Kick back, relax, and enjoy a bottle of coke.

When things get busy in life and things seem to go by very fast and get really hectic, it is natural to become stressed. I think probably the only good use for stress is that it motivates us to get things done that we might not otherwise do. Aside from that, being stressed does not do us any good. Now, you might be wondering where I am going with this and I’ll tell you. Usually I feel stressed when things in school get hectic and I have to do several different projects at once. In these moments where I am stressed, I feel that I get less productive. I’ll continue working on whatever it is that I am doing, but it seems to drag on and on and on and on. You're probably familiar with this feeling. While working on whatever it is that I am working on, all I think about is finishing and it takes my concentration away from just doing it. In these situations, I have found that if I just sit back, relax, and just chill, even if it only for a few moments, the project seems to get finished much quicker.

A bigger example would be this, I was recently surfing the internet when I found evidence that companies are also realizing that if they can create an environment that reduces stress, their workers are much more productive. More specifically, a while back, I was looking into what it would take to get a job working at Google when I am older. I found that Google has excellent working conditions, and that their workers make a ton of money. I was impressed to see how they are striving to create an environment where there workers probably feel pretty stress-free. One of the things Google does to accomplish this is, in their offices, they have a masseuse that goes around and gives the workers free massages. They also have a gourmet chef which cooks free food for their workers. As if that weren’t enough, they also provide free professional hair cuts for their workers.  Okay. Maybe that last one isn’t that cool, but the first two are. And if Google is willing to do all of those things and spend money in order to create that kind of environment, it must be very important.

This lesson, in my opinion, is the most important lesson I have learned in high school. Not only because it gives me an excuse to be lazy every once in awhile, but also because it is very true. I think that this lesson can also be applied in a broader sense to life in general. As we progress down the road of life, it will inevitably become more hectic. As technology continues to evolve and become better, I feel that the incessant need to be “plugged in” will be greater and that this will make our lives much more chaotic. However, I feel that if we just remember to take some time to break this trend and just sit back and relax occasionally, even if it is just for a day or small amounts of time in a day, our lives will be much better.

Procastination

All of my life as a student, I have had an issue with something we all know as procrastination. I feel like I put off almost everything in school until the last moment possible. I feel that by putting doing an assignment off, I am hurting myself by making myself more stressed out over it. Stressed not only when I have to actually do the assignment or project, but by putting it off, the thought that I will have to do the project at some point in the near future is always in the back of my mind. I feel that if I were to do things when I receive the assignment and not wait until right before I have to turn things in, that would make my life less stressful. Not to mention, whatever it is that I am doing would be a higher quality.

I think learning to use my time more effectively and do things when I get the assignment and not put it off would be very beneficial for my future. In this blog assignment, I think I would be better off writing the blogs before the Sunday that I have to write them. Every week, I put off writing the blog until Sunday, and then on Sunday, I spend a while thinking of a life lesson that I could put into my blog. While it has worked well enough so far, I think that I would be better off finishing the assignment before Sunday and then on Sunday, I would not even have to think about my blog or writing it. I think I will try to do that this next upcoming week’s blog post.
Last year, when I was in Mr Mitchell’s AP U.S. History class, he would assign us to make around 100-150 flash cards over miscellaneous things that have happened or people in history. They would take a few hours to make if you did it in one sitting, I would know. I did it many times. However, towards the end of the year, I began working on the cards about two weeks or so before they were do. That way, I could spend about 10-15 minutes working on them a day, and then I would not have to work on them the last day. I think also working in the little shifts made my work more effective. When I would do them in one sitting, I would get bored and distracted and I would finish less in 15 minutes than I would if I were to only work for a 15 minute increment.
Anyway, now more than ever, I think it would be beneficial for me to learn to not put things off and to complete projects or assignments in a timely manner. Considering that we are all going to be leaving high school in the very near future and that many of us will be going to college I think we all could learn to be more efficient with our time.

The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side

There is a saying which says that the grass is always greener on the the other side of the fence. It is emphasizing the idea that we like to think that if we were in some different circumstance or situation that we would be happier than we are now in our current situation. I was thinking about this saying, and I agree that we do think this. But why? In essence, we are postponing our happiness to some future date when we can just simply be happy now. I think what happens is we become jealous of what other people have and their situation. 

In college readiness, we watched a video called Happy, it was about people and how they find happiness. It was really interesting and I found it weird how scientific happiness really is. The gist of the story was basically this: we are ultimately in charge of how happy we are. Basically, it said that, to be happy, all you really need to do is spend time with family and do things that you love to do. It talks about something called “flow”. Flow is basically when you are so focused in something that you enjoy that you are completely content. Usually things involving flow are hobbies or sports. They are activities that you can do almost anywhere. One person experience flow when they had dinner with their family every week. Spending time with other people is good and allows us to experience flow. 

One thing that I like about the video was a little fun fact it had in it. It said that the difference between happiness of someone that makes $5,000 dollars a year and someone that makes $50,000 is great, but the difference in happiness between someone who makes $50,000 and someone who makes $50,000,000 is pretty much negligible. This proves that money does buy happiness, but only to an extent. People always feel that if they had more money they would be happier, but this fact shows that we can be very happy even if we aren’t rich. Most of the activities that allow us to experience flow are not expensive at all.

Another thing that the video pointed out was that we have become a very competitive society. We compete in sports. We compete with other people. The video said that we are a lot happier when we work together with other people rather than when we compete against them. 

So, in conclusion, we should all choose to be happy now and not wait for some future circumstance that might not even come to be. Why wait? The grass is not always greener on the other side. Being super rich, does not make you happier. Being happy is pretty simple and doesn’t need to be complicated or hard to do. We do not need to compete with each other or be jealous because of what some other person has.

What a Waste of Time

So right now, as of writing this, it is Saturday, February 23. It is 9:41 p.m. I got on my laptop around two hours ago (it was probably around 7:30) to accomplish the simple task of writing my blog entry for the week. I was having a little trouble thinking of something to write about and I got a little bored sitting, staring at the blank document in front of my face. So, I did what many of you would have also done in a similar situation, I got on facebook. Then, after I got bored with Facebook, I just surfed on the internet for a while. Then I remembered the reason that I had gotten onto my laptop in the first place, I needed to write my blog entry. Being the profound person that I am, I googled “life lessons”. There were some good suggestions brought up in the pages of results, however, none of them really struck me as something I need to learn to do or be better at. So I thought about it, and I decided to write on the topic of wasting time. And just to be clear, I don’t think that wasting time is always a bad thing. But if you do it too much it can be a bad thing and, in this case, for me, when I am trying to finish homework, it can become problematic.

This is something that I definitely need to work on. After picking my topic, I was thinking about how I waste time. Normally I waste time doing things like checking my Facebook account, watching TV, and playing video games. Almost all of the things involve the use of technology. I find it very ironic but, technology, with all of its time saving benefits that it brings to the table, opens up countless ways for us to waste time away doing things that bring no substantial benefit.

Anyway, take a computer for example, it can make the task of looking up information on a topic almost instantaneous. However, it can make a simple thing of writing 500 words for a blog post take way longer than expected. Right now, it is 10:00. Had I started writing as soon as I got on my computer, I could have done many other things tonight that I think would have been better and more fun than just sitting at my computer checking my facebook and surfing the internet.

I think that I would be more content if I limited the amount of time that I spent on my computer each day. By no means, am I a person who can sit at a computer all day long, but I think that I do use it a bit excessively. There are just so many other things that I could spend my time doing that are more rewarding, such as spending time with friends and family, or doing things outside. I finished writing this blog post at 10:11 p.m. Had I not waste so much time, I probably would have written on a different topic, but I would have been done a long time ago.

It's All About Perspective!

Oftentimes, we find ourselves getting angry because of what another person might think or say about something. I have found that this is all because of perspective. What you see in something may be completely different than what I see in the same thing.

One time, I heard a story that I thought was pretty cool and taught a lesson. I think it was actually told in a poem, but anyway it was about six men who went to see an elephant. They each felt a part of the elephant and thought that they knew exactly what an elephant was. One of them felt the Elephant’s leg and they thought that the elephant was something large and tall like a tree, one of them felt the elephant's tail and thought that it was like a rope, one touched the side of the elephant and thought it was a wall, one felt its tusk and determined that elephant was exactly like a spear, one felt the elephant’s ear and thought that the elephant was similar to a fan, and yet another felt the elephant’s tusk and thought that it was like a snake. The lesson that I got from the story was that, while each man described the elephant as being differently from the nest, they all described something that was partially true. None of them was really right, while none of them was definitively wrong. I think that this is very profound. As people we all have different views, angles, and perspectives about things in life. And, just to be clear, I am not really talking about religion, I am talking about other things.

When you look at things, almost everything can change drastically when you change how you look at it and view it. Take an “out” door for example. You usually use the outdoor when you are walking out of a building, but if you think about it, you could also be walking out of the outside. Also, when you are speaking about what direction something is in, and you use left and right to describe, they are all based off of one person, and thus differ based on your perspective. What is on your left may be on my right. 

This is also true for life. Depending on how we look at an issue, we may think of solutions that are completely different, or we might just view the issue completely different. Does this mean one of us is wrong? Of course it doesn’t. In the US, we hear of the bickering of the left and the right. Is either side wrong? Not really, they just have different views. 

I would contest that it is these differences that make us, as people, better. The differences between the political parties help to keep us in balance. Not one party has too much power over the other and it keeps our country in check. So, instead of being frustrated over other people’s views, we should be glad that they have them, because, to be blunt, it would suck if everyone had the same exact views. Differences make us all better!

Taking it Easy

In a movie called Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the main character says something that I think is very profound. He says, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” I think that this is very true. With all of the technologies and the incessant need to constantly be “plugged in”, it seems like people are caught up in things that really do not have any lasting reward. Furthermore, in today’s society, many people are rushing and not enjoying the little things that we so often take for granted. It seems like they are searching for something that they will never find. Some sort of happiness that may be sitting right in front of them but they neglect to see it. I have found that life is so much better when you simply slow down and enjoy the moment.

Probably the biggest way this affects me is that when I do things, no matter what it is, it seems like I can not wait for it to be over. It can be something enjoyable or it can be somethings not necessarily enjoyable, but not bad either. The thing that I have probably done this the most at is work. When I go to work, from the first minute I get there, I can not wait for it to be over. I think that I could make it so much more enjoyable by just being glad that I have a job and that I am learning the skills that I am learning at work. Also, having money is pretty nice too.

Another situation in which I do this is when my dad and I go and cut wood in the white mountains near Springerville and Eager. For some reason, when I go, I can not wait to just go home. And the thing is, in reality, it is not even that bad. All I do is pick up wood and put it in the back of my dad’s truck while my dad cuts it with a chainsaw. And probably the weirdest part of this is the fact that I enjoy being outdoors and in the forest, but when I am there getting wood, for some reason, I don’t think of it as being in the great outdoors and in the mountains. I think I could probably make it a very enjoyable experience by simply slowing down and looking around me at all of the beauty that, at that moment, is surrounding me. Also, just spending time with my dad and family.


I think you all have probably noticed this about society and I would challenge you who also do this to enjoy the things that you are doing and not rush through them if you do now. Next time, when you are in the car driving somewhere, look out the window and enjoy the views because without a doubt, it seems kind of counter intuitive, but everything seems so much better when you slow down and enjoy the moment. Life is not supposed to be a race. Feel free to share your stories in the comment section below. Thanks!

Whatever

This week and for the rest of the posts on this blog, instead of posting lists of things, I will begin posting things I have learned from life.

Throughout life, everyone is always learning. Some of these lessons come in a classroom, while some of them seem to be taught to you by yourself through experience. In life, we all learn lessons that help to improve our own personal standard of living. The lesson I will relate to you this week is one that I think is very important. It is that sometimes it is better to just think “whatever”.

Caring about things is good, do not get me wrong. But I would contest that it in some situations, simply not caring so much can help you be happier and improve your mood drastically. For example, a long, long time ago, my sister and I used to always get into arguments, usually these happened in the car when we were travelling places. We would always be uber-determined to make the other realize that they were wrong. And I was usually right, but I found that my sister and I got along much better when we were not so prepared to go at it over something that really did not matter.

I remember one time, my family was driving to Salt Lake City, and my parents had bought my sister and I one of those little portable DVD players that you could use in a car. The deal was that we would be allowed to keep it if we didn’t get in an argument in the car. However, we lost the right to use the DVD player very quickly. In fact, it was when we had just left our house. We had grabbed a few DVD’s as we left the house, but what should we watch first? We ended up arguing for a while and my parents returned the DVD player. I will point out that I was only seven when this happened so I lacked the vast amount of maturity that I have now.

My fifth grade teacher used to always say, “In the course of a lifetime, what does it matter?”. In reality, my sister and I had arguments that were so meaningless. We sacrificed having fun with each other because of our pride. We felt that somehow just being right or getting what we wanted would make us happy when, in reality, after the argument was said and done, I don’t think that either one of us was happy. We eventually learned to just let things roll off our back and, when we did this, we stopped arguing though and now Kaitlin and I are very good friends. I have noticed that I am much happier when I just let myself not care so much about things and let things roll off my back, than when I am irritable and let things get under my nails.