How do rules inspire creativity?

I was sitting at a restaurant today and there was a family sitting next to me. The booths are connected, and the family has one child who must have been around 3 or 4 years of age.

Children at this age are curious. Half way through dining the child wanted to explore. Increasingly we are becoming more and more unstable to a degree in which our attention span is abridged. As startling as this may be, I would go as far as to ask whether our attention span and a child’s attention span is homogeneous?

What is affecting our attention span?

According to Martin Lindstrom in his book Small Data, technology is increasing our need for constant change and novelty. Therefore, we cannot sit still and do nothing when our other option is to keep occupied with constantdistraction and information consumption.

So what does this have to do with children?

I didn’t see this child exposed to technology, although it is not uncommon for parents to distract children with tablets, or Ipads that entertain them with games and shows.

What I found curious was not how the child was being parented, although I found it interesting that the father educated the child but stating that there is an invisible boundary between our booth and the booth they were sitting at.

This boundary cannot be crossed.

Mannerism is one thing, an assumption is another, yet taking away the privilege of creativity is something I would like to explore here.

I don’t have children so this is simply coming from a third person perspective. I do have nephews and I have had the pleasure of having that feeling of ownership and responsibility for them in public settings.

Don’t get me wrong by any means, just to clarify, when I say ownership I do not mean that I own their body, minds, or souls, I mean that I am responsible for their actions and my own in a given situation. The ownership is more in the context rather than the literal meaning.

When children get silly we feel the pressure of it reflecting negatively on us. Did we raise them wrong according to social standards? What are the social standards for children? Are they suppose to behave like dogs and listen to commands that we bark at them?

Come finish over here https://karasingroup.com/2016/09/30/rules-inspire-creativity/

How do you decide which is your favorite?

What is your favorite color? How about your favorite song? book? Or person?

How do you decide which is your favorite? Better yet, why did you decide this?

I can assure you that it wasn’t a deliberate decision at first. Exposure to certain elements is a key to things becoming favorite. Could it be the lack of exposure that makes things more wanted? This is also possible.

Have you ever felt that not having something, you wanted that thing that much more? However, for this, you need to know about what you don’t have.

I have always loved the color green, to justify this, everything is green in my world; the grass, trees, money, etc. Number 2, because everything happens to come in pairs; two eyes, legs, sides of a coin etc. Looking at this one can assume that this comes from an analytical perspective.

Although we must consider imagination to liking things. Imagining the world that is the way that you want it to be rather than the way it is.

How about a favorite song, person, or dish? I can tell you something about yourself without having met you.

What used to be your favorite when you were a child is not your favorite anymore. So why do our preferences change?

Can it be exposure to new things when we grow up?

We become tired of the same things over time especially when...

You know what to do, come finish over here https://karasingroup.com/2016/09/28/how-do-you-decide-which-is-your-favorite/

An accidental Vegas experiment

You can’t give things away. I am not talking about the internet; the internet is free for all. The context does matter when wanting to give.

Recently I travelled to Las Vegas, Nevada, if you have been there then you will know what I am talking about and if you haven’t then you will understand by the end of this post.

Vegas is historically known for its implicit 24/7 action. However, what is usually left out are the number of immigrants that are panhandling, performing, and soliciting certain merchandise on the numerous tourists that enter the city daily in swarms.

My friend’s and I were staying at Caesars Palace. Famously known for its shopping experience. The 24 hours that we were there we decided to stroll down the boulevard, passing various casinos that stretch a mile long.

On this especially hot day for someone who comes from a colder climate actually turns out to be an average day of 35 Celsius as told by the locals. The tourist mentality provoked my friend to become disillusioned and interested in possession that he wouldn’t purchase locally.

“Wonder presents too many meanings for the mind to process all at once. You can’t grasp it. It’s unthinkable.” Kirby Farrel Ph.D.

A man in his early thirties, possibly could have  come finish it over here, https://karasingroup.com/2016/09/26/accidental-vegas-experiment/

Why I think birthday's are trivial

How would you feel if the person you been with for 2 years forgot it was your birthday?

Consider this scenario;

She says “Tomorrow you will be turning 25, or 26…”

He says “Tomorrow, 25 or 26?”

She says “Wait, isn’t it tomorrow?”

He says “Not tomorrow.”

What would your reaction be on either side here?

If you are the female would you feel incongruous? If you were the male would you feel exasperated?

One of my more popular posts has been about gift giving and how you should feel special every day and not once a year. The point is that you should most certainly not get bent out of shape if the person that knows you the most, forgets something so trivial.

Not everyone feels this way. Some people hold a high standard and for some reason the day you are born and brought into this ecosystem you possess this stature over everyone else around you.

You need recognition and validation that on the day you are born you are more special than the rest of us. Self-importance can be a double-edged sword.

So what I would like to do here is examine why people, in general, forget important dates. Then I want to contradict myself and explain how valuable it is for business to remember important dates. Of course, we will conclude with an important lesson.

Before I begin I just want to dissect the birthday notion. Okay, I get it, you entered this world from your mother’s womb, what a miracle that was that you lived through one of the most traumatic experiences an average woman will have in a developed world.

You are officially a part of this messed up society. Now you can contribute to our adage waste, consumption, and you can help us further destroy our habitat. You will grow up, learn through experiences as well as your failures.

Even if you do your best to consume less, there is no circumventing your impact.

You will make such a small impact that the ripple effect you create is like a stone being thrown in a vast ocean. Depends on the context, you will be selfish and you will want what’s best for you. You will either move away from pain or go towards pleasure. It’s all about you all the time.

Whether you are doing selfless acts you still are truly being selfish because it is your inner satisfaction that you're nourishing.

You expect everyone to know, care and think about you every year on this day. Yet you wake up feeling the same as you did the day before and the day before that.

You are no different, actually let me rephrase that, you are different every day, not just once a year. Every hour that goes by you is not the same person as you were the hour before that.

The difference lies in the time that you are absorbed in, the experience of which you gained and the actions of which you delivered upon.

It seems I have moved far away from where I started.

Professor Jostein Holmen, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, led a study, in this excerpt from psychology today he said;

“Study shows that people who are more highly educated forget less than those with less education. People who suffer from anxiety or depression forget more than other people do. This is true for people of both sexes.”

There are various factors for forgetting: Besides any cognitive disabilities, we tend to forget things when we are in a high arousal emotional state. Meaning that that your attention is limited. When something is stimulating your mind you lose track of anything that is not relevant.

You are an efficient mechanism at completing the task you set out to complete, on the other hand, you are inefficient at remembering trivial things, one of those things can be a birthdate.

Imagine this scenario: You are working on multiple projects; your boss is holding you accountable to all of them. If those projects aren’t completed then your job could be in jeopardy, and you just found out your child has been struck with a critical illness. Does anything else matter at this point?

Birthdays, unlike other days, are an excuse for people to get together and celebrate something that the birthday person might not even want to. Social norms direct us to this behaviour otherwise we become outcasts.

If you actually think about it, on birthdays we celebrate the person who is actually the most selfish and vain. Unless they came out with a breakthrough experiment that will impact other people’s lives.

That leads us to this question; What should we celebrate?

My birthday is a motive to bring together my friends and family and have them contribute in a charitable way. I use my birthday as leverage because otherwise people are too busy in their lives to participate in events that are for a good cause unless the cause absolutely resonates with the contributors.

And I get it. No one is indebted/obligated to give, and to think that people are is ignorance.

I will wrap it up quickly because I have a birthday to attend to, oh so vain of me I know right.

So why is this important in business? Presume you get a call from a local business that you seldom deal with. Not to sell you something, but to congratulate you on this ‘special day’, that’s it. Just a simple “happy birthday, hope you have a very special day.”

Do you think that you would mention this to your circle of friends or family? That is the point here, to be remarkable business must remember important dates. For business to be talked about, businesses have to do things that other businesses’ do not.

Now if everyone started doing this then it becomes a social norm and the business actually loses merit if they don’t do this according to the standard that is said, but I think this conversation is for another time.

Remembering employee’s birthday’s is that social norm. How unvalued and unappreciated would you feel as an employee if your boss forgot it was your ‘special day’.

I don’t see the big deal of it myself, but that’s just me. I challenge the status quo, and I challenge you to do the same.

However, going back to the social norm, it is a must for businesses to stand out.

I didn’t get a chance to get into how we feel compelled to celebrate the birth of a nation or a historical figure. God forbid we don’t participate. I will have to end this post here, I do want to give you something too takeaway besides all the hidden gems throughout this post and that is:

Making an impact can seem daunting, it all starts from within. Change yourself, your mindset, and the whole world changes.

I’ll leave you with that thought. Thank you for reading this post, share, share, share.

Originally published in Karasingroup.com

To be continued….

Image copyright by wonderopolis.org

Our individualistic choices have an impact on others

Why do I care about other people’s health?

There are a simple answer and a very complex one that I want to elaborate on.

The simple answer is that; collectively we are better.

Okay, so that’s obvious, what is not so obvious is that caring about other people is not something that comes naturally to many. We care about what people think, yet we don’t care about people in general.

If you read my last post, you would have understood that we actually want people to be misfortunate because that gives us stature; superiority.

There has been a study conducted on chimps; Chimps were given orange juice, something they valued. For chimp’s orange juice is like money to humans. They paid in orange juice to watch pictures of their peers who were in higher stature than them and they wanted the payment to see pictures of primates that were in lower stature than them.

Now, we can argue that we have individual tendencies. Each and every one of us behaves and thinks differently from one another. Sure some people are more giving than others and vice versa.

I was sitting in front of Shoppers, it is a kind of supermarket where you find household items as well you can grab food and prescription items. I noticed an overweight man coming out of his vehicle and started walking towards the store.

In my mind at that time I was thinking; what can I do to help this man?

Why did this thought come to mind? Is it my ego that thinks; if I help someone that I would be seen as a better person? Why would I automatically assume that this man needed help, to begin with? Could it be genetics? Is it social norms that determine what it means to be overweight?

I have written about exercise and all the benefits of exercise.

In my heart, I genuinely wanted to help. Maybe put this man on a .... Over here come finish Karasingroup.com Just click on the link hint~ Karasin group

The things you need to know about challenge

Do you get motivated when you are being challenged? Do you love proving yourself as worthy to society? What is it about engaging in a competition that moves you? When money is at stake, why does the challenge seem more daunting?

If you are like me and you love to get competitive then these questions will apply to you, if you are not competitive these questions will apply to you, and if you know someone who is competitive, guess what? These questions will apply to you.

I always begin my posts defining the concept, in this case I will begin by answering the questions first.

Four components are the result of being motivated to enter a challenge; Likelihood, social capital, development, and purpose. This may seem like common sense however I will illustrate the concepts.

When someone challenges you to a race;

First, you examine whether you have a likely chance of winning. There is no point of running a race if there is no chance of winning, therefore this will decrease the likelihood of even entering the challenge. However, a slight chance of winning will increase that motivation.

Second, upon entering this challenge you observe the possibility of the gains. This can be anything from recognition, being liked by your fellow peers, or simply feeling inferior to your opponent.

Third, development is not something ..... Karasingroup.com come finish over here you will enjoy the rest of this post. If you don't you can always leave me a comment and let me know what you didn't or did enjoy about it.

What does it mean being self aware?

What is self awareness? Can self awareness be trained? Does self awareness make oneself remarkable? What steps can one take to become self aware?

You have heard me advocate self awareness through various posts. In fact, it is one of the strongest aspects which a leader should posses. The paradox is; until about a year ago I noticed I was lacking this trait, only then I recognized I was actually constructing this. How did this happen? Why did this happen? How has it improved my life?

All great questions to consider on such a deep topic. You may be wondering what is so important about self awareness. Those of you who are asking that are not self aware or have not found value in self awareness.

First let’s examine what self awareness is. According to Wikipedia; self awareness is the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals. It is not the same thing as consciousness, the difference is in your awareness of being aware of the environment and others.

Okay, maybe that is a bit deep so let me deconstruct that for you.

Being self aware means that you can restrain yourself before you react to any situation. It means you can step aside and question what is actually happening. Having an inner dialogue about the situation.

Self awareness is understanding how others feel, and how your actions impact everyone and everything around you. It is reciprocating a kiss to someone and being aware what the other person likes. Knowing why your grateful for the things your grateful for. Understanding the root to your happiness, and how to replicate it.

Creating the right environmental conditions in which you are most productive.

I get cranky if I don’t eat something for a few hours. My best and most productive time is about 30-45 minutes after I eat something.

Self awareness is finding the connectedness between your habits and their results. Knowing the amount of sleep you need to be well rested and effective the next day

Your limitations and possibilities. Studying the sub context of a current situation.

When I walked into Lush yesterday, a soap company, I asked the store clerk why two bottles of the same kind of soap were a shade different color. She hastily made the assumption that one of the bottles had more of a particular ingredient. I asked her why she thought that.

She looked at me in awe, and couldn’t give me a reason. She said “I never even thought to ask why.”

From that experience I took away three lessons:

1)    When someone makes a claim about something first ask yourself if you agree or disagree with it. Then ask why, was it because they hold an authoritative or friendly position, or was it the power of suggestion or social influence at work?

2)    People make assumptions yet they don’t consider why they make them

3)    If there is truth behind what is said, whose truth is it?

As you can see here that taking into consideration the things you are observing everyday and questioning any assumptions you may have is one step towards become more in tune with yourself. That is what self awareness is primarily about.

I keep a daily learning journal. What do I mean by this? Everyday I write down timeless lessons that can serve me at any point in my life.

Everyday there is something that you will learn. This may sound like a total cliché. I promise you it is true. The only way to actually discover the lessons is if you are actively seeking them.

Okay, so that’s just a few examples of self awareness and how it has helped me, I am sure by now you are starting to get the picture as to what self awareness is and how it can serve you. Let’s see what others are saying about it.

Inc., Fast company, Forbes, Entrepreneur and many other prominent publications sensibly elucidate how important it is to have self awareness and not having it could mean the end of your career. In fact, people are said to be narcissist who lack self awareness.

“A real narcissist is dissociated from his or her true self.” Drs. Drew Pinsky and S. Mark Young.

In the article published in December 2001 in the Harvard Business Review written by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie Mckee titled Primal Leadership; The authors conclude that:

“Bringing them into awareness was a crucial step toward changing them. As they payed more attention to situations while listening to a colleague, coaching soccer, or talking on the phone to someone who was distraught- all became cues that stimulate someone to break old habits and try new responses.”

This excerpt from Inc. magazine, Ilya Pozin founder of Pluto.tv says:

“If you are never pushed to the point where your weaknesses are exposed, you won't ever have the opportunity to become stronger. Same goes with your ideas and plans. Instead of trying to lead others to support your answers and decisions, ask them to prove you wrong.”

Self awareness is one of the cornerstones for emotional intelligence, which will require a whole other topic of discussion, maybe two. EQ will prevail and will be more important or actually is becoming more important than IQ in todays business environment.

I am not perfect, I will never be perfect, news flash neither will you. But we can do our best to be great. Work on your self awareness and observe your life flourish.

How can you become more self aware?

Begin by asking yourself some questions:

How do you feel right at this very moment?

How would you feel if your best friend befriends someone you dislike?

In what condition or situation are you the happiest?

What are your strengths and weaknesses?

If there was one thing you could do for the rest of your life, what would that be, and why did you choose it?

Thank you for reading this post. I will be writing more about this topic because I feel there is more value I could give you. Until then, drop me a comment and let me know your point of view on self awareness.

To be continued….

Originally published in Karasingroup.com

Image copyright by keyword-suggestions.com

Orgin

How can you successfuly use profanity?

Language is fascinating. What is more fascinating is how certain words are misused and how our minds are confused through our conditioning.

I would like to think that a definition of a word can depend on my belief. This is true for the educated however, it seems that popular belief is more accurate for the average person.

This is not an attack on anyone who is not educated, neither am I saying that I am highly educated. Nor am I saying that you are average.

My purpose is to get you to think more in terms of context rather than the belief you have developed.

Let us take the word Fuck for instance. When you hear this word what comes to mind?

Let me help you with that; Aggression, anger, frustration, hate, difficulty and pain.

What if I told you that this word when used in the right context can be powerful?

How is this possible?

It can create an exaggeration for effect for the use of pleasure, apathy, greeting, innovation and surprise.

When over used it absolutely loses its value and effect.

Demolition, received it’s premier in the Toronto international film festival, was eye opening to how Jake Gyllenhaal lost his wife in a car crash and then later became obsessed to writing letters to a customer service department in the soda can machine dispensers.

A woman who worked in the department began writing him letters back, he later found out who she was and began a relationship with her. Upon meeting her teenage son, he witnessed ....

Finish the rest over here Let me know if you enjoyed the rest of the article by leaving a comment below.

Questions from a pragmatic entrepreneur

 

Have you ever faced the fear that you are not doing things fast enough?

That you are alone and you’re not good enough?

That you are not smart enough?

That your counter parts are ahead of you?

Does it make you feel ashamed/depressed/vulnerable that it is taking you so much longer to get to where they are?

How can you overcome this anxiety?

Would it help facing it head on?

How can you recognize that patience in its truest form is the right way to move forward?

What are you moving forward towards?

Do you look at people who are far behind you to make yourself feel better about where you are?

Do you get motivated and inspired by the people ahead of you?

Is it a race?

Who determines who is winning and who is losing?

Is it possible for the people ahead of you to fall behind?

How would that make you feel if they did?

Why would you wish that upon someone?

How do you know where you are and where you are suppose to be?

Are you suppose to be ... come here to finish Karasingroup.com and subscribe to receive a popular monthly post

Why should we care about recycling?

Do you think it is possible to not produce garbage?

I think anything is possible. It is interesting to see people say it is not possible. My opinion is that you need to get creative. People are led to believe it is not possible because it hasn’t been done. However, I think that we are able to recycle everything we use, eliminate everything that is not recyclable.

Can you go a year without buying stuff?

First one would have to define stuff. Is it material goods? If so I would say yes, you can. Is it consumable goods? If so I would argue no, unless you have a means of survival and you are skilled at raising your own food/water.

One way to not buy stuff is to share with others. We are becoming increasingly a sharing economy, for example Air b and B for housing, Co-working for sharing work space, Task rabbit for sharing skills and talent, Crowd funding for raising capital collectively. Another way is to stock up on what you need.

If we violate that assumption, then I would argue it is possible to go a year with buying very minimal stuff. The argument will also have to hold its context. Meaning that it will matter where you are. For example, living in an area where you can grow vegetables all year long and raise cattle.

New stuff is exciting because it activates our reward center in our brain by releasing the dopamine chemicals, thus creating motivation to seek that reward. However, challenge also creates motivation. When challenged not to buy new stuff you are rewiring your brain to release dopamine creating the same effect.

Buying luxury or necessity? How can one avoid buying necessity?

“Competition helps individuals understand themselves better, as well they are ambitious, achievement oriented and dominant. There is always a downside to this as well, becoming hyper-competitive can lead to narcissism, self doubt, rage, and impulsive behaviour.” Adrian Furnham PhD.

Reducing the amount of work people have ... Come over here to finish, and remember to subscribe to receive the most popular post monthly.

How can you ignore reciprocity?

Helping people who have helped you is something we do thoughtlessly. We do this because we feel obligated to do so. Robert Cialdini describes in his book Influence that there are six tools for persuasion and one of them happens to be reciprocity.

“When you do a favor for people they are more compliant to do something back for you.” He goes on to say “naturally people don’t like letting other people down.”

Have you ever faced a situation were someone did a favor for you and when that person asked you to do something for them, you did so even though you did not want to, because you felt guilty?

Last week I faced this consequence and it was difficult for me to say no.

My friend works for a supplement store and he entered a competition to win products. The competition was based on who can sell the most multi-vitamins to win extra containers of protein.

What do I have against my friend winning protein containers? Nothing. What do I have against helping my friend sell multi-vitamins? Everything.

Two years ago I was very regiment with my vitamin intake. In fact, I believed in it so much that I was encouraging my sister and her children to take vitamins. I became very serious about the vitamins. So serious that I bought Vitamins A through Z.

I believed that taking vitamins would increase my health, vitality, and my strength.

You are probably thinking I am going to tell you how it had the opposite effect or how it has caused more harm than good. Fortunately, or unfortunately this is not where I am taking this post.

I stopped taking vitamins because I wasn’t sure if I was doing more harm than good to my body. Not knowing was enough for me to say no more.

Why was I against helping my friend even though he has done so many favors for me? He has saved me a ton of money in supplements from his store. He also told me he would give me a really good deal on the product that he was competing to win.

I was against helping him sell multi-vitamins because I didn’t believe in them myself.

How could you sell or promote something that you don’t believe? I can’t.

As much as I wanted to help my friend out because I felt obligated to, my values got the best of me.

Doing a disservice for others to have personal gain would be a selfish act.

Marshal Sahlins has a sound theory on generalized reciprocity that is selfless, “the exchange consists of pure something-for-nothing gifts.”

What he tells us is to give without expecting anything in return. Even though I did not help my friend out in his competition he did end up winning the contest.

Trust your judgement and never go against your values even when you feel compelled to return a favor.

Thank you for reading this post. Comment, like and share if you found value here.

To be continued….

Image copyright by azquotes.com

Apply these principles when conducting market research

What is marketing? Is it a form of advertising? Is traditional marketing dead?

Marketing according to Wikipedia is the communication between a company and the consumer audience. The purpose is to induce behavioral change in the audience.

Markets are the people who buy what you are selling. Marketing is the research and studies conducted on the audience preferences and advertising is the process of making your product or service known to your market.

Businesses have up words to 100 different market approach’s such as; cloud marketing, email marketing, alliance marketing, call to action marketing, push marketing, pull marketing and so on. I want to cover 3 elements I find relevant in most cases; Organic, paid, social.

Organic is something that is spread through word of mouth, shareable, likeable, and reachable. Paid is something that a third party/broker receives monetary compensation for reaching an audience. Social is something that you barter besides money to reach an audience.

Just as I thought traditional marketing is dead I was put in check when I met Riley from Chicago.

“What do your potential clients pay attention to? That’s where you should be advertising.”

Paying attention to detail is something that is over looked in the business world. When you think it is important to fret about product place and price you become narrow sighted and you forget the most important factor, that is; people.

People buy from you. People are your market. People share if they like what you are offering them. People barter to have your product/service.

The attention needs to be refocused on people, not on ‘sell product, make money.”

I made several mistakes when I entered the market space with my company.

First and foremost, I experienced every avenue of advertising; mail, door to door, radio, news paper, and even carrier pigeons. That last part was to see if your paying attention, and also to emphasize that I exhausted what I thought was all the resources available.

What was over looked here is not so much where I was advertising but how I was doing it, and most importantly why I was doing it. I understood my target audience, I wasn’t clear about my objective. This created chaos and loss of money.

The focus was on profit rather than turnover. I need you to pay attention to what I am going to say. Profit is a bi-product of the relationships you build with customers.

While exhausting the many options that I briefly explained above, my initial intentions were to ‘get the foot in the door’. While acquiring clients was my main concern, my actions were depicting a different message all together.

Make profit.

Despite the conventional view that the business has to make as much money as possible in as short amount of time as possible, this is contradictory to how business becomes dominant in the market.

Take Tesla Motors for example; Elon Musk wanted to revolutionize the way we live our lives by deploying environmentally safe vehicles. Production costs were higher than the actual value of the vehicles that were being sold.

Why did he choose to go into deficit? Because when you bring people value they become loyal to your brand. This is why finding used Tesla vehicles is not that simple.

How do you bring people value?

You do so by connecting and building relationships with them, becoming interested in what they are interested in.

Christopher Locke explains it best in his intuitive book Gonzo Marketing; “What drives common interest is interest not product.”  

Sounds tedious and extensive reaching every client and getting involved in their lives. That’s how most disruptive businesses become well, disruptive.

Riley works for an advertising agency. We met in Arizona this weekend and he has unlocked my perspective on traditional marketing. I became parochial about the traditional advertising approach that I deployed in my early days in the company because it didn’t seem to work.

I came to the realization when I was talking to Riley that

Come finish the rest over here, it's free karasingroup.com

Don't forget to subscribe

Why were you born human?

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a gold fish?

Would you recognise what water is? Or understand your environments (a bowl)?

I am someone who loves change, adventure and adversity. Seeing the same thing, and being in the same environment would drive me nuts.

However, if you don’t experience anything new, how would you know any different? You won’t.

We pursue life on the hope that we will experience something better. I don’t know anyone who goes to bed hoping that tomorrow will be the exact same as today.

What gets me going in the morning is knowing that the future is bright. That I will get to experience new things and that I will have a better day than I previously had.

I was reading Gary Vaynerchuk’s Ask GaryVee, amongst other valuable information, there was one piece of advice that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. He was asked a question; When are you the happiest? He replied; I am the happiest right now.

In this very moment, knowing that the future holds more happiness rather than looking back at the past and thinking that it couldn’t get any better.

I would consider him an optimist.

Are gold fish optimists?

They anticipate getting fed, a water change once in a while, and the safety of the bowl from predators.

They get to experience different exposure to the environment outside of the bowl everyday.

I was watching a viral video on Facebook about a young girl who said she would not eat animals because it was not nice.

Do gold fish have feelings?

They eat, they breathe, they .... you know what to do. Over here guys karasingroup.com and finish this post.

The utmost fundamental factor for improvement

I will keep this brief because I got a plane to catch.

What is a feedback loop?

Feedback according to the dictionary; outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a loop.

Think of your business or life as a system. Whenever you produce something out of that system, you will get a reaction back, thus the cause and effect. For every action, there will be a reaction.

Can this be either negative or positive? It is both.

There are several ways this happens; One way, is by direct feedback from another individual. Another way is indirect feedback from the environment.

This is a hypothetical situation:

Harry is a server at Jim’s Restaurant. He collects the food order from his table and returns back with the wrong order. The direct feedback would be for the customer to tell Harry that his order was wrong, the indirect feedback would be for the customer to never return and leave a bad review online about the service.

How does a feedback loop help us?

We absolutely love to be in control, I know I do. However, we all know that we can only control our own actions (internal) rather than the actions that are happening around us (external). The feedback loop is important in our everyday life and business because this is a way to deploy control.

How? By listening and paying attention.

“When you are coming out with a product the best thing you can do is market it at its early development stages. That way you can get immediate feedback and adjust the product to fit the market.” Ryan Holiday

Whether you create a product or service or you do something for your sibling or your wife, pay attention to their reaction. The ‘market’ is always right. The end user will either like what you are offering or hate it.

When someone hates what you are putting out, it is completely your fault. You weren’t paying attention to what they want. It is possible that they are not educated about what you are offering. It is still your fault.

Soon as someone loves your output you still have to pay attention. Why did they like it? What did they like about it? Will other’s like it too?

We know that the feedback loop can be both positive or negative. Does the time of the feedback loop matter? Absolutely.

You want to keep the feedback loop very short. The faster you gain an understanding of how the ‘market’ (the reason I put to market in a single quotation is because the market can be your friend, girlfriend, parent, sister, and a complete stranger) reacts to your output (product or service) the sooner you can improve that product or service.

Let’s say you are writing a book. You don’t want anyone to throw you off track so you keep the work to yourself. You spend 2 years writing and editing. You finally publish and release 10,000 copies of your work to the market. No one buys your book. Can you see how the feedback loop can be your best friend?

Now imagine this scenario.

You start writing your book, you begin to send out snippets of that book to the ‘market’ (in this scenario the market are the people that are buying similar books of the genre you are writing) to collect their feedback. You send out edited versions to other authors to ask them to leave a review for the book. Now you can choose to either leave it on your shelf or to continue with design and finally place a large order of copies to be distributed.

Let me give you a relevant case scenario. My company performs a steam cleaning service We ask for direct and indirect feedback. Direct feedback; We do a walk through with the client to make sure the work is to their satisfactory level. Indirect feedback; we ask the client to leave a review online about the service for others to see.

This is where I wanted to take this post to.

As important as it is .... come finish here, you will get a ton of value. Karasingroup.com

The things I learned after my 33 day Sabbath from Social

People who have depression seek comfort by turning to the internet and their social groups, yet the internet itself is causing depression in people.

Taking an action and encountering an instant reward will make someone compulsively pursue that same action.

The day I took a social media Sabbath was the day I realized I was hooked. In late December last year, I began several accounts on Instagram. Prior to this, I had my personal account which I did not interact with on a regular basis.

I wasn’t much of a social media guy, in fact, I had a presumption that social media was a negative experience.

Around Christmas of last year headline entrepreneurial news, such as Entrepreneur, Fast company, Tech Crunch, Business Insider and other prominent news agencies were featuring articles about various Instagram accounts that were attracting massive popularity.

This sparked an idea to initiate an account of my own. I had a plan to grow to as many followers as possible than promote either my friend’s brands or other people who were willing to pay me, or perhaps even my own retail products of which I had not developed yet.

I had a big dream, and I wanted to achieve it fast. I wanted to hack my way into gaining a mass number of followers.

So I began.

“For an infrequent action to become a habit, the user must perceive a high degree of utility, either from gaining pleasure or avoiding pain.” Nir Eyal

At first...... Come finish over here, lot's of good insights I promise