Useless Efficiency

"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all" ~ Peter Drucker

As we grow older and responsibilities start piling on us we begin our pursue for efficiency; we seek to do thing faster, cheaper, and better. Therein we start confusing efficiency for effectiveness. for instance, We have efficiency rather than effectiveness when:

• We read more books but understand and remember so little.
• We share hours with our family but we are mentally absent with work.
• We think that our lives age matters more than what we have accomplished in life.

Effectiveness in our examples would be when:

• We read actively to understand and teach.
• We give our times to our family and rejoice out times with them.
• We think about our legacy more than our fun times. This is not to say that fun is not important but we have to be effective with fun as well by having efficent fun time not excessive fun.

This trap fools everyone including myself. Then the thing to remember is that we must question what we do by asking why we are doing it. Then evaluate our effectiveness by measuring our desired results and if we are not having the desired results then we shall stop being merely efficient and work toward effectiveness.

The Year 20,000 (Humorous Speech for Toastmasters Competation)

Imagine that today is January 1st, of the year 20,000. That's ONLY 18,000 years from now. It is a blink of an eye.  it is even quicker, it is just half a blink conditioned that you never open your eyes again. LOL

 

if earth makes it that far, you’ll be there... but you’ll be completely transformed:
Heavy people will turn into heavy oil,
light people will be light oil,
and gassy will be the source of natural gas. :D

You guys thought you will retired at 60, huh?  :D

So, what are some of the awaited changes that will happen?
1- For starter, Dammam and Khobar (two cities that full of traffic and detours) will be detours-free but based on my experience, Jubail- Dhahran highway will be still under-construction  (The highway always under construction)  :D even though we will be working from home by then.
 
2- Saudi Women will be finally on the driver seat but cars will be self-driven. :D
 
But according to a visionary professional, my optician :D Cars will no longer exist. The reason they won't exist is: "humans’ population". Think about it. If population continue to grow at the same rate as it is now, The population will reach a number that I called "Hassan" for discovering it  :D: represented by 1 followed by 34000 zeros. That’s more than the number of atoms on the universe.
 
Logically, Earth will get extremely heavy and fall off the solar system. :( We will be away from our beloved sun and we will be lost in outer space and then and only then we will freeze and die.  :D

That's not funny, People!! Danger is immanent. Earth relies on you and you must save it. So what can we do?

I think there are two solutions to this problem:
 
First,It is known that the sun is the heaviest plant in our solar system. So one thing we can do is simply we must hook earth to the sun witha chain  :D. So when the earth falls off, the sun will hold us still or we will drag it along with us and leave the other plants go figure.  :D
 
The other solution is to be able to travel faster the speed of light. Because if that happens people will be able to go back on time. So we will be able to say something like: our next meeting will be last Tuesday.  :D

The problem with this solutions though is that people might exploit this possibility. For example:

 
• Kids will always go to stormy day to have an official day off from school.
• Ladies will be able to redo their weddings until they are satisfied.
• And if I don't win today, you know what will happen. :D So, Evaluator save yourself the pain. We don’t have to do this all day? :D

Now, The field that will be out of control by the year 20,000 is neuroscience: the science of the brain and how it works. Neuroscience will advance so much that we will be able to literally read someone thoughts, download other people thoughts, and erase bad memory by manipulation brain neurons and their connections. That will be great for quite people like me who doesn’t like to talk a lot.

I just love silence. I love to go home, play a blank CD, :D turn the volume all the way up, :D rewind my favourite part of it, :D and think of absolutely nothing. Even Toastmaster will become Thought-Masters because words won't matter anymore. A Thought master will have to come up to the stage, close his or her eyes, and the challenge is to think straight thoughts for 5 to 7 minutes.

Scientifically proven, Women and men struggle with this: ladies have zillions of thoughts running in there minds at a particular moment and men can have absolutely none. :D

So for instance: Ann could be sitting here listening to me, paying full attention, while thinking: I wonder: what brand is Hassan’s Shirt? :D Why doesn’t my husband wear something nice like that? :D Ohh I need to call my husband to put food for our fish? Hmm, do we need to put some water for it too? :S Well fish don’t get thirsty. :D Ohh my god, fish lives in water. :D Ohh Satan, you made me kill my fish? Satan.. What’s Satan’s last name? :D  and many other questions.

 Ann: you need to get some help.

While in the other hand: Bill could be sitting here staring at me with one question: What? what?   What's going on?

Bill please see Ann's doctor.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I just can't wait for the year 20000. I really can't wait for the year 20,000 so let's head back to reality.

You Inc. III

"All humans are strategic by nature, they all think they are doing what's best"

Many life coaches will advise you not to read a step-by-step self-help book. The reason is that the way someone else took to succeed may not be your way. Thus, in your personal plan you must have your own strategies, habits, and execution plan.

6- Strategy:You must understand that there is a difference between strategy and tactics. Strategy is how to achieve an objective while a tactics is what, not a how, to achieve an objective. Say your objective is to utilize your time to the minute, your strategy could be to avoid distraction or to increase concentration, Your tactics, in the other hand, could be to utilize your driving time to listen to an audio book that you wish to read.
You must consider your strengths and capitalize on them and be honest about your weaknesses and alleviate them.

7- Habits: These are the habits you must habituate yourself to in order to have the character you envision yourself as. You really don't need to invent you own habits because success habits are common. You could begin by applying Steve Covey's book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

• Be proactive: Take charge of your life.
• Begin with End in Mind: Envision success to achieve it.
• Put First things First: Manage your time effectively.
• Think Win-Win: Choose whom to work with and make everyone wins.
• Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood: practice effective communication.
• Synergize: Cooperate and be creative.
• Sharpen the Saw: You are subject to forget and to weaken, thus you must stay motivated, informed, and active.

There are many more success habits, you just need to know that, simply, every habit has a result, good habit leads to good results, and bad habit leads to bad results. You must be aware of your habits: what do you usually do. Keep the good ones and stubtitute the bad ones with good ones. Don't just try to stop bad habits, you must introduce new ones to follow.

One habit I would like to emphasize is to celebrate your victories as well as your failures because your failures are useful to your success. I love a quote that say, "Everything is useful, even useless people can be used as bad example".

8- Execution plan: This is a plan that contains SMARTERS goals. Goals that are:

Letter	Major Term	Minor Terms
S	Specific	Significant, Stretching, Simple
M	Measurable	Motivational, Manageable, Meaningful
A	Attainable	Appropriate, Achievable, Agreed, Assignable, Actionable, Adjustable, Ambitious, Aligned, Aspirational, Acceptable, Action-focused
R	Relevant	Result-Based, Results-oriented, Resourced, Resonant, Realistic
T	Timely	Time-oriented, Time framed, Timed, Time-based, Timeboxed, Time-bound, Time-Specific, Timetabled, Time limited, Trackable, Tangible
E	Evaluate	Ethical, Excitable, Enjoyable, Engaging, Ecological
R	Reevaluate	Rewarded, Reassess, Revisit, Recordable, Rewarding, Reaching
S	Satisfactory	Satisfies Strategic Vision

Finally, writing your personal plan is not enough, it is just the first step. You next step is to actually execute it machanically and revisit it often until it changes from a plan into your actual life.
Good Luck.


This is a continuation to two earlier blogs You Inc., You Inc II

You Inc. II

"It pays to plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.”

In my previous blog, I talked about the importance of creating the great YOU and that you must start by writing a personal "business-like" plan.  Here how I would do it:

1. Know thyself: this is too big to fit here, will write about it later.
2. Vision Statement: This is your ultimate self, what would you do if you had all the time and therefore the money in the world. Usually, this would be something that will benefit humanity. For example, take Bill Gates now, I bet he is enjoying humanitarian work, facing some of the gratest challenges in the world, more than what he was doing when he was the CEO of Microsoft. To help you more, ask yourself the following question: What would you like people to remember you by? What would be your legacy?
3. Mission: How you will reach your ultimate vision: do you need to have a degree in something? do you need to be somewhere? or work on something? Make sure they are all milestones that you can celebrate. If you need a degree and you got it, celebrate it and know why you are celebrating it. Hint: to manifest your destiny.
4. Mantra: A short statement that you need to remember every day. If I was Steve Jobs, my mantra will be: Do what ding . If you are a doctor, yours could be: kill what kills. The only thing to remember is to make it so short and touch your soul so it is easily remembered and it can easily ignite you.
5. Values: These are the rules that govern your actions, such as
1. Honesty: to tell the truth
2. Enjoy life: enjoy what you do regardless if you like it or not.
3. Order: put things where they ought to be and let the right things have their times.
4. etc

           Some values are already in you, just write those that you need to work on and would help you reach your great success.

Stay tunes for You Inc. III.

You Inc.

People don’t plan to fail they just don’t plan to succeed.

If you wish to create a great business, you must start with writing a business plan. A plan that comprises of the business: vision, mission, values, mantra, logo, strategies, market and many more. It is a daunting work involving a lot of thinking, analysis, and experimentation. Although, creating  a great business will result in giving you financial independence, prestige, and social standing, you may end up unhappy about the whole experience at the end. The reason is that there is one thing that you really need to do during the process, that is creating yourself: You Inc. Work gives meaning to our life, but what if you feel that your work is useless. What happens if you spends your entire life doing something and you ultimately looks into the mirror and don’t see yourself in there. Thus, just as it is important to plan a business it is more important to plan to create yourself.

More into this later

The Experimenter

" When I was young I observed that nine out of every ten things I did were failures, so I did ten times more work” ~ George Bernard Shaw

Regardless how hard you try, you will always fail at something. That's why, your attitude toward failing shall be postive in order for you to succeed in accomplishing your bigger dreams. Author John Maxwell called this "Failing Forward", Enistien said "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried something new", and many successful business men and women have gone broke, some of them many times, before they made it big.

In my openion, there are three traits you must have in order to turn failures into building blocks for huge success

1. The experimenter attitude: you must treat every initative as an experiment. Experiments are called experiments because they could fail when they fail, they are after all experiments. Experiment are easier to abondon, easier to get over, and no one can be blamed when things go south. 
2. The experimenter ego, many people want to look infallible. No doubts, we never want to look bad in front of others. But, in this age a full mark put you behind a desk while mistakes make you the boss. So enjoy failure, take picture of them, and laugh at them later on. Just stay away from high risk experiments.
3. The experimenter knowledge wisdom, experimenters know they don't know everything thus they are working on learning and achieving at the same time. Edison, failed forward toward the light bulb and then he lighted the whole world.

Changing Managing Change

Many people try in vain to change something in them, they fail and yet they repeat the same method they were using or just quit trying. When you try to change yourself, you feel that everything is conspiring against you and believe it or not, it is. Because you are a social creature and we move in groups and thus we depend a lot on our surroundings. Then to change,you must start with changing the conditions around you not yourself. If you want to lose weight then ask your spouse and\or your close friends to join you in a group diet. If you want to develop a skill, join like-minded people who are trying to develop the same skill. For example, Toastmasters clubs put speakers together to develop their public speaking skills. One reason why speed runners do not break records during practice even though they are relaxed and stress-free is that they are relaxed and stress-free, the surrounding conditions are not enough. You have to choose your comparators, your enemies and make them close and make them turn you into what your family and friends couldn’t do.

Excellence Ecosystem

"You cannot change everyone around you but you can choose those who are around you."

Sometimes, we feel tired, our efforts are futile, and the world is just a bad place to be in. If you ever felt that way, it is because of the environment you are in not the WHOLE world. Jim Collins, Author of the best seller book “Good To Great” spoke of his method for people to find themelves by asking the following four questions:

1-     List all the things you are great at or can be great at?

2-     From the previous list, highlight the things that people will pay you to do.

3-     Then from the previous list, highlight the one you are most passionate about?

4-     Finally, choose whom you will work with or where you will do what you got from the final list.

You might be doing what you are great at and passionate about, and being paid to do it,  but you fail because you are in the wrong ecosystem. What to do if you are in a bad place varies depending on your authority level as you maybe be a decision maker, or influencer, or neither of both. The good thing is that motivation is contagious and if you start from your end you will definitely improve your environment but if you are certain that your environment will never change, then it is your responsibility to change your place even with a little loss.  It is your life, temporary losses are what stopping many people from winning big,and by that they lose themselves in the way.

Dream Big

"Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men"

Everyone has a dream and if he or she doesn’t. Your mission as a leader for others and leader of yourself is to make him, or her, or yourself have one and believe in achieving it. Dreams are good for people psychological health. Moreover, If they shall have dreams, they shall as well make their dreams big. The bigger the dream, the better the glory.

Everyone has the right to be successful in having and pursuing his dreams for it is basically humans necessity.

Creativity is a Joke II

Is a creative solution to a difficult problem nothing but a joke?

To get us started, consider the following joke: a group of armed robbers burst into a bank, line up customers and staff against the wall, and begin to take everything from them. Two of the bank’s accountants are among those waiting to be robbed. The first accountant suddenly gets something out of his pocket and put it in the other accountant's hand. The second accountant whispers, “What is this?” and The first accountant replied, “It’s the 100 bucks I owe you.

This is funny but it is also very smart and creative solution.

Jokes like these made me realize that creativity and humor have a lot of common. I now believe that a creative solution or let say break through is nothing but a physical joke. Both require a transition between two meanings by a connection point.

 To illustrate and prove my point, let take an example of each and analyze it:

 First the joke:

Sam walks into his boss’s office and say. “Sir, I’ll be straight with you, I know the economy isn’t great, but you know how smart and hard worker I am. In face, I currently have over three companies after me, and I would like to respectfully ask for a raise.”

After a few minutes of thinking the boss finally agrees to a 5% raise.

Sam happily gets up to leave. When his boss asked: “By the way” “which three companies are after you?” Sam said: Well they are “The electric company, Water Company, and Phone Company” are after me to pay their bills.

If you analyze the joke you notice that it starts with something we are all familiar with. Then, there is a buildup before the punch line is reached. The punch line is what makes us laugh and it is usually a connection with another meaning that was not unexpected.

The connection point in the last joke are the words "after me" which is subject to misinterpretation or right interpretation.

Now let's take a creative solution example:
The people who invented the food can opening method got their idea from somewhere completely unrelated, or at least seem unrelated.

 They imitated the "opening" of a banana

Here the connection point is the word “open”.
We have an unsolved problem: A can needs to be opened.
We know a seemingly unrelated solved problem: We know how to "open" a banana. Why not open the can like a banana. Problem is solved.

The English writer William Plomer once said “Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected".

One profound similarity is the environment: when you tell a joke you must consider the time, the place and the people hearing the joke. You would not tell a joke in a funeral, nor tell a stereotype joke to people affected by the stereotype. Also, a creative idea has its time, place, and people.

Consider the following, a company called "Design that Matter" knew that millions of children in the developing world die each year because they we are born in a place that lack new born incubators. Buying incubators from the market and shipping them there is not a feasible solution because they are very expensive and if it breaks there is no one who can fix it. In one particular area,  they asked a "connection" question? What do these people have in abundance? What have they solved already?
They noticed that there are many Toyota Forerunner everywhere and it seems that these people have the spare parts and the skills to maintain these cars running. So they designed incubators completely from that car spare parts. Problem is solved and millions of children are saved.

Einstein famously said that "a problem cannot be solved in the same mindset that created them". You know now what he meant. You have got to look for seemingly unrelated connection.

Consider how David's mother used what she knew to solve her son's challenge in the following joke:

 So David Is finally engaged, and is excited to show off his new bride:

 “Ma”, he said to his Mother, “I’m going to bring home three girls and I want you to guess which one is my fiancé.”

 Later, David walks in the door with three girls following behind him.

“It’s that one”, said his mother.

 without blinking an eye.

 David shouted “how in the world did you know it was her?”

She said: I just don’t like her.

David's mother knew that mother in law don't usually like their son’s wife so she picked the one she didn't like.

In conclusion humor and creativity have the same structure, environment and require a connection between two meanings. That's why I think they are just two faces of one coin.

On being a Toastmaster

The last time I attended a Toastmasters club meeting, a fellow toastmaster asked a question:

Why are we here in toastmasters? 

He then answered that we are here to improve our communication and leadership skills.

Since I am interested in philosophy and psychology, I thought his answer wasn’t sufficient. Despite that it is the right answer because that was what toastmasters program is intended to do.

Therefore, I will now tell you, why I go to toastmasters club meetings by answering another question: why do we do anything at all?

Twenty four hundred years ago Aristotle said:
"Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life; it is the whole aim and the end of human existence”.

Although people may pursue money, fame, social status and everything else, they do it because they believe that will make happy. Afterlife believers, including myself, believe that our aim is to obtain an eternal happiness, a type of happiness that transcends this life to the afterlife.

In the other hand, lack of happiness can lead people to lose their minds, commit crimes and end their own lives. Thus, your happiness is a serious matter and whether you know it or not, you are driving yourself crazy to put a smile on your face. Do you know how to obtain happiness or are merely stumbling on it every now and then?

A lot has been said about happiness, and you will hear it defined differently from different people. Some think that happiness is financial success but we have heard of some wealthy successful people end up using drugs, taking depression bills, or committing suicide.

Others believe that happiness is contentment and we hear them saying something like "happiness is not getting what you want, but wanting what you already have". This is Nonsense because there is a thin line between being content and being complacent and your complacency could stop you from becoming the person you want to be and when you are old, you will reflect sadly of what you could’ve been.

Me: OH Aristotle, it has been 2400 years and we don't seem like we are any closer to understand the purpose of life. Can you help us?

Aristotle: Yes my dear, Happiness is the perfection of human nature.

Me: Perfection of human nature: What does that even mean?

In my opinion, there is one person who had an excellent theory of human nature and thus knew happiness well to articulate Aristotle definition of happiness: that is the psychologist Abraham Maslow. Maslow said that inside each one of us, an essential biological inner natural that’s intrinsic, given, and in a certain limited sense unchangeable. He summarized his idea in a theory famously known as the hierarchy of needs.

As human beings there are five levels of needs that at every moment of time we are trying to fulfill one or more. At the bottom of this hierarchy there are our physiological needs: the need to breath, eat, drink, sleep and anything related to our bodies and they come as the highest priority for us to fulfill.

Then there are safety needs: where we seek employment, protection, and stability.

The next level is the social needs: where we begin to feel the need to belong, the need for friends, a lover, and a community.

The forth level is the need for self-respect and self-esteem: this level involves the need for the respect of others the need of status, fame, appreciation and recognition. This level also involves the need for self-respect by having feelings as confidence, sense of achievement, independence and freedom.

The final level of the hierarchy of needs is the level of self-actualization where we try to fulfill every potential to become our ultimate-self. This is our essential inner nature and perfecting it is what Aristotle thought of happiness.

We live in the age of the upper two levels: the level of self-esteem and self-actualization. Therefore, If we were starving to death, or in an unsafe environment, or we don’t belong to a community. We wouldn’t be in toastmasters and we would be fighting to get our highest priority needs.

We attend toastmasters meeting to get the respect of others and ourselves and to become the best we can be.

In conclusion, happiness is driving our lives like we drive our cars, taking us places and making us do what we do at every moment of time.

Creativity is a joke

Nowadays, whatever you read or look at, you would find the word creativity mentioned. I think that the word "creativity" is one of the most overused words out there to the extent that the word creativity has turned into a cliché just like "think outside the box" and "think different" have become. Everybody talks about creativity not only because it is an important topic but also because of human ego. Everybody wants to think of himself or herself as creative person including myself, Come on admit it, you do too.  Here I am jumping on the bandwagon and sharing my view on creativity.

So What’s the fuss all about?

The reason why creativity is important is because we live in the conceptual age as Daniel Pink calls this age in his great book "A Whole New Mind". It is no longer enough for a product to do the job. Therefore, mobile phones must be slick and neat; cars must be monster-like and hand made, and everything else needs creativity to be sold to people and to be sold to people it needs to touch or shock our senses. This is where creativity overlaps with humor. I believe that creative people must be funny or have a sense of humor. 

What do you think Einstein?

I think he agrees.

Why humor is part of creativity?

First, Read the following joke:

Two elderly men talking to each other, the first guy said moaning: Man, I am 83 years old, and my whole body hurt. How about you?

I feel great, I feel like I was just born.

The other guy furiously says: How #$%$# come?

The other guy says: I have no teeth, I have no hair and best of all, I just wet my pants. 

If you analyze the joke you can realize very quickly that it starts with something we are all familiar with otherwise we wouldn't be able to know what the funny part that's coming next is all about. Then, a buildup was given before a epiphany is reached with the punch line. The punch line is something that you didn’t expect and it has somewhat a connection with something totally new or forgotten. Now ponder the next philosophical question: If a funny joke is never heard, is it still funny? I don't know if an unheard joke is funny or not but a funny joke must be heard and laughed at. Finally, after the joke is heard many times it loses its humor and dies.

Now let’s examine creative thinking process, usually we would be working on an existing problem or a situation that needs improvement. We would mix and try different things until the “aha” moments comes and a connection is made. When a product or a solution is presented to people just like joke, you would get "That’s interesting" or "a smile" reaction. 

Another important similarity to consider is the product or the solution time, if iPad existed 20 years ago it would've been a complete failure because its time hadn't come. Also, a joke must be told in a right time and you mustn't tell a joke in a funeral  for example or else you will share the grave with the deceased.

So in a conclusion.. If you want to be creative you need to have a sense of humor and to have a sense of humor you must have a playful mind and look for connections where it is least expected.

We Wish You a Pleasant Plight

Few days ago I was watching a Youtube video of a young Saudi engineer who was addressing a distinguished audience at the lately established King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He spoke about his dream and gave an excellent heart-touching speech and to make it even better he used Martian Luther King's famous words "I have a dream". His dream, as a proud Saudi, is that Saudi Arabia be ahead of the world and leads it in technology, research, and science. As a Saudi my self, I admired that engineer ambition and determination to change the world starting from his own country.

As I write this topic though I am in Ad Dammam airport waiting for my domestic flight to Madinah which was scheduled to take off two hour earlier with no clue or a word from anyone from the authorities about how long we are going to wait and why the flight is delayed. (The flight was delayed for 6 hours and we had to cancel our trip)

This is just one of the nightmares many of us face and at this time I don't have ambitious dreams, I just want to wake up from this nightmare and all the other that keep repeating since as long as I can remember. The most repeating nightmare we see everyday is on the streets while we are driving along with reckless drivers endangering our lives and theirs. What's troubling about this is the fact that these incidents keeps repeating and this indicates trouble for the future of our country because these nightmares are the results of malfunction of the country system.


Before our dreams can come to reality, we must prevent our nightmares from coming to reality. To leave Nightmare Land and go to Dream Land, there are few facts that we need to confront:

WE ARE in Nightmare Land. This simple truth is overlooked by many people because they are too optimistic and want to skip all the hard work of building the right environment for change. I am not pessimistic about the future but I believe we must not see the glass half full nor half empty. We need to see it half full AND half empty because being truthful to ourselves is the starting point.

Every thing lies on Leadership leaders in every organization must exemplify true leadership. Leaders must cast the vision and lead to the vision, and work the vision. This fact is too critical because without a vision we are headed to nowhere and direction to somewhere worth going is more important than speed. Leaders must fully understand that they are leading the organization's most valuable asset, that is people. People is what make an organization what it is and it is the leaders' responsibility to make these people great for the organization to be great.

Greatness is not a destination greatness is a process, a way of life, that is being shared by the majority. We can't be great with few individuals wining the noble prize for instant. We can't be great with a single dead. We are only great by moving from good to better all the time. This process of continuous change is a huge challenge. It is flight that usually turn into a daunting plight but the latter state is what makes it worth traveling.

As a country and individuals we ought to start the journey to our greatness, our countries need everyone of us greatness for it to be great.


With that I leave you, not wishing you a "pleasant" plight.

The Enemy Within

After the eruption of the latest revolutions in the Middle East, the world has been witnessing the honorable and the disgraceful, the courageous and the vicious, the good and the evil. As human we can feel others' joy, but we feel their pain more. As I watched and read about the people who were killed, injured, and tortured during this critical time, all I could think about is why? What would spur a person to kill or harm another human being especially people who have a lot in common? Why overlook what bring them closer and scrutinize for differences that set them apart?

Differences lump people in different categories; person A is an Arab, person B is English, Person C is a Muslim, and so on. Differences are not the problem,the world would be so boring if we were all from the same sect, but the problem is how people with power exploit differences to commit perversions. Do people have a choice in these differences? For instance, I have no choice of being an Arab as well as many other descriptions related to me. Sadly, minorities all over the world are suffering from mistreatment, discrimination, and harm for nothing but they way they were born and raised.

Albeit that most of people are dualist, believing in a body and a soul, they certainly do not behave per that conviction. Viewing other human being as soul rather than physical body shall compel us to be fair and good with him or her regardless of color, language, origin, social standing, and all other traits. Even if we omit the argument of the soul, simple physical perspective of putting ourselves in others’ shoes and judging from that standpoint shall make the world a better place.

Understanding others' needs and feelings is humans' specialty that can make us more empathic and kind people. Some people tend to be very empathic to the extent of feeling animals' pain and decide to be veterinarians. But sympathy and understanding requires reaching out to “different” people and celebrate their differences therefore turning “hot buttons” into chuckling spots.

People who do evil deeds are sometime described as animals and that is really unfair to animals. Even the most voracious predators are not described as evil because their motives to kill matter unlike humans whose perversions are irrational. What could be a worst irrational example than discriminating against women for being women! Or black for being black!

Rationality is another human specialty and failing to use our mind rationally especially during crisis make humans worst than animals that instinctively lack the thinking capacity. This is why we do not condemned animals for killing other animals. Thus, Humans are by far more dangerous to themselves and to other creatures than any other threatening weapon or disease as Psychologies Carl Jung said “The only thing we have to fear on the planet is man”.

Finally, Although our desires and thinking might fail us, our good and sincere "proactive" emotions can save the world. We have to believe we are loving to give love when needed, believe we are kind to be kind when needed, believe we are forgiving to forgive when mistreated, and most importantly we have to believe in saving humanity a person at a time from the enemy within.

The Power of your Conscious Mind

Self help gurus emphasize the importance of the subconscious mind capacities in our lives. The basic idea to use our subconscious is that we can make our thoughts (positive or negative) a reality by holding them in our mind long enough until they manifest around us. Nobody denies nor belittles the importance of the subconscious; In fact our subconscious make us who we are and it is the part that keeps us alive by controlling breathing and heart beat. Psychologist Paul Bloom answers "why do we have a subconscious?" by saying that this is not the best way to look at mental life as most of what we do is subconscious. The question we should be asking is "why do have that small part of mental life called consciousness since it occupies a smaller portion of our brain? We are immersed in our own routines to the point that we almost do not need our conscious mind at all. Maybe Leonardo Da Vinci can tell us more about us than what we can tell about ourselves. Leonardo once reflected sadly that the average human: looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of fragrance, and talks without thinking. Although our subconscious is vital for us to be alive, our conscious mind has what we live for. In the following points I will address the importance of reviving our conscious mind in relation to five subjects:

Creativity:
Design firm IDEO's General Manager Tom Kelley and author of The Art of Innovation, spoke of his favorite trait of an innovator which he calls "Thinking like a Traveler". When people travel aboard, their brain is "turned on" and they notice small details that locals don't usually notice. That means that we are currently surrounded by details that we are not noticing. Tom Kelley gives a beautifully metaphor to expose us to this truth: "I don't know who discovered water, but I am sure it is not a fish". Therefore, we can be more creative by simply turn on our conscious mind. A great tool for this trait is to log your thoughts and ideas in notebook. By doing so, you are consciously looking around for ‘something’ and eventually you will find it. Ponder this question: What kind of a world would we be in right now if Isaac Newton did not notice the apple fall of the tree?

Health:
Stress is a major factor of many health problems as it sabotages the immune system. Luckily, meditation and exercising come to our rescue. First, let’s take meditation, what is it? Meditation is a practice in which the practitioner self-induces a mode of consciousness in order to relax. Some common meditation exercises are: concentrating the mind on a particular part of our body, creating a sound such as "om" and "ah", and practicing deep breathing. Once more, focusing your mind on doing nothing or your daily activities can make you healthier person. In fact concentration can turn a usual activity into a stress relieve exercise. A study that was done by Harvard University shows that if you remind yourself of the invisible exercises that you do such as shopping, taking a shower, or even eating can improve your heath by only realizing that you are performing that exercise.

Success:
I have never read a self-help book about success that does not accentuate the significance of writing your goals. When it comes to personal success, setting and accomplishing small goals that lead to an ultimate goal is the road map to success. Goals must be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timed). This process of setting goals, measuring, evaluating, and timing them is another conscious exercise that shall be carried out with a pen and paper to confronting your subconscious self and giving it a reality check.

Diet:
One of the most successful methods to lose weight is counting the calories you consume daily by keeping a diet journal. By doing so, you stay conscious of your food consumption and know exactly when to stop eating. Another proof of the importance of conscious eating is the fact that people consume more when they are distracted by, for instance, watching TV. One local custom that hinders our control of food consumption is "group eating", we sit on the same dish and eat, chat, and have fun which leads us to eat more than what we need.

Happiness:
I would like to share a story I once read that shall illustrate this point:
a happy aged woman was asked by a young girl of her secret of happiness.
"My dear," she said, "I keep a Pleasure Book."
"A what?"
"A Pleasure Book. Long ago I learned that there is no day so dark and gloomy that it does not contain some ray of light, and I have made it one business of my life to write down the little things which mean so much to a woman. I have a book marked for every day. It has the little things: the new gown, the chat with a friend, the thoughtfulness of my husband, a flower, a book, a walk in the field, a letter, a concert, or a drive. It all goes into my Pleasure Book, and, when I am inclined to complain, I read a few pages to see what a happy, blessed woman I am. You may see my treasures if you will."
"Slowly the stubborn, discontented girl turned over the book reading a little here and there.
One day's entries were: "Had a pleasant letter from mother. Saw a beautiful lily in a window. Found the pin I thought I had lost. Saw such a bright, happy girl on the street. Husband brought some roses in the evening."
"Have you found a pleasure for every day ?" the discontented girl asked.
"For every day," the low voice answered; "I had to make my theory come true, you know."
The young girl ought to have stopped there, but did not; and she found that page where it was written:
"He died with his hand in mine, and my name upon his lips."


Just as our subconscious is vital, having an employed conscious mind is crucial to our lives. The good news is that your conscious mind is under your command, unlike the subconscious that you have no immediate control of, the conscious mind mostly can be immediately controlled using a pen and paper.
So decide to be conscious and bring your conscious mind to consciousness.

The Deaf Genie

Few days ago I was listening for the umpteenth time to a friend of mine complains about losing a great amount of money in the stock market and how he intends to recover from his lost. His idea to recover was simply doing the same exact things that got him where he is now. He did not literally say that but that's what his words translate to.

Albert Einstein called this insanity, he famously said that Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Self-help guru Brain Tracy explained it as follows "Cause and Effect Law:" "Everything happens for a reason. For every cause there is an effect, and for every effect, whether you know it or not, there is a specific cause or causes. There are no accidents".

Although I wouldn't call my friend's behaviour "insanity", and I won't argue with Einstein neither but I think that when we make a mistake our pride and eagerness to succeed make us fail to reflect on what happens to us. We miss the big picture and then stop looking for the right reasons. We blame luck, other people,,, maybe everything but ourselves.

I truly believe that our outer world, except things that are out of our control, is just a REFLECTION of our inner world. Therefore, if your outer world is not full of happiness, kindness, or success as you wish then you may want to ask yourself: what have you done to make it the way you want it. Consider the following:

1- Studies have proven that people who give are happier than those who receive. This giving does not necessarily have to be money, it can be a simply act of a kindness, such as a smile. The more you smile the happier you feel. Studies have also shown that happiness and smiling goes both ways. Meaning, not only when you are happy you smile but also If you smile you will feel happier. Simply, smile to life and surely life will smile back at you.

2- In Love, Love can only be taken by being given. Only when you are a loving person that you become lovable and receive a true love in return.

3-In financial independence, money can be attained when you put your money, hard work, and time on the line and risk losing.

Therefore, if you are not getting enough, you are probably not giving enough neither. Life is like a deaf Genie, it cannot hear what you are asking but it can read a body language named Actions. When you don't get what you want, you must know that your actions lacked either direction or force, sometime even both. Step back and reflect your shortcomings. Gather your strengths and make an action that cannot be mistaken.

Finally, when you have done your best and truly you best and didn’t get what you wished. Remember that Genies give three wishes at a time.

Form is everything

Few weeks ago, I was surfing the net when I saw an article titled "how to peel a banana!!" The article talks about how the way most people peel a banana is not the "right" way of doing it. At first, I thought who cares? So I googled "how peel banana" and google's search listed over two million websites. Certainly, not all of them explain how to peel a banana but even if 1% of them, that's 20,000 pages, talk about the subject I would say that this subject is over-discussed. That number spurred my curiously and I decided to go to Youtube and watch how it is being done right. To my utter surprised, there is indeed a way to peel a banana easier and it is the same way monkeys do it. That reminded me of a saying I always say "Form Is Everything". Form: they way we go about doing any activity is a very important subject. Every day we undertake different activates, some we do consciously and some others unconsciously. For instance, we consciously choose what to wear in the morning. In the other hand, putting the cloths on is an unconscious act. We do not give much thought to how we are going to put on a shirt because it is "straight-forward", just like peeling a banana. This tells us that the more we do something, the less thoughts we put into it simply because it has been long-practiced and has become a second-nature. There is nothing wrong with second nature habits until we realize we were doing it wrong. The way we do a lot of our straight-forward everyday things affect our lives. Let's take couple of example:
- Eating: do you think about how you are going to chew food? Unlikely. The fact is, the slower we chew food the better. By chewing food slowly, we feel full faster thus lose weight, we get the most out of the food ingredients, and we enjoy the food more.
- Sitting: the subject of how to sit correctly is rapidly discussed because it is very important for our body.
- Sleeping: How long and how to lay down to sleep is another important example.
- Washing your hands: washing your hand especially in the public bathrooms is very critical to your health and learning how it is done right is a must.
The list goes on and on. These activities are straight-forward and that lead us to ignore performing them in their right form. Since form is that important,the question is, how to perform "almost" everything "formly".

• Acknowledging the activity. Since most of what we do daily has become second nature, acknowledging that we are doing something is the first step.
• Learn or relearn the fundamentals slowly. When I was learning how to type a lot of emphasis was put on accuracy rather than speed. This is applicable to everything else, learning the basic is very critical step and rushing to results gets you nothing.
• Practice, Practice and Practice until it become second nature.

Imagine doing everything in its right form, you will be the best person you can be and that's why form is everything.

Doing the Right thing

On my way to work with my friend who was driving, we reached a traffic jam near a traffic light. We were emerging from a turn into the main road where my friend was supposed to yield for coming cars. My friend had two right choices and a wrong one. He had to either wait for the traffic light to turn green or wait for all cars to pass and then slowly emerge into the main road, both choices required waiting. His last choice, which happened to be his first to pick, was simply drive into traffic, overtake coming cars, and add up to the traffic jam as everybody else coming from the same side. When asked why, “you wouldn’t get anywhere if you don’t drive like “them””, he said. My friend overlooked an important fact that he also became one of “them”.

Do we need to justify doing the right thing?
Why can’t we just do “right” for being right and not do “wrong” for simply being wrong?
Why do we justify wrong-doing and ignore right?

Maybe because of it’s the norms, maybe because of them, maybe it is just “us”.

Despite all the reasons to undertake a wrong deed, one particular reason stands out from the rest, Lack of Character. Doing the right thing for being the right thing to do requires strong character. A character that is always consistent with what you would advice or wish other to do. How can you get this kind of character? Follow these six steps to help you obtain that strong character:
1- Acknowledge right from wrong: The first step to do the right thing is to actually know right from wrong. Some people do many wrong things and they are so oblivious to it due to bad habit or being around people who do the same things till that habit becomes natural. To acknowledge right from wrong, you must be conscious of what you do by observing your actions. If you forget or overlook a bad habit have someone close to you remind you when you do it.
2- Develop the mental power to change. This can be done by using the power of imagination. Imagine yourself as if you were your own child. Would you accept your child to do what you are about to do? Would you accept him/her smoking? Driving recklessly? Throwing trash on the street?
3- Being rational. After you start to be conscious of your actions you will get into states of mind when your thoughts battle with your emotions. When you are such battles, staying in control of your emotions is very difficult task. Ask yourself why? Why am I feeling what I am feeling? Are my feelings justifiable? if the your actions might harm others, put yourself in others’ shoes and ask yourself: how would I feel if ‘this” was done to me?
4- Just Do it. Control your emotion mechanically. Forcing yourself to do what you think is right and it is rather than what you feel is right and it is not. This will habituate you to right-doing.
5- Commit to “Right”. Any type of commitment takes up time and energy and involved attachment. You must not expect to change in one day, don’t take this task lightly, and make the right environment for change. For example, you can force yourself to quit smoking by making a promise to a friend that you will quit by a certain date if not you will give him/her a dear item that you own. In short, come up with a strategy for commitment whatever suits you.
6- Help your friends, family, and coworkers to change as well. If we start a chain of change, our society will be full of “us” and less of “them”. This will help you stay in the right track. Habits are contagious; what people around you do, you are most likely going to do or at least try. In the other hand, we all have our weak moments and to stay strong we need each other support and encouragements.

Remember being right makes you part of the solution not the problem better yet you will make your world a better world.

Now go, do the right thing.