Greetings and happy Monday, ladies and gents. I hope this posting finds you well, or at the very least, awake and functioning.

In my wanderings, ramblings, gnosis, and the latent digestion of such things, I've come to a greater realization with regard to how our folk affect us.  We often spend a great deal of time interacting with others and we often take more than we'd like from people.  This function is something that's programmed into us at a biological level, as evidence by the fact that we even respond to how other people's hearts are beating.  The links for such studies escape me at the moment, but sufficed to say, we are much more intimately linked than we like to admit.

We end up mirroring people we respect as a result of our focus on what they represent to us.  We instinctually try to live up to the ideal they tout in order to become better in their eyes, and that can be a dangerous tendency.  When someone is sufficiently strong-willed, they can project a great deal onto others and do a ridiculous amount of damage to that individual.

Its not at all uncommon for a mental patient, for example, to project his or her disease/disorder onto the doctor or that individual's spouse.  I saw and experienced this firsthand as a child, when my mother's erratic behavior and lack of moral limitation "infected" my father.  Not only did I witness him changing over the years, but I confirmed these changes with my family after the fact. Apparently, before he married my mother, he had a slight "bad streak", but it was never particularly volatile or violent.

We see the same tendency in schools, as noted by my significant other (she's a teacher); when a smart kid hangs out with the would-be thugs, the smart kid's test scores and schoolwork suffers.  If that same student suddenly starts hanging out with a bunch of nerds, his scores improve.

In short, our values are ultimately set by the clan we interact with. If your friends, wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, or some other such individual or group is intensely negative, you will behave the same way as a result of your interactions.  This may not be true initially, but eventually your Will will break down and you will fall in line with your pack.

The same interactions and changes occur with those of us who are religious, spiritually inclined, or to those of us who practice some form of magic involving interacting with spiritual forces.  Our very interactions with those spirits, for weal or woe, changes us on some level.  They, very literally, become a part of  our life and our worldview, changing us from within even if we don't expect it.  Its not particularly abnormal for a practicing mage's IQ to be raised as a result of working with planetary intelligences, for example.

I've personally experienced this over the years, as working with Zazel, for example, has helped me to become better at discerning limitations, exposing them, or strengthening weaknesses, even if this wasn't the goal of the work.  It fits perfectly with His Saturnine nature.

That being the case, we can respond to this external stimuli in a couple of different ways; we can either use this to our benefit, or we can try to run from it and become a hermit. I would suggest that we should use this tendency to our benefit rather than pursue the goal of shielding ourselves from influences from others.  It is, ultimately, futile to do so, as we're trying to escape biologically-programmed functions which help us to interact.

I would recommend that you surround yourself with successful folk that you can look up to and interact.  I'd also recommend that you take it a step further and actually work with spirits that will benefit you in such a way.  If you're looking to cultivate a sense of inner peace, either work with Shiva and Ayra-Tara-Ma or have someone else do the work for you. Just bringing an entity into your sphere can have far-reaching effects for the same reasons listed above.

Furthermore, cut the bad apples off the tree.  Make the sacrifice and move on with your life if someone isn't benefiting you.  Don't sit their and stew; it WILL come back to bite you if you don't heed this advice.  Compassion is great until it drags you down; if it does, it needs to be managed like any other emotion or instinct.

The TL:DR version of this is illustrated pretty well by Hopsin in the following music video:

The long and short of it is that in order to grow, we have to cut loose the anchors that hold us down.  If you want to get somewhere in life, make whatever sacrifices you need to, so long as they'll actually get you somewhere.  If that means that you need to ask for help, realize this and then make it happen.

There are plenty of resources, spiritual teachers, spirit workers, teachers, therapists, business contacts, and potential friends who can help you to change your life for the better.  All you need to do is reach out and work to make that occur.

If you should desire such assistance, contact me and we'll talk. If you're not sure what to do about your situation, but just want to do something general to help fix it, I can probably assist.

Take care and thank you for reading.

Regards,

SE

Greetings once again, dear readers.

A conversation with a member over at EM finally sparked my desire to write this post that's been floating around in my brain for ages (thanks for the motivation, by the way!). As one'd guess, I get a great many contacts from  people asking for help in getting jobs; its almost a daily thing, in fact.  That being the case, I thought I'd create a post specific to making oneself marketable, as this is of great import when attempting to gain employment.

Before I really get to the nitty gritty details, I should note that, as mentioned before, I work as a software administrator and have been doing tech work for years. I've also worked retail in the past, trained new employees for the past four years, and sat on interview boards, so I can give you a reasonably good idea of what hiring managers are looking for, as well as give you advice on how to be just that.

Experience is, as one'd expect, of great import in any industry, regardless of credentials.  So much so, in fact, that its more valuable than years of schooling; its becoming more and more frequent, in the USA, that people are being hired into jobs that provide 40-80k a year without a college education.  If you get your foot in the door, its a great way to gain access to opportunities that will open the door wide open for you.

In the conversation with the gentleman I mentioned above, we spoke on this with regard to retail experience.  He had approximately 5 years of retail experience, but unfortunately, even if you're in the retail industry, that's not so valuable anymore. It seems impressive on paper, but it isn't anything special anymore, as for the past 10-15 years, its been increasingly common for kids to start working at the local mall, outlet store, home depot, or other retail outfit.  They usually they start at 15 or 16 years old and stick to it through the remainder of middle school and high school.  Their reasons aren't always the same, but in the case of my girl's students, a pretty significant portion of them have such jobs.

If 5 children per class have such a job, with some of the medium-sized schools will have up to around 200 students who are doing this.  With how many schools are in most states, that's 2000 students or more who have retail experience.  If they stay in school and the retail job through middle and high school, that's 6 years of work experience, resources, and contacts.  That means that these kids are essentially ahead of any of their peers that didn't have such an experience, as far as work is concerned.

They essentially move to the head of the interviewer pool by default, as such work experience it makes them stand out even if it doesn't apply to what they're trying to do (if you're a parent, I strongly suggest that you make your kid start working ASAP; they might hate it at first, but it'll benefit them in the long term).

This, of course, brings me to my next point of bettering your skills constantly and making sure that your resume reflects this. Every time you apply to a job they get a soft copy.  If your skills haven't improved any, the hiring manager probably isn't going to be all that interested, as you're not working on anything of worth; in short, you appear lazy and your resume gets trashed.

The best thing you can do is branch out your skillset. If you have aspirations of doing something techy in the future, spend time taking free classes on things like web design, using Microsoft Office effectively, understanding SQL, and so on and so forth. Those things look great on the resume, as even though they are actually outside your discipline, it means that you can work with people who do know those programs and functions intimately; that makes you a more valuable asset. It also shows that you are intelligent and have a drive to learn more on a daily basis; its hard to come by a better employee.

Finally, ensure that you speak well and understand, on some level, multiple cultures.  This is a widely overlooked skill, but if you know the religious views, political ideology, or cultural views of the interviewing manager, you can adjust your tactics to coincide with this. In essence, you could kiss up to that person and be mostly aware of what they might want, making your attempt to manipulate them more effectively.  Keep in mind, I use the word manipulate here because that is exactly what you are doing.

Once you've done those things, all you need to do is be attentive, use the appropriate magical means to make it all work according to your plans, and you should be able to land any job that's within your grasp with relative ease.

Regards,

SE