Book Review: The Tipping Point

Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and Blink, has also written a book called The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. In a world where a single tweet can end your career, this concept is both interesting and stable. I thoroughly enjoy sociology and understanding the science behind how our brains work. If you ever want to create a product that is widely used or go viral, definitely a good read.

The book is pretty true to its title. We learn about products and ideas that “went viral” to put it into today’s terms. From Hush Puppies to yawns to crime in New york City, Gladwell really breaks down what happened with these things to make them ‘contagious.’ Gladwell says there are 3 rules of epidemics: the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. . . . Read More

No New Friends

Happy New Year and welcome to 2018! Prepare for a paradigm shift, as you probably haven’t heard this before when we talk about resolutions.  I’m going to talk about the concept of #NoNewFriends.

As we start a new year, there will be many new year’s resolutions. You know the typical ones: work out more, get places early, try new things, blah, blah, blah. We are always in search of something more to acquire, do, or be. But what if what you had was enough? Instead of looking for new friends, what if you dedicated your time to the existing friends who love and cherish you? . . . Read More

Movie Review – Beatriz at Dinner

Beatriz at Dinner (2017) was written by Mike White, and Directed by Miguel Arteta. The main stars were Salma Hayek (Beatriz) and John Lithgow (Doug Strutt). After the watching the trailer, I was super excited to see this movie. You have a Mexican lady that is visiting a wealthy American in her house, at what looked like an invite for dinner. A wealthy visitor immediately clashes with the guest, making disrespectful assumptions about her citizenship and thoughts. I was prepared for amazing dialogue and presentation of both sides on screen. That’s really all I knew about the film going in. Taking the political environment into account, I thought this would be a great discussion piece. . . . Read More

The Semicolon Movement

I don’t remember where I was or what I was doing, but I glanced over at someone’s wrist a couple years ago and I saw a tattoo of a semicolon. As a writer, I have always loved the semicolon. It allowed for more dramatic pauses or showing incomplete thoughts in characters as they wrestled with what to do. But to permanently mark your body with a punctuation mark? That’s serious! I never saw that person again, and even if I had the chance, I wouldn’t have asked them about their form of expression on their body. So I did what any curious person does after they see something interesting: I googled it. And it was here that I learned about Project Semicolon . . . Read More

Love is Complicated


Part of stepping outside your comfort zone is realizing that you don’t know everything. In particular, love is such a dynamic and complicated science that we really can’t predict it. There are so many factors that affect the interaction of two people – factors such as childhood issues, daddy issues, distance, trust, personality, communication, availability, priorities, attractiveness, self-esteem, and faithfulness, to name a few. That doesn’t even take into account where you live and who is available to you, the activities you engage in, and the myriad of factors that influences who we meet and when. So, it’s nice to hear some experts, if anyone can be an expert in love. . . . Read More

Adaptability

Adaptability

We can’t talk about stretching outside your comfort zone without mentioning adaptability. Just as a person might bundle up when moving from California to Alaska, outside influences require you to make some internal changes. An easy example is generational gaps in the work force. Even though texting has become a perfectly acceptable way to communicate in this day and age, it is not always appropriate. If I text my coworker that is on board with communicating that way, that is great. If I text a coworker that is not a fan of texting, I’m silently demanding that they use my mode of communication. . . . Read More

Think Differently

Sure, jumping out of one’s fishbowl sounds easy enough for an extravert, you may be thinking, but what about an introvert? What if something as simple as going to a new class is completely out of your comfort zone? Be true to who you are. Your fishbowl is going to look a lot different than my fishbowl or your best friend’s fishbowl. It’s not about the level of craziness; it’s about the stretch. If you aren’t stretching, than things will very well stay the same. And sometimes there’s nothing wrong with that, but if you want more, than you need to do something different. Forcing yourself to be slightly uncomfortable is a complete paradigm shift . . . Read More