Keep looking forward, not at your competition

Brands often face their competitors making advances or catching up to ones you've made.  The longer you spend analyzing what they are doing the less time you have to develop what makes your brand special.  You become homogeneous.  You become replaceable and not memorable.  As nice as it is to be new and improved with 8 million features, at some point we stop caring. 

The same could be said for people, as depressing as that is.  When you look around and see successful people and decide you want to be just like them, you've already lost.  Develop yourself instead of watching others move past.  Surround yourself with people who inspire you and bring out the best in yourself, no ones you want to ape.

Express Thoughts and Ideas Openly

The heat has been unbearable in Chicago the past week. With high heat and humidity, tempers have been short.

Sometimes you need to express your feelings or thoughts honestly. Good or bad. Once they are expressed you can move forward. Find a friend or get a notebook. Just find a way to express yourself.

That's why when brainstorming you include all the ideas just to get them out of your head. It helps.

Get Outside

I've spent almost the entire day out exploring and running errands. It feels great to just leave the house sometimes. With zero air conditioning moving feels unbearable but just leaving makes a difference.

Take a walk, go for a run or do the things you've been avoiding. You'll feel better.

Mediocrity Isn't the Answer

I was reading about brand loyalty today.  It's so hard to find now.  Years before it was easy to have one choice, now in the day and age of having every choice, no one product keeps our attention long.  We feel entitled to have the best.  Every brand tries to offer everything the others do and they become more homogeneous.  The differences stop mattering.  They aren't significant.  

Sadly I feel the same way about people and educations.  We fight to be well rounded and good at everything.  How does that help us?  Employers seem to look for what makes us unique.  That is just as important, if not more.  You don't have to be right for every customer or every employer.  You'll attract better ones if you stand for what you believe in and are unique.  It's a risk, but why fight to be average?

Goal Setting

With significantly more time on my hands than I would like, I have to focus.  I start graduate school in a month, which is exciting and alarming.  I have so much to accomplish before then and get myself ready to dive in completely.

It has been proven that a majority of people do not set goals and those who do seldom review them.  The people who do regularly set goals and review them tend to be the most successful.  I think Teux Deux helps me keep track of my goals most.  I have huge goals and dreams and most of the time I don't have to means to accomplish them easily. 

What I have to do is make sure that I am always moving in the right direction.  This reminds me of Neil Gaiman's commencement talk where he talks about the mountain.

"Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be (...) was a mountain. A distant mountain. My goal.

And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain." -Neil Gaiman

As I go into the next stage of my life of adulthood and graduate school with all the joys and terrors it brings I cannot waste time.  Life and opportunities are precious.  I will set goals and review them as often as I can so that I may do it all!

Taking the harder path

More often than not we forgive others far sooner than we can or will forgive ourselves. For ourselves we give excuses or try and forget our past. It's almost easier.

Something so therapeutic like forgiveness is kept at great length from ourselves. To forgive means we are in some manner responsible for our actions and mistakes. That sounds like common sense when written but in our actions we ignore it.

I truly hope people, including myself, chose forgiveness. It is a necessity for our mistakes and the mistakes we must endure of others.

What are you going to do with your degree/life?

Having a degree often prompts the question, "what do you want to do with that?" I have an answer, but it usually gets a laugh.

Change the world.

Is that so preposterous? Do they think me naive? Isn't that the purpose of being here? I've never been convinced that the problems we face are problems for future generations.

Dreams aren't suppose to be easy. That doesn't make them a joke.