iDiots, el mantra de la sociedad digital

Bueno, es partidista hablando de Apple, porque hay mucho adicto a gadgets no Apple. Pero no deja de ser un mundo un poco así.
iDiots, el mantra de la sociedad digital - ConsumeHastaMorir, contrapublicidad en la sociedad del consumismoA

Cuando la mente está muy despierta, pierde el despertar cada vez que se usa

…he observado que el carnicero usa cuhillos muy "afilados", y que cada vez que acaba de cortar alguna pieza invariablemente vuelve a afilar su cuchillo.
cuando el cuchillo no está afilado no puede perder el filo, cuando el cuchillo está muy afilado pierde el filo cada vez que se usa.
cuando la mente no está despierta no pierde el despertar, cuando la mente está muy despierta, pierde el despertar cada vez que se usa.

Comando Dharma: el cuchillo del carnicero..

Domination and monopoly is the name of the game in the web marketplace.

Vía @adolfoplasencia las interesantes dudas de David Byrne sobre los modelos de suscripción y como el pedir a las discográficas que cambiaran su modelo de negocio fue escuchado por estas para hacerlo a su favor, pero no en favor de los artistas… tema complicado, espinoso y posiblemente una exposición de la problemática muy interesante. No busquéis respuestas… casi mejor proponedlas en los comentarios ;-)

David Byrne: 'The internet will suck all creative content out of the world' | Music | The Guardian

The amounts these services pay per stream is miniscule – their idea being that if enough people use the service those tiny grains of sand will pile up. Domination and ubiquity are therefore to be encouraged. We should readjust our values because in the web-based world we are told that monopoly is good for us. The major record labels usually siphon off most of this income, and then they dribble about 15-20% of what's left down to their artists. Indie labels are often a lot fairer – sometimes sharing the income 50/50. Damon Krukowski (Galaxie 500, Damon & Naomi) has published abysmal data on payouts from Pandora and Spotify for his song "Tugboat" and Lowery even wrote a piece entitled "My Song Got Played on Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89, Less Than What I Make from a Single T-shirt Sale!" For a band of four people that makes a 15% royalty from Spotify streams, it would take 236,549,020 streams for each person to earn a minimum wage of $15,080 (£9,435) a year. For perspective, Daft Punk's song of the summer, "Get Lucky", reached 104,760,000 Spotify streams by the end of August: the two Daft Punk guys stand to make somewhere around $13,000 each. Not bad, but remember this is just one song from a lengthy recording that took a lot of time and money to develop. That won't pay their bills if it's their principal source of income. And what happens to the bands who don't have massive international summer hits?

…
How do you make the transition from "I'll give away anything to get noticed" to "Sorry, now you have to pay for my music"? Carney's implied point is important – the core issue is about sustainability; how can artists survive in the long term beyond that initial surge of interest?
…
Spotify gave $500m in advances to major labels in the US for the right to license their catalogues. That was an "advance" against income – so theoretically it's not the labels' money to pocket. Another chunk of change is soon to follow. The labels also got equity; so they are now partners and shareholders in Spotify, which is valued at around $3bn. That income from equity, when and if the service goes public, does not have to be shared with the artists.…The major labels are happy, the consumer is happy and the CEOs of the web services are happy. All good, except no one is left to speak for those who actually make the stuff. In response to this lack of representation, some artists – of all types, not just musicians – are forming an organisation called the Content Creators Coalition, an entity that speaks out on artists' behalf.…The larger question is that if free or cheap streaming becomes the way we consume all (recorded) music and indeed a huge percentage of other creative content – TV, movies, games, art, porn – then perhaps we might stop for a moment and consider the effect these services and this technology will have, before "selling off" all our cultural assets the way the big record companies did.…I don't have an answer. I wish I could propose something besides what we've heard before: "Make money on live shows." Or, "Get corporate support and sell your music to advertisers."…What's at stake is not so much the survival of artists like me, but that of emerging artists and those who have only a few records under their belts 

Los criterios de inversión de François Derbaix

Si quieres optar a estar entre sus 5 inversiones anuales, primero debes superar la criba:

1. Selección negativa, descartar al 90% del deal flow

Mis principales criterios de descarte son los siguientes:

• No invierto en ideas, sólo negocios que ya estén facturando.
• No en negocios que llevan más de 18 meses desde su lanzamiento (no desde el inicio del trabajo, si no desde el lanzamiento con usuarios o clientes reales).
• No en rondas donde la valoración pre-money es superior a 3M€.
• No en empresas donde no hay al menos 2 co-fundadores dedicados “full life”: ni empresas de 1 sólo fundador, ni empresas donde los fundadores no están dedicados en exclusiva al proyecto.
• No en startups fuera de España o Bélgica.
• No en modelos de negocio que requieren una importante inversión en activos (me gusta que el modelo tenga “una cuenta de resultado grande y un balance pequeño”, por citar a José y Luis Martin Cabiedes).
• No en negocios que no me apetecen. Intento estar bastante disponible para los negocios en los que invierto por lo que busco negocios que me atraen a nivel personal.
• Busco un crecimiento de facturación superior al 20% mensual en el primer año (20% de crecimiento mensual compuesto sobre los últimos meses, ver nota abajo), lo que equivale a multiplicar por 9 en 12 meses, o de 15% en el segundo año, lo que equivale a multiplicar por 5 en 12 meses. Intento mirar este crecimiento sobre los 3, 6, 9 y 12 últimos meses según el histórico de facturación que tenga la startup.
• Que este crecimiento se consiga con una inversión en marketing razonable: con un coste de adquisición de cliente inferior al lifetime value (ver post sobre el CAC y LTV).
• Aunque por supuesto estoy dispuesto a hacer excepciones sobre cualquier criterio ;) porque en definitiva si un tema me interesa mucho, pues igual me acabo metiendo.

Sigue leyendo, cómo puedes estar entre los 5 elegidos si superas la criba:

Mis criterios de inversión | Blog de François Derbaix

A good designer finds an elegant way to…

…put everything you need on a page.

A great designer convinces you half that shit is unnecessary.
— MIKE MONTEIRO en Quotes on Design

¿Cómo es estar dentro de una Aceleradora?

En entrebetas.com ¿Cómo es estar dentro de una Aceleradora?

The Way of Chi

The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.

It is hidden but always present.
I don't know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God.

The Way of Chi | Experts' Corner | Big Think

The magnificent Taoist palaces, temples and monasteries are a UNESCO World Heritage Site – they're as old as the 7th century! Many of the buildings were built in the Ming Dynasty and are regarded as the best of Chinese art and architecture over a 1000 year period – some were apparently established by the legendary Zhang Sanfeng.

The Sharing Economy - The Rise of Invisible Work - Emily Badger

The Rise of Invisible Work - Emily Badger - The Atlantic Cities

So far, the sharing economy’s impact has been largely unseen because we (and the Bureau of Labor Statistics) are used to counting employment in whole jobs, or part-time jobs, not something-I-do-on-the-side-while-I-freelance jobs. Currently, companies like Airbnb, and Etsy, and Sidecar enable tens or hundreds of thousands of people who are even further down the food chain than “small businesses.” They’re micro-entrepreneurs doing something so nontraditional we don’t even know how to measure it.

"It's like an invisible economy," says Molly Turner, Airbnb’s director of public policy. And companies inside it need to get real sophisticated, real fast in figuring out how to measure this invisible economy, she says, because for many people this looks like an important part of the future of work. It could even be a big component in our understanding of why America's jobs numbers look so lethargic.

"That's not to say Airbnb advocates for counting this as work, or as a 'business,'" Turner says. "But it's a productive economic activity that has a really important impact."

…

That argument also neatly nests within wider fears that technology is now destroying jobs faster than it is creating them.

The innovation behind many sharing economy companies, however, is that they are making it more efficient to hail a cab, or rent a hotel, or order a wedding cake topper. On the supply side, they’re making it more efficient to provide these services or sell these products. And an increase in efficiency generally leads to an increase in economic productivity, which, generally speaking, translates to economic growth.

…

Give people a more efficient, convenient, cost-effective way of getting something, and typically the demand for that thing actually goes up. “If something becomes better,” Sundararajan says, “people want more of it, not less.”

In other words, an expansion of consumption possibilities leads to an increase in consumption. This is essentially a story of economic progress, Sundararajan says: new technology leads to more efficiency, which leads to an expansion in production and consumption possibilities. There are substantially more hotel rooms in America today than there were 50 years ago, because people have accumulated more leisure time, more income, more need for business travel.

…

“eBay’s impact hasn’t been on the thousands of tech jobs it created for eBay,” Sundararajan says, “but on the hundreds of thousands of sellers it created.”

That’s where the real economic impact here lies, and it’s not actually clear if all of those people – Uber drivers, Etsy sellers, Airbnb hosts – need more complex skills than what was required of them a decade ago. If you sell furniture on Etsy that you built with a Makerbot 3D printer that you keep in your living room, your skills probably have grown more advanced.

But, for the most part, the sharing economy is not creating new machines that people must learn to use to produce more stuff. It’s creating new marketplaces to access familiar things in better ways.

"There’s something a little different going on with the sharing economy," Sundararajan says. And he doesn’t yet know the broader implication of this.

You talk about the difference in culture between Sony and Samsung. What is it?

Well, it starts with a dream. Sony’s dream is to be a company that creates unique products for the consumer and they have a great tradition of branded, elegant, beautiful, high-performing products. Samsung started by making invisible products — they were making the insides for other branded manufacturers, so they needed to keep costs low and be highly repetitive in their manufacturing. So the two companies start with starkly different dreams and DNA. Both companies were very successful: Sony because of the way it went to market and Samsung because of its cost-competitive manufacturing.

Now, all of a sudden, Samsung has a different dream. The dream is to be a Sony or an Apple. But they are not changing anything else. My sense is that if you are Samsung, you look around and say we can design a product that looks pretty much like that and does pretty much those things. Not to just make a copy but to emulate. They do it really well and cheaper and faster and, in fact, extend it to a zillion different applications. So whichever way Apple goes, Samsung will catch them at some point. But Samsung can never overtake, because to overtake you have to encourage dreams, you have to try different things and be original. They don’t have that. Any originality they have is a hired hand (outsourced) and not part of the club or the main company. These hired resources can give a boost for some time, but they are not changing the inside of the organisation to catapult them to a higher level.

You Will Have A Higher Probability Of Success When You Allow People To Be Small And Independent

So you don’t think Samsung is going to replace Sony and Apple?

No. In fact, I think that somebody will come out of nowhere and surprise Samsung and Apple. I read a piece in MIT’s technology review that made the argument that mobile devices or iPads or iPhones are going to be as dead as the PC in a few years. I wondered how can that be, because we know mobility is our future. But no, what they are saying is that mobility will continue to be our future but portability will die out. We will not carry these things around, our mobility will be embedded in the places we visit. For all you know, this might turn out to be completely wrong. But if you are in this business, you can’t afford to bet that this is irrelevant. It takes us back to our point on probing the future. There are computer companies that have already missed the tablet. Now, they could end up missing the next big thing too. How many of these can you afford to miss? Apple and Samsung and maybe even Google have invested too much in portability to give it up easily. They are going to hesitate to move in that direction. But there is somebody out there who is not going to hesitate and they might become big.

There is no company in the world that has lasted forever except Philip Morris because it is in the cigarette business, which has given them infinite life. Should companies then reconcile to demise at some stage?

What we should be asking is not what we should be making but what customer needs are we serving

Let me quote two friends. One is Charles Fine at MIT Sloan School of Business. Charlie says that there is no such thing as a sustainable competitive advantage. With the probable exception of the New York Yankees, everybody comes down to average. At IMD, Phil Rosenzweig says that over a period of time, even great companies revert to mean because everybody in the industry eventually gets better, with executives moving from one organisation to the other and sharing information. I think we shouldn’t therefore look for perpetual success; what we ought to look for is whether companies are doing things that will put them at a higher probability to outperform over a significant period of time. Another friend of mine, Michael Raynor, who has written a book called The Three Rules, says that the first rule in business is that performance (product attributes) is more important than price. If you are going to invest, invest in making the product better. The second rule is, emphasise revenue growth over cost reduction. The third rule: there are no other rules. The essence is that competition is a great leveller. Organisations that sustain are disruptive in their own right.
One of the great things about the Haier story is that they never waited to the point where they said, ‘If we don’t do this, we are in trouble’. They always did it beforehand, when resources were in abundance and people were not in trouble. The lesson for companies is that instead of investing in outcomes, products and offerings, invest in an organisational culture that gives you a higher probability of adjusting to an uncertain future.

Los 10 barrios más exclusivos del mundo

Hay cosas que mola saber. Conoce a tus enemigos, conócete a ti mismo.
Ten tus propias ideas y forja to opinión.
Good Neighbours: The World’s Top 10 Most Exclusive Streets - Billionaire

1. Pollock’s Path, The Peak, Hong Kong
Average price per square metre: US$120,000 (HK$930,670)
Price change year on year: +10%
Neighbours: movie star Stephen Chow, HSBC top brass

2. Kensington Palace Gardens, London, UK
Average price per square metre: US$107,000 (£69,900)
Price change year on year: +2%
Neighbours: The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (and new Prince George), Lakshmi Mittal, Bernie Ecclestone’s daughter Tamara

3. Avenue Princesse Grace, Monaco
Average price per square metre: US$86,000 (€65,000)
Price change year on year: +5%
Neighbours: Andrea Bocelli, Roger Moore, Lewis Hamilton, Helena Christensen

4. Boulevard du Général de Gaulle, Cap Ferrat, France
Average price per square metre: US$79,000 (€60,000)
Price change year on year: -5%
Neighbours: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie; David Niven and Paul Allen reportedly own holiday homes, as did Charlie Chaplin

5. Paterson Hill, Singapore
Average price per square metre: US$42,500 (SGD$53,800)
Price change year on year: +6.5%
Neighbours: Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and former Miss Singapore beauty queen Rachel Kum 

6. Chemin de Ruth, Geneva, Switzerland
Average price per square metre: US$37,000 (CHF 30,000)
Price change year on year: -5%
Neighbours: France’s Peugeot family, former French tennis player Henri Leconte and former French alpine-skier Jean-Claude Killy

7. Romazzino Hill, Sardinia
Average price per square metre: US$32,900 (€25,000)
Price change year on year: stable
Neighbours: Saudi Arabian politician Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Ural steel tycoon Alexei Mordashov, Qatar royal family members

8. Ostozhenka, Moscow, Russia
Average price per square metre: US$29,000
Price change year on year: +3.6%
Record price: US$48 million
Neighbours: Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov

9. Fifth Avenue, New York, US
Average price per square metre: US$28,000
Price change year on year: +5.4%
Neighbours: Bill Murray, Tom Brokaw

10. Avenue Montaigne, Paris, France
Average price per square metre: US$26,000 (€20,000)
Price change year on year: -3%
Neighbours: Canadian Embassy, Marlene Dietrich (before her death in 1992)

Self-Discipline in 5 Sentences : zenhabits

Self-Discipline in 5 Sentences : zenhabits

Have a powerful reason — when things get difficult, “because it sounds nice” or “to look good” aren’t going to cut it.
Start tiny, with a simple but unbreakable promise to yourself to do one small thing every single day.
Watch your urges, and learn not to act on childish whims.
Listen to your self-rationalizations, and don’t believe their lying ways.
Enjoy the habit, or you won’t stay with it longer than a week’s worth of sunrises.

Dont feel resentful, Make It Your Job

Make It Your Job : zenhabits

And I found myself feeling resentful. …

And I watched my resentment.

And I saw at its root a feeling of entitlement, that everyone should do things the way I want them to do it. A feeling of wanting to control others. A feeling that others should be what I want them to be. I’m at the center of the universe, and everyone else is a supporting character in my story.

Of course, that’s not true. They are their own people, and don’t want to be controlled, and want to live how they want to live. I’m only a supporting character in their lives.

…

The effect is that I released the idea that they should serve me, that they should do things my way. And instead I did the work without complaint, lovingly in the service of my loved ones.

I’ll still teach them, because that’s my job too, to serve them by showing them the best ways to live life. But I won’t do it with the resentment, only with the love.

The Dark Side of Equity Crowdfunding

The Dark Side of Equity Crowdfunding | Barry Schuler | Inc.com

As a growth-stage investor, I welcome unique new ways for companies to achieve critical mass. How a great idea gets to growth stage is irrelevant, as long as it is legal. My message is very simple: Crowd equity is a brand-new, untested concept. It may be a boon for the many valid business ideas that don’t appeal to venture capitalists. Or it may be a boondoggle. But if your idea has real chops and could potentially become an iconic company, it may be worth it to avoid the new unknown “force” until we all discover who Luke Skywalker’s dad really is.

Como continuación a mis reflexiones sobre el crowdfunding, los "peros" del autor a este tipo de inversión son los "pros" que yo le veo ;-)

Creo que se resumen en "saber lo que haces" desde la confianza y con la meritocracia de respaldo. No se trata de invertir a ciegas sino de poder invertir fácilmente poco dinero pero on la intención de obtener un retorno o ver salir adelante un proyecto que opinas que puede tener futuro El autor haba del tamaño como determinante y, efectivamente, lo es. Puede que el crowdfunding tenga más sentido en pequeños negocios locales (SMBs en la jerga de las startups) que en grandes negocios hiperescalables basados en la innovación principalmente con nuevas tecnologías (IDEs –innovation driven enterprises–). Pero los pequeños negocios locales también retroalimentan con sus impuestos a la comunidad y crean una necesaria riqueza local.

Yo no creo que alguien vaya a invertir en algo en lo que no entiende… con el crowdfunding puede hacerlo a pequeña escala (invertir en lo que entiende o cree entender). Esa confianza en conocer al que inviertes hará que los "peros" del autor al crowdfunding se conviertan en "pros".

Lo que está claro es que el dinero esta mejor en las empresas que crean riqueza "real" (productos, servicios e impuestos) que  en los bancos (donde sólo crean más deuda que según se ha visto hemos de resolver al final los contribuyentes).

Money talks (citas en @Forbes_es)

Las "citas" en la edición española de la revista Forbes. Por supuesto, no necesariamente las suscribo, por si a alguien le interesa …

TODA FRASE BREVE ACERCA DE LA ECONOMIA ES INTRINSECAMENTE FALSA.

-Alfred Marshall

----

marzo 2013

Mi interés en la vida es fijarme retos enormes y aparentemente inalcanzables y tratar de superarlos.

- Richard Branson

Hay que ser un punto de referencia de la calidad. Algunas personas no están acostumbradas a un ambiente en el que se espera la excelencia.

- Steve Jobs

Las grandes crisis producen grandes hombres.

- John F. Kennedy

Aquellos que han sido bendecidos con más talento no necesariamente superan a los demás. Son las personas que tienen perseverancia las que triunfan.

- Mary Kay Ash

Sólo cuando baja la marea puedes descubrir quién ha estado nadando desnudo.

- Warren Buffet

Algunas veces, al perder una batalla, encuentras una nueva forma de ganar la guerra.

- Donald Trump

Tu marca es lo que las personas dicen de ti cuando no estás en la habitación.

- Jeff Bezos

Vale más asegurar un interés que ganar mil libras esterlinas.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

abril 2013

Cuando vives para la opinión de los demás, estás muerto. No quiero vivir pensando en como voy a ser recordado.

- Carlos Slim

He fallado una y otra vez en mi vida y ésa es la razón principal por la que he tenido éxito.

- Michael Jordan

Si puedes soñarlo puedes hacerlo.

- Walt Disney

Cuando innovas, tienes que estar preparado para que todos te digan que estás loco.

- Larry Ellison

No he fracasado. Acabo de encontrar 10.000 maneras de que algo no funcione.

- Thomas Edison

En los momentos de crisis, sólo la imaginación es más importante que el conocimiento.

- Albert Einstein

Un síntoma de que te acercas a una crisis nerviosa es creer que tu trabajo es tremendamente importante.

- Bertrand Russell

Una amistad fundada en los negocios es mucho mejor que un negocio fundado en la amistad.

- John D. Rockefeller

mayo 2013

En los negocios no existen los amigos; no hay más que clientes.

- Alejandro Dumas

La suerte es dividendo de sudor. Cuánto más sudas más suerte tendrás.

- Ray Kroc

La vida es como pedalear una bicicleta. Para mantener el equilibrio debes mantenerte en movimiento.

- Albert Einstein

La audacia en los negocios es lo primero, lo segundo y lo tercero.

- Thomas Fuller

Hace mucho tiempo, Ben Graham me enseñó que el precio es lo que pagas y valor lo que obtienes. Hablando de calcetines o de acciones, me gusta comprar mercancía de calidad cuando está rebajada.

- Warren Buffett

El desprecio del dinero en un momento dado es a veces el mejor sistema para ganarlo en abundancia.

- Terencio

Sólo me fío de las estadísticas que he manipulado.

- Winston Churchill

El comercio es comprar por tres lo que vale seis y vender en seis lo que vale tres.

- Charles Fourier

junio 2013

Las oportunidades de negocio son como los autobuses: siempre viene otro en camino.
- Richard Branson

La disciplina es la parte más importante del éxito
- Truman Capote

La prosperidad hace amistades y la adversidad las prueba
- Anónimo

Busco hombres que crean que no hay cosas imposibles
- Henry Ford

Encuentra un trabajo que te guste y no volverás a trabajar ni un solo día
- Confucio

El trabajo es la carne de la vida, el placer es el postre
- B. C. Forbes

Si sabes gastar menos de lo que ganas, has encontrado la piedra filosofal
- Benjamin Franklin

El reconocimiento de un error es por sí mismo una nueva verdad y como una luz que dentro de éste se enciende
- Ortega y Gasset

julio - agosto 2013

Desconfía de todas las empresas que requieren vestidos nuevos
- Edward Morgan Foster

No seas demasiado ambicioso. Haz una cosa al año, lo que creas que es más importante, y tu carrera se hará por si misma

- Henry Kissinger

Un hombre inteligente es aquel que sabe ser tan inteligente como para contratar gente más inteligente que él
- John F. Kennedy

¿Por qué un ser humano (cerebro) funciona más deprisa cuanto más sabe, mientras que una máquina (ordenador) opera más despacio cuanto más conocimientos tiene?
- Tom Wolfe

Divide las dificultades que examinas en tantas partes como puedas y las resolverás mejor
- Descartes

Las empresas pequeñas tienen enormes ventajas competitivas. Están libres de estorbos y son simples e informales. Se alimentan de la pasión y ridiculizan la burocracia
- Jack Welch

La vida es un juego. El dinero es la forma de llevar la puntuación
- Ted Turner

Las oportunidades pequeñas son el principio de las grandes empresas
- Demóstenes

septiembre 2013

La rareza fija el precio de las cosas
- Petronio

En los negocios de la vida no es la fe lo que salva, sino la desconfianza.
- Napoleón Bonaparte

La historia ha demostrado que los ganadores frecuentemente encuentran obstáculos antes de su triunfo. Ganaron porque se negaron a ser derrotados por sus pequeños fracasos
- B. C: Forbes

Todo fracaso es condimento que da sabor al éxito
- Truman Capote

El ambicioso sube por escaleras altas y peligrosas y nunca se preocupa de cómo va a bajar. El deseo de subir ha anulado en él el miedo a la caída
- Thomas Adams

La ambición no es más que la sombra de un sueño
- William Shakespeare

Las riquezas no consisten tanto en la posesión de los bienes como en el uso que de ellos se hace
- Demócrito

Todas las ambiciones son legítimas, excepto las que se construyen sobre la miseria o la credulidad de la humanidad
- Joseph Conrad

octubre 2013

Si quieres que algo se haga, encárgaselo a una persona ocupada
- Proverbio chino

No te tomes a ti en serio, sino a la competencia
- Richard Branson

Ten una visión y vendrá el dinero
- Rubens Ometto

Retirarse a los 65 es absurdo. A los 651 aún conservaba las espinillas
- George Burns

Una de las cosas que más me excitan es la posibilidad de fracasar ¿Qué mejor aliciente para mantenerte en guardia?
- Calvin Ayre

No estoy en los negocios para hacer dinero para otros. Estoy en esto para gastarme yo este dinero
- Sheldon Adelson

Feliz es el hombre que convierte su vocación en hobby
Murray Edwards

Leading in Complex Times (HBR)

leaders must constantly acknowledge that their companies are subject to an onslaught of destabilizing forces. Being vigilant and observant about the nature and velocity of these forces is crucial.

Leading in Complex Times - Lynda Gratton - Harvard Business Review

12 Indispensable Mindful Living Tools

12 Indispensable Mindful Living Tools : zenhabits

a mindful life is worth the effort. It’s a life where we awaken from the dream state we’re most often submerged in — the state of having your mind anywhere but the present moment, locked in thoughts about what you’re going to do later, about something someone else said, about something you’re stressing about or angry about. The state of mind where we’re lost in our smartphones and social media.

It’s worth the effort, because being awake means we’re not missing life as we walk through it. Being awake means we’re conscious of what’s going on inside us, as it happens, and so can make more conscious choices rather than acting on our impulses all the time.

The second thing I’ve learned is that we forget. We forget, over and over, to be awake. And that’s OK. Being mindful is a process of forgetting, and then remembering. Repeatedly. Just as breathing is a process of exhaling, and then inhaling, repeatedly.

The third is that mindful living isn’t just one thing. It’s not just meditation. Nor is it just focusing on the sensations around you, right now in this moment. I’ve found mindful living to be a set of very related tools, perhaps all different ways of getting at the same thing, but each useful in its own regard.

I’ll share them in this post, and hope that you’ll consider each in turn.

Why You Should Care

Why bother to spend the time learning these tools? Is it just for some ideal of living a peaceful, stress-free life?

No. A stress-free life doesn’t exist, but these tools will definitely make you more prepared to deal with the stresses that will inevitably come your way.

But just as importantly, they’ll help you overcome the fear of failure and fear of discomfort that’s holding you back, that’s keeping you from making positive changes in your life.

…

1. Meditation. 
2. Be Awake. 
3. Watch Urges. 
4. Watch Ideals. 
5. Accept People & Life As They Are. 
6. Let Go of Expectations. 
7. Become OK with Discomfort. 
8. Watch Your Resistance. 
9. Be Curious. 
10. Be Grateful. 
11. Let Go of Control.
12. Be Compassionate.

Los cerdos japoneses no dicen 'oink' (ni los perros 'guau')

Imprescindible: onomatopeyas animales en varios idiomas ilustradas.
Los cerdos japoneses no dicen 'oink' - Yorokobu