WOW: Multiply Excellence and Chutzpah

WOWOW: The Inspiration Edition [Links of the Week]

High speed links: Inspiration and creativity, assholes (ooooh sorry -- not really), pirates, and chutzpah, again.

Working In Close

And, sorry, all those romantic notions you have of absinthe spoons, manic episodes and Kerouac-like rambling on a long roll of butcher paper really aren't operative. Creative work is mostly showing up every day and enduring a million tiny failures as you feel your way to something a bit new.
Are You A Certified Asshole?

I'm sure that none of you need to take this test, but you might know someone who does.
The Pirate's Dilemma

The Pirate's Dilemma tells the story of how youth culture drives innovation and is changing the way the world works. It offers understanding and insight for a time when piracy is just another business model, the remix is our most powerful marketing tool and anyone with a computer is capable of reaching more people than a multi-national corporation.
The Danger of Free

Again: Nothing is for free.
The Yiddish Handbook: 40 Words You Should Know

Chutzpah -- Or khutspe. Nerve, extreme arrogance, brazen presumption. In English, chutzpah often connotes courage or confidence, but among Yiddish speakers, it is not a compliment.

Yiddish speakers, on the other hand, get the meaning immediately.

Until next week, stay safe, work hard and don't forget the balancing play hard

Labels: business, chutzpah, creativity, decisions, inspiration, lifehacks, lifestyle, linking, marketing, personal+branding, pirates, success

Common Sense: Friend or Foe?

by Alexander Becker

If there is one enemy to what we're trying to do here it is common sense.

Really? Attacking common sense? Isn't common sense an ideal to strive for, something you attain at some point in life? Isn't common sense even a sign of maturity?

Let's see what we've got --

Common sense is sound judgement not based on specialized knowledge; native good judgement. That which is believed to be knowledge held by people "in common".

Common sense is a good starting point, nothing more and nothing less either.

There really is nothing negative about common sense. It's just that there isn't anything special about it either. Common sense is the lowest common denominator. It is the average. And that's the issue.

On the other hand --

Common sense is judgement without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race. --Giambattista Vico

Judgement without reflection is a shortcut with judgement ultimately substituting experience. Short-circuiting common sense itself creates actual experiences.

WOW, that is so -- common sense... Ever hear that? No?

Extraordinary and common sense are mutually exclusive. The antonym is insanity, if you get my drift... Don't worry, not that kind of insanity.

So what are we going to do about it? Ignoring the enemy?

Ignoring common sense in the absense of something better? Half-knowledge and intellectual weakness is the result of ignoring common sense. Don't let common sense replace education, instead replace common sense with original experience.

Here is the problem --

Common sense is part of the home-made ideology of those who have been deprived of fundamental learning, of those who have been kept ignorant. This ideology is compounded from different sources: items that have survived from religion, items of empirical knowledge, items of protective skepticism, items culled for comfort from the superficial learning that is supplied. But the point is that common sense can never teach itself, can never advance beyond its own limits, for as soon as the lack of fundamental learning has been made good, all items become questionable and the whole function of common sense is destroyed. Common sense can only exist as a category insofar as it can be distinguished from the spirit of inquiry, from philosophy. --John Berger

You first have to master the rule -- master common sense -- in order to intelligently and successfully break it.

This obviously, does not imply to ignore common sense, quite the opposite is indicated and the way to go. Study common sense, master it and be aware of it, all the time, for it is changing and evolving the same way -- though not necessarily in the same direction -- you are evolving.

There is no substitute for common sense except for the lessons you draw from going against it. Common sense itself is a substitute for experience. Again, the key is to closely follow the common in common sense, only to do the exact opposite and replace common assumptions with real experiences.

Do not abandon common sense but instead become highly aware of it and approach it from the other side, fight it from the inside, if you want to.

Do not rebel unreflectedly and against everything. Look through the common and determine uncommon sense instead.

The trick is to not --

Resist and defy a generally accepted convention.

... but instead to turn the convention upside down, not for the sake of rebelling but for the sake of doing the uncommon in order to create original experiences.

Make use of common sense as a temporary placeholder to be filled with your own experience, it is neither friend, nor foe.

It is the individual against the common. You cannot really collaborate and fight together against common sense. Joining forces means, implies, and requires defining common ground, a mutual understanding, it means determining the lowest common denominator. See above.

Set yourself apart from common and bring out your individual best -- without anything common.

Labels: business, common+sense, decisions, experience, extraordinary, insanity, inspiration, judgement, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, motivation, personal+branding, personal+development, rebel, success

Developing Your Style

by Alexander Becker

What does style have to do with insanity?

Isn't style doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results? Of course, Einstein meant to define insanity, but doing the same thing over and over again, creating different results indeed leaves you and your biographers with some kind of a long line, a red thread, a bigger picture of you. Style.

Also, what's insanity without style anyway?

So what's the secret of style? Repetition. As long as you fear repeating yourself, you are experiencing one cycle. Maybe it is the first, the initial one. Embrace repetition once a cycle is over. Style, your style, is born when you revisit your cycles.

You wrote a hundred songs? Painted a hundred walls?

Do it again. And again. And again. Repetition changes. Your job is to sharpen your profile which enables others to eventually recognize style.

Bounce everything off of everything else. Galvanize the results. Revisit, reconsider and contextualize until you find a common theme, that red thread, the residue of your idea.

What's left over is your style.

Labels: albert+einstein, context, decisions, ideation, inspiration, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, personal+branding, style, success

Don't Ask Why: It's Overrated

by Alexander Becker

How doesn't help either, try whether instead.

Why instead of what. Why not. Perceiving instead of judging.

You asked before: Why? Because I can, maybe because I have to but it doesn't get any better than that.

As for the why, well, I prefer to not always ask. If ever, it is best answered with "why not" -- describing instead of interpreting, perceiving instead of analyzing, yet please note that, and that's the key, all of this is beyond analysis. We're not stopping short of thorough analysis here, instead, we're transcending the analytical interpretation to make our informed perception on top of that.

Why? Because I can. Isn't that enough?

You don't ask why and I don't ask how... maybe we change that to you don't ask how and I don't ask why. What do you think?

What about how? What's the problem with how anyway?

Conceptionally, how represents doubts. Either you want to achieve your goal or you don't. How is not relevant and will ultimately be solved. Much more pressing is whether you really want it. If the answer is yes, the how doesn't really matter just as the why is long done and is not going to help anymore.

Whether is about the difference it makes. Does it make a difference? To you? Maybe it makes one for me.

Please note that obviously, how does solve specific tangible, practical problems, however, more often than not, decisions are diluted when how is asked. Ignore the details when conceiving.

Don't get me wrong, details are important, it's just a matter of the right timing for the details and the big picture respectively.

Perceiving instead of judging is an elaborate concept and it surely helps effectivity, efficiency and productivity of all sorts. On the other hand, there will be a time where judging does have its legitimate place. Once you know exactly where you stand, you are more than capable, you are competent enough to judge.

When judging becomes knowing, when knowing is judging, then and only then will why matter again: Because I know.

Labels: business, decisions, inspiration, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, perception, personal+branding, success, yoga

How Context Creates Meaning

by Alexander Becker

The sky is blue.

What a surprise. Is it news? It depends. Great if you know and can see the sky and the blue. What if you never ever caught a glimpse of the sky, color notwithstanding? Then, it becomes news and the most interesting thing in the world.

A claim that is so obvious or self-evident as to be hardly worth mentioning, except as a reminder or as a rhetorical or literary device.

Being reminded of the self-evident, under appropriate conditions -- in the right context -- is often priceless. The most commonplace information becomes special when applied, or ignored, at its appropriate moment.

Some people are said to be always in the wrong place at the wrong time. Being wrong just once is enough.

What about actually being the right one, in the right place, at the right time? What's the point? Isn't it true that --

you're always the right one,
there's is always a right place,
and the time is always right?

It's perfectly true, but to get started, attempt to combine only two of the rights; meeting two conditions at once is hard enough. The right one in the right place, but at the wrong time -- one second too late is sufficient -- isn't any better than no one at all. Miss the right time by as short as one second and don't bother to show up at all. The right one at exactly the right time in the wrong place? You get the idea.

The trick is to meet the three conditions at once. This, you can't fake, by definition. On the other hand, to top it, you have to do it again. And again.

Either it fits together or it doesn't.

Within the right context, even the trivia and the truism become breaking news.

I'm not telling you anything new. I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know. But what I am telling you makes sense, now, at that exact time, in this exact place, for you, for the right one. And only for you.

Within your very context, it makes sense or it doesn't. But just in case it does indeed make sense, just imagine, wouldn't it make perfect sense? Wouldn't it create meaning?

The sky is blue.

Labels: communication, decisions, inspiration, lifehacks, lifestyle, marketing, personal+branding, repetition, success, truism

Two Ways of Owning a Law

by Alexander Becker

The surprising difference between accepting a law and breaking it.

There are laws for almost everything. And I am not talking about jurisdiction here. Not the social and societal restrictions and determinations of governmental authorities.

Yet -- can every rule be bent and every law be broken?

In science, there are a specific number of established scientific laws, or physical laws as they are sometimes called, that are considered absolute and inarguable facts of the physical world. Laws of science may, however, be disproved if new facts or evidence arise to contradict them. A "law" differs from those as hypotheses, theories, postulates, and principles, etc., in that a law is a general statement about nature that is considered proven beyond doubt.

The laws of nature?

The phrase Law of Nature has several meanings:

It can refer to a scientific generalization based upon empirical observation, i.e., a physical law.

It can refer any number of doctrines in moral, political and legal theory, also called natural law.

The second law of thermodynamics --

The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium.

The law of excluded middle --

The law of the excluded middle states that every proposition is either true or false.

Newton's first law: law of inertia --

An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force. An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force.

Finally, what about laws, named after people in general?

Social and societal restrictions can be bent and broken, laws of nature, laws that by definition do not provide exceptions or exemptions, are best accepted and not directly fought against. Not even resisted.

OK, enough common sense, this is the idea: Two ways to make history --

The one who discovers a law of nature gets his name tied to it;
The one who discovers that -- a physical law in particular -- can be bent or broken, gains immortality.

The former is a mere observer while the latter successfully resisted a law of nature. Obviously, the law in question becomes void and obsolete. Now, choose between the latter and the former's experience.

Change the rules and make them yours. Bend them until they break. Any rule that can be broken is worthless anyway. As a rule at least.

Labels: acceptance, business, chutzpah, common+sense, inspiration, law, resistance, wow-bits

How to Legally Apply The Rules of Con: Guy Ritchie's Revolver

by Alexander Becker

This post is part of The Subjective Reality Series.

You can only get smarter by playing a smarter opponent.

In 2005, Guy Ritchie made an extraordinary movie that's apparently not recognized for what it is. Here is the plot summary from IMDb --

Jake Green is a hotshot gambler, long on audacity and short on common sense. He's rarely allowed to play in any casino because he is a winner. Jake has taken in so much money over the years, he is the only client of his accountant and older brother Billy. One night, Jake, Billy and their other brother Joe are invited to sit in on a private game, where Jake is expected to lose to Dorothy Macha, a crime boss and local casino owner who can't play for squat, but always wins because people are too scared to beat him. Jake isn't afraid of Macha, and not only beats Dorothy in a quick game of chance, but takes every possible opportunity to insult the man. Jake and his brothers leave the game, and Macha puts out the order for a hit on Jake, who ends up working for and being protected by a pair of brothers, Avi and Zach, who are out to take Macha down.

Let's take a look beyond the plot and see what the characters say, who is who, and what is what. You obviously need to see the movie before reading the comments, in fact, they may appear to make even less sense than the film itself but once you've seen the film, everything will be fine. Really.

Spoiler warning

What is so fascinating about the rules of con -- besides the fact that they do apply to all of us? Without exception.

To be clear, this is not about teaching you the rules of confidence tricks in order to con other people. Quite the opposite; take a look at how you (in)advertently con yourself and make it work for you instead of having it work against you.

Prison

Jake Green after leaving prison --

One thing I've learned in the last seven years: in every game and con there's always an opponent, and there's always a victim. The trick is to know when you're the latter, so you can become the former.

The quotes that accompany the chapters of the movie --

The greatest enemy will hide in the last place you would ever look. --Julius Cesar; 75 BC

What about the mind itself, right behind fear?

The only way to get smarter is by playing a smarter opponent. --Fundamentals of Chess; 1885

Who's your ultimate opponent? You.

First rule of business, protect your investment. --Etiquette of the Banker; 1775

Protect your belief?

There is no avoiding war, it can only be postponed to the advantage of your enemy. --Niccolo Machiavelli; 1502

To save the ego?

Jake Green, upon deciding against taking the elevator, which he fears --

Why should a man do, what he doesn't like to do?

Dorothy Macha

Dorothy Macha, meeting Jake on the gambling table --

What's in it for me?

Dorothy Macha, trying to evoke fear in Jake.

You're a man who needs a master.

Liberation from Macha?

Jake Green, while winning the game of chance against Macha.

Purple, between blue and white on the color spectrum.

Jake's intuition

On his way out, Jake's got a hunch, he encounters his intuition which has gotten reinforced after Jake's winning the game of chance against Macha. Jake decides to act against intuition, he takes the stairs and breaks down and falls.

Another "hunch" prevents Jake Green from being assassinated by Macha's killers. He's on the right path now. Saved and rescued by -- intuition.

The killer himself -- Sorter -- is getting doubts. The hitman is conscience itself.

Zach and Avi. Loan Sharks. Chess. They force Jake to do everything he doesn't like to do, as the only way to cure his fatal disease under two non-negotiable conditions --

You have to give away all your money.
Do not argue and do answer any question asked.

The confidence trick

If there's a rule, you can bend it.
If there's a law, it can be broken.

Jake Green, after facing choice and fatal disease --

From now on, I am bending all the rules, because desperate men do desperate deeds.

... and not any earlier than that.

Jake's money is his pride -- it even smells proud, says Avi.

People come to Zach and Avi, the loan sharks, only as the last option, the last resort, when they have no choice anymore.

People only get sensible when it's (almost) too late.

The three Eddies

Three Eddies, flash, loud, proud, and stupid, where proud refers to Macha, who happens to stand between loud and stupid. In the next scene, Jake takes the proud spot between the Eddies. The three Eddies, flash, loud, and stupid are dead. Evolution.

Jake Green, citing one of the principles of the con --

I know nothing hurts more than humiliation and a little money loss.

... and slowly starts accepting his reality --

Don't try to make sense out of it, not now, because it doesn't make sense. I just know if you start a job then finish it.

Sam Gold

Macha and Sam Gold. Lilly Walker represents Gold. Eight pawns by her side, the rules of the game Gold/Walker sets the rules and the pawns. Ego. Everyone serves Gold. Gold is religion.

Jake keeps winning in games of chess against Avi. He learned the game and honed his skills in prison, between a chess master and a master con man, after all. The objective is now to --

... create the ultimate con and win the ultimate game.

Jake's already in the ultimate game.

Here are the rules --

You can only get smarter by playing a smarter opponent.
The more sophisticated the game, the more sophisticated the opponent.

Jake finally releases himself and stops resisting --

I pay for my own pain and a part of me dies every time I think about it.

A part of your ego dies -- and that's the whole point. Green learns that everyone has to pay what he owes.

Jake Green vs. Dorothy Macha and vs. Sam Gold. Jake Green vs. Lord John, Macha's competitor. Jake Green plays Lord John against Dorothy Macha and Macha against Gold.

The powder is for Gold, it is food for the ego, pride, vanity, arrogance, addiction.

The awakening

Jake's awakening puts to sleep anybody else.

There is no such thing as problems, only situations. --Avi & Zach

When Avi asks Jake how he keeps winning in chess he replies --

You do the hard work, I just help you along.

... to feed pieces to you and make you believe you took those pieces.

In every game and con there is always an opponent and there is always a victim, the more control the victim thinks he has, the less control he actually has.

The formula is completely consistent.

... inside an environment he can control. The bigger the environment, the easier the control. ... so the opponent simply distracts their victim by getting them consumed with their own consumption.

The bigger the trick and the older the trick, the easier it is to pull, because --

They think it can't be that old,

They think it can't be that big,

... for so many people to have fallen for it.

Eventually, when the opponent is challenged or questioned, it means the victim's investment and thus his intelligence is questioned, no one can accept that. Not even to themselves.

You'll always find a good opponent in the very last place you'd ever look.

In your own mind.

Gold -- the godfather -- doesn't touch Zach and Avi.

Avi & Zach providing some hints to Jake --

You can't see what's right in front of you.

Rachel, Jake Green's niece. Good. Pure. Innocence.

More revelations

Jake Green gains some more insight --

There is something about yourself that you don't know. Something that you will deny even exists, until it's too late to do anything about it. It's the only reason you get up in the morning. The only reason you suffer the shitty puss, the blood, the sweat and the tears. This is because you want people to know how good, attractive, generous, funny, wild and clever you really are. Fear or revere me, but please, think I'm special.

We share an addiction.

We're approval junkies.

Ego gratification. Even the car accident would have been some sort of approval.

Jake Green's conning the three Eddies --

Nobody kills a man who's going to make him money.

Lord John, with a hot girl under his eyes and a beautiful assassin under his command --

Beauty is a destructive angel, how could anything that looks so good be so bad?

Dorothy Macha, after the foiled assassination attempt --

Greed gets them all in the end.

Avi explains the game --

You've heard their voice for so long, you believe it to be you. Mr Gold is pretending to be you. Everyone is in his game and nobody knows it.

He's behind all the pain there ever was. Behind every crime ever committed. Embrace the pain and you will win this game.

If you change the rules on what controls you, you will change the rules on what you can control.

The more power you think you have in Gold's world, the less power you have in the real world.

The end of pride

Jake donates to charity in Macha's name to further illustrate and manifest the difference between the both of them.

Jake apologizes to Macha.

Avi teaches --

Use your perceived enemy to destroy your real enemy.

Controlled vs. free man. Forgiveness is the ultimate act of liberation. No pride.

The end of ego

Jake Green, struggling with ego, pride, and fear --

Wherever you don't want to go is where you will find him.

Meeting the ego in the elevator. Stuck in the voluntarily taken elevator between the 14th and the 12th floor, Jake is struggling with his ego, the ultimate showdown.

The greatest con, that he ever pulled... was making you believe... that he is you. --Avi

You are not your ego.

Liberation. Jake is invincible now. Macha isn't able to shoot nor impress him anymore. No fear.

Macha gets and takes the credit for the donation, thus again feeding his vanity and ego which earns him a strange applause from Mr Gold.

Macha demonstrates his adherence to the system by eventually begging and submitting to Gold. Fear.

Sorter, the hitman, in a twisted scene, hinting at the bigger picture --

None of this is real.

Avi and Zach, the chess master and the master of con ultimately aren't real either.

Liberation

Avi's epilogue --

Nobody knows where the enemy is. They don't even know he exists. He's in every one of their heads. And they trust him because they think they are him.

If you try to destroy him to save them, they'll destroy you to save him.

Jake loses the last game of chess with Avi, he left the game through his own liberation.

Zach and Avi finally reveal it --

We didn't do this because we like you. We did this because we are you.

The ultimate con, the ultimate confidence trick, is absolute -- yet delicate -- confidence in your self. Beyond ego, that is.

The greatest con, that he ever pulled... was making you believe... that he is you.--Avi

Labels: awakening, confidence+trick, enlightenment, guy+ritchie, inspiration, jason+statham, kabbalah, liberation, lifehacks, movie, personal+branding, review, revolver, subjective+reality, thriller, wow

What do People Love About You?

by Alexander Becker

This post is part of The Foundations of Your Personal Brand Series.

Burn the business plan and write a book instead, suggests bypassing the production of an always, almost instantly obsolete business plan in favor of a book that you can still sell, even in case the business fails.

The article is an interesting read, especially in the context of the added value of long tail versions of online content and its appearance in ebooks, for example. Yet, the inspiration came with questions making it into books, more specifically, I stumbled across one simple question, What do customers love about your product? My answer is equally simple, yet it defines everything I do: My customers love that I make them look good. Discretely. I work behind the scenes to make them look good.

For now, no book-instead-of-a-plan but a short manifesto to frame the purpose --

Making You Look Good

That's all I've ever done and all I ever will. Not that you don't look good in the first place -- the opposite is true -- I will make you look even better. Who wouldn't want to look better, especially when given an exact plan and the means to do it. Why not? On the other hand -- why? The answer is exceedingly simple... because I can. Well, I have to.

Technically, I make you look good -- conceptually, I make you look even better.

That's my business and my job, whatever I do, be it technical advice, or conceptual consulting, I am here to make you look good, better, the best you can be. As far as I -- and you, for that matter -- are prepared to go. To me, this means whatever it takes -- why not go all the way if it is almost paved -- but ultimately, you decide.

I make you look good and you make yourself be seen. How about that?

Looking good, of course refers to more than visual beauty. Looking good you can on stage to be sure, but you can also do so in marketing, in politics, in a debate, in writing, and in talking, sometimes you can even look good, best that is, in absence. Opportunities to look good are always and all over the place.

Working from scratch? No. That's pure creation, while, on the other hand, making you look even better is refining and uncovering the divine. I'm not adding anything which is not already there, instead, I bring it out. Think marble and the sculpture hidden within. Nothing more and nothing less.

Little work could be done to discover the smallest hint, implying a whole world of change to you, or, on the other hand, immensely hard work could be invested, only to emerge the slightest bit wiser. It is worth the effort in either case.

The beauty of making you look good is that it is an iterative process, it doesn't matter how small the first step -- by definition and comparison, you'll look even better.

Labels: beauty, business, confession, excellence, inspiration, lifehacks, marketing, motivation, personal+branding, pitch, wow

The Top 5 Reasons to Get Even Leaner

by Alexander Becker

The following article is an entry in the group writing project "Top 5" by Darren Rowse at problogger. The whole known web is currently getting streamlined, partitioned, sliced and diced, by Top-5s only to eventually be reunified in that one, giant, list of all of them. Enjoy.

Let's take a look at why it is beneficial to get even leaner. Not lean instead of fat. Leaner instead of lean. Leaner than lean. This is about and for the already lean. Get more perfect. Here is why --

5. Excellence. The #5 reason to get even leaner is the act of pushing through and going all the way, expecting more than others think is possible.

You leaned your system down until now. Up to this point, you recognize that the leaner you get, the better it gets overall. Why would you settle for mediocrity. You're well on your way to excellence. Why settle for less? It's the goal and the relativity in leaner that propels you forward and makes you accomplish more and more in order to get there. You may not reach perfection but no one ever died from wanting too much either.

4. Efficiency. The #4 reason to get even leaner is to get ever more revenue for the same or even less input.

A leaner organism is a more effective organism. Come with minimal luggage. Don't bring more than you really need. Lean determines the ratio between work and rest, between production and administration, between muscle and fat. The more muscle that is at work against less and less superfluous weight -- as opposed to specific workload -- the more effective is the whole system. Think bureaucracy. Think governments.

3. Hunger. The #3 reason to get even leaner is the hunt, its prerequisites and its conditions. There is no place for complacency on the hunt.

The leaner you get, the more hunger you experience. Hunger keeps you awake and makes you alert. You need all your senses to even mildly satisfy that hunger. It's the hunger for more that guides you on the path to getting leaner in the first place.

2. Discipline. The #2 reason to get even leaner is the reward -- in this particular case, the reward is the reward.

The process of getting leaner is the opposite of instant gratification. It's the noble art of enduring the delay to eventually get it all. As long as the journey appears to be the reward, you're not there yet.

1. Competition. The #1 reason to strive for maximum leanness is doing it because it's possible.

Something that gets infinitely harder, the closer you come to reaching the absolute goal, is the ideal feat to fight for. If it was easy, anybody would do it and succeed. To succeed in getting even more lean -- leaner than any one of your competitors -- is the chance for you to set your name in stone. Competition is the ultimate comparison. There is only one first place.

Please note that while thinspiration employs and works with human role-models, you may also consider lean management, or think lean business administration, for example, if this makes you feel more comfortable.

Getting leaner is ultimately getting rid of more stuff. The ideal of getting leaner is about releasing the unnecessary. Less is more.

Good riddance.

Labels: comparison, competition, diet, discipline, excellence, group+writing, hunger, inspiration, lean, lifehacks, marketing, motivation, personal+branding, productivity, thinspiration, top+5, wow

Free ebook: Celebrate Your Beauty

by Alexander Becker

Peer pressure, vanity and behavior, motivation tricks and hacks, success and pain, and how to excel, Celebrate Your Beauty -- whatever it takes.

Whether you work on stage, or walk the runways, whether you make things real on the big screen, behind the scenes, near a microphone, or in the proximity of a camera, this little book is for you.

Also, producers, can you hear me? Make your artists happy with this book. Celebrate Your Beauty provides targeted and clustered content, a well-readable, pre-selected set of articles written to help promote beauty and maintain motivation on and off stage. Share it, mail it, give it away, and make them love you even more.

This book will make you look even better.

Celebrate Your Beauty is a long tail edition, a small, topical ebook, 26 pages, remixed and arranged from articles appearing on WOW. As much as with a delicious dinner, all the ingredients are readily available -- yet, you still let the chef do the work, don't you?.

Celebrate Your Beauty will never go out of print -- it doesn't have to. You print it if you want to do so, I may even print it, but no one is going to stock this one.

With no shelf space to pay for and, in the case of purely digital services like iTunes, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees, a miss sold is just another sale, with the same margins as a hit. A hit and a miss are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.

The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.

Like I said before: Everything has its moment.

Download the free ebook: Celebrate Your Beauty, written to help promote beauty and maintain motivation in the world of looks.

One last thing -- from now on, comments are open, I invite you to tell me what you think, what you feel, and whether you strive to leap forward and show the world that it is possible.

Labels: beauty, behavior, books, ebook, free, inspiration, lifehacks, marketing, motivation, pdf, peer+pressure, personal+branding, personal+development, print, remix, thelongtail, vanity

Savor Your Moment

by Alexander Becker

Replace self-consciousness with self-awareness within one moment.

When you waste a moment, you have killed it in a sense, squandering an irreplaceable opportunity. But when you use the moment properly, filling it with purpose and productivity, it lives on forever.

Menachem Mendel Schneerson

Every valuable thought, each memory, any emotion, is tied to one, ever so short, single moment.

You don't get any more than that moment. Don't miss it, trade it, or give it up for the next one.

Every moment is unique and if you have a perfect one, enjoy it, savor it, and expand it -- for once it is over, it is over, it will be gone for good.

Do not wait through a moment in order to expand it -- instead, do the exact opposite: Live that moment as fast as you can and fill it with as much life as possible. Do not live it as if it was the last one, live it as if it was the only one. This moment will be eternal.

Do not merely observe your moments, ... take part in your moments and observe yourself. This is the only way to extend that one situation and make it last forever. Observe yourself within the present moment, experience life most purely and at its best.

Unlike the unpleasant feeling of self-consciousness that occurs when we realize that we are being watched or observed, the feeling that everyone is looking at us, we are after self-awareness. More specifically, becoming aware not of your actions but of your thoughts and emotions, your body and mind, leads to appreciation of the current moment. It's not you, it's now.

Make that moment exclusive, whatever it is to distract you, if you can't change it within this very moment, exclude it and do not let it dilute this precious now.

Everything has its moment.

Labels: acceptance, appreciation, inspiration, lifehacks, now, personal+development, self-awareness, self-consciousness, time, wow

WOWOW: Info-Fasting, Regaining Attention, and the 4-Hour Workweek

by Alexander Becker

Apparently, news-fasting is in high-demand these days, broadening the concept to e-mail and general vs. specific information triaging is all the rage when it comes to optimizing your productivity.

Try the low-information diet and extreme e-mail detox: Purge your RSS-readers, your e-mail subscriptions -- review your overall level of communication and pseudo-responsibilities.

Merlin Mann points to Brian Oberkirch on reducing noise and stealing back attention and how to --

Wrest back your attention and start responsibly firewalling your time.

Brian Oberkirch himself is --

Trimming the attention sails: You are what you pay attention to.

Consider these randomly picked but highly effective means to regain your attention --

Reinforcing my habit of making a micro to do list of 3 to 5 things. Index card or sticky note for the day. Setting crazy short deadlines for each activity. Doing only one thing at a time.

Stop trying to accomodate a global work schedule. Again, unless it's really mandatory or unavoidable, I work during my work hours, not those in other parts of the world.

In the meantime, Brian is referring us to Tim Ferriss's 4-hour workweek and experiments in lifestyle design with the book due next week.

Redesigning life is about making you look good. Stay tuned for more redesigning your life through making you look even better right here on WOW.

Now that the plug is over, let's get back to Tim on selective ignorance and single-tasking suggesting how to firewall attention and reclaim time --

The trick to stepping off of the gas pedal is proving to yourself that it can be done.

Here is another gem, a variation of a slow carb diet: How to lose 20 lbs. of fat in 30 days... without doing any exercise

You may want to subscribe to each one of these sites' RSS feeds but then again... you'd end up with three more subs. On the other hand, you're probably following Merlin already so choosing between the remaining two (yay, triage at work), I highly recommend Tim's blog. Or Brian's blog and Tim's book, especially after reading the first review.

To your lean excellence.

Labels: attention, email+detox, fourhourworkweek, info+diet, inspiration, lifehacks, lifestyle, lifestyle+design, linking+park, personal+branding, productivity, time+management, triage, wow

Question: What's the Difference between iTunes and Life?

by Alexander Becker

Playlists. To be more specific, the human interface that makes playlists so easily usable. In iTunes. Let's take a look at real life's playlists.

There is this software -- iTunes -- that let's us create playlists, our own mix du jour, we listen to what we want and when we want, we schedule our music.

Enter the shuffle mode. Random playlists and random sequences. There is no such thing as random, there are no misunderstandings either.

We have the option to control every second of our listening experience, yet we, you, most of us, consciously opt for the delivery of a surprise.

You could, but you prefer the random playlist. You could control everything but you don't. Why?

Now, how does this relate to life? Is iTunes somehow related to real life? Isn't iTunes even modeled after real life? Is it not possible to create your own playlists and plans and set up everything in great detail?

You say it is not? What if it was?

Say it is possible to not live at random. Would you choose the party-jukebox anyway? Would you consciously choose the random mode just because it's possible?

What if life is too easy and you need the excitement of the unknown?

Is true mastery the balancing of preset playlists and the jukebox?

(...)

And then you find yourself on shuffle, only to be crazily hitting next, next, next, to get the one you want, the one you hope to recognize by the time it is presented to you. You're asking for more options when in reality, even in your reality, the same options, presented in ever changing contexts are more than sufficient.

How would the shuffle function know what you want, when you yourself do not know it in the first place?

Labels: apple, inspiration, itunes, life, lifehacks, moderation, music, personal+development, playlists, questions, random, shuffle, wow

There Are No Misunderstandings

by Alexander Becker

This essay is part of The Subjective Reality Series.

A misunderstanding is a failure to understand or interpret correctly. The theory is that there is no failure involved and each and every subjective interpretation is inherently correct.

A misunderstanding is a disagreement. Then again, if both you and I were talking about the exact same thing, there would be no disagreement. But we're not. Instead, we are talking about your interpretation of what's going on and mine.

We are describing different sides of the same coin with different, conflicting terms and the mutual assumption that both sides look alike. The ultimate argument deals with the surprising fact that the sides are not equal -- despite our best efforts to match our communication. Please note that we never argue about different things, we always argue about -- apparently -- one and the same thing. Once it becomes clear that both sides of the coin do in fact differ from another -- the fight is over.

Don't get me wrong because you can't -- there are no misunderstandings. Only asynchronous thoughts. Consider the déjà vu situation from the matrix.

[Neo sees a black cat walk by them, and then a similar black cat walk by them just like the first one]

Neo

Whoa. Déjà vu.

[Everyone freezes right in their tracks]

Trinity

What did you see?

Neo

A black cat went past us, and then another that looked just like it.

Trinity

A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something.

Something has changed. That's the point. Something has changed and isn't -- yet -- communicated to everybody involved. Misunderstandings are indicators of unfinished, incomplete communication. Misunderstandings are the expectation of linear development based on prior, obsolete knowledge while current knowledge has already advanced. You misunderstand because you're not up-to-date, you're not in the present.

It's not that you know less than I do nor do I know less than you do. You and I know different.

But I thought you meant, ...

Apparent misunderstandings are born when one and the same situation, scene, or outcome is perceived and eventually analyzed and compared from different perspectives, through different lenses. Prior knowledge and experiences result in unique expectations which in turn lead to unique conclusions. Misunderstandings are the exchange and forced comparison of different levels of progress, quality, and contextual truth. Yes. It's exactly the way you think it is.

On a sidenote, if there are no misunderstandings, is there any chance that there is no paranoia either?

The paranoid person blames and/or fears intelligent beings for their supposedly intentional actions. The question is whether the supposedly intentional actions are in fact intentional and this again is a matter of perspective. Suppose I, myself am not aware of my intentions but instead you are. You make my actions intentional. Whose paranoia is this in the first place?

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Labels: communication, deja+vu, disagreement, expectations, inspiration, law+of+attraction, lifehacks, misunderstanding, motivation, paranoia, personal+development, subjective+reality, wow

Defining Unknown Variables

by Alexander Becker

Let's take a look at the unknown and find a way to not only make it known, but even more, make it our very own.

As long as you don't know the content of a variable, you can safely assume the most favorable one to match your expectations. Sure, you can always assume the worst in order to have the eventual outcome exceed you expectations but what for?

What's the point in calculating with minimum positives and maximum negatives other than smaller rewards? Of course, you also minimize frustration, but at the same time, you keep the potential gains in check as well. You can easily maximize your results by fixing the unknowns on the positive side.

Think communication. As long as you cannot be sure about an answer, you can as well assert that it is positive. Pretend the outcome to be good and it will be at least -- better.

You don't know the answer? Even less, the answer is likely to be negative but isn't yet expressed? It is your chutzpah to assume and define the most positive reply possible. Thank your correspondent for their understanding and their help and move on. Build on top of that extorted outcome and everything down the road will be tangible and legitimate in its consequences.

In short, once you inquire, do not waste time waiting for a reply, instead, act as if the answer was already received -- positively.

... expecting more than others think is possible...

Expecting more, ultimately leads to more. This is one of the attributes of excellence. The self-fulfilling prophesy is about stating outcomes and determining variables, thus paving the paths for least resistance. A preconceived outcome is easier to realize than any alternative simply because the alternatives aren't made up yet. The more detailed your assumed variable, the closer to manifestation it is; it's just the easiest way possible, laid out, predigested, and formulated.

When comparing the definite with the indefinite, the definite prevails because it just is. It is closer to being. Shape your dream and make it as definite as you can, for realization is just that.

Labels: action, business, chutzpah, excellence, expectations, inspiration, lifehacks, motivation, negotiations, outcomes, personal+branding, productivity, self-fulfilling+prophesy, success, variables, wow

WOWOW: Starred Sodium Lightbulbs

by Alexander Becker

What have salt and lightbulbs in common and why should you care?

Both have issues. While I think that Eat To Live is potentially superior to many, if not most, dietary recommendations, the salt question is an interesting and apparently emotional one, culminating spectacularly in the Salt Wars: The Phantom Menace --

Salt also pulls out calcium and other trace minerals in the urine when the excess is excreted, which is a contributory cause of osteoporosis. If that is not enough, high sodium intake is predictive of increased death from heart attacks. In a large prospective trial, recently published in the respected medical journal The Lancet, there was a frighteningly high correlation between sodium intake and all cause mortality in overweight men. The researchers concluded, High sodium intake predicted mortality and risk of coronary heart disease, independent of other cardiovascular risk factors, including high blood pressure. These results provide direct evidence of the harmful effects of high salt intake in the adult population.

Without implying an actual call for prohibition, ... there is a great line in the movie Demolition Man which is the vehicle to deliver today's point --

Stallone:

Do you have the salt?

Bullock:

Salt is not good for you, hence, it is illegal.

... hence, it is illegal. Does anyone see a problem with this kind of reasoning?

Let's take a look at the call to ban inefficient lightbulbs in EU --

Germany's environment minister Sigmar Gabriel has written to the European Commission proposing that inefficient light bulbs be banned in the EU.

It gets even better with House Inspectors checking your light bulbs --

They will go into every room to calculate the number of low-energy light bulbs and while in the kitchen they will even examine the cooker to see if has automatic ignition or a permanent pilot light.

It is the verboten approach which rings bells -- at least it should do so -- all over the world.

While we're there, this is what you'll do --

Stallone:

You'll get a little dirty...

... you, a lot clean.

And somewhere in the middle...

You'll figure it out.

Just take action and change things for --

... each event triggers -- almost domino-like -- the next and the following ones with the result becoming inevitable because of cause and effect.

Moderation is important to break up black-and-white thinking since nothing is perfectly black nor white. Moderation is the complete scale from black to white and so is life which is -- to stay with colors -- taking continuously and simultaneously from the whole spectrum, including the extremes, incorporating every color that is imaginable, all side by side.

Or is the old concept of moderation all of a sudden broken? I don't think so.

Note: The weekly Linking Park editions will become less weekly and more themed, for there is no day and night on the internet, nor are there timezones and certainly no weeks to adhere to. In the meantime, please check out the starred items provided in the sidebar.

To your excellence.

Labels: commentary, demolition+man, diet, google, inspiration, lifehacks, lightbulbs, linking+park, moderation, movies, rant, reference, review, society, sodium, sylvester+stallone, trends, wow

Linking Park: 2007-W07, The More Suggestions Edition

by Alexander Becker

More networking, productivity, health and exercise suggestions, the whole enchilada.

We've had this before, but here is a great follow up on LinkedIn in particular and on making your business network pay dividends --

LinkedIn is just a tool, albeit a powerful one if you have a use for it and know how to make it work. If you are good at what you do, it amplifies it. If you suck, it amplifies that too. We'll assume the former and give some pointers on how you can make it work more effectively for you. If you find yourself wondering how to better use, derive benefit or get value from this tool, the following suggestions might prove useful. Don't forget the basic rule of being of service to others.

Basic rules? Priorities? See the pattern here? What we talk about when we talk about "priority" --

Since the Bronze Age of personal productivity, conventional wisdom has taught us the importance of priority in deciding how to plan and use our time. And, in the abstract, anyhow, that notion of putting your time and attention into those things that are the most valuable to you seems so "obvious" as to be a tautology, where "productivity = acting on priorities." (Of course, whether people's execution of the things they c

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