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3 Strikes & You’re Out! Why This Rule Should Apply to Dating


In baseball, your team gets three outs for each time it goes up to bat. Once you get three outs, your team goes back out to the field. What would happen if the three outs rule applied to dating?

Looking back to apply this rule to past relationships was eye-opening and so much disappointment and heartache could have been avoided. Don’t get me wrong, some amazing relationships with great guys who simply didn’t have a lot in common with me was the by-product of letting things linger. The 3 strikes rule is to get clear on the not so good ones quickly to make room for someone great. To protect the privacy of guys who clearly do not fall into that category, I’m going to assign them random nicknames so to illustrate my point.

Let’s start with the car guy, this is guy who drove the fancy sports car who thought he didn’t have to plan dates because he had such a cool ride. The inability to plan a date was strike one. Thinking that it was a good idea to call early on a Sunday morning to join him at the bar was strike two. Strike three was for calling after he got out of the club thinking anyone would want to hangout. We dated for about six weeks but if I had the three strikes rule, I could have cut that down to about two dates.

Next let’s move onto the sports guy who had excellent taste in restaurants yet he spent more time with his buddies than with me. What he did right was he planned dates, made reservations, dressed appropriately for the occasion and he picked me up for the date even if it meant he had to backtrack to do so. Here is where he struck out; strike one was for being an hour late even after I told him that was unacceptable. I explained it’s better to cancel plans since I didn’t want to spend what little free time I had waiting, I felt like he took my time for-granted. Strike two was for spending more weekends playing golf with his buddies or going to tournaments. If that’s what he wanted to do with his time, then he should be single. Strike three was for when the engine on my car blew on the freeway and he wasn’t the one who came to pick me up. This was when I realized, wow if I can’t rely on him to be my protector then it’s time to move on. This lasted about eight months but probably should have ended after about six weeks with the three strikes rule.

The sports guy made a recent appearance in my life when he started texting. He asked, if he flew me out to California would stay with him, hmmmm…that was a good question. At the time, I had started dating someone local and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to revisit that old relationship. I’ve been thinking about how I wanted my future to look and when I didn’t see him in it I told him I didn’t want to waste his time in California.
Having the three strikes rule would definitely save a lot of time from dating someone who didn’t respect your time or had different values. The key is being honest with yourself about how you want to be treated and putting your foot down when you’re not treated accordingly. The trickiest part is not going back to something that was comfortable because you’re afraid to go outside your comfort zone to date someone new. If you’re thinking this harsh, perhaps I should mention I waited for someone to commit for six years until I finally had to slap myself to face the reality that it wasn’t going to happen. If I had been honest with myself from the beginning I would have walked away before the first strike because he had red flags emblazoned on his every action.
For everyone who continues to make excuses for why your “significant other” takes you for-granted, ask yourself if you see him/her in your future, and if the answer is no go back out to the field. You can’t stay on the sidelines and call that living.

Photo credit: sunsurfr

Zappos CEO Challenge to Brush Your Teeth Using Your Other Hand for 30 Days


November 2
I attended the Delivering Happiness Book Tour at 7:30 am in downtown Phoenix, about an hour away with traffic and parking. It was a feat to wake up at 5 am. My eyes were open but my brain was behind on the memo to function. I had to ask my daughter to help with the coffee machine because I couldn’t get it to close and brew coffee. I felt more alert after breakfast, then got ready in record time because I didn’t want to miss a minute of the talk.

After arriving at the venue we were given stickers with a space to write our name and the instruction to write something weird that makes you happy. My mind momentarily went blank then I wrote, “random experiments to change my life” and stuck it on. Every week I experiment with different experiments or personal challenges. An example is to eat salad for dinner three nights in a row or go to Zumba three days and run 2.5 miles on yoga days for two weeks. Then challenge myself to go to three weight training classes and write for 30 minutes a day on the iPhone about lessons learned or links to useful business tools. These experiments build into larger dreams and are less intimidating when I schedule them into my calendar.

When the time arrived to get my newly purchased Delivering Happiness book signed by Tony Hsieh, he asked me what was the latest experiment I attempted. I told him waking up early was an experiment that crashed and burned in less than 2 days. I set my alarm early but reset my count the day after I oversleep. He asked me if I was left or right handed and he said, “try brushing your teeth with the other hand for 30 days, it’s an easy challenge to start.” I challenge you to try this experiment with me.

At my first attempt, I had to use two hands to turn on my electric toothbrush. I thought to myself, did I turn on the toothbrush one-handed with my other hand? I finally had to hold the top part of the brush with my right hand and slide the switch with my left thumb to turn it on.

As I brushed my teeth I was very aware of which tooth the brush was on and when I moved onto the next tooth because it was more deliberate. I consciously kept track of which teeth were done so none would be skipped. I automatically switched back to my right hand when I went to rinse. The goal for the next day or so is to turn the toothbrush on one-handed on my left hand. Funny, how I never thought about before.

I will post this weekend from the fabulous Las Vegas on my progress. If you take the challenge post your thoughts in the comments after your first attempt to brush your teeth using the opposite hand. How many days did it take to make it feel effortless?

Update: November 3 – 14
Day 3 was much better, I was able to power on the toothbrush with my left hand and wasn’t using every fiber of my being to concentrate on brushing my teeth without stabbing myself. I also told myself to only use my left hand to touch my toothbrush so I can continue on with the challenge in Vegas. After coming home from a night of dancing in Vegas, I thought oh wow, I haven’t actually thought about brushing my teeth with a manual toothbrush. Luckily, having a few days of practice using my electric toothbrush helped. I wanted to do a victory dance in the bathroom after I finished brushing my teeth but since none of my friends knew about the toothbrush experiment, I had to refrain. I could have blamed it on the alcohol, then of course not jumping around the bathroom was a better solution.

Free Video Calls, Phone Calls, & Texting

Since I have been trying to find different ways to cut my mobile phone bill. I’ve turned using my computer to initiate phone calls or by using Skype, Textfree with Voice, or Yahoo Messenger to make phone calls using WiFi on my cell phone. Here are some of the tools I use, I explain them further in a blog post at GenJuice called How to Communicate Like Kim Kardashian.

Video & Voice Calls

In addition to video calls from your computer, Yahoo released a new iphone app that lets users with the front facing camera make video calls with their phones to other Yahoo Messenger users. Yahoo Messenger users who do not have a front facing camera can make phone calls using wifi or send text messages from their phones.

Free SMS

You can select a phone number so to send and receive text messages with any mobile phone unlike their competitors which rely on the other person having the same app.

Secrets to Staying Young…My Crystal Ball

Photo credit: just.Luc

At least once a year, we look back at our lives and try to figure out what we would have done differently if we had a crystal ball. This is usually prompted by a birthday or the start of a new year.

Rewind
For me, the last year has been a roller coaster ride where everything changed except my family and friends. Professionally, I moved from a job I loved, to not having one, to co-founding a new business in less than three months. While going from making a comfortable living to bootstrapping a business was a huge shock financially, I feel like I’ve learned so much and have become more resilient or resourceful in the process. During that time, I moved out of my dream apartment, got rid of practically everything, moved out of the state and in with my family. 
Stop
People don’t like change, especially not that much change in a short period of time. I used to pride myself on being able to adapt quickly and still over-accomplish. Being forced to slow down bored me to tears, until being challenged with creating a new business, figuring out how we would make money, finding data to support it all while learning what I didn’t know I needed to learn. Yet after the holiday downtime last year, it was hard to be disciplined. I started a project to wake up early to jump start my old work ethic and that ended in an epic fail whale bigger than Twitter’s in less than two days. I thought that would be an experiment I could document until I realized I am more focused and creative in the middle of the night so I trashed the waking up early project. Daytime then became devoted to research, social media marketing, going to the gym (a lot), and conference calls. Nighttime was for focused work and writing.
Play
New habits are formed when you enjoy doing something regularly. The unexpected benefit of working with my own clock was I started going to the gym regularly, ate healthy more frequently, and timing for opportunities in travel or business was perfect. I realized, despite the cards I was given I could choose how I lived my life. I could choose to be bored or to have amazing experiences everywhere or create something amazing out of the mundane.
Fast Forward
If I looked in the crystal ball today, can I say for certain what my future holds for tomorrow, the next year, or the next five years? Probably not, I do know that my life is going to be an adventure and that my real life will be better than anything I could dream of because I am making it happen. This is not to say I’m in the backyard wishing on stars, all my goals, whether it relates to relationships, fitness, or business are clear in my mind and mapped out so that I can do a little everyday to make them real. Being humbled by adversity, change, and uncertainty made me realize that a positive mental attitude attracts opportunities. Acting on the opportunities and being creative brings about the results…the trick is sticking with it until it happens.

Make Calls to U.S. Phones for Free from Gmail

I hate talking on the phone yet, surprisingly have no problems with video conferencing within Skype or Google video chat. Then today, Google announced Gmail users can make phone calls within Gmail. To do this the user needs to install the Google video and voice chat plugin. The geek in me immediately had to test how I can make calls from Gmail to a cell phone or regular landline (home or business phone). I called my business partner Bill on his iPhone and wasn’t happy with the call quality. I was hearing an echo and some of his words were a little clipped. It could be because of AT&T service or he might have been holding is phone incorrectly and affecting signal strength. (Bill I know you never read my blog, so I’m wondering how long it would take for you to realize I said this).


To make a phone call within Gmail, click on “Call phone” from within the chat box, it should be right under your name. If you haven’t installed the Google voice and video chat plugin, it will ask you to “Try it now“. After you’ve installed the plugin, you will be taken to a screen to test the microphone and webcam on your computer.



Once the plugin is installed, clicking on “Call phone” will give you a dialer, where you can type in the name of your contact and if their number is in your phone book, you can click on their number to initiate the call. Otherwise, just dial the number on the keypad with your mouse and it will call their phone. It’s great because I can save mobile minutes and make calls on my computer or even send text messages. They will see a random number generated by Google on their caller ID unless you have a Google Voice number. If you do, the person you dialed will see your Google Voice number on their caller ID. Have you installed the plugin into Gmail, if so, let me know your thoughts in the comments. If you have me on Facebook, give me a call to test it out!

To learn more about how to make phone calls within Gmail:
Watch this animation on how Gmail has evolved.


Here’s a NY Times article on How to Make Phone Calls Within Gmail

UPDATE:
I had to go into my Google Voice Settings and click on the check box to make sure I can get phone calls in Google chat. The call quality for video and voice chat was significantly better for PC to PC calls. I need to call people who have either a landline or mobile phones on different carriers.

How to Grow a Small Business Without Going Crazy

I attended the Front Runner Alumni Reunion at Infusionsoft in Gilbert, Arizona. The keynote speaker was Clate Mask who is one of the co-founders of Infusionsoft and the co-author of Conquer the Chaos: How to Grow a SUCCESSFUL Small Business without Going Crazy. He talked about the growing pains of a small business and getting caught up in the daily details of doing what you can to make money. While that is a good goal for a small business, sometimes that activity is so distracting that business owners don’t sit back to strategize about how to build a company.

The two main themes he talked about were mindset strategies to achieving a balance and systems strategies to control speed. I am joining a book club with other business owners to discuss this book and see what strategies we can implement to grow our businesses. Clate said in his keynote, to achieve the right mindset, business owners need to invest in emotional capital, disciplined optimism, and entrepreneurial independence. In order not to become consumed, the three systems strategies are to centralize, follow-up, and automate. He also mentioned it’s important to read business books and he goes over techniques of speed reading in Conquer the Chaos since most entrepreneurs think they are too busy to read a book.