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10 Ways To Make A Difference (Lessons From Cambodia & Thailand)

10 Ways To Make A Difference (Lessons From Cambodia & Thailand)

Garth Beyer

Cambodia

1) Smile at people until they smile back. Not much is more universal than a smile. And nothing so simple can change the day for someone.

2) Provide the most selfless service you can when you can. It’s one of the beauties about Cambodia. Unlike here where we have to work to be selfless, there it comes natural. Surely it’s something we can work toward and achieve.

3) Observe the little ways you can make the life of another easier. Sometimes carrying the luggage of someone else is all you need to do. It’s difficult to change someone’s life in a huge way. It’s quite easy to make a lot of people’s lives a bit easier. Let’s face it, we can all use a break with this or that.

4) Always suggest the scenic route. You won’t ever regret it. I mean that. They say let the fear of not doing something scare you more than it not going as planned.

5) Put yourself in a location where others are making a difference. It’s sometimes difficult to make a difference on your own, but if you go where the movers and shakers are, there’s no doubt you’ll make the impact you’ve dreamed of.

6) When in doubt, play. (Particularly with children) There’s not much explaining to this one. You’ll experience and learn why this is a way you can make a difference once you do it.

7) Give thanks to three things a day. If you’re thankful for something that involves someone else, let them know directly. Gratitude is the dictator of attitude.

8) Travel. Period. When you go out into the world, doors to making a difference open every minute.

9) Teach someone how to do something or fail at something new together. The deepest impact you can make with someone or yourself involves learning.

10) Keep an open mind while observing ways to give and receive love. Corny, yes, but ultimately underrated. Also, emphasis on the “receive” end of it. Those who only give and never receive deprive others the satisfaction of sharing an experience, of making a difference.

 

Stay Positive & Impact Others To Improve The World (And Your Own)

Wait, That Was Leisure Time?

Garth Beyer

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Recently I’ve written a lot about materialism and how uninformed we are of our own real desires and intentions.

We the people do not want more things. What we want is to feel. We don’t buy energy drinks because they are full of sugar, taste good, or because other people buy them. We buy energy drinks because they make us feel energized. They make us feel productive. You and I both know how great of a feeling that is.

This is positive emotionalism at its finest.

And positive emotionalism (seeking out and leveraging what makes us feel good) is expensive. Our desires are manipulated by marketing, but what’s more important is that we do seek out items that make us feel one way or another, regardless of being marketed to. In more simple terms, if we were never marketed to, we would still find energy drinks that make us feel productive because the feeling is what we really want.

How does this affect you and me?

Research has shown that we don’t necessarily work more each week. If anything, we work less and have more leisure time. On the other hand, I would argue that during the hours we do work, that we work harder. Furthermore, the hours that we don’t clock in, we find ourselves still working. For what?

We’ve exchanged leisure time with our pursuit of how we want to feel. The defining principle here is that our pursuit has lead us to consume rather than enjoy, to buy instead of play, and to fall into instantly crippling debt when we could be doing something remarkable with our leisure time.

Marketers don’t control us. Materialism doesn’t control us.

But our ignorance of “how” we can feel the way we want to feel – that’ll be the death of us. After all, it already is the cause of our “non-existent” leisure time.

We have to search for less consuming ways to feel the way we want to feel if we ever want our leisure time back. Problem is, true leisure is the most likely place we’ll find it.

 

Stay Positive & Oh, The Irony. Sensitivity Has Left Us Senseless.

Garth E. Beyer

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Maintenance Is Nothing New

Garth Beyer

It disturbs me to hear someone say that something (or someone!) is high maintenance. It’s the same as saying that it’s only a short matter of time until they drop whatever it is, (or who!).

Humans are naturally inclined to create, to stack blocks on top of each other – you don’t have to show a kid how to play, they just do.

But you do have to show a kid how to put those blocks away, to take care of them, to clean and nurture them.

Anything we create is not too different from the blocks to the kids, yet we decide that if the blocks are too high maintenance, we would rather not have them to begin with.

This prevents creation, prevents you from building, prevents art.

Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”

To hell with too much maintenance – that’s the most exciting art. That’s the most thrilling challenge, the greatest emotional-sociological-psychological roller coaster ride. Those moments of high maintenance are the ones you will look back on and not need anyone to thank you for the work you did… you will thank yourself.

And that is a feeling that just can’t be beat.

 

Stay Positive & Perpetuate Your Art

Garth E. Beyer