Drop a comment if you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the beauty industry.

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The author of the article below gives some pretty good insight on what’s blocking us from sure success and offers up 3 questions to ask yourself.

Is Your Problem Economic or Spiritual?

By Jim Selman for the Huffington Post

My teacher and friend Dr. Fernando Flores was a candidate for the Presidency of Chile. In one of his speeches, he declared, “We don’t have an economic problem so much as we have a spiritual one… we’ve forgotten who we are… we lack a vision and purpose for our nation.” He dropped out of the presidential race, but this phrase has stayed with me. I think it is true of most nations, including our own.

There is a maxim that states, “A vision without action is just a dream. Action without a vision is a nightmare.” A vision provides a context, a ground of being for our lives. A vision is not a goal: it is the organizing principle for whatever goals we may have. A vision is a place to stand–the future as possibility–a place to “come from” in all that we undertake.

Most of us do not distinguish between vision and goals. We think of vision as merely a “big goal” out there in the distant future someplace. Yet, we’ve also all experienced being connected to a vision at various times in our lives. These are times when we experience a breakthrough or transformation in our relationship to the future–when the future is an opening for unprecedented action. These are the times when we are inspired by what is possible and who we are in the game of life.

There are three questions I am asking my clients and students these days. They are:

1) Who are you?
2) What do you want to accomplish?, and
3) What is missing for you to accomplish it?

I am learning that most of our other questions will take care of themselves if we seriously engage these 3 questions.

We are facing difficult circumstances today. There is a probability that our circumstances could become more difficult in coming years. So in the face of these circumstances, who are we? Are we, for example, spectators having opinions about what’s going on but without any sense of responsibility for what we are observing? Or are we committed participants engaged in creating solutions to our pressing issues? Are we fearful children waiting or hoping for the “grownups” to help us? Or are we the grownups who must clean up the messes that others made–whether we had anything to do with them or not? Are we sheep who are being manipulated by partisan propaganda and bias media pundits? Or are we leaders and followers working together to empower each other and accomplish a vision worthy of who we are as human beings?

Eckhart Tolle in his book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose suggests that when we identify with something that is not our “authentic self” that we become trapped in a kind of egocentric or self-referential relationship to everything else. For example, when we think we “are” our possessions, then any threats to what we possess lead to defensiveness and aggression. When we have possessions but they are not who we are, we may not like it if we lose them–but we get on with life and do not suffer.

Similarly, if we think our nation is the economy, then any economic crisis shakes the very foundations of who we think we are, undermines our confidence, creates conflict and distrust in our relationships, and drives us into a downward spiral of resentment and blame. When we most need to be pulling together, our fears and lack of ownership of the whole (who we are) drive us further and further apart. We need look no further than the gridlock and partisan politics in Washington and most state and municipal governments to appreciate that people have become more attached to their points of view than to the possibility of being UNITED in some context or another. It almost doesn’t matter what context we choose — prosperity, freedom, happiness, health — as long as we become united in something.

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“Every man dies, but not every man really lives.” — Mel Gibson from Braveheart

“You can lose lots of money chasing women, but you will never lose women by chasing money.” — Edward Herman in I Think I Love My Wife

“Nature is about balance. All the world comes in pairs: yin and yang, right and wrong, men and women. What’s pleasure without pain?” — Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

“For just one night let’s not be co-workers. Let’s be co-people.” — Will Ferrell in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more.” — Ryan Gosling in The Notebook

“It’s not about the paycheck, it’s about respect, it’s about looking in the mirror and knowing that you’ve done something valuable with your day.” — Kevin Kline in Dave

“Whatever you fear most has no power over you. It is the fear that has the power.” — George Clooney in The Men Who Stare At Goats

“We can’t retract the decisions we’ve made. We can only affect the decisions we’re going to make from here.” — Jamie Foxx in Law Abiding Citizen

“We’re going to live like we’re telling the best story in the whole world. Are you ready?” — Rachel Weisz in The Brothers Bloom

“Sometimes the truth isn’t good enough. Sometimes people have got to have their faith rewarded.” — Christian Bale in The Dark Knight

Got a few of your own favorites? Drop a comment and share them.

But here’s the kicker. Germans on the other side of the pond are more productive, happier, take more holidays, and have a greater quality of life. So where did things go wrong?

Check out this article and you’ll be baffled. I’m thinking of packing my bags and moving to Germany right now.

“Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?”: America’s misguided culture of overwork

Germany’s workers have higher productivity, shorter hours and greater quality of life. How did we get it so wrong?

By Alex Jung for Salon.com

Since the start of the recession, the number of unemployed in the U.S. has doubled. Those who are fortunate enough to still have jobs are often working longer hours for less pay, with the ever-present threat of losing being laid off. But even before the recession, American workers were already clocking in the most hours in the West. Compared to our German cousins across the pond, we work 1,804 hours versus their 1,436 hours – the equivalent of nine extra 40-hour workweeks per year. The Protestant work ethic may have begun in Germany, but it has since evolved to become the American way of life.

According to Thomas Geoghegan, a labor lawyer in Chicago and author of “Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life,” European social democracy – particularly Germany’s – offers some tantalizing solutions to our overworked age. In comparison to the U.S., the Germans live in a socialist idyll. They have six weeks of federally mandated vacation, free university tuition, nursing care, and childcare. In an attempt to make Germany more like the U.S., Angela Merkel has proposed deregulation and tax cuts only to be met with fury on the left. Over multiple trips spanning a decade, Geoghegan decided to investigate how the Germans were living so well, and by extension, what we might be able to learn from them.

Salon spoke to Geoghegan over the phone about Germany’s luxurious worker benefits, our own dysfunctional attitudes towards work, and how we can make our lives more like theirs.

People in the U.S. often pride themselves for working more than our European counterparts. Why do we work so much in the first place?

There aren’t any historical or cultural reasons for it. Americans famously had more leisure time than the Japanese back in the 1960s. I would say if you did a survey of most people who are in their late 50s or 60s, they will tell you that they take fewer vacations than their parents did. Now why did that change? It wasn’t because of the Pilgrims. People work hard in America, but there was a period where leisure time was increasing. I quoted Linda Bell and Richard Freeman in an article they wrote about what happened during the ‘90s. There was nobody to stop you from working longer. There was no government check, there was no union check as there is on excessive work as there is in Germany or elsewhere in Europe. These institutional checks are gone. So people feel like lab rats: “If I work an extra 10 minutes over the person in the cubicle next to me, then I’m less likely to get laid off.” It’s a very rational response.

Aren’t we at least more productive by virtue of the amount of time we’re putting in?

No. Look at their productivity rates. They’re like ours. I think we understate our hours and they overstate them, because they take so much time off and sneak off early from work. If the productivity rates being reported are officially the same, and if they’re understating and we’re overstating, they’re probably working more efficiently than we are, and maybe the fact that they’re taking time off has something to do with that.

Why is it useful to compare ourselves to the Germans?

Germany has the highest degree of worker control on the planet since the collapse of the Soviet Union. When I saw German labor minister Günther Horzetzky in April of 2009, he said “Our biggest export now is co-determination.” He meant that other European countries were coming up with versions of it.

How did Germany become such a great place to work in the first place?

The Allies did it. This whole European model came, to some extent, from the New Deal. Our real history and tradition is what we created in Europe. Occupying Germany after WWII, the 1945 European constitutions, the UN Charter of Human Rights all came from Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Dealers. All of it got worked into the constitutions of Europe and helped shape their social democracies. It came from us. The papal encyclicals on labor, it came from the Americans.

But the Germans have a lower GDP than we do. Doesn’t that mean that our quality of life is better?

One day we’ll get beyond that and see that the European standard of living is rising. You can pull out these GDP per capita statistics and say that people in Mississippi are vastly wealthier than people in Frankfurt and Hamburg. That can’t be true. Just spend two months in Hamburg and spend two months in Tupelo, Mississippi. There’s something wrong if the statistics are telling you that the people in Tupelo are three times wealthier than the people in Germany. Despite the numbers, social democracy really does work and delivers the goods and it’s the only model that an advanced country can do to be competitive in this world. I mean that not just in terms of exports, but in terms of being green at the same time. That we can raise the standard of living without boiling the planet shows how our measure of GDP is so crude.

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Pretty good song, might we add.

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Drop a comment if you’ve got any funny dating stories or text message woes.

Exactly What To Say In A First Message

By Christian Rudder for OKCupid.com

Ok, here’s the experiment. We analyzed over 500,000 first contacts on our dating site, OkCupid. Our program looked at keywords and phrases, how they affected reply rates, and what trends were statistically significant. The result: a set of rules for what you should and shouldn’t say when introducing yourself. Online dating advice at its best. Let’s go:

Rule 1: Be literate

Netspeak, bad grammar, and bad spelling are huge turn-offs. Our negative correlation list is a fool’s lexicon: ur, u, wat, wont, and so on. These all make a terrible first impression. In fact, if you count hit (and we do!) the worst 6 words you can use in a first message are all stupid slang.

Language like this is such a strong deal-breaker that correctly written but otherwise workaday words like don’t and won’t have nicely above average response rates (36% and 37%, respectively).

Interesting exceptions to the “no netspeak” rule are expressions of amusement. haha (45% reply rate) and lol (41%) both turned out to be quite good for the sender. This makes a certain sense: people like a sense of humor, and you need to be casual to convey genuine laughter. hehe was also a successful word, but much less so (33%). Scientifically, this is because it’s a little evil sounding.

So, in short, it’s okay to laugh, but keep the rest of your message grammatical and punctuated.

Rule 2 - Avoid physical compliments

Although the data shows this advice holds true for both sexes, it’s mostly directed at guys, because they are way more likely to talk about looks. You might think that words like gorgeous, beautiful, and sexy are nice things to say to someone, but no one wants to hear them. As we all know, people normally like compliments, but when they’re used as pick-up lines, before you’ve even met in person, they inevitably feel…ew. Besides, when you tell a woman she’s beautiful, chances are you’re not.

On the other hand, more general compliments seem to work well:

The word pretty is a perfect case study for our point. As an adjective, it’s a physical compliment, but as an adverb (as in, “I’m pretty good at sports.”) it’s is just another word.

When used as an adverb it actually does very well (a phenomenon we’ll examine in detail below), but as pretty‘s uses become more clearly about looks, reply rates decline sharply. You’re pretty and your pretty are phrases that could go either way (physical or non-). But very pretty is almost always used to describe the way something or someone looks, and you can see how that works out.

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Watch the video below. In it I introduce Jon Butcher and I explain the 12 Categories.

Correction: In the video below I mention that Jon’s company Precious Moments does 1 billion dollars in sales annually. I got the data wrong. It has done $10 billion over the last 30 years with it’s best year at $600 million.

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John’s an awesome guy and I’m really happy to announce that part of his LifeBook process will be taught at AwesomenessFest. It’s an intense exercise but worth every second.

To get more info and to get on the early notification list for AwesomenessFest, head here »

Alright, after much deliberation we’ve finally whittled down 437 comments and over 500 different taglines. It was tough but fun work.

And now the time has come for you to pick the number 1 tagline. Drumroll please…

We’ll be announcing the winner of the Tagline contest next week so keep your eyes on the blog. If you’re one of the people short listed, keep your eyes on your inbox. We’ll be getting in contact with you.

And the Winner Gets 2 Tickets To AwesomenessFest (Worth $4000)!

The winner of the tagline contest will get 2 tickets to our December personal growth beach event happening on Costa Rica. It’s called AwesomenessFest.

This December 2 — 5 2010, on a beach in Costa Rica, I’ll be hosting Awesomeness Fest. We’re bringing together music + personal growth + fun and adventure. 300 people will be exposed to the hottest personal growth ideas of 2010. We’ll also bring in amazing musicians, bands, and some of the most incredible speakers in the field of personal growth. The event’s got a huge focus on bonding and team activities. The idea is that people who attend will form and create a whole new network of friends and contacts who can help them in their upward spiral of growth. The event is by invitation only and the ticket package we’re giving is worth $4000 (for you and a friend). That doesn’t include hotel or airfare but it’s pretty cheap if you’re coming in from North America.

Thanks again to everyone who participated. You all rock!

I think it’s important that we as an interconnected humanity be aware and conscious of what’s going on in the world. That’s why I’m bringing this up and that’s why I want your opinions on it.

Check it out:

For the full thread of comments, head here »

We got 81 comments with some really strong opinions. But I don’t want to the discussion to end. I want your thoughts on this. If we don’t question, we don’t grow.

By the way. When Sharif El-Gamal, one of the organizers of this project was asked what would the building be used for he replied, “The community center will provide a place where individuals, regardless of their culture or background, will find a place of learning, arts and culture, and, most importantly, a community center guided by the universal values of all religions in their truest form – peace, compassion, generosity, and respect for all.“

Here are 12 different celebrities who tout the power of meditation and what they used it for.

Article by Jason Wachob for the Huffington Post.

12 Things Celebs Can Teach You About Meditation

One of the many great things about meditation is that there’s no one-size-fits-all formula. There are many different meditation techniques, many different benefits, and many different reasons why people meditate. Here are 13 celebrities who meditate, and 13 things we can learn about meditation from them.

1. Angelina Jolie

You can meditate anywhere and find it everywhere. “I find meditation in sitting on the floor with the kids coloring for an hour, or going on the trampoline,” said Jolie.

2. David Lynch

Meditation can help you can do amazingly creative things. (Have you ever seen Mulholland Drive?) How is David Lynch so creative? Lynch attributes his creativity to meditation, as he’s been practicing Transcendental Meditation for over 35 years.

3. Hugh Jackman

Meditation can help you deal with anxiety. Hugh said that meditation “changed his life” and helped him deal with being obsessive compulsive.

4. Adrien Brody

Meditation can help you prepare for a starring film role — or just prepare, in general. In preparing for his upcoming role in Predator 2, Brody said he stayed in a hut in the jungle and “studied meditation techniques.”

5. Eva Mendes

Meditation can help you deal with everyday stress. Mendes said it helps her “deal with life’s ups and downs, coming from more of a centered place.”

6. Howard Stern

Meditation may help you quit smoking. Stern said he quit smoking almost instantaneously after he began his Transcendental Meditation practice 36 years ago.

7. Gisele Bundchen

Can meditation give you a supermodel-like figure after giving birth? Well, Gisele was a supermodel before giving birth — but was able to lose her baby weight miraculously fast because of “eating healthily, meditating and doing exercises such as kung fu and yoga.“
(Paraphrased from Vogue Magazine)

8. Adam Yauch

This Beastie Boy says daily meditation helps him in his struggle with cancer. Adam “pictures smashing apart all of the cancer cells in the world.” Namaste to that.

9. Russell Brand

Meditation can help you find your soul-mate. Russell Brand told fellow meditator, Howard Stern, that meditation helped him when he first met pop star, and now fiance, Katy Perry.

10. Russell Simmons

Meditation can do all that, and then some… The hip-hop mogul on the benefits of meditation: “It has given me energy, strength, health, wisdom, and access to my own inner stillness, inner silence, inner bliss. It is my connection to myself; it is my connection to the universe.”

11. Tiger Woods

Things can go bad once you stop meditating. Yes, Tiger has said that he’d gotten away from his meditation practice and we all know what happened there.

12. Gwyneth Paltrow

You can start meditating today. You know what Gwyneth Paltrow’s 2010 resolution was? To learn how to meditate. So if Gwyneth just started, so can you. Here are some great meditation techniques from Deepak Chopra to get you started.

Article from the Huffington Post. By Jason Wachob.