In This Episode: Sure, it’s cool to hear stories of famous (and completely obscure) people who exhibit Uncommon Sense. But there’s one other thing you need to know about every one of them: they’re definitely not perfect, and that’s important to know because neither are you.
072: Not Perfect
Tweet
Jump to Transcript
How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes
Show Notes
*
* The episodes I mentioned: 015: Keeping Your Eyes on the Prize, 017: Developing Uncommon Sense, 019: How to be Happier. And: List of All Episodes.
* This is a follow-on to 071: Taking It To the Extreme, though it’s not critical to listen to them in order.
* The Get Out of Hell Free products are here. The True Stella Awards cases are slowly returning to the Stella web site.
Transcript
Welcome to Uncommon Sense. I’m Randy Cassingham.
There are several common gut reactions that people often have when hearing a story about someone doing something fantastic, such as the type of people I tell you about in Uncommon Sense. First there’s the feeling that “I could never do that!” — because the person is so special, or so talented, or born at just the right moment and the right place, that they’re seemingly impossible to emulate.
Or second, the “But what about…?” types, who are aware of something less than savory in the person’s background. To use a couple of recent example people from last week’s episode: Jeff Bezos may be looking way into the future, but didn’t he cheat on his wife of 25 years? Isn’t that pretty much the opposite of Uncommon Sense? I mean, his wife divorced him — and when she left she took 25 percent of his Amazon stock as a consolation prize. That was worth $36 billion at the time. She did allow her ex to retain voting rights in those shares, which sounds like a pretty shrewd move, because that stock is now worth around $50 billion. Yep, bad move ethically, morally, and financially, Jeff.
And what of Elon Musk? Sure he’s looking way into the future too, but doesn’t he do pretty stupid things on a pretty regular basis? Say, taking a big puff from a marijuana cigar — on camera — when his SpaceX company is in the middle of a make-or-break contract with the government? Or call a cave rescue person “pedo guy” in a tweet, which was seen by millions and resulted in a big lawsuit for defamation by said guy? Or make other really stupid tweets that have gotten him in big trouble? Yep, bad moves plural, Elon: every one of those actions (and more) took ...
