I love music and have decided to share some of the reasons I do. You can take so much insight from music. No matter the genre you can learn something so from now on fridays will be music fridays on blog for squares.

The first showcase this week will be Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol. (This is one of my favorite songs)

Check out these bad ass lyrics…

We’ll do it all
Everything
On our own

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Just forget the world and lay here with me. Sometimes we are so caught up in things we forget to take the time to not do anything which can be more beneficial sometimes. Instead of planning your day to rush around and finish everything you can in that short amount of time just leave some time open to lay around with someone you love or just by your self and chase the cars around your head.

This is a followup to my post entitled “the audacity of introversion.” This one is a little more tricky to write though because it is really pushing common belief. Yah me!

How dare you care about others! I’m just kidding but as with the entire goal of this blog I want you to see a different perspective of the extroverted lifestyle. I like to consider myself more extroverted than introverted but I think I am definitely a mix of both. Here are some problems I have pondered with being extroverted.

Your not doing for yourself what you could be. If you focus all your energy and resources on other people you are not doing what you could be to help yourself. Now why is this a bad thing? Because you are just as important as anyone else so you deserve to do good for yourself as well as others. If you spend no time working on yourself your personal potential is not really being met. Try just taking some time for yourself once in a while.

You are destroying our economy. Ok, not really that drastic but you are putting a damper on the free market economy. As evil as greed may be perceived it is a necessary aspect of our society as well as any free market in the world. If people did not focus on increasing their personal wealth then the economy would collapse and we would all be in the same position as those we are trying to help.

Many of you are feeding the problem. I will address this one more in a future post but a fundamental problem with charity is that in many cases it promotes neediness among those it helps. If you are going to help others try to remember the old saying. Give a man a fish… But teach a man to fish…

I know you are probably confused right now. If it is audacious to be introverted and the same to be extroverted than aren’t we all terrible people? No. What I want to stress is a median between the two. Do not feel bad about doing good for yourself but also do not just focus on yourself. The other people in the world are the reason for any success you have. Mix up the two lifestyles and you may end up being much more fulfilled as a person.

Many writers, I myself included have become obsessed with typing. It is easier, more efficient, and gets the job done. Or does it? When you are typing there are a million distractions that cause you not to focus. Your music is playing, your email system is on alert, there are many ways to digress from your goal. This causes your focus not to be on the message in your writing so the thought process is not as focused as it could be.

Instead the alternative is writing. Typing is not writing incase you didn’t already realize this. I call myself a writer because I write. Even many of the articles that are on this blog are written before typed out.

The greatest benefit is profound inspiration. When you write there is much less to distract you so your thoughts flow and can end up being much more profound and solid than if typing. There is no spell check to annoy you as you type, no freaking paperclip asking if you need help, no other activity in your view (on your computer screen); it is only your thoughts turned to words.

If you are a writer try this out. Go to a place with no TV, no music, nothing to distract you. Take out a pen a paper and just write. Relay your thoughts into paper without having to worry about the spell check underline or the ding of new email. There is always time to rewrite, type, and publish but without your concepts flowing it is all for nothing so go back to the basics and just write.

Why do you think you are better than me? What have you done that gives you the right to sit on a pedestal above me?

If the answer to either of these questions is something other than “I am not better than you,” than you are probably an introverted person. What this means is that you think you are more important or above your fellow human beings. Why? Maybe you were raised to think this way, maybe it is natural. Maybe you don’t even realized you are like this. In any case I find it audacious that you view yourself in this manner.

Regardless of who you are, you are still vulnerable to death. You, like every person, will eventually die. Your physical life is just as fragile as anyones and this makes you equal to everyone else. You bleed the same blood and if you needed blood to live, someone would give it to you. Would you make that sacrifice for anyone else?

You are not the center of the universe and must realize that in a world of six billion people you have to wait in line like everyone else. Especially to the full grown adults, why do you throw fits in public when you do not get your way? You are not above the people around you and especially are not above those you are yelling at. Most likely they are working harder than you at that moment. Maybe you should take that into consideration.

You hurt yourself by being introverted just as much as you hurt those around you. John Nash’s theory on economics says that what is best for the group and yourself will benefit all greater in the long run. This is true for more than the economy. It can be set into all walks of life. If you focus on your own needs those around you will not benefit at all and then as the rest fall, either finacially, phisically, or mentally you will go down with them. Your success, no matter what you do, depends on others and without them you would be nothing. Take this into account when you are interacting with others. Helping other people is beneficial to you too you idiot!

P.S. Tomorrow I will be posting the follow up to this entry called “the audacity of extroversion.”

In marketing this blog I have been trying a bunch of new things. One concept I have been trying that I learned from John Chow’s Make Money Online Blog was to use simple business cards place in local public forums.

So I mustered up my amazing graphic design skill and went to work on a simple design for a Blog for Squares business card. I even printed them myself because I do not have a marketing budget and then chose locations to put them.

What I found was that having a nice business card is not enough. Even though it looked great it did not stand out to the many people who came within view of it. So I decided to up my strategy with a simple technique to make it more noticeable.

I took a simple sheet of paper and wrote in orange highlighter the frase “Please take one… It won’t bite.” Just this simple attachment to my display made all the difference. By the day’s end I had checked if it worked and the cards were all gone!

Simple things that can make you stand out, no matter how rediculous or uncessary they may seem. It can make all the difference. Whether it is your business, your new blog, trying to find a significant other, or what ever else you are trying to accomplish; a little creativity to make yourself stand out can make a huge difference.

I was just reading an excellent blog that I found through LifeRemix that has inspired me to change my living space. The article I just mentioned is on ZenHabits and is called “A Guide to Creating a Minimalist Home.”

Briefly I’ll tell you about the article but it is packed with great info so I encourage you to check it out for yourself.

The article tells of how to create a minimalist living space, one room at a time, by clearing out the clutter and taking each room back to the basics. In doing so it inspires you with a less stressful and more proficient environment.

After reading it I decided to try this approach on my living space, especially because of it’s small size. Since then I have made a plan for improving my office / bedroom in some simple steps.

1. Clear out all the unneeded paperwork and decorations that clutter my surfaces. This will clear up a good amount of space to start with.

2. Clean out my closet (especially the unwanted clothes) and convert the half with shelving into my book / media shelf and also add storage bins to take some extra clutter off my desk. This will allow me to get rid of two pieces in my room; my book shelf and media shelf.

3. The overabundance of wall hangings and and decorations have got to go. This will leave much more space to breath. I will only be keeping key decorations visible and two or three pieces of art / photos on the walls.

4. Rearrange my furniture. Now, I am not trying to seek inner peace by my arrangement but my goal with this is to have more surface in my space. I want the most open clear space possible to employ a feeling of simplicity in my room.

This is the plan I am trying. In the future I will show you how it worked out with some before and after pictures. I encourage you to try it for yourself if you think your living space has too much clutter and doesn’t have the feel you want.

The past couple of posts have been my insomnia ranting so I thought I would lighten it up a bit with a name game. This is something I have been doing for fun since about my freshmen year of high school. I was reminded of it when I was talking to these kids I know in my neighborhood and I’ll give you the same tips I gave them.

The fact of the matter is that your name is your own. So really it can be whatever you would like it to be. In my freshmen year of high school my math teacher asked us write down the nick name we wanted to be called. Like for instance if your name is Nicole and you want to be called Nicky. Ok, easy enough… But way to boring for me. So I decided to spice it up a bit. I wrote down the name “Jimmy.” If you have ever read my author page then you know my name is not even remotely close to Jimmy, Jim or James. It’s Warren.

Sure enough the next day, when asked a question I raised my hand and the teacher said “Yes Jimmy?” Ha, it worked! I was giddy as a school boy. Well, I was a school boy but you get the picture. For the rest of the year I was known in 5th period as Jimmy. Those who had never met me called me that and those who did know me laughed everytime it was said. It became a good time for everyone.

Flash forward the the present. I am all grown up now and still having fun. My buddy Ron and I frequent a restaurant called Panera Bread to discuss our businesses, build our ideas, and sometimes just brag to each other. When ordering we are asked to give our names so they can be called out if we don’t respond to the pager. I like the name Warren but names like Bear, Muhammad, and Akbhar are so much more comical, especially when they try to spell and then pronounce it.

Then there is alway putting a new spin on the name game. Another good one is to use your name and spell it differently. I always like to tell the panera employees when asked that I am Warren… with an X. Some laugh. Some just stare blankly.

My name is my own as is your’s your own. You can put your own spin on the Name Game just to make others laugh, enjoy yourself, and be remembered. Believe me. People remember Akbahar or Warren with an X better than just my name as is. Try it out. If nothing else it will be a story you can tell and get a laugh out of.