-long review of University Tuition fees. The question on all our minds is why is it taking so long for this review to take place.

In addition why has it taken so long for the government to question whether tuition fees are actually working or not. Landing students in never-ending debts will cripple their freedom to chose what they wish to do.

This cartoon shows that although the UK government has at last found some common sense in challenging or reviewing Tuition fees, the Universities are likely not to want to know and prefer to keep the status quo.

[embed]https://youtu.be/4ntb_ovqsaI[/embed]

Michael de Groot

Bully

We’ve all been exposed to’ The Bully’, and they show up in many places around us. Maybe they were our parents, siblings, teachers, classmates, schoolmates, partners, banks, creditors, bosses, colleagues, governments, local communities, business interest groups, social groups, friends, social media, the internet and maybe you can think of others?

The fact is bullies exist everywhere in society.

Recently a friend of mine told me a story about his boss publicly challenging him, in front of his colleagues, in connection with what he was up to. It doesn’t matter what it was, the issue was he was doing it publicly in full view and earshot of his colleagues and likely on purpose.

“A black-and-white shot of a crying man in a suit and tie” by Tom Pumford on Unsplash

I’ve heard similar stories from my stepson from managers in hospitality and in a famous high street brand who sells electrical and computer goods.

The incidents don’t matter and in all the stories I’ve heard I know that workplace bullying is far from over. It may start in the playground and it definitely moves into the workplace.

Managers in the UK are seriously under-skilled in people-management. I remember when I used to be in management, there was a prediction that in 10-years time the biggest issue with skills would be management skills. Well we passed that d-day nearly 20 years ago and still we have not improved.

The trouble in all this is, my stepson never complained about it to his manager’s manager. Neither has my friend complained to HR or higher up. If we do not complain about the bullies, they will continue their bad bad behaviour. We all need to step up and stop the offenders. There never is an excuse or good reason for the behaviour that the bully believes is okay.

Happy reporting!

Michael de Groot

Man of Steel

Donald Trump Man of Steel by Michael & Josh #dailycartoon series

Donald Trump decided to start a trade war with the rest of the world on steel. The trouble is the nations he’s threatening reacted straight away.

It’s no different with the threats that he sends out to North Korea, he’s doing it to create maximum effect and of course because everyone does react, he’s getting what he wants. He wants people to be on the back foot. That way he can perhaps achieve a compromise and show the American People that he is actually achieving something.

However the The Dow Jones Industrial Average had initially fallen more than 570 points, with heavy losses for manufacturers like Caterpillar and Boeing. The index closed down 420 points and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both dropped on the day as well.

He also decides to make these announcements to get the American People on his side, especially as he’s been losing some popularity lately.

This cartoon shows Donald Trump as Baby Trump and as Superman, the man of steel. He has just landed on Planet Earth and is showing his power and strength.

[embed]https://youtu.be/28f4hdQNAL4[/embed]

Michael de Groot

Gun Control

Donald Trump by Michael & Josh #dailycartoon series

In February 2018 there was another sad school shooting in the USA. Gun control has been a major issue for the USA for decades and no president has been able to put in place the kind of controls that stop these kind of shootings.

Donald Trump declared that he wanted teachers to carry guns in schools to prevent these kind of incidents from happening again.

Putting guns into schools will attract more shootings.

Hoping that US citizens see sense and start the road to gun control and recovery.

This cartoon shows Donald Trump on horseback with a gun, depicting the old Wild West as a way to protect American schools.

[embed]https://youtu.be/NOC1bpkXqjw[/embed]

Michael de Groot

Clickbait

We’ve recently been experiencing a bad snow storm in the whole of the United Kingdom, they even gave it a name, ‘The Beast from the East’. The phenomena was due to the fact that the jet stream, which normally flows from west to east around the UK, had reversed and was flowing from east to west, bringing it with itself huge amount of cold air across Europe and as a consequence huge amounts of big snowfall.

In addition a rain storm with high winds coming up from the south, named Emma, hit the cold air and as a consequence deposited huge amounts of snow as well.

The whole affair was actually short-lived maybe 5 days in total. At the end of the fifth day, all snow has pretty much melted as a consequence of higher temperatures and normal rainfall.

We love talking about the weather in the UK and we love even more creating stress and drama about the weather, which indeed the media did for these storms. Don’t get me wrong there’s always a threat to life when bad weather lands like this and unfortunately 10 people did lose their lives as a result, which is very sad. Note however that on average 32 people die every week on Britains roads and they rarely get reported. The fact that we had a big snow storm made it worthy reporting.

“A macro view of a chainlink fence covered with snow in winter.” by Lance Anderson on Unsplash

All of it really is not assisted by the media hype and constant bombardment of hysteria, film footage, photographs and other such reports of doom and destruction. Yes it is bad and dangerous but rarely as bad as they make it out to be.

Weather reporting in the UK is massive Clickbait. Clickbait is where you create sensationalist stories in the press and media to get viewers and readers to click through to their publication and reports on the weather. When you are there, you are likely to see adverts, see requests to donate to their online website and see other articles which you will potentially read.

Why does the press need Clickbait? To ensure they can prove to their advertisers that they have millions of viewers/readers coming to their websites and as such their website is a great reason for the advertisers to spend their money with them instead of different media outlets.

In 2017 I looked at headlines every single day and copied them onto a Pinterest board to try and evidence the sensationalism that exists in the press to get us to click through. The headlines on UK weather were by far the worst and of course Donald Trump headlines too. But the weather ones were rarely factual or true and worded in such a way that you would be fooled in believing that the country would come to a standstill. It rarely does.

Happy reading!

Michael de Groot

Rewards

We’ve been conditioned from birth that when you behave, when you achieve and when those closest to you approve you will receive a reward. It all starts out with a sugar reward.

Rewards motivate us to do better next time and to strive for the next reward. During those early young years the rewards were handed to us, all we had to do was perform according to the wishes of our parents, our teachers and maybe even society.

As we grow into adulthood and we earn money we totally see that as the reward, after all we’ve been conditioned for a couple of decades and it’s now a habit. Really it’s no different to rewarding your dog.

“Hand holding scoops of sweet ice cream in a cone” by Alex Jones on Unsplash

And when we receive our reward as money, well then that means we can now start buying the rewards that we want. The money is exchanged for rewards like alcohol, food, holidays, houses, cars, jewellery, clothing, presents and stuff we definitely don’t need but still we feel we deserve them.

Knowing that we will receive the funds each month, each year, year in year out means that we feel safe in the knowledge that if we spend now, probably on credit, we will be able to pay off that credit in time. Trouble is we rarely do and we become slaves to the credit system and stay in debt for the rest of our lives.

The banks invented credit as a way of making more money and in doing so created a system of over-consuming or rather over-rewarding, because after all that’s what it is.

Happy spending!

Michael de Groot

Consideration

I’m not sure there’s much of it about these days. All of us are pretty much self-obsessed. We just have no space to consider others as much as we used to. I do remember a time when neighbours spoke to each other, looked out for each other and knocked on the door with a cup of sugar when you moved in next door.

Now we don’t even say hello when we pass a neighbour, someone in the community and we glance away when we see a homeless person sitting or standing on the street, begging for pennies or selling the ‘Big Issue’.

Photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash

I know there are many caring people around and I do know there are many that are selfless, but just think if just 1% of our community stepped up their consideration for others. Might we have a better environment to live in?

Consideration for others means sometimes putting ourselves last and that’s not about being a martyr it’s about considering someone else’s issues above our own. Sure we all have issues, money worries, health issues, work troubles, mental health constraints and so does your neighbour.

A homeless person has all of those issues and more. Maybe time to stop and ask someone if they’re okay.

Happy chatting!

Michael de Groot

Get the inside out

I believe it’s a fantastic campaign, well thought out and of course a massively important topic. Helping people who have mental health issues with their money issues or indeed the other way around.

I for one have been affected by money possibly my whole life. My Dad used to regularly say that there was never enough money and if any of the kids wanted to money he used to point to his back and ask if we saw any money growing on it. What makes it worse, my Dad used to work for the Bank of America. He ended up being an AVP (assistant vice president), not badly paid I would have said. Actually we never went without when we were young, although I do remember a very long period of my life when I was wearing 2nd hand clothes and some of them were great.

“Graffiti on an old brick wall reads “until debt tear us apart”” by Alice Pasqual on Unsplash

This didn’t set me up very well for my relationship with money. Basically when I had money, I spent it. When I look back now how much money I wasted, it makes me feel sick.

Only now, in the past 6 months when I have been enlightened by The Minimalists, has my relationship with money started to change.

[embed]https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/lloyds-bank-get-inside-out-adam-eve-ddb/1455976[/embed]

But, when I saw the advert by Lloyds promoting a brilliant campaign highlighting the need for acceptance of mental health and it’s often financial impact, I felt sick when at the end they showed the prancing horse with the slogan, ‘Lloyds, by your side’.

The reason I felt sick is that in the end, although I applaud the campaign, Lloyds did this for their own profit, to show that they care and therefore we should bank with them. In actual fact all my banking is with them, which makes it even worse!

Corporations are in it for the profit Michael, they’re not in it to be nice to their customers or even nice to people with mental health, they only care about their shareholders. Oh blast, what a load of charlatans they all are.

Happy banking!

Michael de Groot

Don’t be Evil

The ‘Don’t be Evil’ motto was coined by Google around 2000 and was dropped by Alphabet in 2015 and replaced by ‘Do the right thing’.

The human brain doesn’t hear the word ‘not’ when used as part of the verb doing. So instead of hearing ‘don’t’ we hear ‘do’.

Don’t believe me? Try it out with a child. I once walked into a party and it was a summer party in the daytime so kids were allowed to attend. One of the kids had a ‘bored moment’ going on.

This young boy was opening and closing the living room door with his full force, making a real noise and potentially damaging the door or maybe the doorframe. His Dad was shouting at him ‘don’t close the door, don’t close the door and he repeated the mantra without success. It was both annoying to the guests and of course the Dad and his son.

So I intervened and simply said; ‘Stop closing the door’.

Guess what? Yes indeed he stopped doing it.

“A smiling Guy Fawkes mask in shadow against a black background” by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

With Google’s motto ‘Don’t be Evil’, of course the internet has been evil and I’m sure there’ve been a lot of ‘evil’ goings on even inside Google.

One such an example is YouTube autoplays, which literally create patterns of addiction in our brains by allowing YouTube (owned by Google) to tell us which video we should be watching next.

And of course because they are queuing up the next video, it will also include those annoying ads, which pre-play and allow to skip or as is often the case these days no option to skip. (YUK!).

YouTube, (Google) prey on our psychology for their own profit, as do many others on the Internet.

Happy browsing!

Michael de Groot

Grayscale

Listening to Tristan Harris recently during a live (recorded) Wisdom 2.0 conference, he recommended that we can do a couple of things to reduce our addiction to our smart phones. If you haven’t seen his TED Talk, you will enjoy it. WARNING: After watching his talk you will seriously change your habits in connection with your technology.

1. Switch off all notifications. By the way I’ve done that for the past couple of years and it’s made a huge difference in my attention and being present in the moment.
2. Switch the colours on your phone to ‘grayscale’. Now this one I didn’t know about and you can find it in your accessibility section. For the iPhone go to general>accessibility>display accommodations>colour filters and there make sure you switch colour filters to on.

I like this hack a lot. Not seeing the colours of those apps they become meaningless in your life and you will switch your attention to the useful apps that you need to use, instead of the mindless apps that you don’t need, like social media apps.

I have to say it looks weird, but I’m getting used to it.

The other tip that worked for me is to remove the Facebook app from my iPhone and iPad. Now I can only access Facebook by going to a browser on my iPad or my Mac. This is a major game changer, I’ve also paused my activity on Facebook altogether.

Happy graying out!

Michael de Groot

[embed]https://youtu.be/nAmhPGnstK8[/embed]

Injustice

It’s in the eye of the beholder right?

Whether it’s religion, politics, money or status in society we all have a perception of the injustice that’s bestowed upon us.

We rarely think of the injustice that’s been bestowed on others, nations or communities.

We have a saying at home;
‘If you believe that others are thinking about you, think again’.

We do have to only think of ourselves, nobody will spend the time thinking about us. Even if we perform charity work we are meeting a need inside of ourselves. It’s called survival. We do things to survive the hardships we experience, whether physical or emotional, we experience them as some sort of injustice by society.

“Black and white photograph of the back view of street protesters in a rally in Washington.” by Jerry Kiesewetter on Unsplash

And they say we are the creators of our own reality, we create our reality one thought at a time.

If that’s the case why do we believe there’s an injustice being bestowed upon us? It could be your family, your employer or the state and I guarantee you that you believe the injustices that exist around you are directed at you.

That very belief, that directed thinking is what holds us back.

Happy thinking!

Michael de Groot

Pause

I’m not being anti-social, maybe just anti-Facebook.
I’ve decided to put Facebook on pause for a while. How long? I have no idea. I had already removed the app from my mobile devices and I can truly say I haven’t missed it.

I’m not rage quitting or culling my connections. I value all of them hugely and hope they will continue to benefit from their activities on Facebook. I know some of them have managed to be hugely successful as a result, long may it continue.

My decision to put things on pause here have not been decided overnight, I reflected on it for a quite a while. Basically I no longer enjoy the experience here and by learning more about Facebook’s practices to program us has meant that I don’t value the organisation and what they stand for.

Therefore instead of moaning about it, I prefer to move away from them for a while. My views may change, who knows, for now though, cheerio to my Facebook connections and some, maybe half a dozen, friends.

You can catch me on LinkedIn and Medium for any meaningful conversations.

Happy Facebooking!

Michael de Groot

Greed

After watching ‘Saving Capitalism’ https://www.netflix.com/title/80127558 with Robert Reich, former US secretary of labor (1993–1997) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Reich, I realised a number of things.

1. The big US corporates are as corrupt as you can possibly imagine. They buy legislation through their donations to politicians. And it’s all been made legal by the way.
2. We fund this. Yes you and me, we are the ones that are buying the produce made by these big global corporates and from their massive profits they buy favours (favors) from the US political system.
3. Simple then, stop buying from them. I know, I know, we have to buy our fuel, our utilities, our food, (our healthcare in the case of the US) and our homes, but even then we also know we are paying over the odds, we are over-consuming all the time. Just start cutting back, REDUCE!

Michael de Groot

There’s no point protesting as nobody really ever wins via that route, the only voice they will hear is when you hit them where it hurts. Their profits, the bonuses, the big pay-packets and stop them from being able to buy those favours from Washington, London and maybe every major city in the world.

We actually have the biggest voice and we are not using it.

Happy protesting!

Michael de Groot

50%

A not so common known fact is that 50% of the population will not agree with you. This doesn’t always sit comfortably with most of us. We believe of course that we are right and everyone else is wrong.

You only need to look at the evidence of the US presidential election and the Brexit referendum. Both of those events were miss judged by the media and politicians alike. The polls gave us the wrong data and nobody expected the results.

Pretty much the votes were 50/50.

Now take this into your own life, your work and community and you will experience the same even in your own family.

In my family there are 4 kids, now of course adults. 2 of them don’t agree with the other 2 and as a consequence don’t speak to each other. When my parents were alive you could split the family unit exactly into 2. 50% of the unit were predisposed to be mostly negative and 50% were predisposed to be mostly positive.

If you are regularly commenting on Social Media, you will definitely have 50% of your readers that will disagree with you, unless they know you very well, in which case they probably keep quiet.

Recently I made a comment on LinkedIn on a post by one of my connections. I noticed a few days later they had disconnected from me. Interesting.

Everyone has an opinion, just because you think you are right, it doesn’t make the other person wrong.

Happy judging!

Michael de Groot

Internet Crooks

I’ve received several calls over the years from a foreign country trying to get me to allow them to log in to my computer. Of course I know what they are trying to do, I’m not stupid but I also know that many people who are not aware have had thousands of pounds or dollars stolen from them.

I had such a call again on 14th February, 2018. We had a bit of warning, the number had been trying to get hold of us for days, but every time we answered we stayed quiet and the call rang off automatically. This time I said hello and as these auto callers respond to voice it connected me to an agent (scammer), who started their scam routine.

Over the years I’ve recorded the calls and shared them on the web and even with the right authorities. I also recorded this latest call and the scam was different, they have invented a new approach. The sound quality was terrible, so I’ve had to increase the volume, which may sound a bit scratchy on your devices. Anyway be warned they may contact you or a family member, so please warn them, send them the video/audio for them to hear what their scam is.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDDVLGO-T-I[/embed]

Happy crook catching.

Michael de Groot

Reduce

Reduce is my word for 2018. Whether it’s reducing my time on social, reducing my spending habits or reducing the stuff that I own.

In September 2017, my dear friend Petros Kkolas suggested I watch a documentary on Netflix, titled ‘Minimalism’.

I was hooked, converted, a believer and probably recognised that I’ve always been a minimalist all my life and now I knew for sure.

Doesn’t mean that I behaved like one throughout my life, oh no! I was a shopaholic for most of my life, especially via the internet and of course the seductress Amazon. It’s interesting actually, I asked them if I could see my total spend from when I first started buying from Amazon and guess what? They can’t supply that figure, they said you have to go through each year on your profile and add it up manually.

Not many folks will do that right?!

Well I did and you can see the chart below. Total spend for my lifetime with Amazon is £5555.27. Now you would have thought that my spend in 2017 would be less compared to previous years because I had found Minimalism (September 2017) and yet it is higher compared to the previous 9 years. Oops!

Michael de Groot’s Amazon Spend

Well that was mainly due to some technology spend and it included a scanner, which will assist me in reducing my paperwork by scanning most of it and saving it to the cloud.

If I discount the scanner and some microphone kit for making videos on my smartphone, the spend for 2017 would have amounted to just £74.00, 2nd lowest in the past 9 years.

Anyway on target to beat that during 2018.

Happy reducing!

Michael de Groot

Notifications

For a number of years now, I don’t receive any app notifications on my phone, none. The only exception is the text message app and of course the phone when it rings. Just like we had in the old days, when we didn’t have a smartphone.

So what, you might be thinking?

Well, those fabulous tech people have been so clever in conditioning our brain that are neurons have literally been hardwired to ensure that we pick up our phone at least 150 times per day to check it. Checking for emails, messages, social media activity, likes, comments and shares.

Every time we check we’re looking for dopamine hits, the same hits that a cocaine addict may get.

You are literally addicted to your smartphone, except it’s not so smart. By being addicted you believe that you have less time in your life, that you’re always busy and when you don’t have your phone with you, you feel like you have lost something. The feelings are very very real.

As I’m writing this on my iPad, my phone is upstairs in my office on charge and I have no desire to have it with me and I’m not missing it. Sure the same apps are on my iPad and because I don’t receive any notifications here either there is no desire for me to even look.

I have conditioned my brain to stop looking any longer. I may look when I’m on my desktop if I even remember. It’s a very liberating feeling.

Happy recovery!

Michael de Groot