Personal Development Training and Motivational Humor from the Motivational Smart Ass!

The people who know me well know that I am not a fan of baseball. I only watch baseball during the World Series. When the Philadelphia Phillies are in it. During the second half of the game. If it’s not too late at night. If I remember. Otherwise, I care less about baseball than Kanye West cares about decorum.

I could go on and on about things I don’t like about the sport, but since I don’t want all my readers to hate me, I won’t. Instead, I’ll share a revelation that may explain why I don’t like baseball. Or at least explain why I never got into it as much as all my friends…

When I was in third grade, me and all my friends went to Little league tryouts. There were two ways the tryouts could go: if you were good enough, you got into Little League. If not, you got to play in the Minor League. Since this was the first year we were eligible to tryout, chances were kind of slim we would make it to Little League.

A few days after the tryout I got a notice that I made Little League! Whoo-hoo! This should have been an awesome thing for me. Sadly, it as not.

I called up my friends to find out if we made the same team. As it turns out, not only did we not make the same team, but we weren’t even in the same league! That’s right, I was the only one of my friends to make Little League that year. This gave me a momentary ego boost, which died immediately after my first practice.

Holy cow! I hated it! I had no friends on the team (they were all in the Minor League). I was the youngest guy by far, so I didn’t connect with anyone on the team. I was also the smallest by far, so I was terrible! The pitches came in fast, the balls were hit hard, and I didn’t know what the heck I was doing.

It was a miserable experience, and at the end of the first year, I gave up. Not only did I stop playing baseball, but I lost interest in the sport altogether.

Looking back on that experience, I realize that there were a few reasons I quit, and I think we can all learn a few lessons for our adult lives from those reasons…

It Was No Fun

All of my friends were in the other league. How did this happen? I have no idea. I was by no means the most athletic one amongst my friends. Maybe there was a weird “Indian Affirmative Action” program going on that I didn’t know about and I was just filling a quota. Who knows? That’ll be one of life’s little mysteries, like why Hollywood keeps green lighting the Friedberg/Seltzer crop of spoof movies (Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, and the upcoming Vampires Suck. Seriously. These are quite possibly the worst movies ever made by man. Or any other creature. But they keep getting made. I don’t get it. Maybe they’ll make “Baseball Movie” next and two banes of my existence can fuse into a congealed mess of awfulness. But I digress…)

Being in a league without my friends made baseball waaaaay less fun for me. Not only were none of my friends on my team, but everybody was a lot older than me too, so it’s not like I made lots of friends.

To top it off, since I wasn’t so great, playing baseball at practice and games was not all that much fun either. Ergo, I did not enjoy baseball. At all.

I’m all for perseverance and stick-to-it-iveness, but at that age, when I just wanted to play baseball for fun, I didn’t care about sticking it out. I quit after a year, and haven’t ever really been into baseball since.

Lesson: Make sure you have some fun! As adults, we often have to do things that we don’t enjoy. But if you never enjoy what you’re doing, it’s time to do something else.

I Sucked

I don’t think I sucked absolutely, but it’s safe to say that comparatively, I was awful. I was the smallest, worst hitting, worst fielding guy on the team. I needed to rely on a bad pitcher and a small strike zone to get on base. I never took the field until the 6th inning, and I’m guessing that’s when the opposing team thought, “yes! now we can win this game.”

It’s not my fault! I was years younger than most others! Let me tell you, there is a huge difference between a 12 year old athlete and a 8 year old athlete (yes, I accept the egotistical ridiculousness of describing my 8-year old self as an athlete).

It’s hard to go back day after day, week after week, to participate in activities that you are awful at. I realize now that if I had stuck it out, by the time I became 12 years old I may very well have become awesome. But at the time, it just wasn’t worth it.

Being bad at something is not a great excuse to quit, if you are building towards something you truly want. In fact, you have to be willing to be bad, to stretch yourself, and to feel awful at times in order to work through the process of improvement that will eventually make you great.

However, make sure you are making progress, and celebrate the little victories along the way. Doing something over and over and never making any progress and never seeing any results is a quick way to burn out.

Lesson: Celebrate Your Small Progress Victories! – The road to real success is usually a long one. Set yourself small progress goals, and celebrate as you achieve them. If you never make progress, or never acknowledge the progress you are making, you may very well give up on a worthwhile goal long before you should.

I Didn’t Care

One of the main reasons I gave up on Little League (and baseball entirely) is that I just didn’t care enough. I was looking for a fun organized sport to partake in, not a chance to be the pee-wee loser in the land of baseball giants.

Some kids love what they do enough (or have crazy enough parents that force them to do it) that they get up at 4AM everyday to practice before school (I’m looking at you, ice skaters…). I didn’t care about baseball nearly that much. As a result, I didn’t have any drive to stick it out and put in the work to get better.

Lesson: Ask Yourself, “Do I Care?” – Sometimes we have goals that we really don’t care about. They may have been set for us by other people (like our parents), or they may be what we feel society expects us to do, or they may just be goals we set years ago that we no longer care about. Life is too short to plug away at something you have no passion for. Revisit your goals and life choices and ask yourself, “do I really care about this?” If not, it’s time for a change.

The overall lesson here is about setting the appropriate challenge level for yourself. If a task is too easy, you get bored. If the challenge is too great (like my Little League experience), you get frustrated and give up. If the challenge is just right, you stay motivated, push through obstacles, and have fun even when things aren’t going quite right.

When you set your long term and short term goals, play around with the size until you hit that sweet spot. Many “motivational speakers” will just tell you to “dream big.” Nothing wrong with that, but if you are not up for the challenge you are just setting yourself to give up. Scale the challenge back a bit, and you are much more likely to achieve your goal and so much more.

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Are you planning an event and looking for a great speaker to add humor and energy? Then visit Avish’s Motivational Humorist page now!
 

I have a guest post up at Pick The Brain. You can read it here:

If you have trouble “letting things go,” (and who doesn’t?) then this article can definitely help you! Please use their “Re-Tweet” button to pass it on…

Superman is dead. Again.

But don’t worry, he’s coming back. Again…

I am not referring to the comic book Superman who was killed off by Doomsday in the 90’s. I am referring to the Superman movie series, which originally gave us four movies:

1. The excellent Superman: The Motion Picture
2. Superman II, one of the best superhero movies ever! (a movie I have previously blogged about in The Ridiculousness that is “Superman II”)
3. The nonsensical stupidity of Superman III (Really, Richard Pryor and a supercomputer? Really??)
4. The unwatchable dreck that was Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

Superman IV was so bad it killed the franchise for many years. Then the series was “rebooted” in 2006 with the disappointing Superman Returns. Sadly, since the movie decided to…um…be kinda boring – which shouldn’t be that surprising since they decided that it would be more fun to watch Superman put out fires and pick up a big rock (yes, calm down fanboys, I know it was a kryptonite rock) – it proved to be a disappointment.

Superman Returns was disappointing enough that the studio is, after only one movie and four years, once again “rebooting” the Superman series.

In movies (and all fiction), rebooting means “to discard much or even all previous continuity in the series and start anew with fresh ideas.” (definition from Wikipedia).

Rebooting is all the rage in Hollywood these days. After three movies and a gazillion dollars worldwide, Marvel is rebooting Spiderman with a new cast, new director, and new story. Every horror movie ever made has been rebooted recently (Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the Thirteenth, the Hills Have Eyes, etc.) Random TV shows from the 70s have been rebooted as slapstick comedies (Charlie’s Angels, Starsky and Hutch, Land of the Lost – seriously, was anyone clamoring for a Sleestack based cornball comedy starring Will Ferrel? Anyone??).

The list goes on and on. It won’t be long before we see a Casablanca reboot with Ashton Kutcher and Megan Fox – guest starring Zach Galifinakis as Louie!

When it comes to movies, this practice usually annoys me. It represents a dearth of creativity in what should be one of the most creative industries on Earth (for those who scoff at that, watch Christopher Nolan’s Inception to see what kind of creativity Hollywood is capable of).

However, as much as I loathe the practice of rebooting movies, I thought, “what if a person decided to reboot their life?”

Reboot your life? Why not?

Remember, rebooting means “to discard much or even all previous continuity in the series and start anew with fresh ideas.”

Why can’t you reboot your life? Just discontinue much or even all of your previous continuity and start anew with fresh ideas?

Sounds like an interesting idea to me.

Think about it: you could just stop doing all the things you are currently doing that aren’t serving you, let go of the past, and start over with a clean slate.

Speaking of movies, this week the movie adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love” (a book I have blogged on before in my What’s Your Word? post) is coming out. That bestselling book was about a woman who spent a year rebooting her life. It seemed to work out pretty well for her…

If you feel your life hasn’t gotten a bit stale, or like you’re stuck in a rut, or if you ever feel a gnawing unhappiness, perhaps you need to reboot your life. You don’t need to pack a suitcase, sell everything that’s left, and travel the world for a year. You could do something simple like pick up a new hobby, discontinue a relationship that isn’t serving you, or quit an association that bogs you down. You could also go grandiose and quit a job to start a new business, sell the house and move to a brand new city, or find a way to take a sabbatical and tour the world.

The size of the reboot and the exact method you use are dependent on your means and desires. The important thing is that you do something to get unstuck.

There’s no right answer or step by step system to do it. Here are a few questions to get you started:

• What do you really want to stop doing?
• What do you really want to start doing?
• What excites you?
• What drains you?
• What do you wish you did years ago?
• What will you most regret ot doing if you die before you do it?

Start with those questions and let your mind wander and play. Then ask yourself, “if I was to reboot my life, what would it look lie?” The answer might both surprise and excite you.

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Are you planning an event and looking for a great speaker to add humor and energy? Then visit Avish’s Motivational Humorist page now!

Do you ever feel like you are fighting an uphill battle? Like the world is not set up to allow you to achieve your dreams? Take heart, because as it turns out, even when conventional wisdom is against you, you can still succeed…

Growing up, I had a book titled, Bet You Can’t! It was a short book filled with sciencey type challenges that were impossible; they could not be done.

For example, one chapter was, “bet you can’t boil ice water!” Fair enough, since “ice water” was defined as water having ice in it, and since water, in theory, won’t go up in temperature until the ice is melted, it can’t reach the boiling point while ice exists. This would have been a great book to win beers off of your friends, if of course you drank beer in the 3rd grade. I didn’t, but I don’t know what the heck kids are up to these days.

One of the challenges was, “bet you can’t fold a piece of paper in half 7 times!” The logic being that each fold doubles the thickness of the paper, and that by the time you get to the 7th fold, it would be too short and too thick to fold.

My book said it, I heard others say it, and this seemed to be one of those “conventional bits of wisdom” that everyone accepted. Until 2001, that is…

I just came across a story about a high school girl, Britney Gallivan, who not only folded a piece of paper 7 times, she actually went and folded it 12 times! (why a story from 2001 was on the front page of Digg, I have no idea, but I’m glad it was…). You can read it here:

Folding Paper on ABC Science

Britney’s math teacher offered extra credit to anyone who could fold a sheet of paper 12 times. Seemed like a safe bet, since it was an impossible problem.

Britney, however, decided it wasn’t impossible. She then went and figured out the math behind the paper folding. I have to admit, I made it through Calc IV in college and did two years of mechanical engineering, and I can’t make heads or tails of the equation she used on the website. And she was in high school. I have probably felt dumber before in my life, but not by much… Using the equations, Britney determined it was possible if she had a piece of paper 1.2 km long.

So she got a 1.2 km long roll of toilet paper for $85 (imagine explaining that to a sales rep. “Um, yeah, I need 1.2 km worth of toilet paper. Why? Uh…I am planning on eating nothing but beans and habeneros for the next month…”), got a mall to let her unroll her paper down it’s length and then spend 7 hours folding it. And she did it, disproving the “conventional wisdom” about paper folding.

She then went on to attend the University of Berkley, had her story mentioned on Mythbusters and Numb3rs, and now works as the world’s largest Origmai scupltorist (ok, I made that last part up).

I spend enough time complaining about the stupidity I see in the world that I find it exciting and inspirational to see a high school student not be dissuaded by conventional wisdom and go out and tackle and solve a seemingly impossible problem. Too cool.

Here are three things we can all learn from Britney’s example:

Don’t Blindly Accept “Conventional Wisdom”

If you ever set out to do anything cool, or great, or innovative, people will come out of the woodwork like scarab beetles swarming Imhotep to point out to you how it won’t work. They’ll site “conventional wisdom.” They’ll reference “common sense.” And they’ll be quick to point out anecdotal evidence about “my sister’s husband’s cousin’s roommate’s accountant’s dogwalker tried the same thing and failed. Don’t do it.”

Getting advice and thinking through your idea is smart, but don’t be dissauded by the naysayers. If you believe in your idea, can find a way to mimimize the risk, and have enough passion to see it through, then heck, tell everyone else to screw off (even if only in your own head) and go forward. Most great things in the world came from people flying in the face of “conventional wisdom.”

Understand the Reasons for the Arguments Against

When I first read about this challenge, the problem was said to be the thickness of the folded paper. If I recall correctly, the book said, “…that would be like trying to fold a phone book – impossible!” Ok, sounded good to me.

Turns out, the problem had more to do with the ratio of the thickness to the width or length. The higher the ratio, the harder to fold. Based on the fact that she has a “pi” in her equations, I would say that as long as there was enough paper left to complete a half-circle (i.e. a fold) it could be done (I am just guessing here – trying to make myself look “math smart” so I get all those cushy “Smart Ass Mathematics” speaking gigs)

My assumption of the underlying cause (and most people’s assumptions I would hazzard, based on what I have seen) was wrong. As long as I held that to be true, I would never even consider tackling the problem because I couldn’t get around how thick the paper would be. Once you understand the real problem, you can create a real solution.

In the same way, we often make incorrect assumptions about the things that are preventing us from achieving our goals. Whether it’s a mistaken external assumption (blaming a bad economy when in fact your marketing stinks) or internal (thinking you are not good enough when in fact you are just marketing to the wrong crowd), you can waste a lot of time and effort if you don’t fully understand what’s going on.

Take some time to really think through what is holding you back. Be honest and fair with yourself. Once you identify your real roadblock, you can much more easily movee past it.

Try a New Approach

What’s interesting is that Britney actually solved this problem twice. First, she solved it by using gold leaf, which is so thin that she was able to fold it 12 times. This is significant because the common set up of the challenge is, “no matter its size or thickness, no piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.” Turns out the thickness does matter.

Then, when her math teacher told her it had to be paper and not gold leaf, she again took a different approach. Most people would fold the piece of paper in different directions to prevent it from getting too small to fast. That is, they would fold it in half, then rotate it 90 degrees, then fold in half again, and so on and so on.

Britney thought out of the box and ran the math for repeatedly folding it in a single direction, and realized that that approach had its advantages. By simply trying a new approach, she found a way to “do the impossible.”

When you start out on a goal you will probably find yourself going down a traditional, pre-set path. Nothing wrong with that, as long as it works. But if it stops working, don’t give up! Try a new approach. There is no “one way” to success; if the traditional route doesn’t work, forge your own path.

Not only will this help you achieve your goal despite the obstacles, but you may end up finding a better, faster way to get what you want!

I have a suggestion: the next time you feel overwhelmed, or like you can’t achieve something, or that you are on a crazy path, grab a piece of paper and see how many times you can fold it in half. When you get stuck on the fourth or fifth fold, remember that most people assume seven folds is impossible. If a high school student can figure out a way to fold a sheet 12 times, you can figure out a way to achieve your dreams.

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Are you planning an event and looking for a great speaker to add humor and energy? Then visit Avish’s Motivational Humorist page now!