Remabulous

Who's Got Your Back? The Remabulous read of the week.

Who's Got Your Back by Keith Ferrazzi was one of the books that didn't make the cut for travel to Spain, but that was only because I had to make a "No Hardbacks" rule in order to cut down on the number of books I was bringing.

I was knee deep in this baby before I left for a reason: it has great advice, especially for people who work alone.

We all know we need contact with others to spur new ideas. When sitting at home in pajamas at three in the afternoon in front of the computer and having forgotten to eat lunch for the third day in a row, most of us at-home entrepreneurs have an a-ha moment:

"It might be useful for me to have someone to talk to and keep me on track," we think. "Hmmm."

Ferrazzi steps in with his book to help you find the best possible people to connect with at these moments. Here's how and why, according to the book...

Monday Mindfulness: Seek beauty every day.

My time in Spain was a great reminder: that I love travel, that I love seeing new scenery and art, that I love a good siesta with a book, and that I love to look at a beautiful view. 

 

I was reminded of a bio-feedback monitor I got to play with a few months ago on a weekend away with friends. We each got to watch the beeping light of our heartbeat as we learned to relax and turn the red light indicating stress to blue and then green, indicating relaxation. I wonder how much of the ease of arriving at green had to do with the view my friends and I had of the ocean through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall of the living room. I was reminded of this as I spent time looking at other beautiful views in Spain like at Montserrat monastery, pictured above.

 

Beauty keeps us sane, but the wonderful thing about it is that it is so subjective. I am often delighted, when driving around LA, with the shapes of the power lines and their towers. I can barely stop myself from pulling over and sketching them. They look like robots or statues. Normally, I blow right past this sort of mundane element of a long highway drive, but as I am on a check-in call on Mondays where we talk about the art we are working on, I try to look with different eyes these days.

 

This week's tip is simply this: what if you were to imagine that you had on a pair of goggles that allowed you to see everything as beautiful? 

 

Would that change your day? Your approach? Your life?

 

Give the world around you a chance to be beautiful today. It will show up for you.

Video Friday: Big Ideas in Barcelona.

And big hair. For anyone who missed Vanessa Summer's awesome video about her bad hair day, check it out and see that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree between teacher and student. At least Vanessa was in the process of improving her hair in her video!

Anyway... the Gaudi architecture is still pretty exciting, so enjoy.

Podcast: Why I need some humor in my mix.

While traveling in Spain, I noticed something. All the movies I decided to watch on the flight (Bless Air France for giving you about 40 choices even in coach and letting you watch as many as you want on your own private screen) were kind of heavy relationship dramas or romantic comedies, while my brother was laughing with delight at Madagascar 2 next to me. Hmm.

I am thinking that perhaps it is time to incorporate humor into my entertainment queue.

We all need a good laugh. Remember school lunches when laughing was the main portion of the conversation? I think that during this economic trend, we have all been so focused on work and adapting to the new world we now live in that we have forgotten to laugh.

Laughter is the most wonderful stress relief. That isn't a new idea- much like being reminded to take a deep breath, we all know we should but rarely remember to do it.

So, as I haven't interviewed anyone for this week's podcast, I offer instead the Ricky Gervais show which my brother was kind enough to play for me while we were traveling. It's a bit naughty and ridiculous, but I still have learned things from it and it has made me think.

And it reminded me that humor is one of the best ways to make your business stand out from the pack. If you can find a way to bring a laugh into your message, you will be even more enticing to your audience than you can imagine.

A laugh is a gift to the world right now. Let's have more of them. Enjoy Ricky and try to branch out that way yourself...

And... if you know of other funny podcasts, please do share them in the comments. I would so love to have more to listen to and I am sure others would as well.

Context is everything, or Why mannerism was the beginning of gang signs.

I am back from Spain and back to work! I had a lovely trip and am sure to be sprinkling things I discovered along the way through lots of posts.

The first example is from the painting above: a mannerist work that we found in the art museum in Seville, in southern Spain.

When first looking at it, I simply saw the strange hand positions that were popular during this art movement. People had gotten tired of plain old renaissance works, so strange hand positions had become the rage all over Europe. Who knew this was the antidote?

But what I realized when looking closer... if you stop thinking about this as a painting and remove that context, it really does look like these guys are facing off and throwing down gang signs:

Right?

Craziness. Read on to learn why you need to know what context you are in when you talk about your business, or your likely to start a rumble just like these guys in robes would do today...

Angela Jia Kim on closing old doors and opening new ones.

Loved, loved loved this. And as I have just decided to leave Book Soup in order to pursue Remabulous full time, it couldn't have come at a better moment. Stick around for the piano afterward... it really is a gift.

Design as art: lecture from MoMA's design curator Paola Antonelli

And she talks about Barcelona in this one. I think design is an under-appreciated art, given how much it impacts our world. Enjoy another magical talk from TED. I am back from Spain today, so I'm sure I will be dying to post live on my adventures tomorrow...

Video Friday: Most adorable music video ever.

No vlog today while i am off, so I share someone else's video handiwork instead. It makes me smile about posting this to while I am away. Just like this adorable video makes me smile. I love it so... Enjoy!

Ask Remabulous: preach it, Seth Godin!

Seth Godin knows what he is talking about. There are many people who fit in this category, but the thing I love about Seth is that there is so much joy, play, and fun in what he writes and in his message. I can't think of a better guest to leave in charge of Ask Remabulous while I am away. Many people I know are thinking about branding, connection, and how to get ideas out into the market in a compelling way.

Here is the master on that topic:

Reading on the road... my biggest challenge.

As i write this, I am still in LA, getting ready to leave on my trip with my family. My obsession lately: what am I going to take to read?

I am the guilty party in my family who always has the heavy suitcase. Heavy with warning tags on it. Heavy having to pay a fine when I fly back. Seriously heavy. Why is this? Because I am the sort of traveler who would have been better served during the days of steamer trunks. This is because I cannot travel without books.

Not just one or two either. For one night away I have been known to bring as many as three. Even if I read nothing, which rarely happens on a trip this long, the thought of being stuck somewhere with nothing to read or, even worse in some ways, something that is absolutely wrong for my mood or the place where I am, puts me in a cold clammy sweat.

At the time of this writing, I have whittled it down to six, no seven:

1. Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins. have already started it and love it, so it has to come.
2. Vagabonding by Rolf Potts. Whenever I get to travel, I want to do it more. Got this recommendation from the Random Show that Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose did, so it's in.
3. Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski. Looks like a gorgeous read about travel as well. It's small, will pack well and the NYT said "Few have written more beautifully of Unspeakable things." It's in.
4. 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. Al Ries and Jack Trout. Another of Tim Ferriss's. Another thin one. And as my dad, who serves as a bit of a business advisor, is travelling with me, I love having things to talk about with him.
5. The Devlin Diary, Christi Phillips. A big novel. It came out in May, but I have the paperback galley and so get to enjoy the Rosetti Letter's follow-up in paperback.
6. Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. John Wood. Ok- last one from Ferriss' list. But yet again, I love an enthralling business read on vacation. This looks amazing- from the founder of Room to Read, and the story of a man finding his true passion in a classroom in Nepal. So on the Remabulous wavelength!
7. And, Provenance, by Laney Salisbury & Aly Sujo. Another galley. This book comes out mid July. And as it's about con men and art theft, when my friend Paige presented it to me, there was no way I could resist.

Perhaps by the time you read this I will have reorganized this list several times over, but for now it feels pretty good. I will review all those I got to when I get home...