Tag Archives: Thinking

The Very First Thing To Do When Opening Your Eyes Each Morning

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Close them for another 10 minutes.

The deeper I go in this industry the more I realize success is determined by the quality of my mental fitness.  It was with that realization I recently started the practice of mediation. This new direction might come to some as a surprise, as it does with me. I’m not a very “spiritual” person and have up until recently thought of mediation and other methods of silence with a “not my kind of tea” nonchalance.

What we view as different we tend to be afraid of and to be very honest I was afraid of meditating. It was just foreign to me. Yet that might be why I found myself in a situation where I was desperately needing it!

I realized in my first month of meditation it’s not as weird, shamanic, spiritual, or cult-like as I thought.  In fact, I realize now that it quite possibly could be the secret to a happy and successful life no matter what country you live in or what religion you claim to believe.

Why?

With so much stimulation, media distraction and impulsive opportunities today, clarity of thought is our most scarce resource. By not taking the time to center oneself in their purpose before they start their day, one may find each day harder and harder to complete. I felt this overcoming me during the last year or two – the subtle feeling of losing my compass and lacking the fulfilling energy of pursuing a direction that aligns with a purposeful life.

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So with a suggestion from my girlfriend – who has been meditating for more than 10 years and glows with its benefits – I jumped in.  Boy do I have a long way to go.  I haven’t established a strongly held habit yet but here’s what I learned in the first month.

1. Calmness.  I found I was becoming more tense as the years went on, and given my laid back nature this was starting to really bug me.  It probably has to do with the nature of our industry and the difficulties of being a founder or working for an early stage company.  As I started the practice of meditation I began to feel the tension ease off a bit.  It’s still there to some extent, but I am now learning how to deal with it and shift the excess energy to a more positive area of my life.

The main reason I feel better is with the consistent nature of meditation you are able to think, ponder, and review; this leading to an adequate evaluation of the difficult things happening over the course of your daily life.  Stress overcomes us not because of something that happens to us, but because we haven’t adequately perceived the reality of the situation and are uncertain of what we are going to do about it.  We lack clarity. My calmness has resulted from taking time each day to let my mind wrap itself around the challenging things developing in my life, and allowing my mind time to determine the next step.

2. Centeredness.  I never really knew what this term meant before starting to meditate, but now I understand the power of allowing your mind to focus on certain aspects of your life, steering away from harmful and negative things while steering towards ones more beneficial. It actually takes effort to think about what you are doing here on earth, what you want to accomplish, how you want to live each day, how you want to treat people each day and the trajectory you want your life to take.  All this becomes clearer when one consistently starts their day in deep thought.  Although just a month in, I am feeling more centered and aligned and I can’t wait to see where the next 6 months or year directs me.

3.  Slowness.  It seems like things are going faster and faster each day.  Computing power speeds up each year, and computers just keep getting smaller and more ingrained into our existence.  Emailing went to text messaging.  Taking pictures with a digital camera and uploading to a website went to snapping a pic and sending a quick Snapchat to a friend. We expect to grab our phone and instantly find a restaurant whenever we are hungry. We also expect a response from someone we communicated with – immediately.  Each day seems to be speeding up and taking our whole society with it. It’s no wonder people are so stressed out.

Meditation has shown me the power of slowness and what it can do in a world where people and ideas are flying by at the speed of light.  Slowness allows for thoughtful consideration of the world around you. It allows for deeper comprehension of all the things happening to you and around you.  There are many things in our world that are simply too complex to fully grasp only after a few seconds or immediately after a meeting.  Not taking the time to allow your mind and body to fully comprehend the world around you is a grave mistake.  Through slowing down and practicing mental clarity each morning I set the tone for a stronger, more agile, more flexible mind which now has a better understanding of when to make quick hasty decisions or to slow down and contemplate all angles of a situation.

Take it from someone who used to shrug off the concept of meditation, you are making a huge mistake by not starting your day with your eyes closed in deep thought about the day you are about to experience.

Thinking Without Interruption

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By chance have you noticed how often you are interrupted each day?

I am sure every minute or two you are dinged or buzzed with a new text message, IM, email, phone call or Facebook message.   If you are not dinged you are probably grabbing your phone incessantly and checking it yourself, thus breaking from the normal pattern of thought.

In a one word, it’s annoying.  I know life has to continue and we need to communicate with each other but the ever increasing pace of interruptions is definitely becoming more obvious.

I wonder if this Is this good or bad for us humans.

I recently read how Paul graham viewed this phenomenon, as he tied it into the larger addiction conversation.  He ends by saying:

I used to think running was a better form of exercise than hiking because it took less time. Now the slowness of hiking seems an advantage, because the longer I spend on the trail, the longer I have to think without interruption.

…We’ll increasingly be defined by what we say no to.

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I fully agree.

I recently went on a weekend excursion into the Cascades with a group of friends, spending 3 days with my hiking boots, pack and tent.  We hiked 10 miles into glacier lake and set camp for two nights,  We hiked a total of 26 miles in 3 days – all without checking our phones once!

It was refreshing.

I believe we need to schedule into our lives a few days/weeks every so often to be off the grid, just so we can remember what it’s like to not be interrupted every few minutes.   And just so we can be taken back to what a long, winding and challenging conversation with another person feels like without grabbing a device a solving the argument by “googling” the answer. I cannot tell you how great it was to be on the trail, talking with my friends about anything and everything we wanted, without interruption or having to pause because one of us was responding to a text or grabbing a quick phone call.

Remember, technology is there to augment our real world relationships, not replace them.  The nuance is in how we gracefully use technology to enhance our world, not negatively impact it. I was beautifully reminded this on my weekend backpacking trip and then again today as I read Paul Grahams words.

Do yourself a favor and plan off-grid experiences, your health and sanity will thank you later.

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What Every Entrepreneur Thinks Before They Even Lift Their Head Off The Pillow

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“No way, You Can’t Quit Now”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this founder thing is damn tough.  Not a day goes by do I not think about how much easier life would be if I just quit and went back to a measly job trading hours for dollars.

It sounds so nice, doesn’t it… get a job where I have no real responsibility, just show up, go through the motions and every two weeks have money automatically deposited into my bank account.  Clock-in/clock-out and then go hang with friends and family, gleefully spending the money I didn’t work very hard to earn.

If that was the case, the basis of my employment would be how close to the status quo I could lie, just making sure I don’t screw anything up.

Oppose this to the radical idea of pursing excellence in myself and the things I create.

Yes, it’s tempting to go take the easy road like so many others do… so many whom most likely are way more in touch with reality than am I.

The thing is I am not wired that way.  As crazy as it seems to be, entrepreneurship is so much more than status quo, hours for dollars and not screwing up.  Entrepreneurship is about embracing the unknown and challenging yourself to overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges, all this with little or no support and resources.  Basically, an entrepreneur is a magician creating something from nothing.  And trust me, most challenges we face seem insurmountable.  These aren’t just “where’s that piece of paper again?” or “I wonder if my boss will let me go on that vacation I have been thinking about?’

That’s child’s play.

Not a day goes by where I don’t think about the consequences of my decision to forgo income (in my own company or with another job opportunity) for the opportunity to do something most people are afraid to do.    Think about what would happen to you and your life if one day your paycheck just stopped showing up in your bank account.  It takes courage, vision, strategy and a bit of stubbornness to make it as an entrepreneur.  And because of those requirements, most don’t.

Also, quitting is the worst possible option at this time.  Quitting not only validates all who doubted but it also flushes everything I’ve worked for and have equity in.  It flushes it right down the drain.  Not only would I be broke but I would have nothing to show for it.  I can’t let that happen.  I won’t let it happen.

All this goes through my head before I even raise it off the pillow each day.  Although things are tough at times, I count my blessings –  family, friends, business partners, God and all other greatness in my life – allowing me this opportunity.   Not everyone has what I have around me.

The amazing thing is how great of position Seconds is sitting in right now.

  • We just experienced our 8th month of continuous growth, month over month.  We have never seen a down month and don’t intend to.
  • We are just about to release a new version of Seconds, one where it will be much easier for you and I to use and experience the value.   It’s gonna blow your socks off.
  • We are throwing a big charity party at the end of the month involving a number of area startups as well as donations (via Seconds) to local non-profit Vittana in an effort to fight world poverty.
  • We are attending DEMO Conference at the beginning of October, a conference which will be full of founders, executives, investors and media.  This is the event we won a trip to earlier this year at the SURF Incubator pitch competition.
  • We have been asked to go back down to San Francisco mid-Oct to be a part of a select group of startups in attendance the TwilioCon, a conference put on by one of the tech platforms in which we have built our system.  They want us to demo Seconds and showcase what we have built with their communications technology.
  • In conjunction with our release, we will be rolling out across local colleges and universities for Seconds to be used to easily collect payments in students’ college and greek life.  First one starts at the end of September and we’ll be systematically spreading across numerous campuses throughout the year.

Given all that is good about where Seconds is heading, a few bad days/weeks/months personally will not be enough to push me over the cliff.  I suppose someone or something is trying its best to persuade me to give-in and give up.  If that’s the case, they are going to have to do much better than they are now.

No way, you can’t quit now… you gotta get up and go make it happen.

Be Iconclastic

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Ever look at prominent figures in the world and wonder how they stand out from all the rest?  I believe it comes down to how they think.   I believe you can think like them too.  Or.  Not.  Like.  Them..?    At this point, you may not know what the word Iconclast means, but by the end of this post I hope you will be inclined to think a bit differently.

Gregory Burns talks about people who do things others say can’t be done in his book Iconclast – A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently .  He calls them Iconclasts.

He succinctly describes being an iconclast hinges on 3 things: perception, courage and social skills.

The successful iconclast learns to see things clearly for what they are and are not influenced by other peoples options.  He keeps his amydala in check and does not let fear rule his decisions.  And he expertly navigates the complicated waters of social networking so that other people eventually come to see things the way he does.

If you are like me you’ll want a shorter and easier way to remember the word:

Thinking different is so easy, yet it baffles me how many people do the exact opposite.  They think the same as everyone else.  For some reason they don’t want to be different.  They don’t want to separate themselves from the crowd for they just might have to form an opinion.   They think the same as their neighbor, their classmates, the same as their teammates and they even the same as their competitors.  To me this is just crazy and a recipe for averagism.

Seriously, when did it become generally accepted to think the same as your competitor?  I am pretty sure this type of thinking did not go on in the days of early civilization.  If someone did I guarantee they we’re quickly eliminated…  Thinking the same as the competition is what gets us all these copy-cat products that flood the market.  How many different Groupon competitors do we need?  How many different brands of ‘Bran Flakes’ Cereal is enough.  I could go on and on, but I won’t because I’m not here to inspire you to copy others.  My goal is to inspire you to think differently.  And since we all are capable of thinking… being an Iconclast is now up to you and your thoughts.

Perception

Berns describes in detail how our brains actually perceive thoughts.  Being too scientific for this post, I will only encourage you to buy and read the book for yourself.  But to paraphrase: because we learn from past experiences and past experiences shapes both our perception and our imagination, we tend to constrain our views on things as we grow older.  This is not good for much of anything, but most importantly you will begin lose your creativity.  As time goes on you start to see the same things as everyone else.  And if you see everything others are seeing, you are not to unique.  How are you supposed to be innovative when you see just the same as the others?  Berns suggests we continue to bombard to brain with new experiences.

I suggest running the exact opposite direction as everyone else.  I have always been attracted to uniqueness.  It doesn’t have to be anything eccentric, just being different.   Everyone staying in their safe job because of the recession…  quit yours and pursue your dream of building a company.  You will have a leg up since most others are going in the opposite direction.  Seeing a lot of other companies are offering “daily deals for X” and “social networking for Y”?  Why not have an original vision and do something different?   Most importantly, get out of the daily routine you have slipped into over the last 8 years.  Take Berns advice and change your life.  Create new experiences.  Iconclasts do this and succeed.

Fear

Plain and simple, humans hate fear and live everyday to avoid the feeling.  Fear prevents people from taking action, and even worse it changes the way they see the world.  The ultimate underpinnings of fear is failure, which is the strongest force inconclasts overcome.  Berns notes fear permeates any business and should only be taken as a warning sign.  Once the fear is recognized, it can be deconstructed and reappraised.  So there you go – everyone experiences fear.  Inconclasts dissect it and figure out what it is actually pointing to.  Then they act accordingly.

Here’s my take:  Most people in the world are scared, weak overgrown children.  Sorry to be so blunt, but this is what I have picked up over the years.  Just as we tried to fit in with the “cool” kids on the playground during recess, we go about our lives in constant fear of what people think.  Most people never live as an independent thinker because they are so worried of what other people will think about them.

I say “who gives a @#$% “and “Screw what they think“.  Why do you care what some random guy thinks about you or your idea?  Here’s the truth: One minute after you leave the conversation he will forget what his opinion of your idea was.  He has enough to care about in his life, why would he waste time thinking about you?

Here is Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, an Iconclast I have always looked up to referring to his willingness to be misunderstood.  He has no fear of failure:

If you invent frequently and are willing to fail, then you never get to that point where you really need to bet the whole company. AWS also started about six or seven years ago. We are planting more seeds right now, and it is too early to talk about them, but we are going to continue to plant seeds. And I can guarantee you that everything we do will not work. And, I am never concerned about that…. We are stubbon on vision. We are flexible on details…. We don’t give up on things easily. Our third party seller business is an example of that. It took us three tries to get the third party seller business to work. We didn’t give up.

My mind never lets me get in a place where I think we can’t afford to take these bets, because the bad case never seems that bad to me. And, I think to have that point of view, requires a corporate culture that does a few things. I don’t think every company can do that, can take that point of view. A big piece of the story we tell ourselves about who we are, is that we are willing to invent. We are willing to think long-term. We start with the customer and work backwards. And, very importantly, we are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.

I believe if you don’t have that set of things in your corporate culture, then you can’t do large-scale invention. You can do incremental invention, which is critically important for any company. But it is very difficult — if you are not willing to be misunderstood. People will misunderstand you.

Any time you do something big, that’s disruptive — Kindle, AWS — there will be critics. And there will be at least two kinds of critics. There will be well-meaning critics who genuinely misunderstand what you are doing or genuinely have a different opinion. And there will be the self-interested critics that have a vested interest in not liking what you are doing and they will have reason to misunderstand. And you have to be willing to ignore both types of critics. You listen to them, because you want to see, always testing, is it possible they are right?

But if you hold back and you say, ‘No, we believe in this vision,’ then you just stay heads down, stay focused and you build out your vision.

Social Networking

To be successful, it comes down to one’s ability to connect with other people.  Two aspects of social intelligence figure prominently in success or failure: familiarity and reputation.  Incidentally the two are interconnected, since in order to sell your ideas you must create a positive reputation that will draw people toward what is initially unfamiliar and potentially scary.  Familiarity helps build your reputation.  Simply put: to get their ideas into the mass market iconclasts must be able to connect with people.

Think about someone right now who you admire and feel they are a “success” in your eyes.  And now ask yourself this: “Are they good with people?  Do they know how to navigate the social waters?”  I guarantee they (or someone they are close to) understands this principal.  Being an iconclast, thinking different, changing your perception, and dealing with your fear will only get you so far.  I would argue being great in the people department completes the package and helps you rise to prominence.

If you have been reading the words Think Different and imagining a certain company, I am sure you are not alone.  It’s not a coincidence the largest Technology company and one of the most recognizable brands in the world adopted that phrase in most of their marketing.  Apple thinks differently.  I believe the Different Thinking of their founder Steve Jobs is the sole reason they are where they are today. I will leave you with a video that sends chills down my spine.  It is one of the early Apple commercials and the first one in which they used the term Think Different.  Enjoy.