When I was in high school I don't think I could have cared any less about the college decision process. As far as I was concerned I was going to move back to my old state of residence and go to school with my friends. Well, my lack of planning certainly came back to bite me in the ass when after I had gotten into the only school I applied to I realized the true cost of an out of state tuition and that funding all of the debt wouldn't be worth it. Lucky for me the school in the city that I live in was still taking applications and I got accepted...in June. I tell this story not only to single out my idiocy but to drive home the point that the decision on where to go to school should not be made on the basis of where your friends are going or where your boy/girlfriend is going. When deciding on a school weigh all of you options and decide on the place that is most comfortable to you, let's go over some things that you should consider.

What are you going for?

The answer to this question doesn't need to be a specific major or activity but you need to have a sense of purpose and not go to college just to be there. If it isn't clear on why you want to go to school perhaps it might be best to take a year off before registering for any classes. If however you do decide that you would like to attend right after high school and don't have a major in mind do yourself a favor a sign up for a variety of courses your first year and worry about major requirements later on. During my Freshman year I took only the classes that sounded the most interesting to me and not only did it give me exposure to many different topics it also kept my grades up. That is something first year students tend to overlook, the transition in the amount of work between high school and college. If you are already interested in something it makes it that much more easier to drag your ass out of bed and go to class and much more likely that you will do your work.

What kind of experience are you looking for?

Are you the type of person who likes quieter surroundings with less people or would you rather be in a big college town where you might not ever see a fellow classmate more than once? The size of the school is important not only socially but also academically. It gets difficult to meet your professors and have a closer working relationship with them when there are 200-300 other students in your class. What about the location of the school? Are you going to move across the country to experience new things and be fine with the distance? If you stay close to home will you miss out on things? What about the weather? I've lived in the south pretty much my whole life so even if I would have applied to more school I doubt that I would have moved up north because I don't like a colder climate. It may sound stupid to weigh climate as part of your decision but you're going to be there for four years you should enjoy where you live (note: I wouldn't over weigh this in a decision but if two schools are even this could be a deal breaker).

Find out what kind of social life you would have at the school. Are athletics a huge deal? Parties? What is there to do in and around campus? It would probably a disappointment if you arrived your first week and found out there was nothing to do but sit in your room and read your books. Try narrowing down your choices of schools to two or three and then start going on campus visits if you have the opportunity. You may find that your decision becomes quite clear after spending some time on the campus, whether one school was a really great visit or you found out that the school you had your eye on isn't all that great. There is no substitute for visiting the place and seeing it with your own eyes don't rely on what you have heard from other people because they will have their own bias and reasons for loving/hating a school.

This also applies to rankings and schools that you think would look good on some future resume. Don't assume that a school is no good academically just because it made a 'party' school list and don't push yourself into crazy amounts of debt just to attend an 'elite' institution. Just because a place has a big name doesn't mean it's a good fit for you socially, academically, or financially and you'll quickly learn it isn't fun coming out of school with $50K plus in debt tied around your neck. Which brings me to....

How much does it cost?

If you're filthy rich then this doesn't matter that much but for everyone else the financing of your education is a big deal. When I was looking to go to school out of state they were sending me estimates of 25-30 thousand dollars a year when everything was taken into consideration (tuition, room, board, etc.) but in-state I won't pay that in four years, in fact with grants I should finish with under 10 grand in student loans to repay. Think about that even if I cut my costs way down at an out of state school I would still owe over 50 thousand dollars! In this job market unless you get very lucky your starting salary isn't going to be that high and that's a whole years worth of work just to equal your debt. Then add on all your living expenses and you're going to be staring down student loan payments for years. Don't get discouraged though, it just means that you need to research about possible aid your school offers or scholarships that are available for you to pursue. With that said keep in mind schools budgets have been slashed and tuition is going up so that means even less money is being given out as pure aid that you don't have to pay back. Ask yourself if that debt is something that you really want to have looming on the horizon as an 18 year old or could you still get a quality education and have fun a some place more affordable?

This isn't a full list of factors that you need to consider when making a choice on a college but you get the idea of where your mind needs to be. Clear your mind of everything you think college is going to be based on what you have seen on TV or in a movie because most of it is bull shit. Make the choice that you want and don't make a decision without taking in and processing tons of information about the place. You may come to find out that after all of this time and research that you want to transfer somewhere else and that's okay plenty of people do, just try to get it right the first time and I promise you'll have a great college experience.

Each afternoon when I go to the gym for my workout I see the same faces that I saw there during the summer and earlier on this year. While all of these people have dedicated themselves to showing up everyday they still tend to fall into two groups, those who work hard and those who work some. You can tell which group someone is apart of the hard workers all look noticeably better than they did when they first started and the ones who don't look like they have their same old body. The hard workers are efficient with their workouts, keeping their rests light and conversations with other people to an almost non existent level. The other group tends to take over an hour to do work that in all honesty should take about half the time. You can spot these people very easily because they are the ones sitting on an exercise bike reading a magazine and after doing a set in the weight room either walk around listlessly or carry on five minute conversations with anybody willing to talk in a ten foot radius. We know that persistence is the key to success but persistence is made up of hard work over a long period of time, day after day, month after month of success and achievement.

I recognized that I was doing the same in my workouts the first week back. No I wasn't talking or reading a magazine but I certainly could push myself harder. Take for instance the mile I run as part of my cardio, the time in which I finished on Friday was 30 seconds slower than the one I ran today, this while feeling sluggish this afternoon. Thirty seconds is not a long time when compared to our lives but 30 seconds on a mile run is a pretty significant chunk (especially since I'm still pretty slow). All it took to increase my output was to keep reminding myself of what I want to accomplish and that I won't get to reach my if I don't push myself harder each time I step foot in the gym. When you come in to a goal with this mindset you stop cutting corners and take it to the limit. Thinking about this today made me push to a new level of fatigue while lifting weights by making sure that every rep was executed perfectly, every chin up with full range of motion, and every rest break shortened to force my muscles to adapt or fail.

Every great obstacle and goal you set for yourself will never be easy it takes hours of repetition and gutting it out through the hard time, there are no short cuts to meeting your full potential. How many athletes have been successful off of sheer athleticism alone? If you have ever looked at the prep basketball player rankings for each year that all have talent but what separates one who never makes it to the NBA to one who does is through sheer hard work and perseverance. Don't believe me? Take a look at one of those lists from ten years or so ago and you'll see many guys that you have never heard of ranked higher than current NBA stars. Was there other factors besides work ethic that could have played a role? Sure but don't underestimate the role of getting too cocky and trying to coast off of pure talent, which many of them learned the hard way has ever diminishing returns without more dedication.

Hard work however is not random there must be a purpose to it. If you were building a house, it would be hard work to carry all of the supplies around and build a house just using your mind. Some home builders might be able to build a house from scratch without blueprints but they probably wouldn't be as focused than if they had a specific purpose. This is true for all hard work that your practice must have a method to it. Going back to another basketball example if I want to become a better shooter would I improve more if I just shot around for an hour or if I used that hour to focus on a detail like shooting threes? The latter of course because it is zeroed in on one thing.

One of my favorite quotes is from the book Good to Great which said, "The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency." Committing to something is all well and good but is doing it half assed much better than not doing it at all? By not putting in hard work on what you want day after day you are setting yourself up for disappointment and mediocrity. If you want to separate yourself from the pack and taste greatness you must be willing to go full throttle otherwise you're just like everybody else, stuck in the same spot.

Searching for textbooks is something that every student I know hates to do because it is so damn expensive. It still amazes me that people buy their texts from the bookstore at the insane prices those books sell for. While I always by old editions online it got me to thinking about how much a degree equivalent education could be acquired for. I looked at the classes that were necessary to successfully complete a degree and for all majors the classes number from 15-25 (not including general education classes but rather classes for the major). With used textbooks available on amazon for $4 a piece it seems that an entire education could be had for less than my LCD monitor. Now the purpose of this post is not to rail against college and its price because while it is expensive I do still enjoy going but rather I wanted to write about learning on your own beyond whatever education level you finished. It seems to me with the amount of information available freely on the internet and in public libraries you could teach yourself the same knowledge you would learn in any major within a year or two. Imagine getting a new degree every year or two just by diving into the material yourself, think that would give you some business ideas?

Right now I am going through what I have termed 1 year film school where I will study everyday about some aspect of film making, currently it is screenwriting. Obviously it will take me longer than a year to truly learn enough about all aspects to be competent and I still need to work in the field after my self education is complete. But with a vast array of information at my disposal I can still get a film school education for next to nothing in dollar terms and when I am done do with the information as I please or do nothing and move onto some other subject. But what if you don't know how or where to start you own personal education?

1. Search online for class textbook lists.

At most universities they have it set up where students can buy their textbooks online by using a drop down menu to select a course. So say you chosen interest is in economics (my major) go through the lists and write down the text names. From here you can choose to search for the texts online for cheap at sites like amazon.com or to find the information for free. Start with the basics in this case simple microeconomics would be a good beginning for you.

2. Audio books or Project Gutenberg.

Librivox.org and reading free text at Project Gutenberg is a great way to get educated in the classics. These sites give you complete access to pretty much all of the greatest works mankind has ever produced. If you choose to start with the classics first it will teach you a lot about how people act and expose you to ways of thinking that too often get overlooked.

3. Free classes.

Top universities around the world including Yale, Oxford, MIT, Stanford, and California have made available video lectures from their introductory courses. Yale in particular has many complete courses available to view or listen to in audio format. You get to sit in and listen to the professors just the same as if you went to the schools themselves.

4. Look to those who came before you.

If you have a field that really sparks your interest find out who is or was the best that ever worked in that field. For example, I am currently watching Lawrence of Arabia which I have to say is quite an entertaining way to study film. Studying the works of the best will not only help you to understand what works and what doesn't but also give you endless sources of inspiration to help keep you moving forward.

5. Let you curiosity get the best of you.

Did you ever no someone that always loved to take things apart just to figure out how they worked? Probably the fastest way to become self educated is to throw yourself in the deep end and learn as you go. Perhaps you can find work in what you're interested in and start from the bottom picking up knowledge as you move along. Many successful people have started out this way with no formal education but learning only from their experiences.

Always keep in mind that school isn't going to teach you everything you need it is merely a tool to help teach you how to learn. If you want something in life you have to go out and get it and self education is the path that will move you forward.

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Since I've started this blog back in July I have been finding inspiration in a lot of different places. It's as if just knowing that I need to write each day makes me see clearly all of the motivational and inspirational things in the world around me. Today for example I received a book in the mail that I had ordered last week, How to Write a Movie in 21 Days and only a few minutes after tearing open the packaging I got hit with a source of inspiration. It wasn't anything the author wrote because I haven't even read a page, the inspiration came from the previous owner. Normally when I get a book with underlines and notes scrawled all over the pages I am less than pleased. However, these notes were different because these were the notes of a man writing a screenplay something that I want to achieve myself. What I love about the notes is the mystery of it all. He only writes bits and pieces of his idea for a story in short notations and from what I gather it is the story of a man trying to keep his sanity in an insane world. On the last page of the book it is signed and dated as 'finished' on 9/25/88 which both gives me inspiration as an end goal but also because it reminds me that this book has been around for almost as long as I have and may have gone through so many others hands. It makes me wonder if this screenplay was ever developed and the owner actually saw his idea through to the end even if it wasn't a major movie. This all got me thinking about inspiration and how to find it which in turn sparked this post and I wanted to express some thoughts on the process.


1. Find what drives you.

I wrote about this in my post The Drive of Success and the Creativity Flood that also relates to inspiration and the main idea is that when you find that thing in life that drives you to reach for it , the ideas and inspiration just bombard you. I've concluded that my drive in life comes from wanting to learn and create. For a long while I thought it was simply to become a writer but after some more thought it occurred to me that I really love to use my mind and create. For example I learned how to use the music making program FL Studio and love to create my own remixes that usually only I get to hear. There wasn't any real motivation to use these songs beyond that (not like I could they're copyrighted) but I made them simply so I could enjoy listening to music I liked on my mp3 player. It's this kind of creative feeling that makes it a breeze to spend hours on various projects which is why my old jobs could never hold a candle to my own interests.

2. Doing new things.

By breaking the repetitiveness of your everyday life you get exposed to new things, places, people, and ideas that if you're paying attention can pay you back many times over in the inspiration these experiences create. Sometimes I just like to go somewhere different whether it be the mall or a movie to get little bits of inspiration by watching people or seeing interesting products. But for this method to work the best you should try and go places that you have never been to or join a group of people by taking a class in something you've always been interested in but never have acted upon. This upcoming week I am planning on going to study sessions for a few of my classes whether I need the extra help or not just to be around some different people. I'm not sure if I will get any new ideas or motivation from this but who knows, I'll just have to find out for myself.

3. Digest your day.

When you get a moment of downtime think about your day or week and what happened that is particular interest to you. Maybe you saw a movie preview that interested you. What about it grabbed your attention? Perhaps the theme of the movie hit close to home and you should explore these feelings deeper. Did you meet someone special? It doesn't have to be romantic but if you met someone interesting what was it that made them cross your mind? I often do this kind of reflection before I fall asleep because it usually take me awhile to drift off and it has netted me a ton of new ideas that I write down and expand on later.


4. Look to what others produced with their inspiration.

This is actually a really fun way of finding inspiration because you get to explore artistic expression. Pick up a favorite book, movie, or go to an art museum (or look through paintings on your computer) and try to imagine what was going through the creator's mind when they were making this work. If you're someone who enjoys architecture take a walk through your town and just let your mind absorb interesting structures. Pick out something you like about the building and really just let your mind go off on tangents. Bring a notepad and copy down feelings, questions, or ideas you have from your wanderings. I'm sure you can find at least one thing that will inspire you forward.

5. Just let it flow.

Don't second guess your ideas at first just get them out there. Sometimes I'll just sit down and write without the vaguest notion of what exactly I want to say but this stream of consciousness method does provide good results. Often I won't get out what I wanted to say the first time but after a few readings it conjures up even more points and then other times it changes the idea into something else that is better. Not every new idea is going to work out, like the other day I was in the middle of writing about realism in your life but I didn't like it anymore, it had ceased to inspire me. That post is now in the graveyard of ideas but it is still written down in my notes and maybe next week I'll resurrect it with a whole new batch of points to make.

Inspiration is easier for some people than others but we all have the capacity to make it happen. The key is to tune into the world around you and let your curiosity loose without second guessing what you find interesting until your brainstorming is over with. I hoped this helped you with seeking out your own inspiration because I had to get these thoughts out of my head.

Every once in a while I read books on business and investing just to give me a solid foundation to build on should I decide to go into business for myself. One of my favorite books on investments is The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing by Pat Dorsey and Morningstar because it gives thorough explanations and isn't a get rich quick type of investment strategy. As you can tell from the title the book lays out in the first chapter five rules that every successful investor should follow and while looking over them late last night I noticed that these rules could also be applicable to self-improvement and goal setting. Yes, it turns out that investing in stocks is much like investing in yourself and done right both can pay off handsomely, only self-improvement the results are a lot less volatile.

1. Do Your Homework

Obviously before starting any goal the most important thing to do is to research how you can accomplish it successfully. Right now one of my goals is to learn everything I can about writing a screenplay as a part of my larger goal of learning all I can about making movies. It would be easy for me to rush into this and just commit a bunch of words into a word processor with some semblance of a story and call it a screenplay but that wouldn't be a good screenplay now would it? The time that you put into before setting off on your goals should allow you to have a plan of action and be more prepared for any setbacks that you will inevitably face while seeking your goal.

2. Find Economic Moats

In the book this section is referring to the competitive advantage firms have within their market but for our purposes we'll be using it to refer to your personal competition. Now not all goals will have you competing against other but some will. For instance, if your goal is to attain a certain position within a company or get into a certain school then you are going to have to separate yourself from the rest of the pack by being able to do something better than anyone else can. Even if we go beyond specific goals we can apply this rule to life in general, consistently growing and improving creates a moat that can protect you in tough times. Economic moats allow companies to be more profitable just as growth allows your life to be more profitable. If you read and engage your interests and develop new skills are you not better off in a terrible economic climate than someone who does nothing to better themselves? Of course you are because whether it's having a better resume for a job or taking the reins yourself you always know that you have value to offer. So create moats for yourself by learning new things and separate yourself from the competition. Becoming World Class at Something.


3. Have a Margin of Safety

In the book this section deals with valuation of stocks and making sure that the price you pay isn't too high. In life sometimes the price you pay for something may also be too much and leaves you high and dry when things don't work out. Just like stocks you can overvalue people too. If you are in a relationship with someone and it's not going the way you want it to then you may be paying too high of a price to be with that person. This extra cost can be physical, emotional, or just your partner holding you back from being the person you want to be. You have to be honest and evaluate the person realistically to see if they are the right match for you or just someone who was nice for awhile and has since declined in their personal value. If you come to the conclusion that the price you're paying to stay with them exceeds what you actually want then it is time to move on.

4.Hold for the Long Haul

In investments constantly trading racks up fees and taxes which will usually hurt long term growth. With goals if you constantly shift from one to the next without putting the proper amount of time into it you're also hurting yourself in the long term. Jumping around with your goals leaves your original goals done hastily or you never complete them at all. Sometimes moving on is required but often it is simply due to a lack of commitment on your part. I often had this problem when reading books. I would buy one long book and be absorbed in it for a few days and then I would hear about a topic that seemed interesting and buy a book on that. I eventually found myself with a ton of books but only a shallow understanding of each because I lacked the commitment to keep going with the book or subject. I finally decided to do something about this by selling those books I had started but weren't on a topic that I was interested in on a regular basis and then made myself get through the ones I did have a consistent interest in. Sticking with your goal allows you to reap all of the benefits that you originally set out to acquire while bowing out early is like a paying tax (time and energy invested) and not receiving much profit.

5. Know When to Sell

Ah so now we get to when it is appropriate to shift away from one goal to another. First ask yourself is it worth it to you to keep continuing your pursuit of the goal? If the answer is no then it is probably time to reevaluate things. Obviously if you have achieved what you set out to do then of course it is time to move on to something new. But if your goal was something like weight loss then you will need to maintain a healthy lifestyle otherwise the result of your goal was temporary. The book goes into asking whether your money could be invested better somewhere else and if you have too much money in one stock. This translates well to what we are trying to do with this article. Replace money with time. Could your time produce better results if it were spent another way? There are only 24 hours in a day and each of them must be scheduled accordingly and if one pursuit isn't paying you back it's fair share based on the amount of time invested then it may be time to let it go. Also, while focusing on one goal in the short term can be very beneficial, if you put all of your eggs in one basket it will hinder the rest of your growth if you dedicate too much time to it over the long haul. Eventually you will see diminishing returns in its value to your growth and can be disastrous if one thing goes wrong. If all your doing is pursuing one thing and that doesn't work out you're not left with much to cling to.

This is just a few short ideas that I was exploring based off of these rules and I believe that if you do some thinking on them of your own you can find a way to apply them to your life. Personally I like to look for advice and inspiration in lots of different ways so maybe I'll make a trip to the business section of the used book store and find other thought provoking ideas, after I finish my current reading list of course.

I have a lot of bookmarks that I have saved on Firefox and last night I was going through the list and deleting the ones I no longer needed. While cleaning up my bookmarks I noticed where I had saved information about a certain video camera and different lenses, stands, and microphones that could be attached to it. It gave me a sense of motivation not because I simply wanted the camera but it represented a goal that I have in mind which is to write my own screenplay and then film it as a low budget movie. This goal is preceded by my current goal of turning this site into a success and garnering enough traffic to earn a passive income and in fact rests on me doing so because I can’t very well have the freedom to film a movie working some crummy job everyday. This motivation I have been feeling for the past few months has been incredible and everyday something new inspires me again it’s like a perpetual kick in the ass that won’t let me give up. It’s a feeling of knowing that something is going to happen because you’re just so tuned into making it so that it is a foregone conclusion.

I remember for the past two years or so of my life sitting at work talking with my friend about how great it would be not to have a job and it always ended with the feeling that yes it would be great but it’s not realistic. It wasn’t until I sat down and made it my intention to find a way off the usual path that I really believed that it was possible for me not to work a crappy job and then graduate and get another job. My self belief has gotten to the point where I don’t even think about getting a job after I finish my degree because it’s not a part of who I am or who I want to become. Those fears of being forced into a life I don’t want have been replaced by goals both big and small, long term and short term. The change is in fact to stop thinking about what will happen to you and to rather think about how I am going to get where I want to go.

Once you open your mind up in this way things just start coming to you like ideas to write about or even new ways to make money. Last week while I was surfing the web a bit I was on a site and saw an ad for their ebook which was available for download. Now I’ve seen these ads probably thousands of times in all of the years I’ve been on the internet but it wasn’t until that instance that I thought about writing one myself. It never occurred to me that I could write and publish my own book online for a profit (and here I am publishing on the internet with this blog) perhaps I’m just stupid and overlooked an opportunity that was staring me right in the face or maybe it was the mindset I’ve developed for constantly looking for new opportunities. That one small image advertisement altered the course of work I plan on doing in the next few months and inspired me to begin planning my own ebook(s).

We human beings have a huge capacity for problem solving and when we’re motivated to do something you can better believe that a solution will be found. Too often our thoughts are attached to some responsibility or work instead of being free flowing and meditative which is usually where we come up with our most brilliant ideas that seem to be plucked from thin air. The desire that gives us our will to succeed brings forth all of these ideas and makes them easy to dream up, you start understanding more, connecting dots you didn’t know existed, and seeing angles that had previously escaped you. I don’t seem to ever worry about what to write anymore and now only focus on which idea I am going to develop for the blog today. Coming up with new ideas isn’t something I sit down and do, I just let them trickle in to my brain and then scribble down the idea however vague into my notebook. When I went to bed at around 3 AM this morning I had just finished listening to one of my audio books and wasn’t really focused on anything then this blog crossed my mind. Suddenly I had an idea and I got up out of bed to write it down. Then another one not more than 15 seconds after I had laid back down. This happened a total of four times before I finally fell asleep. As you can see, writer’s block should present much of a problem with inspiration like that.

So what is it that drives you in life? For me it seems to be having the freedom to create and express myself in a variety of ways. Think about what it is in your life that gives you that feeling of motivation like no other. Once you have that and start working towards getting there you will see the paths opening up even if it’s a roundabout way like mine. In order for me to manifest my desire to make a screenplay and film I chose to take this path of blogging to help raise the capital to finance my endeavors which still allows me to be creative and express myself. In a way I’m doing something that I enjoy to make a living to pursue something else I enjoy and I’m sure that will open up further opportunities for me. This drive should make you excited about waking up each day because at least half of the fun of setting a goal is the journey you take to get there and the knowledge that you will get there one day fuels your work ethic and creativity. Ponder your own life and find what it is that you want and the motivation will rise from there, mine all seems to be encapsulated on a single camera I don’t own (yet).

With schools across the country about to start the fall semester the signal for back to school shopping has been sent out by the nation’s retailers. My classes start back up on Monday and I thought that it would be a good idea to produce a post on back to school fashion for college guys (if you're a freshman try reading this also: 5 Tips for College Freshman). Too many people brush the way the dress off as unimportant, I mean just look at the guys (and girls) who come to class in their pajamas. Like it or not how you dress will have a say in how people react to you in your day to day life. After all what is the first thing people notice before they ever speak to you? What you look like and if you spend your days walking around looking like a bum then you can expect it to have some effect at the way people view you as a person.

I actually just got back from the mall (sigh) and while I prefer online shopping I wanted to get some things that I could have during these first few days of classes and that required a precise fit. My main purpose was to hunt down the cardigan that I wanted and to add more basics to my wardrobe. That is what we are going to start with today the basics of what we wear. Too often we buy a great shirt(s) and keep pairing it with the same look until it gets too worn and faded. That’s wear these basics come into play, they help add versatility to your wardrobe and don’t always run you a lot of money.

Fitted tees: I’m talking about solid color tees here and most importantly white and black tees. They shouldn’t be included in every single look that you’re trying out but they are great when done right as stand alone pieces of clothing and for layering purposes. I don’t mean Hanes undershirts but more along the lines of the solid tees you would find at Gap. These shirts generally cost between 12-15 dollars a piece and I make sure that I have some in my closet.

Dress shirts: You don’t necessarily have to wear them like you’re going to a business meeting in fact they can look great casually. You should have at least two dress shirts to start but make sure these fit properly and have the right type of collar for the shape of your face, meaning try them on before you buy. For a really perfect fit you might consider having the shirts tailored so that all of the proportions are right.

Jeans: I’m not a fan of skinny jeans but then again you shouldn’t go baggy with your jeans either. Are you sensing a trend of having clothes that fit? You’ll want some with a darker wash and a pair with a lighter wash so you can pair them with different colored shirts. If you can afford the expensive designer jeans you should consider investing in a pair because there are some brands that are very high quality and durable. For the rest of us poor folk, Levi’s has some more in our price range that aren’t totally flimsy.

Pants: For many guys khaki’s are as far as they venture out to besides wearing jeans but a good pair of pants allows for more looks and are very comfortable. In addition to your khakis, pick up pairs of slacks in black, grey, and navy. These are all essentials to have because they often work better than jeans when paired with certain sweaters or coats plus those dress shirts we already talked about. A store like Dillards usually has some designer pants that you can get for fairly cheap. Today for instance I bought a pair of dark grey Calvin Klein’s for $35 because they were the last of my size and on the clearance rack. This isn’t the first time either, I’ve bought pairs marked down to $12 that weren’t any weird design or pattern they just needed to get rid of inventory. So check these clearance racks for your basic items like pants because some things that never go out of style get placed on there too not just horrid crap.

Belts: Have one brown and one black as a minimum.

Shoes: We should move beyond just wearing trainers, I know we’re in college but we need to have other options. First, we should have a white pair of shoes for our casual days something along the lines of an Adidas Stan Smiths or Nike Cortez. Boat shoes or drivers will work well with the pants we bought when we’re not trying to dress up, brown will work for most shades. Finally we need dress shoes and don’t go buy the plastic ones from Target either. Your dress shoes should be an investment in quality and despite the fact they won’t be in our day to day campus wear you should still own a pair.

Sweaters: It’s the middle of August now and hotter than hell but in 6-8 weeks it will be time to whip out the longer sleeves. A v-neck pullover is a good bet to have and also have a nice cardigan because you can use them for many different styles.

Socks: Get more than just the white athletic socks and pick up some nice dress socks in different colors.

The list of items shown above are always going to be in your wardrobe and will serve as your building blocks. Always add more of them to your collection but try different shades and styles to help branch out. The rest of the clothes you buy should exemplify your very own style which I cannot decide for you. Add different tops, pants, jewelry, and other accessories to complete the look that you’re going for.

When choosing the types of clothes you want to wear you need to take into account your body type and skin tone because certain cuts and colors will look like crap on you. For me red really does a disservice which sucks because I like the color but I know that other colors look much better on me. Here are two great articles to help you out, How to Find Your Perfect Colors and The Color Wheel: How to Combine Colors in Your Wardrobe. Also you should look through pictures of different styles that you like and mix and match items you find or maybe lift the style of some celebrity you enjoy ( I would recommend only using pieces that reflect who you are).

Beyond clothing another important aspect of fashion is grooming. You should always look the best that you can which means shaving, cutting your hair and nails, and just practicing all around good hygine.

Shaving

When it comes to shaving you can use a blade or an electric shave. I use a blade because it produces a closer shave. You can get fancy and have a whole shaving kit with brush and hot lather but I use only a good razor and some Nivea shaving foam. The trick to getting a really close shave is to lather once and shave with the grain and then re-lather and shave against the grain, thus getting the hair from both sides and leaving you baby soft.

Skin Care

I have a tendency to break out if I don’t shave for a couple days so I make sure to shave almost daily to help keep my skin clean. I wash my face using the Neutrogena Complete Acne Therapy system. It really helped my skin get way clearer than it had been previously. Yours may be different so if you have acne try different things and find what works for you. Also, with skin care make sure you use an after shave lotion with SPF 15 and that doesn’t clog pores to protect your skin and prevent blade irritation. The Neutrogena kit actually comes with it so if you buy that you’re covered. Get a body lotion as well especially for the winter months because your skin will get very dry. During one winter years ago I kept forgetting to go buy lotion and use it and my knuckles started to crack and bleed a bit from the cold. Yeah it hurt like hell.

Teeth

Floss your teeth everyday. Use a mouthwash like Listerine twice a day. Obviously brush your teeth. If you need whitening I suggest Crest 3D White toothpaste, I’ve used it for the past 6 weeks or so and my teeth look much whiter and it’s only $5 so buy it.

Scent

A good antiperspirant deodorant is a given to help you from stinking up everywhere you go but what else do you need? It starts in the shower. Find a scented bodywash or soap that you enjoy and do the same for shampoo. Take a shower daily which I don’t think I should have to say but well I can tell people don’t do it. During the summer months I use baby powder to help keep me dry and smelling good and then in the winter switch to lotion. When choosing a cologne try out many different scents to see which one you like and try not to buy one that’s too overpowering. Speaking of which don’t make a cologne overpowering by spraying it all over, 3 sprays max (and that may be too much for some scents). I own the following colognes, YSL Body Kouros, Burberry London, YSL Opium, and Adidas Moves 0:01 which I hardly ever wear. The Kouros is a favorite of mine and I don’t know how to describe its scent properly but it’s delightful. London is more of a rugged/woody smell, and Opium has an Asian spice to it and settles down into hints of vanilla.

Well that’s going to do it for my back to school fashion extravaganza. Try to always keep in mind that your clothes should be a reflection of who you are and who you want other people to see you as. If you’re still totally clueless remember to keep it simple and stick to the basics, having clothes that fit and the right colors for your skin tone will put you ahead of most of the pack. Keep searching online and pick up books on fashion to help move you into a space where you can make the right fashion decisions on a daily basis and have a wardrobe you can be proud of.

This afternoon I went to the library at my university for a bit of research on movie making and screenwriting to help continue my development of a screenplay. The library features 10 full floors of books and even though the film section is relegated to a single row on a single floor it still features more material than I could reasonably read even with years at my disposal. When I thought about this fact while making my way from shelf to shelf I realized that while I read every single day I probably have only read 20-30 entire books so far this year. It dawned on me that most of my information comes through articles and reading the parts of books that interest me and that actually may be a good thing.

Today for instance I pulled books off of the shelf on Woody Allen films,a book on Ridley Scott's films, a book of essays on Blade Runner, and three separate books on writing and selling screenplays. Now unless I had mounds of time that I wanted to dedicate to reading these books let's say it could take a month or so of my life to sit down and read each page. Sure it would be an accomplishment of sorts but would the time invested be worth it? No. I knew exactly what I wanted to read about going into the day, developing a screenplay. So as a result upon opening each books I scanned the table of contents to pick out the sections that would be most beneficial for me. I read about the characters and their relationships in Manhattan, I read about interpretations of Blade Runner and the production of that Los Angeles cityscape , and then I focused specifically on writing scenes and took notes from each of the three books on their specific advice.

In three hours I managed to gather all the information I wanted today and read some nice tid bits about two movies I enjoy that made me feel creative. Now I'm not saying that I want to start doing this with every single book I pick up but let's face it many books especially non-fiction that don't require you to follow in a linear fashion because up to half of it can be fluff. When I looked through these books on screenplays entire chapters were devoted to why would you want to write one? This may be well and good if you lack motivation to do something but I'm in a library on a day I could have done anything I wanted but instead I wanted to learn further about crafting scenes, I think I can safely skip those types of chapters.

It's just like the textbooks you buy for a class have any of your professors covered every chapter that's in those mammoth back breakers? None of mine have but did it stop you from feeling like you didn't learn? Would you have learned more if the professor tried to squeeze 50-60 chapters into 4 months of the semester? No you have to be efficient with your learning and break things down into further sections just like you have separate classes for a major. If i were to sit down and read one giant book that covered every topic of screenwriting I highly doubt that I could write a better script than if I had taken the same time and read only about creating scenes from several sources. The first option would give me shallow understanding of everything instead of a great deal of knowledge in one area and the movie maybe crap and other areas but it might have enough memorable scenes to carry it to decency.

I still want to read complete books every month and I'm doing so especially with classics on audio book which just listening to at the gym could net me and extra 5-10 per month but I also need to ramp up my intensity for going after specific knowledge in books. I need to stop feeling like it was somehow a failure that I checked out a book and didn't finish the whole thing and cut through the fluff. It's like I mentioned in this post: Become World Class at Something about utilizing short bursts of intense focus on one aspect of a subject and becoming great at one thing instead of trying to learn a whole broad topic at once and I think I may have just found it's application in crafting a screenplay. I'll have to think on this some more and I'll let you know in future posts what my course of action will be. Keep reading.

I was a rather shy kid when I was in elementary school, not to the point of complete inability to communicate with others but it certainly slowed me down. When I got a few years older they shyness itself wasn't a problem but I did retain some of the hesitancy to speak or approach certain situations that I wasn't fully comfortable with or unsure about. Shyness doesn't have to just be an overwhelming fear to be a menace in your life, even something as simple as fear of getting in front of a group and speaking can hold you back from opportunities and experiences. Shyness however, is not something that you have to live with and just accept it can be overcome just like any other fear.

We know that shyness is a fear but a fear of what exactly? It seems to me that it is nothing more than a fear of humiliation or judgment from society. Most of the time these thoughts you have about other people judging you when you speak are unfounded because most people aren't even necessarily paying too much attention to what you say but waiting for their own turn to speak. What you are actually perceiving is you self conscious holding you back from an experience that isn't all that bad by making you afraid of some grand negative consequence. You may have had a bad experience when you were younger that instilled this fear, perhaps you spoke out of turn and some adult chided you. This might have had a point at the time (maybe you were saying bad things) but now that you're an adult you have the ability and the duty to yourself to speak up and be heard. Let it go!

Now once you have recognized and acknowledged your shyness you must next take steps to boost you confidence. This article I wrote isn't specifically about confidence building but it may help Take Control of Your Life: Stop Living in Fear and Act. Confidence can be developed directly by facing your fears in social situations and get a huge boost indirectly by improving what you're already good at or passionate about. Those are just a few tips for purposes of this article and I may go into further depth in a future article but until then do a quick search on building confidence.

Building confidence will help you to remain cool, calm, and collected in social situations but you must also stop getting inside your own head and starting trouble. If you are too focused on yourself during a conversation then you nitpick everything that you do and build up those walls of fear again. Let's say that you were on a date and this self consciousness started to creep into your mind. One solution is to turn your focus onto what the other person is saying and not to be focused on you. Pay attention and be a good listener which will allow you to make simple responses, focus on the conversation, and get out of your own head.

Understand that you are going to make mistakes in your actions and say the wrong things sometimes and that's okay because everybody does this. Stop expecting perfection from yourself and realize that mistakes are part of life. By fearing a mistake you effectively silence yourself and your opinions when I guarantee that you have something valuable to say and contribute to other peoples lives. When I look back at all the potential friends I missed out on when I was younger or fun times that I could have had but didn't because of my silence and lack of confidence it gives me a bit of regret. Overcoming shyness and becoming more social takes consistent work and practice in situations where your comfort is tested. I know that I still struggle with it from time to time but I've also learned that I must immediately correct myself when these feelings start. So the next time you have about of shyness remember to take a deep breath, relax, and dive right into slaying your fear. It's really the only way to overcome your shyness.

I got the list of these books from the selected bibliography of the 48 Laws of Power and linked the titles to places on the internet where they could be found. For the majority of these books I linked right to the Amazon page because they aren't very popular and still under copyright so finding them on the web for free was a no go. However, for many of the books I did link the free text or audio versions because they are classics that belong to the public domain. I don't think I'm going to go through this whole list and read everything myself but if you're up to the challenge by all means dive in.


Fables of Aesop by Aesop

The Chinese Machiavelli by Dennis Bloodworth and Ching Ping

Cheating: Deception in war & magic, games & sports, sex & religion, business & con games, politics & espionage, art & science by J. Barton Bowyer

The Book of the Courtier by Baldesar Castiglione

On War by Carl von Clausewitz

The Court Society by Norbet Elias.

The Power of the Charlatan by Grete de Francesco (try your local libraries for this one it's apparently hard to come by).

The Power Tactics of Jesus Christ and Other Essays by Jay Haley

The Complete Works of Han-fei-tzu by Han-fei-tzu
I linked the basic writings because the book was out of print.

The Histories by Herodotus. Free audio book here: Librivox

Kissinger: A Biography by Walter Issacson

Selected Fables by Jean de La Fontaine

Life, Letters and Epicurian Philosophy of Ninon de Lenclos, The Celebrated Beauty of the 17th Century by Ninon de Lenclos.

Bismarck: The Story of a Fighter by Emil Ludwig.

The Prince and The Discourses by Niccolo Machiavelli.

Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-tung by Mao Tse-tung.

Monstrous Regiment: Women Rulers in Men's Worlds by Betty Milan.

The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne.

The Art of Winning Wars by Col. James Mrazek.

Hustlers and Con Men by Jay Robert Nash.

The Birth of Tragedy and On the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Talleyrand: The Art of Survival by Jean Orieux.

Makers of Rome and The Rise and Fall of Athens by Plutarch.

Foxes and Lions: Machiavelli's Confidence Men by Wayne A. Rebhorn.

Memoirs of Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz by Cardinal de Retz.

Cha-no-yu: The Japanese Tea Ceremony by A.L. Sadler.

Amoral Politics by Ben-Ami Scharfstein.

Mirrors, Masks, Lies, and Secrets by Karl E. Scheibe.

The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims by Arthur Schopenhauer.

The Book of Stratagems: Tactics for Triumph and Survival by Harro von Senger.

The Craft of Power by R.G.H. Siu.

The Art of War by Sun-tzu.

The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.

Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity by Perez Zagorin.

The Con Game and "Yellow Kid" Weil by "Yellow Kid" Weil.

In all aspects of our lives we will periodically experience letdowns and sometimes it can seem that nothing ever goes your way. For men in the dating world these letdowns often come in the form of being rejected by a woman. The fear of rejection stands in the way of just about every guy at some point in their lives and it can be utterly crippling if you do not work to overcome it. There isn't anything inherently wrong with you as a man but your mind is planting seeds of doubt about your chances of attracting a potential mate. How do you get past your fear of rejection? I think that it is useful to weigh the costs of rejection against regretting not taking action.

If you are still going through the stage of inaction when you see an attractive girl on a regular basis then I'm going to assume it is out of inexperience. The rejection fear really represents a bridge you must cross in your quest to build self confidence and become a successful dater. You may have been working on your confidence for a while and changing your life for the better (if not you might start here Reinventing Yourself ) but while you're out on the town you come across a pretty girl and suddenly you freeze. What's the cause of your fear? That you will fail? Why is that such a bad thing? Getting rejected doesn't mean that you are somehow less of a person then you were five seconds before you made your approach, in fact you should be an improved person because there is opportunity to learn from your mistakes.

The fear can be reinforced from adolescence when it seemed like the whole school would see and laugh at you if you failed to land the girl you wanted. The thing is I don't think that it has ever been true unless you did something totally out there to get that many people talking but so what even if other people see your rejection they will soon forget. Your brain sometimes makes it seem as if you are the center of the universe and that everyone will pay attention and chide you for your failings but guess what they've all got their own problems to worry about. I can think back on my own life about all the many times I have been rejected and laugh at them now because they were all part of my learning experience, you cannot become good at anything in life without failure (see: Success is made of Failure)Were some of these approaches nerve racking in the moment? Yes, pretty much all of them but after it was over I didn't have to live with the notion of regret, I lived those moments the way I wanted to.

Notice this about rejection, you survive each time, I mean if it were as bad as our fear makes it out to be how am I still alive to write this today? This should also tell you that regret is a worse proposition than being rejected 100 times because you are putting boundaries within your life that shouldn't be there and once that opportunity to act is gone there may never be another one. You must get over any doubts and jump into action to be successful in picking up women and other areas of life as well and the only way to do this is to accept that failure (rejection in this case) is apart of the deal and is going to happen no matter how much of a smooth talker you are. So ask yourself today what's worse a few moments of nervousness or the compounded depression you will face by sitting on the sidelines and living your life with regret?

If you've ever watched any cable news channels you might have noticed the amount of so-called experts they present to discuss whatever topic they are hammering away on that particular day. But how many of them are what could be called world class? Malcolm Gladwell stated that it takes 10,000 hours of practice/learning to become world class at something which got me thinking what have I spent 10,000 doing in my life that I could claim some type of mastery in?

Basketball came to mind as something I may have spent that many hours of my life doing but I am certainly not world class, if I were I would be playing in the NBA making a nice bit of change. But besides being proficient at playing the game I would also need world class athleticism (I don't have that but I'm certainly above average). Nonetheless I do have a certain ability to play the game that is now ingrained in me for life. For example I recently started to play in pick up games regularly again after playing maybe 15 times in the past 5 years but what is great is that besides a little rust and fatigue I am still competitive with or better than the other guys on the court. Do I have what it takes to be world class if I were to devote my life to the game and physical training? I don't know, probably not but I don't ever like to tell myself that I cannot accomplish something.

Is there anything else that comes close to the 10,000 mark? Reading perhaps? But that is too broad to be world class at. For the past few days I have started to immerse myself in the history of the Roman Republic for the course I am taking this upcoming semester. Putting in these hours isn't going to give me the doctoral knowledge equivalence within a few months but it should certainly give me mastery over the topics covered in class (maybe not as much depth). But what if I were to pick a specific topic and in one 6 month burst studied everything that I could on that topic? (182.5 days x 8 hours per day = 1460 hours) If it were a specific enough subject I could definitely climb to the top 1% of the population in regards to knowledge. Then by further expanding into related topics you could become a master in a much broader field.

There isn't really anything that I want to be world champion at or have any recognition as being the best there is but there are things that for financial or other reasons that I would like to have great understanding of. Unless you have that burning desire to be the best at one thing it might make better sense to be great at multiple things as long as you don't spread your knowledge to thin across too many interests. For me I believe the best option is intense short term focus on one thing then maintaining and enhancing my performance through repetition. I like lots of different topics so having a single passion in life isn't for me but I definitely have related interests.

Obviously what separates average from the best is the extra commitment of time, learning, and execution which begs the question what have you done today to help propel you forward?

In my last post before I left on vacation I mentioned that one of my goals for the upcoming months was to make straight A's in my classes. Since I've returned home I've signed up for two more classes to bring my total up to the maximum six allowed and also learned that school actually starts in almost two weeks not this upcoming week like I thought. While it's nice to declare intentions, having goals is pretty useless without an actionable plan attached to them. So how will I go about accomplishing this feat of academic success?

1. Starting Now

Thanks to the internet, I already have access to course schedules for most classes and book lists for all of my classes. I have twelve days until my first class and it's time to put my goals into action. One of the classes I just signed up for is History of the Roman Republic which I don't technically need to graduate but it is a topic I find interesting. Two of the required texts are ancient accounts so I have found them for free online and I checked out the actual book for one of them so I didn't have to stare at the screen for hours.

Using Librivox.org I found the audio readings for The Catiline Conspiracy and the Jugurthine War by Sallust and listened to the first two sections twice during my cardio this afternoon. Since I will be working out during this semester five times a week for about two hours per day I could easily listen to this book four times in the next month, although I will probably move on to another work instead. Beyond just reading the books that I have to read I am going to (after writing this)start exploring online the topics presented in the syllabus. With this twelve day cushion I should have an effective knowledge base to get ahead in all of my classes and in essence already be in review mode for my first exams.

2.Scheduling time

Having class everyday starting at 11 am will allow me to fall into a routine where I can still stay up til 1 or 2 am like I enjoy and still have plenty of time before class to eat and get some extra work done. Now beyond just a sleeping schedule I will further map out my day with the assistance of my planner to include short reviews of the material that I have learned that day and readings that still need to be taken care of. There is time everyday to go over each class and lock into memory what I need to know but I also have already scheduled that Wednesday and Thursday afternoons will serve as library time. On these two days I will devote more time to study and demonstrating to myself that I know how to apply what I have learned for instance explaining of solving economics principles and problems.

3. Going to class

I've never been great about going to class but I will attend more this semester to help reinforce concepts and spark my interest again in the topic. I've noticed that early morning classes are the ones I skip the most because I like being up late night so I've scheduled classes around lunch time giving me ample time to be awake, go to the gym in the early afternoon when it's not packed and be able to come home and write new posts and study.

Last year not going to class really brought down my grades. For example in Biology II, while I had an A average on exams because I rarely went to class I missed out on tons of participation points and had to always force myself to be interested in biology just to save my grade. I never knew exactly what to study so I ended up reading whole chapters that weren't even covered because she had changed the syllabus a month into the semester. If I want to get straight A's I must know what's going on in all my classes and let myself hear someone teach the class a few hours per week to peak my curiosity.

4. Embracing new learning techniques

I've always been a read the book over and over kind of student(maybe take some notes)and it has worked well in some classes but it gets very boring doing it for all of the classes. Not to say that rereading is a bad thing like I said earlier I'm going to listen to that audio book more than once during my workouts but it shouldn't be the only method I embrace. I haven't explored to deeply into other methods that are more efficient but I have bookmarked various sites I have found to help me start using other learning techniques. I hate the flash card method of learning so I know that I won't be using it but I'm open to using other ways of improving my comprehension. Also, I plan on making more friends in my classes and will perhaps start going to group study sessions for further help or evidence that I can teach others meaning that I've actually learned something.

This like just about every other goal is going to come down to planning and efficient time management. I am definitely not going to spend all of my life for the next few months obsessing over a letter grade because there is so much that I want to accomplish during the same time frame socially, physically, and financially that it would be stupid for me to become one dimensional. However, it is a goal that I want to stick with because it serves as notice that I worked, learned, and reached my full potential as a student. I won't get to my 10,000 hour expertise threshold on any of these topics during this semester but hopefully it will help grow my interest in learning about all of them. Here's to getting straight A's.

I've been thinking a lot today about failure and how much power we sometimes let it have in determining our lives. I always liked that Michael Jordan quote about being able to accept failure but not being able to accept not trying and the more I thought about it the more I realized that basketball was a perfect example of it in my life as well. A star perimeter player in the NBA will hit around 50% of his shots that means he will fail half of the time he tries to make a shot. You might say well those are small failures and you would be correct but all of those small failures add up to great success. Even though a basketball player spends hours of his life practicing shooting he knows that even though he will miss shots he must keep shooting because of the confidence he has developed over the years.

I look at my own experiences with basketball and see plenty of defeats and failures to execute but it never erased my love of the game for they were all only temporary set backs. I could have stopped playing at the age of six when my shots weren't falling the way I wanted them, I could have stopped playing when I was cut from teams, I could have stopped trying to dunk (haha I'm still working on this)but none of this ever made me quit or make me any less passionate.

We only seem to remember our major letdowns and forget all the little battles we lost at first like learning to tie our shoes or ride a bike because those have become habits that are ingrained in our minds. I think the key is to try and never let one failure effect you more than another no matter how much you worked towards that goal. Obviously some will push us to our psychological breaking point and that's fine you're going to get knocked down sometimes but are you going to let one thing keep beating you down repeatedly?

That's one of the great things about being human, our ability to learn and overcome what we once thought were our limits. How many times did people fail before the 4 minute mile 'barrier' was broken? Well, every documented runner up to that point. Failure is not meant to be a deterrent but rather a learning experience, something that you analyze and try to figure out with the same vigor as your first attempt. You're always going to make mistakes there just isn't any point in letting it depress you.

So take this to heart when you're trying to accomplish your current goals or goals that are still on the horizon: Every success is made up of smaller failures. Maybe you're are trying to lose weight and it isn't working as well as you had planned. Does that mean you should just stop and revert back to your old unhealthy lifestyle? No, it only means that you must adapt to a new exercise and/or diet plan to get six pack abs. To get to where you want to go in life involves accepting that you will always experience more failure than you do moments of triumph.

Many times I have found myself daydreaming about the near future when I have all of the things I've ever wanted such as my complete freedom and financial independence. It's not necessarily a bad thing to take a walk in the clouds of your mind and project your future but too often it gets treated like a cinema and once you leave there is no follow up action to make the dream into a reality. Taking control of your life and working your way to those dreams are the only path to a fulfilling existence. I touched on seizing control in this post,Reinventing Yourself: 5 Steps to Bring Change in Your Life, and I wanted to try and expand more on the subject.

Making yourself the one that is responsible and being able to direct where your life is heading can be a difficult thing to do. During the start of our lives we lived very much within a constructed bubble under the care of people such as our parents and institutions such as school. While there became increasingly some modicum of freedom of choice as we advanced in age, most of us never really had to take control because our lives were scheduled by others. If you work or have ever worked in your adult life you still undergo something similar to this today with your employer through the dictated hours that you must work and the projects that you must complete. Sometimes it isn't all that bad, you make decent money and you have a sense of security (whether your security is real or not is another question)but are you living for relative comfort or for actual happiness? Judging by the total garbage economy most of us are living just to get by and any control over what we do can seem distant and almost unattainable.

You can't let current circumstances overwhelm your future plans just think about all of the large companies that were started with a single person who turned very little into a fortune. Things don't totally change overnight but the mark of success can be found with those who are the most consistent, who chip away at smaller goals until the ultimate goal is held in their hands. It is carrying a positive mental attitude and not letting the fear or detractors hold you back. Using myself as an example, I still haven't come close to reaching my goals for this blog and if you looked at my previous post you would see in the first month here I've averaged around 8 views per day. But because I am so enamored with my work here I have set my goals both short term (1 month) and long term and have laid out my plans on how to reach each mark in the road.

Is it frustrating at times? It can be when I think about all of the hours I have poured into it for just one month and have yet to reap any benefits. Hell, at least with school I get a grade for my papers. But I know the power that positive thinking can have on a person and their willingness to do anything necessary. It takes years for most businesses to become successful so why would it be any different for online writing?

Going after what you want is really that scary and in all honesty your mortal life most likely won't be in danger doing it but how you live your life will be. Not everybody likes change and play it safe because they are more afraid of losing the little they have rather embracing everything that they truly want. You cannot focus on the fear you must overcome what you are scared of and reach for the joy because it will keep you focused and motivated on the positive rather than the negative.

What makes you happy? What do you want out of life? What are your values? You can do what you want and you can figure out what exactly 'that thing' is by examining who your are. I knew that the daily grind of a bad job wasn't what I wanted at all and even though I went back to school nothing I see really interests me as a career (probably because I like so many different things). It actually took a couple of years of thinking about different options for my life before I arrived at the path that I'm on now. What I want isn't to be a blogger but it is part of the path that I have set for myself to take in order to enter the next phase of my life. In fact my process just to arrive at this point went something like this:

1.Depressed and bored at work and school.

2. Think school is the problem. Decide to drop out and work full time save up money and live as a wanderer. Yeah, I actually wanted to give up my life and walk the earth haha.

3. Never set any goals on how to accomplish my wanderer status and got bogged down with bills. My confidence is at an all time low.

4. I began to read about philosophy, business, and biographies of people who 'made it'.

5. Back to school.

6. Still working and testing various ways of making a living.

7. Start writing at Associated Content but not very much, I see very few dollars.

8. Finally made a plan and started to put it into action. I quit my job and now do this as the first part of getting what I want out of my life.

If you want to take control of your life you have to overcome all of your fear and doubt about what is possible. Take things slowly at first until you come to that point where you have things down pat (i.e. learning and planning). Then when it is time to execute your full plan don't hesitate and be bold. You're going to fail at times and things will seem hopeless but that's when you reevaluate and keep pushing on, just stay positive.

Link to my original article: Tips for College Freshman

When freshman students enter college it can be a little overwhelming for some to handle (look at graduation rates if you don't believe me) and they start to develop bad habits or feel homesick having never dealt with being away from their families. The first time I went to school, I had no real problems my freshman year with classes but I had failed to establish myself to my surroundings and soon lost my way. My sophomore year is when these unsettling feelings began to really creep in and I started to question the path I was on, stopped doing my school work, stopped going to class, and at the end of the year dropped out. Eventually I got things straightened out and returned to school with a new sense of purpose and really focused on making my college experience more than just four years of taking classes I wanted it to be a time of growth and fond memories. If you found your way to this article you may be going through some of the same things that I did and are ready to make some changes to your life and have a great time doing it. If that is the case read on and let's break down this whole college thing.

1. You don't have to settle your life when you're 18 years old.

I know things can be set up a certain way so that some degrees require you to start as a freshman to get into a program (pre-med for example) and if you want to be a doctor that's fine this part isn't for you. But chances are you don't know what you exactly want to do coming straight out of high school and here's the kicker unless you've had tremendous life experience you shouldn't. Too often college gets treated as a degree factory and people go out and get jobs they hate because they never found or pursued their passion. Don't pick a path because the career doesn't sound that bad to you, that's what you do when you rent movies out of the Red Box not spend thousands of dollars on an education. Sign up for classes that you might not otherwise take or that you don't know much about. For example, I needed a science credit and had no real interest in anything but I went out on a limb and signed up for Biology, the introductory course for science majors. Much to my surprise I really loved learning about biology and have taken a few more classes on the subject simply out of my enjoyment. It might not be your chosen profession but you will expand your horizons.

2. Speaking of Expanding Your Horizons

You need to make friends there is no caveat of if you want to, you will have to spend years at this place why live your life as a loner? Being away from home is a lot tougher if you're constantly left alone to your own thoughts, negativity will start to consume your mind. If you live in a dorm you have a built in crowd of people to talk to, I never lived in a dorm so I had to use other methods to meet new people. The classroom is an easy way to gather some new contacts a conversation can be started the first day of class on a simple question about the textbook or just random banter introducing yourself to the person next to you. Make a goal of it and tell yourself that you will get to know at least one person in every class you take and at the very least you'll have new acquaintances. I do this and it has resulted in new friends, people I only talked to about due dates and homework, girls I've dated, and a full fledged relationship. Not everyone is going to become a best friend but building a network of support is very beneficial. Join a club or organization of some kind just to try different things out and if you don't like it then don't participate anymore. Also, please get to know your professors! If you have a paper due at the end of the semester get to work early on it and then go discuss it with your professor during their office hours. They will help to steer your idea in the right direction and as an added benefit they usually grade a bit easier when you have shown that you put forth the effort.

3. Organize Your Life and Don't Wait Until the Last Minute

The first thing you should do is a buy a planner of some kind and write down all of the due dates and assignments when you're given your syllabus in each class. Focus your energy on getting these assignments done early if you can and study what the lecture was about that day. Don't wait any longer to start reading the book and try to learn it later. Break it up into smaller pieces and study it while it is still fresh in your mind. Most classes only cover a few sections each class and that will take less then an hour for you to study on your own so just get it done. Then when it's test time all you have to do is review and not try to teach yourself everything in one night, trust me it doesn't always work. Organizing your time takes some effort but it is well worth it. By staying on top of things you can achieve your maximum output and still have more than enough time to go out and have fun.

4. Learn Something Outside of the Classroom

The library isn't just there for show and classes aren't the only ways you need to learn from there are only so many that you can take. Find topics that interest you and try to read as much as you can. Not only will it make you smarter it will allow you to grow and maybe come closer to making a decision about how you would like to live your life. Now if you couldn't tell from this article I am a big believer in setting personal goals and often apply it toward reading books so that I will finish the ones that I have started. I make a game of it and try to read a certain number of books on one topic in the shortest amount of time or read as many books as I can in one month. A great little technique I picked up for extra learning is to listen to audio books while I'm walking around campus or have some downtime after classes and I'm heading home.

5. Make Sure That You Have a Good Time in Moderation

One of the first things freshman discover when they first get to college is the party scene. Within the first few weeks you will have figured out which bars or clubs are the place to be on a specific night and who on campus always throws huge parties. This is all something that you should partake in but not every single night or not necessarily every week even. Neither of the two extremes of staying in and studying every single day of your college career or being the party animal is the way to go. Sure either one has some benefits of either achievement or fun but each also has too much downside to be sustainable. Like anything else in life be responsible for your own actions and when you do party keep it in moderation. You may have nothing bad happen for a while if you get extremely wasted all the time but eventually something always does and you will be wasting precious time.

Here are some pictures from around the web dating to the 1960s and 1970s. It's interesting to look at the fashion choices from back then and see some candid shots of celebrities. I tried to link most of them back to their original source but some of these I just had on my computer and I don't know where I saved them from.

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Bruce Lee looking like a gangster.


Steve Rubell, Michael Jackson, and Steven Tyler at Studio 54 from Life.

Steve Rubell rockin' Adidas sneakers.

Bianca and Mick Jagger at 54.




Cher.




Check out this photobucket gallery where I got the past four pictures from it's great.




Jane Fonda from this gallery.


The Ronettes and Phil Spector from here.






Lauren Hutton


Debbie Harry looks good without even trying.


Miss Universe contestants from here.


English soccer star George Best.