to know that tomorrow is a day that has no mistakes yet.
You ready and willing to change that?
Stay Positive & Go Make A Rumpus
Garth E. Beyer
Life Lesson
“Keep Calm & Carry On?” So Passe
Keep calm?
Screw that. Calm is for the banal, for the overrated, for those who unfortunately associate calm with being safe and comfortable.
When I hear “Keep Calm,” I want to say, “Go try surfing. Go to a concert. Go rock climbing. Go ship your art. Go talk to that girl. Go try something for the first time. Go get criticized.” The list goes on. And this list is a remarkable one; it can’t be completed if you wish to keep calm.
(Nor is it any fun whatsoever if the water is calm, if the crowd is calm, if the audience thinks you don’t care, if the girl doesn’t sense your nervousness and think it’s cute, if you don’t take a risk, and if you don’t care. To get anywhere (and to have fun doing so), the further away from calm, the better.)
“Keep Calm & Carry On” The motto is a bit… bucolic on the first part.
Better yet, instead of “Keep Calm,” here are some alternatives,
- Get weird
- Be uncomfortable
- Be impeccable
- Stay positive
On the latter end, to “Carry on,” I couldn’t agree with more. In fact, I’ve given my own spin to elaborate on it.
Find the strength to carry on. Once completed, find the strength to carry more. Repeat.
Stay Positive & As You Are, Not As People Urge You To Be
Garth E. Beyer
Enlighten Others
How To Get A Second Meet Up
We meet a lot of important people: Idols, Influencers, Administrators, Deans, and so on…
Typically, after meeting them, we fly on the cloud quote of, “You won’t believe who I met!” And that’s it. Rarely does one continue to say, “and I am meeting them again for lunch in a couple of weeks!”
To get that second meet up with someone, all you have to do is ask a question – and no, it’s not “would you like to meet up again?” [insert “ain’t nobody got time for that” meme]
You want to ask a question that the other person won’t be able to answer right away. Not only that, it must be one that they will want to think deeply about and get back to you on.
It seems simple, but it’s devilishly difficult to 1. Put in the emotional labor in such short of time to understand what the person is truly passionate about and 2. To craft a question that they have never thought about related to their passion.
In achieving this task, you create an instantaneous bond. People who are of high influence are always more attracted to those who give them more challenges than they are attracted to their supporting fans.
Stay Positive & It Works Out Best When You’re Both
Garth E. Beyer
Questions are a big deal.
Enlighten Others
The Possibilities
People live, not in their concept of what is true, but of what is possible. Repeating: of what they think, see, and feel is possible.
This is what makes it damn difficult to encourage people and communicate to them their potential. Not only that, but it interferes with all forms of learning and communication. For example, one reason for the change in what is reported in the newspaper industry is the inability for people to associate so closely with facts.
We now base our knowledge sources by their relatability, their story, and their entertainment. Is this wrong? No, but we need to acknowledge the altercations it presents. We are growing up with a worldview of what is possible, not what is true or proven. We may now believe what is false, is still possible. A sure sign of this complexity is your current inability to follow it. For that reason, let me simplify it the best I can.
There is a saying that once you have eliminated all possibilities, all you have left is the truth. The thing is, we now have an infinite number of possibilities
It’s a lot to live up to and understand. But in order to build a connection with someone, you have to understand what they believe to be possible, not true.
In longsight, as Mark Twain famously stated, “Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.”
Stay Positive & Fiction? Possibilities? Truth? What’s The Difference, Really?
Garth E. Beyer
Enlighten Others
Baby Steps
When things get to be too much, break them down. It’s all about baby steps, right?
Wrong.
There’s a complete misunderstanding of what baby steps are. We can take big projects and break them down into small steps to make the overall task easier.
That’s just it though: to make it easier. Not easy, which is the majorities general concept of baby steps. Short tasks can motivate us more, but cutting tasks down to a small size to where it becomes easy, does not excite, passion or promise.
Stay Positive & Cut, But Don’t Crop
Garth E. Beyer
Enlighten Others
What May Be Interesting To You
is extremely likely to not be interesting to others. That’s the largest problem that aspiring marketers, writers, artists, speakers, and storytellers alike are faced with.
Yesterdays story about running with the UW Womens rowing crew may have only been interesting to me and I felt like it needed to be shared. That doesn’t mean that it was interesting to others (you).
I went out with friends last night and you would think everyone had attention deficit disorder because no one would finish listening to someone tell their story, no matter how excited they were to tell it.
When you are trying to reach people, connect with people, win people over, you have to discover a way that your story is interesting to them.
And that requires a lot of emotional labor. Well worth it though.
Stay Positive & Interested
Garth E. Beyer
Enlighten Others
How To Grow A Tribe (Not Numbers, Quality)
It’s 6 degrees out and I decided to go for a run. While out, running through town, I saw a cluster of black, red, and white colors moving up Bascom Hill. Heading that way myself, I came to find that it was UW Madison’s Women’s Rowing Crew.
When I go out running, I always hit Bascom Hill once. This time, I found myself trekking up it 3.5 times with the crew. After 3 times some of the crew were stopped while others were finishing up. As I was running past those standing, I shouted, “You guys [should have said ladies] are kicking my butt!”
After that, a few girls hollered and a stampede started. They all started running with me and with all the other girls who were finishing up. The pride these girls had, the encouragement they handed each other, and the determination each had to finish as a team was insurmountable.
That alone is a less than good tribe.
They didn’t stop there though. What makes a good tribe is being open to the influence of others, connecting with like-minded individuals (me) or tribes. Even more so, what makes a great tribe is placing yourselves where you can have a challenges from inside and outside the tribe.
Building a tribe isn’t about unity, about definitive togetherness, or about exclusion. The best way to grow a tribe from within, is to grow from out, from the surroundings, from all the people around you. You’ll never know what challenges you’ll get … or give.
Stay Positive & Inclusion Isn’t Vital, But Awareness Is
Garth E. Beyer