Chances are there are some simple things out there in the sprawling universe that you don’t know either.

So, don’t laugh at someone for not knowing something simple.

This is something new I’m trying for myself because of some things I’ve noticed:

1. When you laugh at someone for not knowing something, you automatically alienate them.
2. The person, friend or stranger, will feel like they need to censor their thoughts around you, and will shy away from opening up to you next time.
3. They’ll start to realize that you’re blindly belittling them, and so they won’t ask you questions anymore.

Questions spur conversations. And conversations are good for building relationships. So, I want to keep this short: no one knows everything out there, and we’ve all been in conversations before when we have no clue what everyone else is talking about. When someone doesn’t know something simple, don’t alienate them, don’t belittle them by saying “Oh, you didn’t know that!?!?” Just explain it and move on.

Great, now we can talk about more important things… So, who exactly is this Jeremy Lin kid? What does he eat for breakfast? Can he really do the dougie?

If you like this post, you might also like Stop Trying to Convince People.

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* Post Image from Marco Bellucci (and what a wonderful picture it is).

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Will you be tweeting about this year’s Super Bowl?

Is that even a question? Of course, you’ll be tweeting about Super Bowl 2012. And, if you haven’t teetered your way into Twitter yet, well then you’re definitely going to be posting a status or two when Victor Cruz comes up with the big play (considering he’s averaging 18.7 yards per catch).

Twitter, Facebook, and other mobile apps are reaping the benefits of increased social sharing during sporting events, and the Super Bowl is no exception. We saw the rise of social media as a funnel of smack talk, celebrations, camaraderie, and emotional outcries during the 2010 FIFA World Cup games in South Africa. Not to mention, social networking sites like, Facebook, Google+, and especially Twitter as instant news feeds.

Just like people looking for a laugh got their news from the unlikely source of The Daily Show with John Stewart (due to his amazing ability to be comically witty and politically savvy at the same time), people are also increasingly turning to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Tumblr for their daily headlines. I take that back. People aren’t really turning to these sites voluntarily, but are already on Facebook to begin with, making it much easier to click a news link while your surfing your friend’s profiles on Facebook instead of going to a different site all-together (yeah, it makes the human race look a little lazy when you read it like that).

With this increasing tendency for social media to play multiple roles in peoples’ lives, also comes increased user interaction. What does this mean for the famous Super Bowl ads that everyone either chooses to deliberately ignore (made-up of diehards and ad-hating viewers), watch the Super Bowl only for the ads (who does that?), and the ones that come for the Super Bowl and stick around during the timeouts and dead space because slightly above average ads are on (the one who also positions himself in front of the dip)?

It means that Super Bowl ads get leaked early, even earlier than the Super Bowl itself. It means that people have new avenues for shit talk, more than ever before. It means you can send emotional outcries of disbelief and disparity to the masses (actually, just your friends). It means you can bitch about losing. It means you can study all day, and still know the play-by-play by scrolling your Facebook news feed. It means you can create awesome, new hashtags (useless after the Super Bowl is over) on Twitter. AND, most of all, it means you should be aware of how companies are capitalizing from your attachment to these new digital modes of media. According to this stat below, you’ll also be on your phone alot:

A snippet from CNN’s article, 5 things to watch during the Super Bowl

“Apparently, a good many people aren’t occupied enough by the annual super extravaganza called the Super Bowl. Nearly 60% of mobile phone users plan to look at their device during the game, according to a survey by Velti, a mobile marketing firm.”

That’s a ridiculous statistic. Why aren’t people just enjoying the game? It’s because we’re now part of a huge social circle, which is an extension of our own identities as social beings. We have the ability to interact with our friends at all times, especially during widely publicized events like the Super Bowl and the World Cup. But, it isn’t just about sporting events. I first learned about Bin Laden’s capture and death via Twitter, before any news stations even publicly reported it.

So, it’s gravely important to appreciate social media and what it has done for our social circles, but also know that it’s encroaching in on all parts of our lives that involve communication, and almost all of them do: news, media, sports, jobs, opinions, education, etc.

Twitter and Facebook have not only changed our lives as to how we interact with others, but also changed the whole scape of communication by meshing different realms of identity into one. Our social identity, our academic identity, and our workplace identity all come together in one place.  Things that were once on different book shelves of our lives (for instance, retaining news and talking to our friends) are now “apps” on the same book shelf, and maybe pages of the same book, or words in the same sentence (okay, I kind of pushed the extended metaphor too far). But, it has some truth.

At the least, I hope this post makes you take a step back and just think about, not only, how we’re evolving, but also how we’re responding to how our world is evolving. And of course, how sometimes it’s just nice to sit back and enjoy the game.

Now, I pass it to you. I’m curious, what do you think? If you get a chance, post a comment.

If you like my blog, sign up for email updates here

If you’ve signed up, and you’re not getting email updates, check your spam/trash folder for the verification email. I know that sounds a little shady, but sometimes shit happens. That’s how shadiness occurs, but then hopefully you deal with the shadiness and then everything is good again. Spectacular.

Thanks for reading, as always.

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* Post image from Phandroid

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If you’re a young entrepreneur, the one thing that keeps getting hammered into your head is failing.

Entrepreneurship starts much more often with failing, than with instant success. So, why not embrace something that is so imminent? You know you will fail, so embrace failure. But don’t just embrace, do it fast. Fail fast. Fail forward fast. What does that mean?

Metaphorically speaking, I think it can help to see success  through the lens of evolution. Let’s take a look at how Charles Darwin might explain the road to success, using the example of the budding entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur you are constantly evolving. Starting off with minute resources, big dreams, and soft manpower (and daily scarfing down of ramen noodles too), you’ll start to tweak small things in your strategy as you move forward on your journey of creating a business.

Think about how evolution works. The idea of natural selection is one that can be applied to many things in our world because nature is the foundation on which many man-made things seek to mimic. So, the way success comes about is kind of like the workings of natural selection.

Different traits in organisms in a population, over time, allow for the passing on of effective traits that make it easier for them to survive, making them dominant and complementary to the unique environment around them. These changes, individually, are defined as microevolution, and over a long period of time, a mosaic of changes creates a whole new species, often described as macroevolution.

Treat success (as an entrepreneur, teacher, or student) like the rules of natural selection and evolution. The traits that you have as a leader inform your decisions and eventually drive either success or failure in creating the viable organism that is your start-up company. The challenge is to pinpoint the traits that lead to small successes on a daily basis and emphasize them more often, making them the dominant traits of your leadership. Hopefully, over time, you pick out your strengths, concentrate on them, and make your weak decisions obsolete, creating an evolutionary change in your character as a leader.

Now, if you have weak traits, think about this more in terms of outside of the rules of natural selection. It’s important to pinpoint your weak traits as a leader, and either work on them personally, or more importantly, hire smarter than you in those fields. For example, if you’re a participatory leader and enjoy listening and absorbing other people’s ideas, you’ll want a slightly aggressive manager to drive execution in your start-up. These aren’t hard and fast rules, but a company requires a diverse group of self-starters to ensure it’s success.

Remember, as an entrepreneur, you’re always changing, evolving, and tweaking. That’s how you ensure success because entrepreneur’s solve worldly problems, and if the world is always changing, than the entrepreneur must also follow suit and evolve to recognize and grasp opportunities as they come to execute them from start to finish. Similarly, the same is true for a student, teacher, or doctor. Trends, people, and knowledge are always changing, and you must keep up with the changes by evolving your own skill set.

Now, I pass it to you. How do you view success? What is your favorite color? Where is Waldo? All pertinent questions that NEED pertinent answers!

As always, thanks for reading!

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Post Image by kabils

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A nonrandom environmental variable (ranchers that shoot rattlesnakes) is changing the population of rattlesnakes in the American Southwest, making the population more resistant to ranchers. Why? Because the ones that rattle less are surviving and reproducing in large numbers.

Now in anecdotal terms, outside the theory of evolution, cowboys and ranchers are telling stories of rattlesnakes that are learning not to rattle as much. The reason being, every time a rancher walks past a rattlesnake, it’s instinct is to stick it’s tail out and start hissing and rattling to scare away predators in the wild. What the rattlesnakes don’t know, is that they are dealing with ranchers. Ranchers end up killing the rattlesnakes almost instantly because they cause sickness among the livestock eventually killing them off.

As an aside, in evolutionary terms, this can be explained pretty easily. Basically, there are some rattlesnakes that rattle more than others, meaning there are also a set of rattlesnakes that have a higher sensory threshold, causing them to rattle less. They need more of  a stimulus to alarm the senses to start rattling. So, because of ranchers’ practice of almost always killing rattlesnakes when they do rattle, the ‘rattlesnake ninjas’ (as I like to call them) that don’t rattle as much are escaping, surviving, and then reproducing. They are becoming the dominant population over a span of years. This is essentially how natural selection works.

I like to call them Rattlesnake Ninjas because they are able to stay quiet (based upon their genome) when ranchers walk within feet of them, allowing them to survive and live long lives.

When it comes to following your dreams, you want to be like a Rattlesnake Ninja. You can’t get defensive every time someone botches your dream. I’m an english major, and I often get sneers, jerks of disapproval, slight nods of negativity, and the infamous “oh, what do you plan to do with that” (emphasis on the “do,” as if my degree is obsolete and I won’t be able to do anything at all. That I’ll be lucky to get a job in just about anything).

It hurts. Well, it used to, anyways. And, it’s because I was rattling like the rattlesnake that rattles way too often (tongue twister?). I would chime off and start getting nervous and put my defensive shields up. “What do you mean, what am I going to do? I can do plenty of things! Publishing, err, I might want to be a teacher somewhere down the road… maybe something in business,” I would retort back. My demeanor was a sloppy, last cry of hope, just like the over-zealous rattlesnake.

Like the Rattlesnake Ninja, I stopped rattling so much when someone asked me about school. I would tell them exactly what I wanted to do and how my degree could help me do that. “English majors learn how to think critically and creatively, something that business majors aren’t so focused on all the time. I’m aiming to work for a startup, where I might be able to apply the problem-solving skills I learned in my creative writing classes.”

It’s not always that clean-cut or clear, but my confidence is there, and, most importantly I’m not rattling anymore. I’m just telling the truth. I know what I’m doing and this is what it is. There are no defense mechanisms or buttressed walls or a castle moat. Just what I’ve worked through in my head about what I want to do with my life.

So, I guess the lesson isn’t really that you shouln’t be completely quiet all the time, nor should you ‘rattle’ off a bunch of murmurs and “errrs” and incomplete thoughts. Learn from the Rattlesnake Ninja–if a rancher walks 5 feet away, it won’t rattle, but when stomped on, the Rattlesnake Ninja rattles, and does so eloquently. And that’s the point! You need to pick your battles and use your rattles sparingly, but when you do, make them count.

Now, I pass it to you: What do you think as an entrepreneur, a reader, a college student, an employee? Are you a rattlesnake ninja already? Do you even care about rattlesnakes? These are heart-pulsing questions that need to be addressed!

As always, thanks for reading. If you made it this far, you really are a loyal reader

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* Rattlesnake facts from Biological Anthropology class and this article

* Post image from Charles & Clint

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Liking is the laziest form of communication known to the digital age, besides one word texts that just say ‘lol.’

Stop liking everything on your Facebook news feed and start engaging. You know, there are some things that technology does to make  things more convenient for the human race. Like ergonomic office chairs (good for the human race). Liking is not convenient, it’s just plain lazy and stunts creativity (not good for the human race). Sure, sometimes it’s great to like something that you ACTUALLY like and have nothing of substance to add (a nice profile picture, perhaps). But excessive ‘liking’ is the very epitome of our generation’s lack of ability to think. Think critically for yourselves people.

And, yes. I’m a culprit too (There’s a like button at the top of this page). Thanks for pressing it btw. But, come on people!

Procrastinate on your English composition midterm paper, procrastinate on your dry cleaning, procrastinate on flossing your teeth. But, please. Do not procrastinate on Facebook. Because eventually our brains will just be a mush of grey looking globular applesauce that has the elasticity and IQ of silly putty.

Just think about it. If everyone on Facebook just ‘liked’ things all the time, and put no input in the form of comments, Facebook would be useless! No interaction with your friends except for a dumb like. You don’t wanna write an amazing status that deserves noteworthy praise from your friends, (which they would be giving you, if you were side by side in the real world) and instead get a moronic thumbs up that tells you absolutely nothing.

When you’re talking to your friends and you raise a controversial topic about politics, does one of your friends give you a thumbs up? No, he/she agrees with you and expands upon the idea. Or, he/she absolutely hates your idea and thinks you’re a moron, but it’s better than getting absolutely nothing.

Let’s stop liking and start engaging. OK, you can like too, but why not throw in your two cents every now and then. Let’s save social networks while we still can and prevent our brains from their grey, applesauce-like, doomed future.

And don’t get me started on poking…

What do you think about liking?

(PS. I’d love if you could like this post)

=)

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* Post Image by zimo

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Okay, so let’s get to the heart of the matter. How do people like Will Smith, Tim Ferriss, Richard Branson, Ev Bogue, and J.K. Rowling get so successful?

Some of the most celebrated people in the world today, got to where they are now by being one step ahead of everyone else.

It’s that simple. Or is it?

Well, the answer lies within you. It is completely up to you to decide whether you want to be ahead of the game or not. You have to be aware that doing something just a little bit better than everyone else puts you in a totally different position of advantage than everyone else, but you have to be willing to leverage that knowledge, a concept articulated by Bill Bly.

Doing something (writing, plumbing, managing, marketing) just a little bit better than someone else and being aware of that fact is the key to move from being recognized as an amateur to widely gained recognition.

Once you’ve recognized that you do something just a little bit better than everyone else, what do you do now?

The answer is pretty simple, but the work will be hard. You have to be one step ahead of everyone else. You have to step out of your comfort zone and promise a job that you’ve never promised before.

If you’re an HTML coder and you’ve never coded PHP before then take an amazing opportunity that comes up anyway. That’s how you’ll be one step ahead of your peers.

Step up and legitimize yourself. It won’t come easy–anyone can promise a job, but not everyone can deliver. If you don’t know PHP, you learn PHP. Because, you never know when the opportunity to work as a web developer for Zappos or Pandora or BranchOut will ever come again.

So, learn to recognize your skill set, grasp versatile opportunities as they become available, and deliver on your promises. That’s how you’ll leverage your abilities and legitimize yourself.

In a way, you’ll be faking it until you make it, which is what Ev Bogue attributes to bettering yourself and moving forward in life. Move, grow, and promise more. But if you do, know that you’ll have to deliver on those promises.

Now, I pass it to you. What do you think?

Post Image seier+seier

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Making declarations at the beginning of the New Year has become too much of an empty tradition, causing the meaning to be reduced a bit. So, lets stir things up!

Okay, first, let’s start with declarations.

Declaring New Year’s Resolutions is counter-productive. Once you tell everyone that you’re resolving to do something, you’ve already given yourself the satisfaction of doing that certain thing. Meaning, you have less of a chance of following through on your goals.

I think one of the better ways to make sure you actually follow through on your resolutions, is to set aside some time and really think about what you want to work on for the new year. Afterall, resolutions for the new year are a healthy thing if you’re able to act upon them and improve yourself in productive ways. Personally, I write them down somewhere visible (like in a small moleskin notebook that I use almost everyday).

I’ve heard some people say that sharing your goals with others helps you execute them more thoroughly because you then feel a certain pressure to meet their expectations and earn their respect of holding up to your word. I think that’s true for some people. But, for me, and I know me pretty well, if I tell my friends what I’m specifically aiming to do for the new year, there’s a chance that I may not do it because I’ve already elicited certain reactions from them. As humans, we’re looking for acceptance from our peers, and if they give you that acceptance before you even get to work, then it seems like you’ve already won, allowing for laziness to enter the picture.

If you want to eat a sandwich, you don’t resolve to go eat one. You just do it. So cut out the intermediary step of resolving to do something. Just get to the core of what you want to do and, well… do it.

You have nothing to gain by resolving to do something. If you truly know yourself, you’ll know what you need to work on to improve your lifestyle, your relationships, your work life, your output, your writing, your business. Whatever it is. Now, of course you may need some time by yourself to clear your head and get away from all the chaos of the world to really get to the heart of the matter. But, once you’ve got that time and you’ve figured out what you want to change for the better. Don’t wait any longer! Just get to it and   start making a better you.

What do you think?

* Post image - smithwithclass

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Sometimes you fall in love with something and oftentimes for no real reason than the feeling you get in your gut.

You know what I’m talking about?

When you read a book and it becomes your best friend because you it just makes you feel good. It gives you warmth and makes you smile. When you go to a favorite restaurant and eat your favorite dish there. It just makes you feel at home and comforts you.

I felt the same thing today, not for a book or favorite place to eat, but for a new york city store located in SoHo. It’s called Treasure & Bond and it’s one of the quirkiest stores I’ve been to in along time. It reminded me of Urban Outfitters, but less grungy and more clean cut. It was sophisticated, but not in your face pompous.

Well, in any case, you should definitely check it out. I love it’s feel and flow, which gives the design a dose of simplicity and creates a retail space that just makes me feel like kickin’ back and relaxing on one of there thickly woven wool sofa pouches. Yeah, it’s that cool. They got sofa pouches. I’m not even sure that’s a real term, but it’s definitely real because my bottom experienced it pretty well.

And get this, they just opened up a coffee center with a barista and all. I know what you’re thinking: coffee… in a store?

Well, exactly! Treasure & Bond isn’t a normal retail store. It’s more like a community gathering place that offers a hodge podge of both high-end and affordably cheap and functional quirks.

To top it all off–and you won’t believe this–all of their profits go to NYC charities. They’re funneling all of their net revenue into the community. That’s why I had to shout it out in a blog post. What a cool business idea. They’re meshing store with community and pop culture with functionality. I love it.

It’s pretty crazy how we love things like books, food, and stores because of the internal feeling they give us. Many times it’s not the places themselves that do this, but the ideas behind them. In my case at least, I left the store feeling better about myself because I bought something that was eco-friendly, functional, and was being recycled back into the New York City community.

Definitely check it out if you get a chance and if you’re ever in NYC give them a visit and check out Treasure & Bond for yourself.

* Post Images from solifestyle and treasure & bond

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What does ‘no regrets’ mean?

In passing conversation, people always say “I have no regrets,” and then they usually follow it up with “but if I could go back, I would do it differently.”

That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. If you wish you could go back in the past and do something differently, then you’re expressing a regret.

It’s almost become popular to say that you have no regrets.

And yeah, I say it all the time too–”I love going to school in Florida, but I wonder what it would have been like to go to school in New York city? Either way, no regrets.”

It’s really not a big deal, but what happens is that you start convincing yourself that you have no regrets all the time and eventually you may start thinking all your choices are correct. Cant walk on water, people.

Because that is essentially what you are saying. If you have no regrets, all you’re decisions are perfect, or you don’t care when they go wrong. You’re at risk of becoming indifferent.

It just cant be. Not everything you decide will work out in your favor all the time, 100 % of the time. And it’s important to realize that. One way to start is by embracing your regrets, rather than dusting them off to the side by saying you have none.

By embracing your regrets you’re taking some very important steps. For one, it’s easier to learn from your mistakes because now you’re recognizing decisions that may have gone wrong.

Now, you’ll be able to pinpoint similar bad decisions that could very well come up in the future, and try and work them out to your advantage.

Don’t brush off bad decisions, absorb the lessons that you can gain from your regrets and put them to work to make your life more productive for yourself.

Also, check out this TED video, Don’t Regret Regret, by Kathryn Schulz on embracing your regrets to improve your relationship with your decisions.

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* Post Image by *~Dawn~*

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Let’s face it, we all have our moments where we feel the world closing in on us. Life is a stock chart full of peaks and valleys. Hopefully, your stock is continuously moving in an upwards trend. But, when you hit those valleys, you must be willing to get up and make moves. Don’t stay stagnant, do something. Take action. Use whatever inspires you to rise above your temporary roadblock.

You should embrace roadblocks as they come. If you take a drive downtown and get to your destination without any trouble, you take the drive for granted. If you take that same drive downtown next week, get a flat tire along the way, fix it and move on, your appreciation for reaching your destination will be much higher. Roadblocks alone don’t offer gratification. Embracing and rising above them does.

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Post Image Bohari Adventures

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