Leadership=Inspiration

Leadership=Inspiration

...Quote Of The Day...On Change...

...Quote Of The Day...

Progress doesn't saunter into the world; it staggers. Grown-ups don't often change their minds about the important political and social questions of their time. Change arrives because their children are born into a whole new set of assumptions different from those of their parents. –Stephen Marche

Ever Wonder What It Would Be Like To Fly?

Ever Wonder What It Would Be Like To Fly?

The Key To Happiness

The Key To Happiness

I just came across a fascinating article named "Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy" and it had a fascinating premise coupled with an equally interesting Happiness Equation. Below is the Equation followed by the author's premise:

Happiness = Reality – Expectations

Premise: It's pretty straightforward. When the reality of someone's life is better than they had expected, they're happy. When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, they're unhappy.

I have always believed the more accurate equation is:

Happiness=Growth

Thus:

Growth=Happiness

Think about this for a second. What is the opposite of growth? Decay, or death. Anything that is not growing is decaying or dying, thus, Happiness=Growth, and conversely, Growth=Happiness. My goal every day of my life is to grow and learn as much as I can. If I can grow like Jack and the Beanstalk, everyday, I do.

That being said, the Happiness quotient can also arguably be said to be Happiness is expectation management. In other words, as the author of the article points out, happiness really is about managing expectation. There is also an ancient Confucius proverb that profoundly makes the point:

"The wealthiest man in the world is the one who is content with the least."—Confucius proverb

In our western world, this ancient ideal is perhaps difficult to achieve, but profoundly true. It is like saying, if you never expect anything, you will never be disappointed. But aren't expectations the cornerstone of success? In other words, as Sun Tzu said 2500 years ago, Every war is won before it is fault, or in modern English we would say, the key to success in life and business is always know where you are going to come out before you go in?

I think it was Warren Buffet who said, "Happiness is wanting what you have, not having what you want." or, "Happiness is not having what you want, it's wanting what you have."

Buddha said "Happiness does not depend on what you have or who you are. It solely relies on what you think."

Rene Scalfani profoundly said "Happiness it the key to life. It doesn't matter how much you have, what you spend, make, drive or wear. It all means nothing if you are not happy within yourself. Happiness is the the richest thing we will ever own."

P.S. I was just listening to a Bob Dylan song named "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), and there is a line in it where Bob sings, "He not busy being born, is busy dying." I originally heard this song for the first time when it was played at the end of a Sopranos episode. This is kind of the same premise that the opposite of growth is death or decay, which I mentioned earlier ;-)

A Serious Evolutionary Missing Link Discovered A Walking Shark

A Serious Evolutionary Missing Link Discovered A Walking Shark
Ever wonder how mammals walked out of the ocean, on to land? This offers an insight into how it happened.

The Importance Of Sleep

The Importance Of Sleep

Beauty Is Skin Deep

Beauty Is Skin Deep

Teaching Future Generations To Teach Themselves

The Future Of Learning  Teaching Future Generations To Teach Themselves

Hawaii =Zen

Hawaii =Zen

Why Do Assholes Love Watches?

Why Do Assholes Love Watches?

I stumbled into a article on Gawker entitled "Why Do Assholes Love Watches?"

The article is filled with fascinating anecdotes and insight. Since I am the Editor and Publisher of three major watch related blogs, I obviously disagree on many levels with the author, and on other levels, I understand his perspective. If you have some spare time to read, I very, very highly recommend reading the comments left by readers in the story. They are absolutely fascinating!!!

The reason I am writing this post is because of this fascinating response from somebody who uses the handle of Suburban Brawl:

It's pretty funny all the reactionary defenses of consumption habits on display here.

It's pretty simple: what people want in aggregate determines what they demand in aggregate. What they demand in aggregate determines what people produce in aggregate. What people produce in aggregate determines how labor time is spent, how natural resources are used, how land is apportioned, &etc. Accordingly, changing people's consumer preferences, in aggregate, affects what the world makes, what the world uses, and how people spend their time.

So if you think there is inequity in how time is spent, how resources are used, and in what is or isn't produced, then one obvious path to remedy this is to... change what people spend their money and exert their labor to get. Change preferences in aggregate, you change what gets produced in aggregate - like shifting resources from, say, watches, to charity or scientific research or leisure or whatever.

Lost Vegas The Gaming Center Of The Universe

Lost Vegas

The Gaming Center Of The Universe

I just got back from Las Vegas. My company attended the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) trade show, which is the biggest electronics trade show in the world.

It is amazing to me how rigged Las Vegas is for making money.

I remember, up until about 10 years ago, if you went to Las Vegas, everything was really cheap. This included hotel rooms, food, alcohol and taxi cabs. I believe the logic was that they wanted to do everything they could to make you comfortable so you would gamble and lose your money.

This is not the case anymore–at all. If there is a big convention in town, all the hotel rooms go up significantly in price, which is understandable. When I say go up in price, I mean they more than triple in price.

The most interesting thing is that you can still get a decent room for $40 a night, but they charge you an additional $18, for what is referred to as a "resort fee." This is bizarre to me because the hotel we stayed in said part of the resort fee was for complimentary internet access, but it is not complimentary if I have to pay $18 a day for it, not to mention, it was often slow as molasses, and the hotel did not even offer wireless internet access!?!?!? 

I mean c'mon it's 2013!!! Everybody has an iPad, iPhone and wireless laptop, but they are too cheap to install a wireless system? Why? They don't want you in your hotel room, on the internet when you can be drinking and gambling away your hard earned money.

We went to see Cirque du Soleil and it was over $150 per ticket for nose-bleed seating. I mean it would have looked more impressive watching it on a TV set.

Everything in Vegas is optimized to take your money. After my girlfriend and I saw Cirque du Soleil, we wandered through the casino and she said "Hey, do you want to play penny slot machines!?!, to which I said "No", since I don't gamble. She said c'mon, let's have some fun. She made me sit down next to her at "Sex In The City" themed slot computer, she handed me a dollar bill which I refused to insert in the machine. She put a five dollar bill in her machine, and in less than 30 seconds it was gone, and she grabbed the $1 bill she gave me and put it in my machine which was gone in a few seconds.

I was just stunned at how expensive everything was in Las Vegas!!! The hotel we stayed in charged $9 for a bottle of water that would normally be about $1. Even the Starbucks charged almost double for everything. Even all the taxi-cabs charge a $3 fee if you want to pay with a credit card!!! Scam, Scam, Scam.

The supreme irony is that if you study Las Vegas, you realize that there are obviously full-time employees who do nothing but figure out how to take advantage of guests.

American Accent Is A Singing British Accent

Jake's Though Of The Day

An American Accent Is A Singing British Accent

Personal Thought: Have you ever noticed that when British people sing, there British accent completely disappears, and gets replace with an American accent? Ironically, perhaps an American accent is nothing more than a singing British accent?

Just to be specific, if you listen to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones or even Eric Clapton when they sing, you can't hear any British accent, but when they speak in person you hear a thick and obviously British accent. Hmmmm!?!