Hasta La Gadget!

The Softech Natural shone the brightest of your list of nominees , taking the title of best desk lamp with its minimalist style, sunlight-replicating glow, and power efficiency.

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Three Al-Jazeera reporters have been arrested in the wake of the drones of Paris mystery . It’s likely the reporters were using drones to film the poorly-thought-out segment on the mystery drones, not the original perpetrators. We have so many questions.

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Are you living the life you dreamed about as a child?

Sadly, for many people the answer is “No, not really.”

Have you ever wondered what went wrong? Here’s one of the culprits: Our society thrives on success, and we have defined success in a very narrow way that leads us down a dead end path. And here we are, doing whatever we do every day, and wishing it were different and better and more fulfilling.

Let’s face it: We are measured in large part, by our careers and economic success, right? Our parents told us, “Go to school and get a job” and most of us obediently did just that. And yet that path all by itself hasn’t made us happy.

In my opinion, we fail as a society, when we forget that a job is not the same thing as a life. We fail as parents when we don’t encourage our children to create a life of both success and happiness. We fail our families when we are so consumed with climbing the corporate ladder that we miss out on the memories that make life worth living. We fail ourselves if don’t allow ourselves the opportunity to be happy.

And, it turns out that life is very short. Why should we spend it being miserable in a job that does not suit us? Don Clifton, a positive psychology pioneer and inventor of The Gallup StrengthFinder, once said, “Everybody does one thing better than 10,000 other people. That’s the good news. The bad news is that most of us have no idea what that one thing is.” I am encouraging you today to find and do the one thing that makes you truly happy. I am giving you permission to explore your options. I want you to have a career or business that brings you both happiness and success. And, you can have both. In fact, you should settle for no less. You are literally spending what is left of your life gambling on the fact that you will live long enough to retire and THEN be happy. Is that your plan? Why are you waiting? Why not plan to be happy now? Today!

Here’s some sobering news, and maybe some impetus for you to get started. Did you know that the average life expectancy of an adult in the United States is 78 years or 4056 weeks? If you take your current age, and multiply it by 52 to get your age in weeks and then subtract that from 4056, you get the number of weeks, on average, you have left in your life.

What is your number?

Sobering isn’t it?

More importantly, how will you spend it?

Will you spend it living your ideal life? Or not?

The fact is, we just never know how long we have left, and yet most of us just plug away at a job or a business that makes us miserable. In my mind, that is a travesty and a waste of potential talent that could be solving the important problems in the world. The problem, I think, is that most people have no idea what will truly make them happy. But you need to start somewhere. There are five steps you can take today toward designing your ideal life. These are simple, but not easy. It is your life, so get started.

The first step: Decide to be happy. Simple really, but it truly is your mindset that has to shift before anything else can improve. You have to plant in your mind the idea that you will no longer tolerate less than happiness. You will need to challenge the negative self-talk that keeps you stuck in your current situation. And then you must wake up every morning and BE happy. Happiness starts in your mind. Start there, and everything else in your life will naturally get easier. You will be more pleasant to be around. People will start to relate to you. Your decision to BE happy will start to change the rest of your life. But that is only the first step.

The second step: Get crystal clear on what you really want and why you want it. What will really make you happy? Most people cannot answer this question. You will need to do some personal reflection and soul searching. What does a truly ideal life look like for you? Have you thought about all areas of your life? Your life is much more than just your job. Are you doing the one thing in life that you were meant to do? Are you doing the one thing that brings you joy and gives you energy? Why not? You really need to paint a vivid picture of what your new ideal life looks like for you. You need to examine every area of your life before you get a new job. You can call it creating your vision. Whatever you call it, it is a critical step in designing your ideal life. You must picture it first before you can create it. Every action is preceded by a thought. But, just thinking about it will not make it so.

Next: Determine your starting point. Every journey has a starting point. You cannot determine where you are going before you determine where you are starting. If you decided tomorrow that you wanted to go to Chicago, the route looks much different if you start in Seattle versus Houston. You need to assess your current situation, your health, your finances, your training, your desires, your strengths, your values, your skills, and your talents. All of these and more are the pieces that go into the puzzle of designing your ideal life.

Then: Create your action plan. Once you know where you currently are, and where you want to go, you need to plan out the steps to get there. Your action plan is the bridge to get from where you are today to where you want to be. Again, this plan needs to look at every area of your life. Perhaps your plan includes a change of jobs or careers. You may need to take a class or get a certification. Having a plan helps you make sure you are taking steps every day toward your new desired future.

Finally: Get off the couch and take focused action. You have to actually DO something to make it better. Complaining about it is not going to help. You have to get focused and stay focused on your dream of an ideal life. And you need to find someone to help hold you accountable to do the work to stay on track with your plan to achieve those dreams.

These are just five steps. They are simple, but they are not easy. If they were easy, everyone would be living their ideal life. Maybe you need to stop looking for a job, and start looking for a life. Choosing the right career and job will make a significant difference in your happiness, health, and wellbeing, but your job is only one part of your ideal life.

This journey starts in your mind. Designing Your Ideal Life takes you through a proven process to create your blueprint for success and happiness.

Get started today. Create your blueprint for success and happiness.

Harvard University accepted 5.9% of applicants last year, and Stanford admitted 5.1% of applicants – the lowest in college history. High school students increasingly turn to extracurricular activities to differentiate themselves, and even with that, they must apply to more and more schools to diversify their risk.

In this cycle of ever-increasing competitiveness, what should students actually focus on? It is easy to say focus on what you love to do or do something you are good at. Those concepts, however, are often tied together. On top of that, helicopter parents, over-competitive peers, and over-stretched high school counselors do not offer unified advice for a busy high school student.

The Shotgun Approach

At Synocate, our answer is the shotgun method: trying 3 different activities in various fields and reflecting on them after 3 months. In this way, we create a “rotational” program for our students and help them realize their own interests, strengths, and weaknesses.

In this article, we will lay out the steps of the shotgun approach: engaging, reflecting, and iterating. This time-tested approach is featured in our book The Applicant and has been used with over 250 students individually.

Step 1: Engaging

The first step is to frame the activities, your mindset, and game plan

In the shotgun approach, students take ownership in finding and participating in activities. Students themselves reach out to professors for internships, local clubs for officer positions, and competitions. In this way, students can take ownership for their plan and learn time management and long-term planning. They also will be more engaged.

These activities should span across different “buckets”, or types of activities. There are four buckets in the framework: out-of-school, in-school, social work, and competitions. The actual number in each bucket is flexible and dependent on the student and available activities.

After an initial reflection, students devise a 3-month plan of activity management and tangible metrics they will use to measure each activity. Keeping a weekly log of reflections is helpful.

Step 2: Reflecting

The second step is to think deeply about each activity

After 3 months, the student should have a good sense of the people, the work, and the scope of each activity. Reflecting is just as important as doing the activity: it can take the form of a journal, a brainstorm, or even conversations with parents or peers. In fact, discussing thoughts with a school counselor or teacher can be a way to get to know them, which eventually reflects well in letters of recommendation.

Students should think critically about what they enjoyed most about each activity and how that connects to their personality or their previous experiences. Often, merit and happiness are correlated.

Step 3: Iterating

The third step is to use these experiences to inform future actions

Thinking is not enough – it is important to make those thoughts into a reality. After reflecting, develop next steps that can be measured either by time span or achievement. These goals can vary from making your own “dream” activities to starting again from scratch with three very different activities. The shotgun approach can be iterated upon many times, and often with great results.

The Dangers of a Narrow Mind

In order for the shotgun approach to work, two things must exist: an open attitude and a willingness to persevere. An attitude to try new things is essential to the shotgun method and to expanding one’s horizons. Often times, we speak with parents or students who are focused on just one school or a set of schools (usually Ivy League schools). Although it is good to have a focus, sometimes being so narrow-minded can remove students from what they actually would enjoy or where they would excel.

We have used the shotgun approach with 7th-12th grade students and it has worked wonderfully. Some students realize they actually enjoy robotics and pursue that, winning VEX competitions and other related competitions. Others realize that medicine was just a dream their parents had for them, and they pursue dance, turning that into a series of performances and focusing on specific styles.

Conclusion

The beauty of the process is that life is a rotational program. We view the shotgun approach as just the start to a series of experiences that young adults take themselves. Students take responsibility for finding these activities, following through, and ultimately reflecting. Using these tools, students will be equipped to find their focus, which often changes, in college itself. About 80% of college students end up changing their major at least once.

This long-term view of admissions is what really has made us successful and what can make you successful. Empower your child to explore, and give them the energy and perspective to do so. That is often easier said than done, which is why many parents approach us as a third party with experience and a passion for helping others.

Although SAT scores are important, understanding and evaluating a student’s core strengths and areas of interest are equally valuable and often underestimated. Using our shotgun approach and carefully selecting different activities across a spectrum of buckets is one way to create your own rotational program and explore interests. Some of those may even turn into professions. We have followed students over the years and found exactly that: when a student uses this approach and finds their passion early on, that budding interest sometimes turns into a fully-fledged profession.

Good luck and comment with your story below!

It was night time. An openly gay man was walking alone down 10th Street in the crime-ridden section of Long Beach, California. Wearing neon red parachute pants, a bright pink polo shirt, the latest Air Jordan shoes, and sporting a white Kangol hat, he looked like a cross between Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince. It was the early 1980s.

I was nine years old, and I knew this gay man from around my neighborhood. He was the first gay person I’d ever met.

As this man walked towards the intersection of Orange Avenue, suddenly he was bum rushed by ten local gang members. They formed a tight circle around him, knocked off his hat, and punched him around like boxer Floyd Mayweather punching Manny Pacquiao.

The gay man stumbled to the hard concrete and the gangsters began to violently stomp him into the cement; yelling and screaming with blind rage.

“Stay out of our hood, you flaming ‘F’!” The gangbangers used the demeaning F-word to refer to members of the gay community.

While I watched the gay-bashing, my nine year old mind could not process the nature of the bitter homophobic juggernaut that compelled these hardcore thugs to beat down a helpless homosexual man.

In my neighborhood everyone knew that “snitches get stitches” and “if you open your mouth, a gun goes in your mouth”. These colorful ghetto code phrases mean that one must never intervene in a fight and never report crimes to the police. In my low-income housing project, the police were considered enemies and the gang members were considered friends.

Terrified by the savagery and afraid of these hoodlums, I ran away from this episode of anti-gay violence. Meanwhile, the gay man was thug-jacked and booty-crushed. No one intervened and I heard the man nearly died.

On the same night of this beating, I watched a video tape of Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream speech.” I distinctly remember Dr. King oozing moral courage and socio-political power as he continually described his compassionate dream of equality and justice. A tear rolled down my face as I listened to the speech.

Today, as I reflect upon the pain inflicted on this particular gay man, I am inspired with a new dream — not only an aspiration for LGBT equality — but a dream of gay empowerment. For without power there can be no true security or freedom of choice.

I have a dream today that gay people and lesbians will have a vested and inalienable right to universal marriage equality backed by the power of law. Gay marriage is not only a civil right to be enacted by governments, but it is a fundamental human right bestowed by the almighty hands of God.

Today, in a major step towards fulfilling this lofty dream of social justice, I submitted an innovative proposal to the offices of California State Senator Mark Leno and California Assembly Member David Chiu.

My proposal calls for the creation of “California LGBT Police Departments” throughout the Golden State. These police departments, funded by the state, would be staffed exclusively by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender police officers. The goals of these proposed “LGBT Squads” are to better serve communities while minimizing troubling incidents of anti-gay violence.

I believe it is important for heterosexual people and homosexual people to love and respect one another regardless of sexual orientation or transgender identity. However, it is also vital for LGBT communities to wield police power backed by the force of law. In other words, we must not only demand “gay rights,” but we must also demand “gay power.”

As I think back on the savage episode of anti-gay bashing I witnessed as a small boy, I now understand that LGBT communities worldwide must be empowered with the weapons to fight for justice.

This essay is humbly dedicated to the memory of Matthew Shepard (December 1, 1976–October 12, 1998).

Mark Charles Hardie is a candidate for United States Senate in California (2016). An attorney, Mr. Hardie is a veteran of both the United States Army and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). He is a member of the World Jewish Congress and the NAACP. His critically acclaimed autobiography is titled “Black & Bulletproof: An African American Warrior in the Israeli Army” (New Horizon Press, New Jersey, 2010).