Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Seetha E]

Playing it to your strengths helps. Tutoring really young kids may help him polish his language. So true ....once an introvert always and introvert. That is the happy, peace and calm place for the person.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

If you haven't already, you can sign up to be personally mentored by Scott "Eckhart Aurelius" Hughes at this link.

Hello Sir,

I've previously read about your rise from grass to grace. I read about your past stories, including that one moment when you used the last coin you had to pay your rent.

I've also worked with you for some time now and everything I know about you is incredible. You are very smart, you have an incredible work discipline, you have very good people skills (Not to mention managerial and marketing skills). I also logged in to Alignable today and saw that you've received so many recognitions, including the Local Business Person of the Year right from 2020 to 2023.

My question is, how is it that you couldn't monetize all these skills then? Is it because during this period, you were still laying foundation for some other big projects or did you acquire these incredible skills later in life?

Are there any specific skills that you think that if you had acquired earlier in life, your financial success would have come earlier than it did?

Hi, Melissa Jane,

Thank you so much for your kind words and compliments! And thank you for your thoughtful and intriguing question!

There are several factors at play for why didn't have as much financial success 10 years ago as I do now. So I'll go through some of the top ones one at a time below, and keep in mind this list isn't exhaustive.


Factor One-- Connecticut (the state in which I live) is a very expensive place to live.

For example, when I was squeezing together the money to pay my rent by turning in my spare change on the last day at the bank using the Coinstar machine, keep in mind my rent was $900 per month. That's just the rent, not including utilities like electricity, let alone other important expensive like food. I was considered as being below the poverty line and was making over $20,000 USD that year. In many places in the world, a salary like that would make a person rich. In Connecticut, it can leave you borderline homeless.

I was also working solely online with OnlineBookClub at that time (having recently left my day job as a bartender to go full-time at OnlineBookClub), so I didn't get the benefits on the income end of the excessive inflation in Connecticut. In other words, when you live somewhere the cost of living is extremely high and the value of the dollar is very low (such as Connecticut), the other side of that is that typically incomes are proportionally higher. If everything costs twice as much, it usually means every one's getting paid twice as much, and it roughly evens out, but that doesn't work for people like me if you are getting your income from online remote work. Remote workers benefit greatly from living somewhere the cost of living is very low (e.g. where the value of the dollar is higher), since they get paid the same amount no matter where they live. I not only didn't have that benefit, I had the opposite. I live in one of the worst places a remote worker can live. The only places I can think of that would be worse are New York City and parts of California.


Factor Two-- In many ways, I was very successful back then.

This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point. Most people in this world, if they created a project/business out of thin air in the way I created OnlineBookClub.org and were suddenly making $20,000 USD per year in profit from that, they would be considered a huge success.

Most new businesses fail. 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more.

The number are even worse if you remember that just beaus a business hasn't gone out of business doesn't mean it is profitable. There's a lot of businesses out there, especially new ones, that just lose money. They don't just make $0 profits, but, worse, actually lose money, before often eventually then going under.

The fact that I was making any profit at all means that my business (and by extension me) was already exceptionally more successful than most other people who start a business, let alone those who even fail to start one.


Factor Three-- Financial and business success is like climbing a staircase.

In 10 more years, I will hopefully climb even higher. In 10 more years, maybe I will be a billionaire. Then someone might ask me, "Scott, why weren't you a billionaire yet back in 2023? Why couldn't you afford to fly in spaceships and travel to Mars back then?"

The answer I would give to them would be in great part the same as I would give to you: I was on my way then, but in these kind of matters you have to C before you get D and go to B before you get to C and go A before you get to B.

5 years ago I was very successful in relation to where I was 10 years ago. 10 years ago I was very successful in relation to where I was 15 years ago. And 10 years from now I'll likely be very successful in relation to where I am now and make this look like poverty compared to that.

If you are born a billionaire and lose almost all of it to only be a millionaire, that's kind of a failure. If you are born in severe poverty and are homeless and then manage to earn a $20k a year salary and an apartment to live in, then that's a huge success.

At most stages in my life, I've considered myself to be a huge success because I was one step higher on that infinite staircase that is the business and finance world. There is no top to it. So if one defined happiness or success as being at the top, then one will never be successful or happy, at least not in the sense of seeing themself that way. I saw myself as a huge success already back then, even when I was barely scraping together my $900 per month rent. I fought hard to pay that rent, used my skills to their fullest to do it, and did it successfully. It was really tough and required a lot of skills to put a roof over my kids head and pay the rent on time, but I did it, successfully. I fed and housed my kids and I by monetizing my skills at that time.

Typically, I don't look at a billionaire and a millionaire and think the billionaire is more successful. There's not enough data to make that judgement. It's irrelevant that the billionaire has 1,000x more money. Those facts help exemplify what I mean when I talk about success being a choice, and failure being an illusion. Instead of merely looking at how much money they have, I look at whether they are currently climbing up the staircase or tumbling down. I ask where they were yesterday. I ask how much money they had a year ago. I ask where they are coming from. Someone who is born with 10 billion dollars and loses 90% of it would still be a billionaire, but they are much less successful than someone who is born poor and manages to make $100,000, which is not even a million. There's millionaires I consider more financially successful than some billionaires, and there's many thousandaires I consider more successfully than most millionaires.

To measure someone's success in business and finance, I deduct their headstart by their current position.

If I had suddenly by pure luck inherited OnlineBookClub as it is now when I was only 20 years old, then living the way I did back then and making the modest income I did back then would indeed be an embarrassment that would indicate I wasted (or didn't have) my skills.

People wisely say, Rome wasn't built in a day. I didn't inherit Rome, so I had to build it, and that takes time, a lot of time.. Each day this Rome I'm building is a little bigger and a little more fleshed out, and each day the world gets to see a little bit more of this vision of proverbial Rome that I have in my head and work towards consistently day after day and year after year.


Factor Four -- My journey to achieving inner peace and extreme full-fledged spiritual freedom (a.k.a. extreme full-fledged self-discipline) was like climbing a staircase.

This point is similar to the previous one, except where the previous one focused on money and business success, this focuses on the personal traits I have in my head. In other words, the former was about financial wealth versus this one being about mental health and mental strength and such.

One point I make in my book, which I stand by, is that spiritual freedom and inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness) are in your control, and require no time or money to get. In that way, achieving those things is very much not like business success or making money. It's the exact opposite. You can't choose to instantly be rich and then be rich instantly. You can't instantly choose to lose weight and then instantly weigh 50 lbs less. Those kind of external goals take time and consistent physical investment over that time.

Nonetheless, even though one could go from 0-100 overnight--or instantly--in this journey to inner peace and spiritual freedom, I didn't.

In analogy, a lifelong alcoholic could suddenly decide they want to quit and do it. They could have never tried before in any sense of the word, made the choice, and then bam never drink again.

In practice, it often doesn't work that way.

I had a lot more self-discipline (a.k.a. spiritual freedom) and inner peace (a.k.e. true happiness) than most people 10 years ago, but not nearly as much as I have now.

That is also part of the reason it took me 5 years to write In It Together. I had most of it, I was close to where I am now when I came up with the idea for the book and launched the Kickstarter to get it funded, but I just didn't quite all clicked into place yet.

I hope reading the book has helped speed up that process for others. It takes maybe 5 hours to read the book. I'm hopeful that in the 5 hours people read it they learn as much I learned over the 5-10 years of my life before that. I primarily like to think of my book, In It Together, as a huge time-saver for the reader: It teaches you things you could figure out on your own over the next 10 years. It teaches you what you are likely to learn the hard way anyway if you don't read the book. And it does that all in 5 hours instead of 10 years. Some of the truths in the book might be bitter pills to swallow for some readers, but it saves them from having to learn those same lessons through even more bitter harder knocks in life. One can learn the slow, hard way (let life teach you without my book to help) or the quick, easy way (my book).

If I had read my book, In It Together, 10 or 20 years before I wrote it, I would have had all this success that I have now much, much sooner. And I'd probably have even more material success and wealth and such than I have now. But I still had to learn the lessons that my book now teachers others, so they can learn it not only the easy way (instead of the hard way) but in 5 hours instead of 20 years.


Thank you, Melissa, for the wonderful question!


With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott

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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

If you haven't already, you can sign up to be personally mentored by Scott "Eckhart Aurelius" Hughes at this link.

Did you ever feel like quitting on online book club, and if you did, what did you do to pull back your spirits not to quit?

Hi, Risper Ouma Lisa Anyango,

Thank you for your question!

No, I never really feel like quitting OnlineBookClub, at least not in the short-term. I've often considered my exit strategy and/or long-term business game-plan, as any company owner or investor is wise to do. I've hypothetically thought about selling OnlineBookClub, and when and under what conditions I might be interested in doing that, or otherwise how I might gracefully exiting over time. But I don't ever desire to just abruptly quit and give up.

I feel about quitting like that like I feel about cutting off my own pinky finger. It's not even remotely an attractive idea to me.

With all that said, I suggest we take a moment to consider what it means exactly, if anything, to (1) feel like doing something, which can then be contrasted to both (2) not feel like doing it and (3) feel like not doing it.

For instance, we could imagine ourselves meeting an alcoholic who has been sober for a year and who just proudly earned their one-year sobriety chip at AA. We could ask them, "During the past year, did you ever feel like drinking? If so, what did you do to pull your spirits back up and avoid drinking?"

It's not wording I would typically use, but I think I understand what one might mean by the phrase "feel like doing" in that case, but we want to be very careful about falsely conflating feelings with choices. As I typically use the terms, we feel feelings, and we do choices, and phrases such as "feel like doing" come dangerously close to falsely conflating those very different things.

Nonetheless, we can all relate to what the alcoholic experienced during his year of sobriety and what his answer might be since all humans including us are on the addiction spectrum. We all experience temptation. We all have the capacity to choose spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) or its vicious opposite, meaning spiritual slavery, which feels like being a prisoner in your own body, a slave to temptation and bodily feelings and urges like fear, hunger, pain, and discomfort. We all frequently get presented with the choice between choosing to be spiritually free (a.k.a. self-disciplined) or choosing to be an obedient servant to temptation.

For some, it's the urge to overeat to the point of morbid obesity and even literal death by eating; for others, it's the urge to drink alcohol until they die of liver disease; for yet others, it's gambling or sex. Each of us has our thing, or things, which my book calls our differing props. As my book says, the props are different. But the underlying struggle is common to us all. It's what my book calls, the beautiful common struggle uniting us all.

You can ask me, "throughout my life, what did I do to lift my spirits--i.e. to maintain my spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline)--when temptation struck most powerfully?

The answer is this: I followed the teachings of my book, most notably the 11 suggestions at the end.

Perhaps, the most relevant mantra from my book is the following:

"When it comes to your choices, you always get exactly what you want, meaning what you choose."

I could advise you to simply remember what you want, but it's worth noting that you need to first know what you want to even be able to remember it.

The rest is infinitely easy. As I often say, success is a choice, and failure is an illusion.


With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott

Success is a choice, failure is an illusion, and consistency beats intensity.
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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.

[Nehap17]

Do you have a, financial advisor or do you do it on your own? How much %of one's income should one invest into a financial advisor? I'm asking this as this will help weed out the over-priced offerings.

[Nehap17]

An author has reached out to me to help her write a short ebook, that she will later provide to her corporate clients. I know the topic well and the technical knowledge and expertise is my strength. How should the compensation look like?

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Which book(s) would you credit to have changed your life and set you on the path you're currently on?

Hi, Nehap17,

Thank you for your question.

Here is the list of books I have compiled for this purpose:

Recommended Reading for My Mentees


With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Do you have a, financial advisor or do you do it on your own? How much %of one's income should one invest into a financial advisor? I'm asking this as this will help weed out the over-priced offerings.

An author has reached out to me to help her write a short ebook, that she will later provide to her corporate clients. I know the topic well and the technical knowledge and expertise is my strength. How should the compensation look like?

Hi, Nehap17,

Thank you for your questions, but I cannot answer them as written because they are loaded with the word 'should'.

As my book teaches, there is no should.

The fact that there is no 'should' (and likewise that there is no 'ought') is a key teaching in my book, "In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All".

May I ask if you have already read my book in full?

Regardless, here are some other topics I wrote about the subject of how 'shouldness' is an illusion/superstition that leads to you giving up your inner peace (a.k.a. happiness):


- An elaboration on how judgemental moralizing and the superstition of 'moral law' infringes on free-spirited inner peace

- I lovingly and deeply pity those who think unchangeable reality "ought" to be different than it unchangeably is.

- The Six Dangerous Misery-Inducing Words: "Must", "Have to", "Need to", "Should", "Ought", "Try"

- To believe in an all-powerful God and think 'should-not-have-ness' exists is to therefore believe that God did a bad job

- My Advice: Cut the **** by letting go of the shoulds. #SelfResponsibility #Freedom #SelfDiscipline #FreeSpirit

- There is no "Is-Ought Problem" because there is no 'ought'.

- Don't should on me. If you are going to should on anyone, go should on yourself.

- How Unassertiveness Leads to Aggression and the Illusion of 'Shoulds' and 'Oughts'

- Dangerous Moral Busybodies | "A tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."

- Letting go of expectation | How clinging to the superstitions of expectation and blame disrupts your inner peace

- Six Questions for People Who Believe Should-Not-Have-Ness Exists (i.e. for people who believe in 'shoulds' and 'oughts')



Feel free to re-word and re-post the questions.


With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

If you haven't already, you can sign up to be personally mentored by Scott "Eckhart Aurelius" Hughes at this link.



Hi, Moisés Alcántara Ayre,

Thank you for your following questions.

When hiring people (and more generally when choosing friends and associates), these are the critical qualities that I value and prioritize most:

- Honest

- Self-Disciplined

- Values and practices self-responsibility

- Respects the freedom of others and, in other words, the self-responsibility of others (e.g. practices the principle of live and let live, both spiritually and politically, meaning the person engages in neither aggressive violence nor in the emotional/spiritual analogues thereof such as hate, resentment, and judgementalism)

- Motivated

- Hard-Working

- Consistently aims to be smart-working, i.e. understands the value of delegating, automating, self-educating, and making a process more efficient and productive so that you get even more work done with the same time and effort. (I say "aims to be", because I'll happily teach someone this as long as they really want it.)

- Assertive

- Values assertive communication in others, and isn't an enabler of toxic unassertiveness; i.e. avoids reading between the lines and doesn't try to be a mind-reader.

- Gracious, i.e. consistently practices gratitude and has the grace of free-spirited inner peace (a.k.a. graceful true happiness).

Thank you, Scott.

The list does help me look for a specific set of qualities.
I was wondering whether these can be spotted on a job interview.

Moises

I did answer that one in my previous answer to you, with the following that I wrote in that post:

Before I get to the list, it's definitely possible to get a decent sense of roughly how much someone has these traits via a job interview, or otherwise just meeting them or even looking them up on social media. Haters, for instance, don't usually seem to hide the fact that they are haters; they wear it almost like a badge of honor. People who truly have the qualities I list below have a noticeable aura around them, and it manifests in everything they do even the tone of the posts they make on social media, such as in how positive/loving versus how negative/hateful those posts are or versus how honest those posts are versus sensationalist, click-baity, or poorly fact-checked.

Are there critical questions to be asked? Are there specific techniques to be used to elicit some of the qualities you've mentioned?

For most of them (e.g. whether a person practices gratitude versus whining about others and things they cannot control), you can get a great feel about that by asking some random open-ended questions, including questions about the person's previous job and why they left.

Watch out for words like 'should, 'ought', and 'try' in their response. That would be a huge warning sign and red flag that they

Likewise, watch out for them complaining about anything instead of focusing on saying what they are grateful for.

Likewise, watch out for them engaging in resentment or blame at all, instead of displaying extreme self-responsibility in the way they discuss past events, including their experience at their previous jobs and reason for departure.

You can also take notes and call or email their previous bosses to both (1) see if the candidate was honest and forthright and (2) to get the boss's perspective about any traits or events the candidate may have failed to mention, especially in regard their departure from the previous job. Did they give at least two weeks notice? Did they leave on good terms? If not, why not? Would the boss re-hire them? If not, why not?

You can ask those questions to both the candidate and then their previous bosses.

For example, you can say in the interview, "Do you think your previous boss would re-hire you? If so, why? If not, why not?"

Then you can later literally call or email the boss, ask him or her that exact question, and then compare the two answers.

That will reveal a lot but one important thing from the list it can help reveal is honesty. A dishonest person would be very likely to fall into the trap of being dishonest about how their previous boss feels about them or what exactly happened in their departure from that previous job.

Of the full list, the hardest one to discover is honesty. And that's because a dishonest person will be dishonest about being dishonest. In fact, if you could already be sure someone was honest, you could just ask them about the other trait's straight up.

Even if everything ended in their previous job on good terms and overall the boos would recommend them, a dishonest person might fall into the trap of not being fully honest about their imperfections in their previous job. You can ask things like, "What was the biggest mistake you made at your previous job? Did your boss or any of your coworkers ever get upset at you or complain about you or something you did at all ever?" Those kind of questions are a great way to get a feel for how honest someone is.

Likewise, you can fact-check the other things they tell you in the interview or put on their application and resume. Don't just check the things that really matter: Check it all, especially the things that don't matter and the most hiring managers wouldn't check because that's precisely what a liar will most likely lie about.

You don't check it because it matter's if it's true intrinsically, but rather it matters a ton extrinsically in terms of whether the person is honest.

In both the interviewing and hiring process, my main tip is this: Make the candidate's honesty your absolutely #1 top priority, and ask questions whose answers can be fact-checked some way or that will otherwise reveal how honest the person is. Open-ended questions that invite the candidate to reveal negative or embarrassing information about themselves is an especially useful tool. The more overly perfect a candidate presents themelf as, the more likely you are dealing with a dishonest liar.

If you can confirm their honesty, everything else is easy since you can just ask it and trust the candidate will give you the honest upfront answer.

In all relationships, including professional, personal, and romantic ones, honesty is the most important thing. If you catch a liar in a lie, I recommend terminating the relationship asap, no matter what the liar says and no matter what excuses or promises they make.

The reason the mantra that once a cheater always a cheater is generally so true is that by the time you catch them it wasn't the one time. If you catch an employee stealing from the cash register, 99.9% of the time that wasn't one the first time. It was the first you caught them, not the first time they did it. When a future will-be adulterer in marriage gets caught lying about something, it's not the first time they lied. Then when they get caught having an affair down the line, not only is it likely the not the first affair but it's not even the first time the victim has caught them being dishonest and lying. 99% of the time when an employee steals or a spouse cheats, the victim let it happen by trusting someone who already showed their stripes previously.

It's not that hard to figure out whether someone is dishonest or not. That's because someone who will lie about one thing will lie about a million things. They lie to you every day they see you probably. In a single job interview, they will likely tell 10 or 20 or more lies. And you only need to catch them in one to discover they are liar. Even if you fail to spot 99% of their lies, you can catch the liar pretty easily if you focus on it because you only have to catch them once in one lie.

The main miscalculation and very dangerous miscalculation most people make in relationships and when dealing with other people, including in professional relationships and job interviews, is believing the liar when the liar claims it was a one-time thing. The reason the mantra once a liar always a liar is almost always true is because the person didn't really just become a liar when they walked through the door before the interview, or right before they took the cash out of the register that first time you caught them doing it.

99.9% of the time, the mantra will hold true that once a cheater always a cheater and once a liar always a liar, just as the alcoholic will almost surely drink again despite what they say to the contrary. A liar you caught lying about one thing is (almost certainly) a liar about so many things. They are almost certainly someone who lies every single day of their lives and who has already lied to you many times before you caught them in one, even if you just met them 10 minutes ago at the start of a job interview.

Believing someone you caught in one lie or one act of dishonesty when they say it won't happen again and/or say it was a one-time thing is like believing a lifelong alcoholic when they promise to stop drinking: It's theoretically possible, but you'd generally be a very gullible fool to believe it at all, let alone hire the person to work for you or your company. My advice: Never invest in that stock.


With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott

In all relationships, including professional, personal, and romantic ones, honesty is the most important thing.
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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.

[Nehap17]

Thanks Scott!!! I have just started reading it, hence clearly missed this!! I wil re-word and repost my questions shortly. Thanks!!

[Risper Ouma Lisa Anyango]

Thank you for the notes about honesty, this will be beneficial to both employers and employees.

[Okoth Omondi]

To be able to post in this topic, you must have purchased my book, In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All. If you purchased the book, but are not able to post in this topic, please simply email a copy or picture of your receipt, or other proof of purchase to scott@onlinephilosophyclub.com and then I will give you access to post in this forum and topic. Please allow up to 48 hours after emailing your receipt for me to see the email and upgrade your account.
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Public Q&A for My Mentees (or Anyone Who Wants My Advice) -- If you want my advice about anything, post your questions here.

Primarily, I am creating this topic for the sake of those who have signed up to be mentored by me. But anybody who has bought my book is welcome to post their questions for me here to get my advice about any topic, which will also help mentees since they may have similar questions about similar matters.

I am happy to offer my advice about and and all of the following:

• physical fitness (e.g. weight loss, weight gain, strength training, endurance training, being able to do a pull up, etc.),
• finances and business (e.g. getting out of debt, building wealth once of debt, starting your own business, growing your own business, etc.)
• anything else about which you want my advice (e.g. how to become a bestselling author, how to get very good at dancing, how to shoot a shotgun, how to get good at boxing, how to learn jiu jitsu, or anything).

If you are in my mentoring program or may want to take part in it in the future, please do use this opportunity--right here, right now--to post any and all questions you have for me.

This is not merely a favor from me. I am requesting you to do it for my sake too, and for the sake of everyone else in the mentoring program.

For those in my mentoring program, I am essentially insisting that you use this opportunity (starting now and moving forward), to ask any and all questions you have for me that don't need to be kept private. Unless there is some significant reason your question or my answer needs to be kept private, please ask it here now.

The reason is because this will save us all a lot of time. Many of my mentees will have the same or similar questions. Even when the questions are different, many times the answers and advice will still be the same. For example, the formula for "how to get really good at boxing" versus "how to get really good at dancing" will be almost entirely the same. The formula for "how to get my shoe-selling business off the ground" will be almost entirely the same as "how to get my hat-selling business off the ground". Reading my answer to one will likely answer the other, or at least mostly answer it such that you will have much fewer unanswered questions left, which will help us both greatly.

To illustrate the value here by example, I won't be able to mentor anyone effectively if I have the same ten-hour one-on-one private conversation with each person separately. That won't be good for you or for me. It would wreak the whole thing for everyone. Instead, we will reserve the time-consuming one-on-one private conversations for things that specifically need to be private.

I'm not just talking about killing two birds with one stone here. I'm talking about potentially killing millions of birds with one stone. It's much, much better for all of us. Don't worry about the birds, they are just figurative. No birds will be harmed in the making of this program.

One reason I have explained my reasoning for this post in this post in such detail is because I think that explaining myself as such will itself act as advice and help those I mentor. This concept of killing two birds (or more) with one stone is extremely crucial to the fundamental formula I use to be so successful in business, finances, and other areas. Wealth is not a zero-sum game. It can be created. So, like I encourage in my book, let's be creative!

My friends, I say, let's get our loving free-spirited creativity going!

Let's work together in a mutually beneficial way to create wealth and succeed together. After all, we are in this together.

For those who already signed up for my mentoring program, even if you have not yet completed the initial 100-day startup period (i.e. "Phase One"), please still use this opportunity to ask any and all questions you have for me now, both right now and as they pop up in your head or come up in your life moving forward.

I'm here for you, right here in this thread.

When replying, make sure the little box "Notify me when a reply is posted" is checked so that you get notifications of new posts.

I suggest you continually read through all the questions by others, and then if even partly applicable to you, read through my answer to them.

One reason is because of the role of reasoning from first principles that will often come up in my answers. While superficially it might at first seem that a question is unrelated to your own life, when you read my long in-depth answer, especially the logic and reasoning behind the answer, you will likely see that those first principles from which I reason, and thus much if not all of the reasoning itself, apply greatly if not just as much or more to your unique situation. More interestingly, seeing how seemingly different problems can be resolved and solved by the same few fundamental processes will indirectly teach you those tools as well, so that you can solve your own problems in the future without having to ask me, both in terms of (1) teaching the incredible empowering value of these tools and (2) teaching you by example what they are and how to use them.

By reading my replies to others in this topic, you will not only be getting mentored by me, but you will also be learning how to mentor others (and in sense mentor yourself). You will not only be getting the fish you want, you will be at the same being shown how to fish and how to provide fish for others. There we go killing two birds with one stone again.


With all that said, let's do it! Fire away! Please ask your questions now. I am happy to do my best to give you my best advice about anything. Right here, right now.




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Hi,

I'm curious to hear your insights on how exposure to diverse literary landscapes can impact one's perspective and understanding of the world. How do you believe the selection of books shapes not only a reader's intellectual growth but also their emotional and empathetic capacities over time?

[Amy Jackson]

Hi, Scott.
Thank you for this great opportunity to learn from you.
Please I'd like to know: paid employment and running a business of your own, which do you think is better? Both in the long run and short run.
Is there a period in one's life that paid employment is better than running a business and vice versa?
Thank you.

[Amy Jackson]

I'm good at getting ideas. If I understand something well enough and take the time to think about how to make it better, I get ideas for it. I can't put every idea I get to work for myself because of the people and other resources needed. Yet, I feel I can monetize this ... what should I call it? Skill, ability, gift, talent?
Please what's your advice for me on this?

Thank you.

[Jenna Padayachee]

Hi

When did you know that you wanted to become an author and how did you go about developing the right process for you, in your schedule, to commit to writing your books ( including filtering down to the genre)?

Thank you,

Jenna

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

If you haven't already, you can sign up to be personally mentored by Scott "Eckhart Aurelius" Hughes at this link.


Hi, Amy Jackson,

Thank you for your question!

Hi, Scott.
Thank you for this great opportunity to learn from you.
Please I'd like to know: paid employment and running a business of your own, which do you think is better? Both in the long run and short run.
Is there a period in one's life that paid employment is better than running a business and vice versa?
Thank you.

In an important way, your question seems incomplete because it treats something subjective (goodness/betterness) as if it was something objective.

So I must ask: better for whom and for what purpose or goal exactly?

For instance, a gun might be better than a knife for a serial killer to do serial killing, but a knife might be better for a chef to prepare food dishes.

I love peanut butter, and eat peanut butter sandwiches almost every day. Imagine someone with a peanut allergy, or who thinks peanut butter tastes gross, asks me: "Which is better: peanut butter or tuna fish?"

The thought of eating tuna fish makes me want to puke, but how could that help inform my answer to such a question? It couldn't because goodness/betterness is relative and subjective. One person's trash is another's treasure. So, unless one specifies the specific subject and relative goals and conditional factors, the question is meaningless and unanswerable. Of note is my forum topic about what I call Orwellian Agent-Smithism, in which I write in part, "I don't want every other person to have the same haircut as me, the same exercise regime as me, and the same sleeping schedule as me. I don't want to be King of Earth. I don't want to be grand master of anything but myself. I have no more interest in infringing on anyone else's spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) than I have interest in having someone else infringe upon my own."

To ask a question of the form "Which is better: peanut butter or tuna fish?", is at best dangerously close to asking a question like, "Should I eat peanut butter or tuna fish?", Or, "What should I eat?"

Please do feel free to re-phrase and re-ask your question, namely specifying the 'better to whom' (i.e. the subject/person) and the 'better for what' (i.e. the goal to which the measurement is relative).

Or ask yourself: What do you really want ultimately, as an end in itself not just a means? Which path forward would be most likely to lead to that desired result that you subjectively desire? Which of the options available to you would be the truest and fullest expression of happy free-spiritedness (a.k.a. self-discipline)? In other words, which path forward for you would most represent you having spiritual freedom? What that looks like for you will be very different than what it looks for me, and very different from any other person or creature or plant or system or agent in this beautiful diverse creative universe.

As I write in my book, "Perhaps the most crucial aspect of the wonderful beauty of freedom is the creative diversity that the freedom engenders."

Thus, to questions of the form, "Which is better: peanut butter or tuna fish?", I can simply answer with some of my most cherished mottoes:

- To each their own.

- Live and let live.

- Just love everything.

- The universe doesn't miscalculate.

- Reality is right.

- When it comes to your choices, you always get exactly what you want.



With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott

Objectively, there is no 'better', nor any 'shoulds' or 'oughts'. There is only the is-ness of what is. And that is the inherent inexorable perfectness of reality.
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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.