Inspiration

Using All Your Potential: Bullying And Psychological Cardio

Garth Beyer

There’s extreme power in balance, in meditation, in flow. I just don’t believe you can use all your potential that way. If you think of an idea and proceed to ruminate, perhaps you’ll reach a symbolic conclusion. Then what? What if you think of an idea and then run with it, try it out, make it happen? Psychological cardio.

Forget all adjectives used to describe ideas. An idea is an idea. The real meaning of it is defined by what you do with the idea, how far you run with it, what you shape it into. Don’t tell me what kind of idea it is. It doesn’t matter. Show me.

How do you run with an idea? That’s where bullying comes in. I’m not fond of the connotation bullying has taken on; it’s completely negative. There’s so much more we can learn from it. We are our own best bullies.

Track coaches are great bullies too. They push you to run further, they yell at you to run faster, they blow their whistle to get you to try the jump again, only this time, jump higher.

B2B bosses are great bullies too. They’ll tell you to go back and do something again until it’s right, they hold meetings with you just to tell you where you are failing and how to improve, they adapt negative reinforcement strategies into their training.

And as I said, we are our own best bullies. We have the chance everyday to steal our own lunch money, to trip ourselves up on a project, to hate on ourselves when we half-ass something. However, we can also yell at ourselves to get up off the ground, to blow a mental whistle signaling to try something again (practice, practice, practice), and to threaten ourselves with unemployment.

Every person I’ve spoken to who states they are self-employed, also tells me “my boss can be a real ass sometimes.”

Rightfully so! As a friend Tweeted at me yesterday, it’s not about seeing just the forest or just the trees, it’s not all in or nothing. She means that it’s a dance. We can institute positive reinforcement, but if we want to reach our fullest potential, there must also be negative reinforcement. To get the most out of our rumination, we also need to act on our thoughts. Think about it in terms of bullying.

What you hear about bullying is only the negative extremes of it. You never hear of bullying gone right even though it happens in our lives everyday and turns out some of the most talented artists.

You have a chance to redefine bullying, you have a chance to build up your psychological cardio, you have a chance to use all of your potential. You can read all the inspirational quotes you want, but follow them up with the crack of a bull whip.

 

Stay Positive & Yes, Bullying CAN Be A Good Thing

Don’t forget to help stop the bad bullying

You’re Not Thinking Of Everyone

Garth Beyer

It’s tough to lead. You’re busy prioritizing moments of your own life and planning each step of the business, constantly reevaluating, constantly making changes and updates.

It’s a lot to handle.

Stop a second. You’re forgetting someone?

Some of the worst counts of leadership failure that I have seen have come from leaders neglecting the priorities of their team. Not in the sense of what each team member needs to do for the business, but the moments of their own lives they are working on prioritizing.

If you came to lead your life and the business, you’ve really came to fail.

Great leaders help their team lead their own lives too. There’s a reason many refer to great leaders as sources of inspiration, encouragement and guidance.

 

Stay Positive & Are You Truly Leading

Sources Of Emulation, Inspiration, And Self-Dissatisfaction

Garth Beyer

In a world that defines the importance of everything by placing it in a list, one more list won’t hurt, right?

1. Seth Godin

2. Malcolm Gladwell (also find his writing in the New Yorker)

3. Paul Krugman

Breaking them down

Seth Godin: You may wonder why I have “self-dissatisfaction” in the title. Godin is the reason why. I work to emulate Godin on a daily basis, to write in a way that equally encourages people to challenge the status quo (by creating a ruckus) and inspires them to be creative about it. Godin writes in the way that says “you can do better, here is how you can be better – go and combine the two.”

Malcolm Gladwell: Ah, Gladwell. No person can say “you’re an idiot, start asking why things are the way they are so you quit buying into the status quo and being manipulated” like Gladwell. His way of writing answers the question of why with grace, common sense, and resolve. He inspires me to not only question everything, but actually seek out the answer – the full answer (and share it!).

Paul Krugman: He has attitude. Actually, a firefull combination of expertness and bias. I read his wonkish writing to understand how to state facts in a direct, “duh!” kind of way. While I don’t care to know all of the facts of economics he has to share, I adorn the way he shares them. Additionally, I admire everything that he writes that is non-wonkish, such as why he doesn’t use Twitter, or his reflections on family and life. He reminds me that although you can be one of the top-most professionals in your niche, that you’re human and people love reading the works of people who are human.

Bittersweet Productivity

Garth Beyer

I never plan to be productive. Night after night in the past I’ve said to myself that I will take care of the banal so that I can be productive in the late evening. I never was. Maybe I got a few words on paper, but not enough to consider it a productive night. And that is why I don’t plan to be productive.

I’ve realized that there is no surer way to invite the unexpected into your life than to plan progress. This alone sounds bitter.

But, what do you do when your entire day is filled with banality, when your routine is running your life, when there’s just no inspiration to be productive with?

Plan evenings, or mornings, or afternoons, to be productive, even when there is nothing to be productive with. You’ll be surprised at how quickly the world will throw something at you to stop production.

 

Stay Positive & Sweet, Sweet Productivity

Garth E. Beyer

 

The People We Run Into

Garth Beyer

I do my best to socialize with anyone around. From the results, I encourage the same to anyone wishing to get ahead in their field of interest.  2250191764_7f4cc4a6d5

You will be continuously amazed at how many great ideas people have. You will see how relatable a random person is to you. And, worth remembering, everyone wants (needs?) a bit of encouragement – you’ll be surprised how the people who know you least, encourage you the most.

Most importantly, though:

You never know when you can be there to help them.

You never know when they can be there to help you.

 

Stay Positive & Thankfully, People Are Everywhere

Garth E. Beyer

Photo credit

Morning Stream Of Awesome Better Than Coffee

Garth Beyer

6917350948_a6fa6e0855_z

Checking Facebook when you first wake up can be a good thing. I’ve read articles that suggest you shouldn’t check your phone right away (FB,email, texts,etc,.), that you should wake up on your own schedule, enjoy life a bit, and deal with all the work that your phone is blinking at you at a later time. But then, ignoring these suggestions, this morning I read the following on Facebook,

“All artists should be treated with respect I always see many people getting put down at doing what they love and lose confidence to making music,making art, dancing , and whatever you do, keep your head up and chase your dreams, because every person out there has the capability to do anything in life!”

This is as livening as a cup of coffee, if not more.

Those suggesting you don’t check your phone right away are half right. I am all for staying unplugged a couple of mornings a week to take a walk down to the lake or do a workout without any distractions, but what people fail to recognize is our need to evaluate what calls our attention in the morning.

There are negative consequences to checking our phone as soon as we wake up when we read a Facebook feed filled with complaints, an RSS feed of the days most negative news, our work email instead of our personal email.

Give yourself a morning stream of awesome on your phone and I don’t see a problem with checking it before we all get out of bed.

 

Stay Positive & Combine It With Coffee, You’ll Be Set To Go All Day

Garth E. Beyer

Photo credit

Storytelling In The Digital Revolution

Garth Beyer

Being a digital native, using the term new media does not feel accurate. While it may be new to other people, it is perfectly normal and expected to me. However, the world does not consist entirely of digital natives and the media must account for this. They do in the sense of utilizing and incorporating storytelling into all forms of media. Every TV program, radio station, YouTube video, and E-version of a magazine use storytelling to not only gain the attention of you and me, but to maintain that attention. Rushkoff, who spoke in Digital Nation explains how everyone is multitasking now. Rarely does a person focus on one specific thing intensely; they are all over the place! It is our inability to focus which requires the new media to use storytelling.

It seems that when media uses storytelling, it is the only time when a person is face-to-face with technology, which they can actually focus on one specific thing. You can find examples of this in every medium of media. On TV, you can watch the speeches given by Romney, Anne, Michelle, Obama and others. Most people who do watch those speeches are not doing ten other tasks at the same time. Why? Because each of the speakers go up and tell a story, they get your interest, they offer a plot, rising action, a climax and so on.

Why is this so effective? Because storytelling has been around since the beginning of man. Before scripture was invented, people communicated and entertained each other through storytelling. It is in our nature to be attracted to storytelling and the media knows this. However, not all media knows it and this is where we get the distractions; the ads, the pop-ups, the proclamations of people who interrupt our lives. “It may be decades until we know what living in a state of constant distraction will do to us,” says Rushkoff. He is right in the sense that we are living in a state of constant distraction, but since the media utilizes storytelling in all that they communicate effectively, as long as we continue to subject ourselves to that type of media and not the type which only acquires are attention for a few moments, we will be safe.

If the media and storytelling are so vitally important to our lives and society in general, we better be paying attention to the right kind of media. It is almost as if media’s storytelling ability makes us grow or destroy us. Since storytelling holds such persuasion over our daily lives, how do we know what storytelling is right and just? This is my biggest fear. The new media direction of storytelling is an absolutely great thing overall, so long as the storytelling persuades positive action. Going back to the example of our presidential candidates and ladies speaking on TV, their speeches were inspiring, positive, and radiating love for one another and our nation. However, we can look at the type of storytelling that is occurring in another country to find that the particular storytelling the media is producing creates negativity, arguments, and even wars. I suppose you can go so far as to say that our quality of life is dependent on the media’s quality of storytelling.