If you have been following me @TheFactoryPod on Twitter you may have noticed my Oppositional Thoughts tweets.  Well I have been counting them up and realised there are now over 100 of them.  So I thought I would publish the 50 of them here and post another collection later if folks like them.

The idea is to poke gentle fun at the tendency of some careers advice and sayings to be just a little too trite, too simple or simplifying.  Life and careers are often more complex than that!

What are your oppositional thoughts?

Oppositional Thoughts 1 – 50

1. Oppositional Thoughts…What if you follow your Passion and your Passion gets a restraining order for stalking?
2. Oppositional Thoughts… The early bird makes the breakfast
3. Oppositional Thoughts…what if today is not the first day of the rest of your life because you’ve overslept?
4. Oppositional Thoughts…At a seance, can a medium give you the long and short of it?
5. Oppositional Thoughts…If the water is still how can it run, let alone deep?
6. Oppositional Thoughts…when you iron out the kinks where do they go?  Are they latent kinks? Sleeper kinks?
7. Oppositional Thoughts…I can’t set my goals. I tried putting them in the freezer, but they are still runny.
8. Oppositional Thoughts…Honesty is the best policy. So what are the other policies? An honest person would list them all.
9. Oppositional Thoughts…Every day, I am getting better and better. It’s what I’m getting better at that is worrying me.
10. Oppositional Thoughts…Just do it.  I did, and it made my eyes water.
11. Oppositional Thoughts…To succeed we need to dream and to act. But do them at the same time and get fired.
12. Oppositional Thoughts…outshine your competitors.  Alternatively go green and use energy saving bulbs.
13. Oppositional Thoughts..Get the job you love.I did.I took it to a remote farm, tied it to a chair and freed it only when it said it loved me.
14. Oppositional Thoughts…I was going to move from Downtown to the Edge of Chaos but I’m worried about my iPhone 4 reception.
15. Oppositional Thoughts…Is the failure to include failure as an option a failure?
16. Oppositional Thoughts..When the going gets tough the tough get going. Not in the case of my over-cooked steak. It just sat there defying me.
17. Oppositional Thoughts…Winners never quit…which explains the widespread substance abuse in the corner offices…
18. Oppositional Thoughts…Reach for the stars. I did and I got ejected off the red carpet shortly after.
19. Oppositional Thoughts…My coach wanted to solidify and bed down my skills.  She put my feet in concrete and dropped me in the Hudson river.
20. Oppositional Thoughts…Here’s an idea.  To get a pay rise ensure your performance is consistently risible.
21. Oppositional Thoughts…Life is a choice. What do you choose?  Well, periodic detention, or a good behavior bond is better than life surely?
22. Oppositional Thoughts…Get your game face on…  Look like a turkey and act like a goose!
23. Oppositional Thoughts…When you are taking a licking, keep on ticking. Like a bomb. Then presumably explode.
24. Oppositional Thoughts…Short term pain, long term gain..of haunting memories of the pain…
25. Oppositional Thoughts…”High Performance, Delivered”…but what if you were not home when they delivered…
26. Oppositional Thoughts… A puff of wind and popular praise weigh the same. Not in a packed lift they don’t.
27. Oppositional Thoughts… Great doubts deep wisdom. Small doubts little wisdom. Should I have small or great doubts about this saying?
28. Oppositional Thoughts…It is what it is.  But what if what it was wasn’t, was it ever?
29. Oppositional Thoughts..When receiving parcels it is the thoughts inside the box that are more interesting than the thoughts outside the box.
30. Oppositional Thoughts…I want to carry something out in narrow daylight, the other kind istoo wide to fit through my front door.
31. Oppositional Thoughts…I can’t recall ever being on a train that served gravy.
32. Oppositional Thoughts…how can I achieve a ripple effect without making waves?
33. Oppositional Thoughts…Standing in the middle of a vineyard, I saw two people talking, but I couldn’t hear the talk through the grapevine.
34. Oppositional Thoughts…A group exercise. Get as many people as possible to lay their hands on a bulb to see if they make the light work.
35. Oppositional Thoughts…I was lost in the woods when I stumbled over a neck.  But it wasn’t ours.
36. Oppositional Thoughts…To live is to move. Which is a worry if you are horizontal and being driven to a cemetery.
37. Oppositional Thoughts…In the kitchen of a safe house in the witness protection program do you have to keep spilling the beans?
38. Oppositional Thoughts…What is wrong with being washed up? It means you wont be nagged about doing the dishes.
39. Oppositional Thoughts…What if you have an epiphany that belongs to someone else?
40. Oppositional Thoughts…Don’t make too many opportunities or you wont be able to sell them all.
41. Oppositional Thoughts…If your career is the sum of your choices, what if they don’t add up?
42. Oppositional Thoughts…There is no such thing as failure only feedback. But what if the feedback says “you failed”?
43. Oppositional Thoughts…At parties,follow career development advice. Talk to yourself.First know yourself, then you’ll know who to talk to.
44. Oppositional Thoughts…I let my hair down today.It said that my body had gone pear shaped.You try living under a cloud of disappointed hair
45. Oppositional Thoughts…“The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.” – so next gen don’t get to own future?
46. Oppositional Thoughts…Why Can’t We All Just Get Along? Except obviously with those we don’t like,disapprove of, list is endless…
47. Oppositional Thoughts..Life is only as good as you make it..I hope not, I’m rubbish at making things, and its good to admire others’ efforts
48. Oppositional thoughts.”Leadership is no longer about position but passion” but show the passion in an incriminating position and get fired
49. Oppositional thoughts…”never trust anyone completely, you are bound to get deceived”. I distrust this sentiment.
50. Oppositional Thoughts…The mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work unless it’s open…and when you board a plane you prefer not to use it