comfort zone challenge 10, asking people obnoxious stuff

comfort zone challenge 10, asking people obnoxious stuff

14:24:00 - By Vincent 0

20 Small Ways to Break Out of Your Comfort Zone and Create a Positive Change Starting Today

by HENRIK EDBERG

“Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.”
Brian Tracy

I’m a big fan of doing the unusual thing. Sometimes in big ways. Often in small and daily ways to mix things up.

Why?

Because this habit is a simple and relatively easy way to:

• Expand your comfort zone. And if you change your perspective on yourself from someone who sticks to the old and comfortable all the time to someone who likes to mix things up then it will feel more natural and easier to break out of your comfort zone when comes to bigger things too. Because this habit makes the inner resistance and the fear that may hold you back smaller.
• Add a spark to your day and come alive. It keeps you from getting stuck in the same old daily or weekly rut. And it adds more fun to your life.
• Refuel your curiousness about the world and life. When you do the unusual thing regularly you to discover a ton of new and exciting things. And that will refuel your curiousness about what else is out there that you haven’t discovered just yet.

So how do you do the unusual thing and break out of your comfort zone in small and sometimes bigger ways?

Here’s 20 ideas that have helped me and still help me to do just that.

1. Eat the unusual thing. Instead of choosing the meat-based dish at lunch try the vegetarian alternative. Or try the fish if you usually go for the beef.
2. Smile towards everyone. Instead of just going along with your day in your normal social way try smiling more. Smile more towards your co-workers, the lady at the checkout at the supermarket, the people closest to you and smile to yourself when you encounter a mirror. See what happens.
3. Cook something new. Each week we try cooking a new recipe. It is most often a tasty experiment and helps us to find, sometimes unexpected, new favorites. It has also certainly made me a better cook in the last few years.
4. Mix up your music. I mix things up by trying new music every month. I have a look at the best music on sites like Pitchfork.com and Metacritic.com. Then I load a few of those albums on Spotify and listen.
5. Work in complete silence and stillness. Shut the door to your office, shut off your music, unplug the internet and just focus on doing the most important thing you can do today while enjoying the silence.
6. Read something that your friends wouldn’t guess that you are reading. Right now I’m reading a Swedish book about investing sensibly in stocks. Definitely not my usual cup of tea. But it’s really interesting.
7. Do all your shopping for the week. Instead of doing grocery shopping when you feel like it or need to, sit down and plan what you will eat and need for a whole week. Go and get all of that at the store. Now you don’t have to go back there for a week and you’ll probably have a bunch of extra free time and less stress to enjoy this week.
8. Have a day of kindness. Instead of having the usual bursts of irony, sarcasm etc. during your day try to go for a day where you are just being kind and friendly to everyone including yourself.
9. Enjoy it all. All fluctuations during your normal day is a part of life and as life it’s a gift in some way or another. So on some days I just tell myself: “enjoy it all”. Then I try to enjoy my day no matter if the inbox is overfull, if I’m hungry and starting to get cranky. The things I usually don’t like so much I tell myself to enjoy as a part of life. And so my day actually becomes more enjoyable because much of how we see life is about how we choose to think about it.
10. Watch something odd. If you usually watch thrillers then try a romantic comedy. If you most often get stuck with documentaries try an animated movie form Japan (I recommend anything by Hayao Miyazaki). If you love Family Guy, try the Wire. Expand what you watch to get new ideas and impressions.
    
11. Listen to the sound of the world. Leave your portable music player/radio at home. Just listen to sounds of the city, nature and people as you move about during your day.
12. Take a day to be offline. I tend to spend a day a week offline (usually Saturday or Sunday). It’s a wonderful change of pace and feels like I’m on a small, healthy and extra relaxing vacation. Plus, it makes it more fun to get back to work on Monday.
13. Take a news black out. Instead of reading the paper or watching the news as usual try to go without that for a day. See how it affects you and how much you miss the news.
14. Hide a note for a loved one. Hide a sweet note of affection for a partner, family member or a friend in his or her cookie jar, tea or coffee container, book on the nightstand, hat, shoes or somewhere else where they look each day. Make him or her happy in an unexpected and unusual way.
15. Take a different route. To work or to school. To your gym or home. See something new even when you are in transport mode.
16. Walk or take the bicycle to work. Instead of taking the car or riding the bus as usual. Get some exercise and fresh air before it is time to start working and on your way home.
17. Let it go just for today. If you often get into arguments or have trouble letting issues go and replay them over and over in your mind then just for today let it all go. Tomorrow you can take up your old habits just where you left them . But for today, instead of getting into an argument just let it go and walk away. If you replay something in your mind, let it go for today. If an old memory pops up today too, let it go instead of dwelling.
18. Go out. If you usually stay in during the weekdays, then call up a few friends and head down to the pub for a few hours even if it’s just a Wednesday. Or call up someone you haven’t met in ages and go for a cup of tea or coffee. Or pop down to the movie theater and catch a movie. If you usually do those things though, consider just staying in with PJs on and taking it easy.
19. Sit in a new place. If you have favorite chair or part of the sofa where you always sit then try another chair or place to sit today. It can give you a new perspective at work or at home. And I have found that it can even give me some new and fresh thoughts and perspectives on life.
20. Throw out the things you haven’t used in 1 year. Go through one part of your home – a closet, a drawer in your desk or bedroom cabinet – and see what’s in there. Go through the items one by one and ask yourself: have I used this item in the past year? If not, give the item(s) away to charity or a friend or simply throw it out.

16:44:00 - By Vincent 0

Comfort zone challenge 9. Selfies with 3 random people

Comfort zone challenge 9. Selfies with 3 random people

14:20:00 - By Vincent 0

Giving Kick-Ass Presentations In The Age Of Social Media

By DREW NEISSER

Seven (somewhat snarky) new rules for public speaking in the social media era.

It was painful to watch. Jon Bond, the former ad giant turned social media honcho, was actually getting heckled at the Pivot Conference. When faced with what was a feisty crowd to begin with, Bond admitting that he "didn’t like Twitter" was like throwing fresh meat at rabid dogs. But rather than raise their voices, they let their fingers do the shouting. So while Bond continued to speak, a steady stream of snarky tweets projected on the wall behind him, acting like foghorns and essentially drowning him out.

Being a great speaker was never easy, but now, with your audience likely to have a mobile device in hand and real-time access to multiple social channels, the challenges have gotten that much greater. To get a sense of the impact of social media on conference presentations, I interviewed a bunch of regulars on the social media circuit. In the process, they helped me identify these seven (somewhat snarky) new rules for public speaking in the social media era.

1. Don’t Panic if They Aren’t Looking at You

Sure, it's disconcerting when you gaze out at the audience and no one looks back. But whatever you do—don’t panic. Just because they are transfixed by their mobile devices, doesn’t mean they aren’t all ears. "I think the body language tells you if they’re paying attention—it’s far more distracting to see people whispering to each other than it is to see someone tapping on an iPad" said Jenny Dervin, VP of Corporate Communications at JetBlue, who received raves at a recent BDI event. 

2. Stifle the Temptation to Ask for a Device Moratorium

As tempting as it might be to ask your audience to shut down their devices, every speaker I talked to thought this would be a huge mistake. "I might get their undivided attention, but it would be mixed with their ire at being told how to watch my presentation," said former actor and speaker extraordinaire John C. Havens, who reminded me that in the old days, before digital devices, a lot of people would take notes on a pad of paper, which isn’t all that different than tapping out a tweet.

3. If You Aren’t Nervous, You Should Be Now

When I first learned public speaking, an experience advisor suggested that you "imagine the audience is naked," to quell the initial butterflies. Today, speakers are probably better off reminding themselves that they are the naked ones. If your facts are wrong, your audiences will Google then tweet the corrected data before you can say, "I’m just sayin’." And if that isn’t scary enough, as author and speaker Jeff Jarvis proclaimed last year at TED-NY, "the lecture, as a form, is bullshit," so you better ask yourself what you’re doing up there, anyway!

4. If You Don’t Speak Twitterese, It’s Time to Learn It

Let’s just imagine for the moment that your audience is absolutely riveted by your every word. Chances are some, if not many of them, will want to share your wisdom with their network, not tomorrow when they get back to the office, but right at that very moment. It is for this reason today’s effective speakers are not just sharing their Twitter handles upfront but also mixing in tweetable quotes. "Puns, sound bites and pithy phrases are [also] ways to aid in retention," Havens said. 

5. Congratulations! You May Be Speaking to Millions You Can’t SeeThe irony of speaking in the social media era is that audience in front of you may be far less significant than the collective reach of that particular group. "I’d much rather have the broader reach; it is one of the better measurements of speaking at events," said Frank Eliason, SVP of Social Media for Citibank. Havens adds that if his audience is glued to their devices, "odds are half of them are tweeting about my presentation and they’re helping market me!"

6. The Reviews Are In—In Real Time

Rather than waiting to ask a friend after the fact how you did, today’s skilled presenters welcome this feedback in real time. "It’s fun to respond to a tweet when I am on stage, and it personalizes the interaction with the audience," said Eliason. JetBlue’s Dervin finds these tweets helpful as well. "I go back in the stream to see what landed, based on how many people tweeted the same quoted," he said. "It’s an instant evaluation of my key messages."

7. When All Else Fails, Surprise the Audience with HonestyBringing this article back full circle, Jon Bond perplexed the Pivot crowd with his admission of not liking Twitter. While this honesty may have cost him some street cred with a Twitter-loving crowd, I recently saw another speaker use honesty to extraordinary advantage. Ray Kerins, VP of Corporate Communications at Pfizer, transfixed a BDI crowd with tales of a crisis that had befallen ChapStick on Facebook the day before. By admitting that Pfizer’s social media activities were a "work in progress," Kerins earned credibility that reverberated through the Twitterverse.

Final Note

All of the people we spoke to for this piece are very effective speakers, and though each has their own distinctive style, there are a few other commonalities I’d like to point out. First, none of them depend on word-laden PowerPoint presentations. Second, most are good storytellers and use humor, often self-deprecating, to connect with their audiences. Finally, each of them manages to keep their presentations short enough to allow time for a healthy Q&A. Speaking of Q&A’s, you can find my complete interviews with Dervin, Havens, Eliason, and Jarvis onTheDrewBlog.com.

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16:30:00 - By Vincent 0

Comfort zone challenge 8, compliment people

Comfort zone challenge 8, compliment people

14:18:00 - By Vincent 0

How To Stop Caring What People Think Of You

That's it! Lead your life, We all know it! But how do it???  Have you the answer? WHat do you think?

16:12:00 - By Vincent 0

Social media cited as largest source of procrastination

By Rachel Moford

Procrastination is by no means a new invention, but a new survey shows that social media takes time from studying and projects the most.

Research conducted by Stop Procrastinating, an app that disconnects users from the internet in attempts to boost productivity, finds social media  and other internet time-wasters, to be the leading culprits behind millennial procrastination trends. The survey, analyzing the study habits of 1500 US undergraduate students, consistently found students identifying relatively new technological luxuries as the cause of their procrastination.

Phu Lwin, a freshman undeclared student, identifies social media as a contributor to her procrastination.

“I am very distracted by social media…as an international student, it is important to stay connected,”  Lwin said.

Of those polled, 74 percent identified that the degree to which internet distractions fueled their procrastination was significant and worrying. Another 64 percent of those polled admitted to having lost their train of thought after responding to a social media alert while studying. This is compared to the 14 percent that identified television as the cause of their distractions

Lwin, however,seems to have mixed feelings about procrastination as a whole.

“I know that procrastination is bad – but I feel like it is a part of my learning style. I work better under pressure, my ideas are just better then, ”Lwin said.

The study also shows that 51 percent of students admit to losing at least an hour of productivity a day to social media and internet distraction. About 44 percent of those polled were worried about the overall quality of their work decreasing due to procrastination caused by the internet.

Freshman computer science major Michael Wang believed that findings were underreported and categorically a terrible habit.

“If I could change one thing about myself, it would be that,” Wang said. “At this point, I think telling someone to stop procrastinating is about the same as telling someone to stop being depressed. That’s just not how it works.”

However, Wang did not view the internet or social media as solely culpable for his procrastination habits.

“Social media is definitely the easiest, most convenient form of procrastination. But if it wasn’t that, it would be something else. I once taught myself how to do a handstand,” Wang said.

Yulexa Bradford, a freshman psychology major, disagreed with the study’s conclusions completely.

“I don’t see the internet as the directly the cause of procrastination. A lot of it is just wanting to enjoy oneself,” Bradford said.

Bradford identifies herself as a procrastinator, but does not see it as an overall detriment to her studies and instead inherent to many individuals’ work styles.

“If I need to do something, I’m going to do it – there’s no pull from procrastination stopping me,” Bradford said.

SOURCE

16:00:00 - By Vincent 0

comfort zone challenge 7, work out in public. Central London

comfort zone challenge 7, work out in public. Central London. Picadilly circus

14:16:00 - By Vincent 0

How to stop screwing yourself over | Mel Robbins | TEDxSF

What do you think of this? Almost 7 million views.......

13:07:00 - By Vincent 0

Social Media, FOMO and the Perfect Storm for the Quarter-Life Crisis

By Rebecca Strong

“Your twenties are the best time in your life. You have nothing to worry about yet.” — my delusional uncle, December 2010.

For some, it hits right after they’re handed a college diploma. Set free in the “real world,” they feel lost — overwhelmed by their options and flailing around trying to figure out what to do with their degrees (all while dealing with a pile of debt). For others, the panic sweeps in a slow burn and sets in later. They watch as one by one, their friends get engaged or achieve professional success, leaving them feeling unsure of the decisions they’ve made, the path they’ve taken and ultimately, perhaps a bit inadequate.

While the term may have only been coined in recent years, it’s become increasingly clear that the quarter-life crisis is a very real thing. The phenomenon, which can occur anytime between one’s early 20s and early 30s, is characterized by disappointments, insecurities, loneliness and depression. And a study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Development found that 39 percent of men and 49 percent of women reported feeling such a crisis in their twenties. Furthermore, according to a survey conducted by Gumtree.com, 86 percent of young people admitted feeling under pressure to succeed in their relationships, finances and jobs before hitting 30, 32 percent felt under pressure to marry and have children by the age of 30, and 21 percent wanted a complete career change.

At a British Psychological Society meeting, researchers broke down the quarter-life crisis into five key phases based on their studies of various individuals who’d experienced one:

• Phase 1: A feeling of being locked in by your life choices — whether a job, relationship, or both — as though you have been living your life on autopilot.
• Phase 2: A rising sense of “I’ve got to get out” and that change is possible.
• Phase 3: Quitting whatever is making you feel trapped and embarking on a “time out” period where you try out new experiences to figure out who you want to be.
• Phase 4: A period of rebuilding your life.
• Phase 5: Developing and cementing new commitments that better reflect your interests and aspirations.

Of course the trigger — and trajectory — for these crises is slightly different for every individual. But on the whole, it’s a remarkably similar experience, and in some ways, seems to have become a sort of rite of passage. In fact, I’m hard pressed to think of a single friend who I haven’t witnessed experience some form of this phenomenon already. Some of us are still treading through it, just trying to stay above water. Some have made it through unscathed to the other side.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how different the life of a 20-something is now than it was 30 or 40 years ago, for our parents. Sure, some of that has to do with the economy/job market, changing social pressures, shifting gender roles, etc. But a lot of it has to do with technology. More specifically, it has to do with social media.

Log onto Facebook in your 20s and you’re bound to see someone flashing their engagement ring. Check LinkedIn and you can’t escape noticing your old colleague just got promoted. Scroll through Instagram and you might come across your college roomie vacationing with his or her S.O. at some chic resort in St. Bart’s. Social media fuels our hunger for fantasy, and we can lose ourselves in it. But we’re only seeing a carefully crafted slice of someone’s life — which they’ve probably slapped a filter on — and it can make us feel like we’re falling short when the fact is, we’re not seeing the whole picture.

In short, many of us are suffering from permanent fear of missing out. “FOMO,” which was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013, refers to the feeling of “anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere.” And certainly, for someone on the brink of — or in the throes of — a quarter life crisis, being constantly confronted with others’ successes on social media will only fuel this.

So even though our parents may have been plagued by the fear that somewhere, someone is having a better time, thanks to social networks, we millennials have at our fingertips what we consider proof that someone has a better job, a better car, a better relationship, is making more money, etc. No surprise here: A 2014 study in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions found a correlation between higher social media usage and depression/anxiety. Furthermore, research by Psychology Today reveals that key themes in relation to the negative consequences of FOMO include self-identity problems, loneliness, negative self-image, feelings of personal inadequacy, disconnection and jealousy. Sound familiar? They’re almost identical to the symptoms of the quarter-life crisis.

Is giving up on social media the answer? Not for everyone. Staying connected to people going through the same crises can be crucial for remembering that you’re not alone in this, and better yet, that will you will get through it. The key seems to be a shift in mindset — realizing that this phase of life is not one-size-fits-all, that the so-called life milestones ingrained in our brains by societal norms are certainly not anything to measure our happiness against.

At the core of the quarter-life crisis is the burning feeling that you need to already have achieved certain things by a certain age. Newsflash: you define your own success and happiness. And more importantly, the success and happiness of others that you think you’re witnessing on social channels isn’t necessarily a reflection of their reality. You don’t know the incessant arguments those newlyweds are already having — and they certainly wouldn’t tweet about them. You don’t know that your former fraternity brother who just posted on Facebook about his high-paying job is secretly miserable because he’s working 14-hour days. You don’t know what dreams the young, smiling mom with her Instagrams of the seemingly perfect family gave up on to have kids a little sooner than she was ready for. In other words, those people you think have it “all figured out”? They don’t know what the hell they’re doing either. It’s just that people choose only to highlight the most glamorous snippets of their lives on these sites.

So instead of wasting time comparing yourself to others, spend it figuring out what’s meaningful to you. What makes you tick. What kind of change you want to see in the world. And remember this: synonyms for the word “crisis” include a turning point, a crossroads. It may not feel like it, but this painful phase is the beginning of something great: taking your life back.

SOURCE

11:00:00 - By Vincent 0