By Jeremy Newcombe
Going into the new year, it might seem appropriate to talk about the old clichés—your resolutions, new fitness plans, giving up smoking or some similarly bad habit—but that seemed a little, well, cliché. Resolutions can be all well and good, if you go about them realistically, but in all likelihood you’ve probably already been resolutioned close to death by this point. Instead, I thought I’d do some pondering on life transitions, and how to make changes in your life successfully (which is a similar train of thought, but different).
Now, just because a brand new year is just around the corner does not mean your life has to go through some great upheaval. That’s one of the classic pitfalls of resolutions, after all; starting a new calendar page doesn’t necessarily indicate that anything will be any different. That being said, many of us want things to be different, and we often use the New Year as a launching point for our planned life alterations. Maybe you’d like to make changes in your lifestyle, work on some problems you’ve been having, change your outlook on life, or maybe find your dream job (that is why you’re here after all, isn’t it?). Of course, I would encourage you to pursue these things year-round and not just in January, but if you are planning on making some modifications to your life, here are a few useful things I’ve learned about lifestyle transitions.
How to Transition
William Bridges is a transitional guru. Google him, you’ll see. One of the most important things I picked up from his writing was the difference between (how he defines) change and transition. Now, I’m not stuck on semantics, but as he puts it, change is fast and transition is slow. Change is situational, whereas transition is something that runs much deeper. Again, sticking with his definition, I’d feel that most of us would be looking to make meaningful transitions rather than quick-fix changes. I could promise myself to spend 30 minutes a day on a treadmill and change my lifestyle starting tomorrow, but to actually transition into a healthy lifestyle (which would be my ultimate goal) I’d have to see that change take effect over a long period of time and implement other changes in my life to complement it. Slowly, my body would adapt. Eventually I’d stop craving sugar as much I do, start stocking my fridge with healthier options, have more energy (which would make running on the treadmill easier), and generally live better. Of course that makes it sound easy. Anyone who’s tried to transition into a healthy lifestyle knows it isn’t.
Bridges describes first of the three stages of transition as “Ending” (loosing, letting go), wherein, as you’d imagine, you have to let go of what you’ve been hanging on to. This is difficult, unpleasant, and often painful. You then enter the “Neutral Zone,” which he describes as a period of confusion and distress (which, going back to my analogy, is exactly how I feel whenever I do physical exercise). The advice that follows during this period is to paradoxically go against your natural instincts. He says to go with the flow and stop fighting the change. Let it come to fruition. Ride out the discomfort. The rewards are sure to follow. That doesn’t mean to stop caring about what’s going on, but rather that at times we can be our own worst enemies, fighting against progress.
I think this is pertinent advice to anyone undergoing transition in their own life, be it now or any time of year. Relax. Embrace the transitions you want to happen. Don’t make things harder than they need to be. Don’t just look for quick changes either, but allow things to happen slowly. Be patient with yourself.
Whatever you find yourself doing in the days and months to come, I wish you the best of luck and a very happy new year.
By Jocelyn McLean
Anyone who has met me for five minutes, regardless of the season, will learn quickly that Christmas is my favourite time of year. I buy in to every aspect of it. I am an advertising executive’s dream. I’m obsessed with the music, the food, the traditions, the shopping, and of course, spending time with the family. Naturally I’d like to share the holiday joy, so here’s a collection of some of my favourite things.
MUSIC
Anyone who says they don’t like Christmas music is probably just looking in the wrong place. This is why, every year, I take it upon myself to make about 5 Christmas playlists so that I can instill Christmas spirit in every Grinch. 8tracks is a particularly great place to find these gems. One of these playlists should do the trick for you: there’s a jazz playlist for a nice relaxing evening by the fireplace; a pop Christmas for those of you who secretly (or not-so-secretly) love Justin Bieber and Mariah Carey; an indie playlist for those of you who are just too hipster for the mainstream; and of course, a classic playlist for all the traditionalists.
TV & MOVIES
My family and I literally have to schedule our time down to the hour sometimes so that we can fit in all the Christmas movies and TV episodes we watch every year. Some of my family’s favourites include It’s A Wonderful Life, Love Actually, and all the Christmas episodes of The West Wing. I also love the abundance of Christmas specials that take over my television.
DELICIOUS TREATS
I don’t mean to brag (except I totally do), but earlier this month I made candy cane brownies for the office and they were pretty much a work of art. For a long time my favourite part about Christmas food was eating the Christmas food, but it turns out making it can be just as much fun. Here are some tasty recipes for you to try over the holidays:
FUN FACTS
I don’t think a holiday is a holiday without some obscure facts, so here’s some fun information to send you off – Merry Christmas, everyone!
- In Canada, Santa Claus has his own postal zip code, H0H 0H0.
- Christmas trees usually grow for about 15 years before they are sold. Approximately 30-35 million real (living) Christmas trees are sold each year in the U.S.
- The world’s largest Christmas stocking was made by the Children’s Society in London in 2009, and measured 106 feet and 9 inches long, and 49 feet and 1 inch wide. It weighed as much as five reindeer and held almost 1,000 presents.
By Spencer Thompson
In the age of the internet, many new “micro-celebrities” have been created. Just head on over to the Twitter Most Followed list to see the current rankings. What does this list tell us in terms of popularity? Not much - seeing as the top people on the list are all musicians and celebrities that we already know and love. But what becomes more interesting is when we scroll down to the ~50th position, where we can start to see some unknown names. Have you ever heard of Pete Cashmore? If you aren’t in the tech industry, probably not. How about Tony Hsieh? No? Going further down the list, somebody like Gary Vaynerchuk may pop out at you - seeing as a bald guy that tweets a lot has over 800,000 followers. Impressive right?
So is this what we define as influence? Probably not, seeing as we have had influential people since the beginning of man. The bigger question, I believe, is what constitutes influence? And how do we interpret it? Realistically, there are very few influential people on this planet, but we are affected by many more. I believe this is because there are multiple forms of influence upon each person, and we will attempt to take a look at some of them here.
Influence Is…
The effect that something or someone has on your cognitive processes. With this broad definition, simply going for a drive every morning results in you being influential to everyone around you. But of course when we talk about influence, we are talking about a person and who they are. The problem I see is that we lump everyone into the same boat. Your teacher may be influential on you, but so is Bill Gates. But do we classify them the same way?
Strong-Link Influences
When you go to school or work, you begin to develop a relationship with the people around you. It doesn’t matter if you have passed these people on the street a thousand times beforehand, when you are forced to interact and collaborate with them, a bond is formed. Thus, friendships are a result. I’m sure that everyone reading this still has a close group of friends from high school and university, as well as another set of friends from their workplace or social place (gym, etc…) These people that you know very well are called “strong-ties”, and have a pretty powerful effect on you. In the context of the internet, these are the people on Facebook that you add first and interact with the most.
Whether you think so or not, you have a very strong influence on these people, and vice versa. If one of them moves up the corporate “ladder”, you will begin to feel differently about them. Does someone get better marks than you, yet doesn’t seem to try as hard? This may change your behavioural patterns when it comes to school. And of course in terms of morals and ethics, our strong-link network strongly influences our decisions. But the reality is, zooming out to a 20,000 foot view, is very, very few of these people are influential on anyone but your core group. Do you have a boss that you can’t stand and you complain about to your friends? That’s fine and dandy, but almost 100% of the time that boss has no influence on your friend whatsoever. And this is where we can fall into the “small-minded” trap.
Take the example of a high school. You are a math teacher that does the best job you can every single day. You play by the rules, donate your time after school and genuinely care about your students. But your principal, the boss, is not correctly allocating your budget so that you can purchase new computers. Naturally, you are upset. And so who do you turn to in order to complain? Your co-workers, family and friends. The principal has a massive influence over your life each and every day, which is negative in this case. But once again, zooming out to the 20,000 foot view - that principal is a mere speck in planetary system. To other humans, he is not influential at all. So we can determine that he has a large personal influence, but a very poor global influence.
Industry Influence
The next level up the ladder is people that interact with you on a very rare basis. In the case of the teacher, this may be your superintendent or maybe the minister of education in your province. Obviously, this person holds a lot more power, as he or she is responsible for whole batches of school districts. Accordingly, no matter what school you go to in the region, everyone has heard of this person and follows their decisions. Every time they pass a new bill in parliament, you think that it is a massive influence in the world. What if a new bill is proposed to add five minutes to the school day. Does this influence you? Of course! You may join a protest, sign a petition or send an email to the minister himself. This person, while not being a strong-link, is a very powerful industry-link.
The problem with this level of influence is that people believe these people are mini-celebrities. In the land of the technology world, bloggers like Michael Arrington have a lot of influence. But in reality, 99.99% of the world has no clue who Michael Arrington is, and don’t care to know. They don’t care that Yuri Milnar is giving every Y-Combinator team 150k, or that Quora is growing like a weed. In fact, all of that is like space language. But if you are in the technology industry, the Ontario minister of education means nothing to you whatsoever. And the dentists association? They have an association? you might ask. You see, the issue with the internet is that we get trapped in our “worlds” rather than realizing that industry-influence is very limited. Sometimes we need to step back and look at the broader picture.
Weak-Link Influences (Global Power)
The last category of influence is the furthest away from you personally. Going back to the teachers example, a person of global influence may be Michelle Rhee. Is she involved in education? Yes - she is trying to do many great things. Does she influence your career? Probably, seeing as if you are a good teacher you will stand by her philosophies. Do you know her personally? Not even close. But the thing is, not many people do, but many know who she is. Her influence not only extends into the education industry, but also technology, finance, health-care, sports, entertainment, etc… Why? Due to the national media coverage she has gotten (ex. Oprah) and the success of Waiting For Superman - she has transcended her industry.
She is one example of somebody who is influential across the three level. Her actions can determine changes in your day-to-day activities, effect your industry due to changes made and globally influence education leaders. Other examples of global powers can include people like: Bill Gates & Steve Jobs in technology, Michael Jordan & Tiger Woods in sports, Barbara Walters & Oprah Winfrey in media, etc, etc… These are people that have not only reached the top of their industry, but have transcended into all other industries. When this happens, true influence is reached.
World-class individuals are very rare indeed, but very important in the global sphere. They are heavily scrutinized and always in the limelight. Every action is watched and analyzed closely (usually by non-influential people). Books are written about them, websites dedicated to them. All of these are measures of global influence.
Are these people influential to you? Like we mentioned before, probably on some level. They are definitely nowhere near as influential as your strong-link connections, but they still affect how you think and act. The balance is remembering that usually the people that affect you the most are the people that have the least amount of influence. It’s a tough balance, but I believe that we need to learn to balance all three levels in order to continue along the path we need to.
