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Why Most Big Goals Are Never Achieved

In my early teens, a friend of mine and I came up with a business idea. It was essentially identical to what’s today known as Google Maps. The idea never took off because it needed a seed capital of around $20K which for young teenagers was a huge amount of money. Thinking back, I can’t help but wonder if I knew then what I know now about raising capital how things would’ve been different.

You go to an NLP training, a life coaching course or a motivational seminar and the general theme is that you can achieve anything you put your mind to. You just got to have what it takes! This I believe is absolutely true. However this isn’t the complete story.

Before you get all enthusiastic, start roaring loudly and bouncing off walls with excitement because you know you got what it takes to make your dream come true, there is a question you might want to ask yourself first.

Do you KNOW what it takesto make your dreams come true?

The reason my friend and I didn’t succeed in launching our business was because we didn’t really know what it took to make it happen. We were all excited, enthusiastic and ready to do whatever it takes. We just didn’t know exactly what it was!

Everyone who knew me as a young man knows that I was an F1 fanatic. And all I wanted to be was an F1 driver. After I learned my lesson from the first business venture that didn’t take off I set my mind on discovering what it entitles to become an F1 driver first. Following a moderate amount of research and finding out all about the gruelling physical regimes that the drivers have to live by, I knew that this wasn’t for me. Yes, I voluntarily abandoned what I once thought was my biggest dream ever. This saved me a lot of trouble and heartache! I satisfactorily concluded that being an F1 driver isn’t for me and then happily moved on to something else that I knew I’d enjoy more.

So before you dive in head first in your new venture, here are some simple steps you can follow:

Define your ultimate goal, the idea that gets you all excited and enthusiastic.
Figure out what it takes to make it happen being it skills, resources, sacrifices etc.
After collecting the facts, you now can decide whether this is something you really want to pursue.
If not, have the courage to abandon it and move on to something you know you can commit to.
If yes, great! Start working on it immediately and make it come true!

You see, when we think of rock stars, gold medal Olympians or billionaires we only see the end result. However many fail to estimate the magnitude of work these spectacular individuals put on the path to achieving such magnificent results. Once you figure out exactly what it takes to make it happen, you’re in a better position to make an informed decision on whether this is something for you, or not. And if you decide it is, chances are you’ll be more equipped to make it happen then.

Enthusiasm and great energy are essential requirements on your way to success, but they’re not enough. Before you dive in head first, educate yourself on what it takes to achieve your goals, research what is essential to make things happen and then once you decide this is for you, enthusiastically and excitedly get on track. And who knows, maybe you’ll end up being the creator of the next Google Maps!

Until next time,

Tarek

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How to Lose Clients and Repulse People

How many times have you stopped going to a restaurant just because their staff aren’t friendly enough? On the other hand, how many times you’ve been to a restaurant that isn’t necessarily the best in town, but they treat you like royalty the moment you step in?

People like dealing with people they like. If you’re into business providing any product or service and your potential clients don’t like you, you’re in deep trouble. That’s especially true, if you’re the one doing the selling.

After my experience with over 60 estate agents recently, here are a few things you can do to set your potential clients running in the opposite direction and never wanting to do business with you:

1- Look like crap. You should dress for success, frankly, only when you want to be successful. But if you don’t, you must look like you’ve been living in a WWII trench for the past 3 months. It’s also encouraged to smell like a rat that died as a result of chain smoking. This could go a long way to help you repulse people. So to make sure it works, always have a cigarette dangling from your mouth even when you’re with a client.

2- Smiling is frowned upon. If you’ve done any NLP training you’ll know that 38% of the meaning of your communication is in your tonality. And when you smile, even if it’s over the phone, your smile WILL be heard. So you must be as grim and grumpy as possible and it will come across. This is key to driving clients away as normally clients are more attracted to smiley people – which you don’t want to be classified as one!

3- Don’t listen. After all whatever you have to say is much more important than what others or your clients have to say. Interrupt them, don’t let them finish and interject with your thoughts and opinions because they’re more important that your clients’. I mean, you’re the know all and be all and everyone should be fully attentive to your verbal diarrhoea.

4- Don’t make people and especially your clients feel special. That’s an absolute no no if you want to repulse them. You must make them feel like they’re the servants to your holiness. If your phone rings while in mid conversation answer it. Even if you feel like making a call, make it. Forget their names. Ignore what they want. And just treat them like a random name on a piece of paper not like people. Because they’re not people. They’re bags of money and that’s what you’re after.

5- Have zero etiquette and business manners. Never introduce yourself, it’s perfectly normal to be talking for 20 minutes and not know each other’s names. Coming to think about it, names are overused. Never use pleasantries. Why say thank you and please? You’re the king/queen and they must obey your every command. Never be courteous. It’s absolutely fine to be eating and making loud chewing noises while talking to your clients.

6- Lie. That’s a big one and is sure to help you repulse people and especially clients. Lie through your teeth. Even if it’s obvious that your client has done their homework and they know you’re not telling the truth, keep lying. After all who knows, one of you might start believing your lies and it’s probably going to be you.

There you have it. Obviously this isn’t an exhaustive list, but if you stick to these few tips and make sure you practice them well enough, you’ll be losing clients and repulsing people in no time, guaranteed. And even if you have the best product or service in the world, you’ll notice your clients migrating to your competitors. That’s when you know you’ve been successful in losing them and you can then go back to smoking in your trench happily ever after.

Tarek

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How to Fund Your Passion

If you’re passionate about something in life, you’re likely to have thought about the possibility of pursuing your passion and making it a full time occupation. But you’re also likely to have wondered about how to make enough money to fund the business project that is your passion. In the following blog post I answer this question.

Desmond Morris; a zoologist, published a book titled The Biology of Art in which he describes a very interesting experiment. In that experiment he taught chimpanzees to paint. The chimps enjoyed the paintings producing some great works. Then something unexpected happened.

During one phase, Desmond Morris began rewarding the chimps by giving them peanuts every time they created an art work. Soon enough the quality of their work degraded. Eventually the chimps only produced the bare minimum to satisfy the reward giver and get their peanuts.

Does this remind you of someone you know?

It took me five years of hard work to land my dream job. But I never thought of it as hard work, because I was passionate about what I did and enjoyed every moment of it… until it became my job. Soon after, reality hit and I turned into a Desmond chimp. I stopped enjoying myself, did the bare minimum to get my peanuts and eagerly waited for weekends. I figured perhaps it’s the job to blame for losing my passion and drive, so I decided to change employers. The second time was even worse than the first. So I decided that’s it, jobs suck, I need to set up my own business, thinking this would solve the problem.

Admittedly, this still worries me. Because right now, even that I absolutely love what I do I still worry that a few years down the line, this will turn into another job where I’ll be doing just what it takes to get the peanuts. Do you see the dilemma here?

Either do what you love and not get paid for it, or get paid for it and stop loving it as a result.

That’s the dilemma. What’s the solution?

I’m not going to claim I know the answer because I don’t. Instead I’m going to share with you my personal experience. And please, if you have any ideas on how to deal with this do share them in the comment box below.

Here’s what I think the answer is…

A few days ago I was talking to my life coach in London and she reminded me of why I started doing what I’m doing in the first place. Even before I landed what I thought was my dream job. She reminded me of the vision that set me on this path, that somehow I got deviated from and ended up doing a job or feeling like I’m in one.

You might think that setting up your own business solves this problem. It doesn’t. Because when you set up your own business, you can’t rely on a salary at the end of the month. You need to be creating your own income. As a result, especially if you’re a startup, you might be doing anything that brings you this income to get your business of the ground. Which results in you deviating from your vision and your business turning into a job. Here’s an example…

Let’s say you’re passionate about making desserts. That’s what you love to do and you want to spend the rest of your life indulging people in amazing desserts that you artistically produce in your kitchen. But because you’re still new to the business and there’s no income yet, you accept a job request to cater for a raw food dinner, which you don’t particularly like doing. Slowly, to keep the cash flow, you find yourself catering to more jobs that you don’t enjoy. Suddenly it starts feeling as if you’re working for your clients and not following your passion anymore. You’re a chimp doing a job for peanuts! What possibly could you do?

Let’s be realistic. You need the money to keep your business going. There’s no harm taking jobs that keep the cash flowing especially if you’re starting up. That’s fine. At the same time do the following:

1- Get REALLY good at making desserts. Become known as the dessert person. When you hit this status, you’ll be flooded by dessert making requests; exactly what you’re passionate about doing.

2- Stick to it. When your business takes off and you get flooded by dessert making requests or if you’re starting your business strong with a solid capital stick to making desserts. It’s your passion and there’s absolutely no point in doing anything you don’t enjoy. Unless…

3- Unless you discover that catering for raw food dinners is a very lucrative business, but you hate doing that. When you have the funding for it, learn everything you can about raw foods then hire someone to do it for you. The trick is, hiring someone who absolutely loves catering for raw food dinners.

So to sum it up, the solution is to find ways to get your passion to work for you and make you money. Not the other way around. You shouldn’t be asking “How do I fund my passion?” That’s the wrong question. The question you should be asking instead is “How do I get my passion to fund me?” If you’re passionate about your vision you’ll become resourceful and come up with tons of answers to this question. That’s when you’ll start truly living your passion, steadily move toward your vision and achieve your purpose in life.

If you’re struggling to find answers to this question, get some life coaching. My London life coach has tremendously helped me find answers and I know if you find one he/she could do the same for you.

Tarek

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Oprah’s “Thing” to Achieving Material and Spiritual Success

Oprah admits that she listens to her inner voice; she trusts her feelings and allows them to guide her to material and spiritual success. You might think Oprah is a very emotionally mature person and that’s unique to her. Other billionaires don’t do that. Right? Wrong.

Warren Buffet is another billionaire that trusts his intuition and has acquired businesses based on it. How could one of the wealthiest men and women on the planet rely on their feelings as opposed to their logic and rationale to make decisions, possibly worth multiple millions of dollars? And what’s the difference between them and the average person?

What is Intuition?

As Oprah says, you can call it whatever you want, instinct, inner voice, higher power, intuition. For the sake of this post, let’s stick to intuition.

First let us start by defining intuition. You’ll probably find dozens of definitions and with your permission I’d like to share with you what intuition means to me from my years of life coaching and NLP training.

Intuition is a gut feeling. A feeling that tells you whether something is right or wrong, or good or bad. And when you develop this gut feeling it allows you to support crucial skills like making quicker decisions more effectively. Or knowing what to say and when to say it. And of course the ability to identify whether someone is being truthful and honest to you which is an incredibly important skill to have not only if you’re a life coach, but in general.

Where does it come from?

Each and every one of us has intuition deep within. It comes with your experience. You’ve been living on this planet for decades learning, experimenting and experiencing. And this experience goes nowhere! It stays with you. The difference is how much you utilize this experience and act upon it thus transforming it into wisdom and a trust worthy intuition.

When Oprah makes a decision based on her instinct or when Buffet acquires a business following his intuition it’s because they both have tremendous experience in their fields. Buffet for example reads 2000 annual reports per year. Imagine if you did that for 45 years. Do you think you’d be financially savvy and are able to make snappy decisions based on your gut feeling? Of course you would!

How do you develop it?

If you don’t think you’re intuitive, don’t worry. I wasn’t… at all! I was and still am a very logical, analytical, rational person. And if a person like me can develop his intuition, then you can definitely do a better job than me. And here’s how you do it.

1- Listen. Listen to what others are communicating to you and more importantly listen to yourself. Keep your mind open and your attention alert for when your intuition kicks in. You want to be ready to hear what it says. Last time I talked about how you can develop you listening skills. If you haven’t done so already, go ahead and read about it here.

2- Relax. When communicating with someone, or something it’s important you do this in a relaxed state of mind. If you’re in your head being anxious, nervous or worried that means you’re not listening which also means you’re going to miss out on what your intuition is trying to tell you. So take a deep breath (or two), relax and listen.

3- Trust it! Imagine that your intuition is this close person that absolutely loves you and is doing whatever it can to help you. If you don’t trust in its abilities, it cannot help you. When you start trusting in your intuition you’ll allow it to help you more, you’ll produce better results materially and spiritually and as a result you’ll trust in it more then it will help you even more and so on… it’s a circle of growth.

I hope this helps you identify with you intuition and trust in it more allowing it to guide you into spiritual and material success. Remember that listening and developing your intuition go hand in hand. Make sure you practice both skills and you’re sure to experience outstanding results.

Until next time,

Tarek

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A Crucial Key to Being Loved By Millions

Oprah Winfrey is adored by the public. Millions; through the silver screen, allow her into their homes and between their children every single day. Why is that? What makes Oprah such a loveable and influential person?

There are many skills that make Oprah who she is but there are a few CRUCIAL and KEY skills that without them Oprah wouldn’t be Oprah. And very, very few people know about these skills or how to master them. Today I’ll share with you one of those skills and I’ll explain to you exactly how it works. Hopefully by the end of it, you’ll posses a skill that’s incredibly rare to find.

Keep in mind that if you’re a life coach this is an extremely powerful skill to have. So listen up.

Quincy Jones once said that Oprah: “… does something that most people don’t have a clue about. She knows how to listen. And she listens not just with her head. She listens with her heart and soul”

Have you ever been described as a good listener?

Practice what you’re about to learn and you’re guaranteed to be described as an extraordinary listener that people will open up to and connect with just like Oprah’s audience opens up to and connects with her.

Listening is of four types:

Cosmetic listening is when you’re pretending you’re listening but you’re not. Think a man watching a football game and his wife trying to share with him the latest soufflé recipe she just discovered. He’s nodding and making “listening noises” like aha, uhum but he’s not really listening to a word she’s saying. As disconnected as it may sound, this type of listening has its uses. For example, it could be used when someone is ranting and they just need to talk to someone to vent if a bit, even if this someone is pretending to be listening.

Conversational listening is what most of us do every day. It involves listening to what others are saying, then getting into your own head to think about what you want to say then saying it then listening then thinking then talking and so on. The focus is shifting between yourself and the person you’re conversing with.

Active listening is what you do when you’re life coaching someone. It is when you’re intentionally focused on the person talking to you. You’re aiming to genuinely understand the message they’re trying to get across. You ask questions to fill in the gaps they might have left. Unlike conversational listening, you don’t share your stories or experiences just yet. In other words, you’re less in your head and more focused on building a complete picture of what the other person is telling you.

Deep listening is the fourth and most powerful type. It is almost hypnotic and it’s more powerful than active listening especially if you’re life coaching someone. It’s as if you’re in a meditative state where your mind is completely silent and you’re fully focused on what the other person in front of you is telling you. By nature, this state is very elusive because the moment you’re thinking “OMG I’m deep listening” you lost it!

You need not be a life coach or life coaching someone however to deep listen. You can do this if you’re a teacher, a parent, a spouse, a friend or just a stranger. Of course it’s not possible, desirable nor recommended to deep listen for long periods of time. That’s especially true if you’re life coaching someone as that will require a fair bit of active listening too.

But in these moments when you’re deep listening, you’ll feel as if you’re experiencing being the other person. The other person will feel that no one has ever before related to them or understood them like you do… and rightfully so! It feels as if the entire world is melting down around you and that you’re the only two people left there. You forget about the big cheering audience, the rolling cameras, the bright studio lights or the fact that you’re live on TV. It’s just you and the other person in front of you and there’s this incredible and powerful connection between you that’s unique only to you two.

That’s what “listening with your heart and soul” is all about. And when you master this skill, you’re one step closer to being adored by millions just like Oprah or being the outstanding life coach that you are.

Soon, I’ll be letting you in on much more skills that Oprah posses and uses. Some amazing stuff is coming up so stay tuned.

Until next time,

Tarek

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Tips From The Cash Lady

On my way to a meeting with other life coaches and NLP trainers yesterday I was listening to an interview with a lady known for her ability to generate cash almost instantly. I recorded this video to share with you what I learned.

You can watch it here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW3zjdFyeeg

Until next time,

Tarek

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Are You Insane?!

A few months ago I wrote a blog titled YCDBSOYA. You can read it here. We had great discussions over it on the blog and on my facebook page. In a nutshell we were trying to figure out why, if some are working on a business and know exactly what needs to be done, they would still not do it?

After all this time thinking about, I think I finally know why!

If you know what needs to be done, in your health, wealth or relationship, and you’re still not doing it, it’s because of one of two reasons:

1- You’re Insane.

Albert Einstein says: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

If you’ve been to any NLP training or life coaching courses you might have come across this: “keep doing what you’ve done and you’ll keep getting what you’ve got”.

Do you do this sometimes? Constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized. You know it doesn’t work. Nothing new will ever materialize. That’s fine, keep going back to the fridge, it’s funny. Just don’t use the same strategy with your health wealth and relationships because nothing new will ever materialize if you keep doing what you’ve done.

The second reason is what, in NLP terms, is called:

2- Secondary Gains

The medical dictionary defines a secondary gain as: “an indirect benefit, usually obtained through an illness or debility. Such gains may include monetary and disability benefits, personal attention, or escape from unpleasant situations and responsibilities.”

In other words, when you engage in an act such as eating a tub of ice cream or smoking a cigarette even when knowing that you shouldn’t, you’re likely doing it because of a secondary gain. The secondary gain could be for example the momentarily comfort that the ice cream or cigarette provides.

Do you have a secondary gain for an unwanted behaviour you’re currently engaging in? Share it with us in the comment box below.

Equally, not engaging in an act could also be motivated by secondary gains. For example, not getting off the couch and making things happen in your business could have the secondary gain of you staying in a comfortable familiar place instead of subjecting yourself to the unpleasantness of , say, learning to create a website for your business and dealing with an evil computer.

The problem with secondary gains is that they are happening on an unconscious level. They could be affecting you without you even knowing. So how do you deal with them? I’m glad you asked.

1- Become aware. The first thing you need to do is bring the secondary gain out of the unconscious into your conscious awareness. When you catch yourself engaging in an unwanted behaviour, especially if it had become a routine, pause for a minute and ask yourself: “Why am I doing this? What could be my secondary gain from doing this?” Do this now. Think of a routine unwanted behaviour that you normally engage in and answer these questions.

2- Realize the real reward. Secondary gains reward you, by providing comfort or safety or any other momentarily rewards. You must understand that these rewards are very short term and that you’re likely going to feel a lot worse shortly after receiving that momentarily reward. But because your unconscious mind is receiving a reward anyway, it believes it’s doing you good. You must bring to your awareness the fact that receiving a momentarily reward for engaging in an unwanted behaviour does NOT mean that this behaviour is correct. Read this on goal oriented self imposed delayed gratification.

3- Focus on the real reward. Now you know there’s a long term, much better reward if you stop that unwanted behaviour, get off your butt and go get that reward. Set your sight on it, get motivated and go claim it. It’s yours, you deserve it and all you need to do is reach out and grab it. It’s not going to come to you. You can’t get it sitting on your ass.

Until next time,

Tarek

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How to TRULY Look Unique

If you’ve read the previous post here and you answer is “YES, I truly want to look unique” then this post is for you.

Almost a year back I was taking part in an NLP training and life coaching course. One of the ladies (hopefully) complimenting me said: “Tarek, you really stand out”. What’s unusual about her comment is that it was said in a time where I couldn’t possibly have looked any more normal. I was wearing a jeans and a plain white tshirt. That’s as normal looking as any guy could be!

So why did I stand out and how can you do it? I’ll tell you.

To be unique and stand out, there are two phases. The first one is looking unique. The second one, as the title says, looking TRULY unique.

Can You Handle TRULY Standing Out?

Anyone could look unique. It’s really easy. Go get yourself a fuchsia cowboy hat and a fuchsia feather boa and wear them both together. It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman. It’s a sure way to stand out and look unique. But what would you accomplish with that apart from looking really silly?

Believe it or not, there is a great advantage to doing this.

On my path to discovering my unique self and trying to stand out I wore a lot of things. Some I’m embarrassed to mention here. I remember going out once on Halloween night when a lady on the train told me she liked my costume. I said: “thanks, but these are my normal clothes”. And they really were! (In case you’re wondering, yes, my costume did include a cowboy hat)

So what’s the advantage of this? Standing out immediately puts you under the spot light. You get noticed. Some will like your uniqueness, and some will not. You will get compliments and you will get criticism. More often than not, it will be criticism. But why would you put yourself through that?! Because it will happen anyway, whether you’re wearing fuchsia accessories or a pair of jeans and a plain white tshirt.

Why People Hide

The reason women hide behind make up and fancy dresses, or men hide behind bank accounts and flashy cars is because they don’t think they’re good enough. They put an act and hide behind a persona because they think others will not like who they truly are. And this is what they fear the most. They fear that people might not like their true selves. So if they hide behind a car or a dress or an act and someone doesn’t like them they can always blame the act and keep their true selves protected and hidden.

Here’s an example. A young lady puts on an outrageous dress that’s very attention grabbing. She goes on a night out with her friends and soon enough she spots a handsome man. She smiles at the man who smiles back and keeps walking. In her mind she’s thinking: “why didn’t he come and say hi? It must be my dress. He probably didn’t like my dress” That in her mind isn’t half as bad as the second scenario.

Same guy, same lady minus the outrageous dress. This time without the dress she’s thinking: “why didn’t he come and say hi? It must be me. He didn’t like me!”

Without the dress, her true self is in the sport light and if her true self gets rejected, there is no excuse to giver herself to cushion the blow.

I Dare You

It’s the real world. You need to realize this now: you can’t possibly please everyone. People will still criticize you. Whether you’re wearing a fuchsia cowboy hat and a fuchsia feather boa or whether you’re just being you. So you have one of two options. Either hide behind whatever persona you create or just be your true self starting this moment.

And because it’s the real world know that not everyone will like your true self. Your ego and true self will still get bruised by people’s rejections. But the difference is that everyone will respect you for having the courage to show your true self. Those very few that, similar to you, dare to show their true selves, will respect you. And the rest who don’t have the courage, will respect and envy you.

It’s then, when you are truly unique and you stand out, even when you’re wearing a pair of jeans, and a plain white tshirt. Because as cliché as it might sound, everyone is really unique.

Until next time,

Tarek

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Do You Really Want to Look Unique?

I was discussing with a friend of mine my last blog post ‘Are You Judged By Your Dimensions?’ when she told me about a lady that once appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show. That lady is naturally brunette but for years she had dyed her hair blonde. When she was asked why, she simply said: “because I want to get noticed.” Then a man asked her a very smart question: “How will you get noticed when 10000 women look like you?”

Hearing what that woman said, I actually think her main reason to dying her hair is opposite to what she consciously believes. I think the main reason why she and hundreds of thousands of other women dye their hair is the exact opposite to getting noticed: it’s to fit in.

She so desperately wants to fit in with what society has told her is noticeable that she ended up becoming a part of a uniformed looking herd thus creating the exact opposite of what she desires. What I also think is that on an unconscious level, she does this because she actually wants to be UNNOTICED.

Think about it this way. In the jungle, if an animal is different, it gets outcast at birth and left to die on its own. The only chance this animal has to survival is if it looks like the rest of the pack. Unfortunately, human societies can very much be jungle like.

Meet a Goth

If the human jungle says blonde is the now noticeable norm, we all sleep walk to hair salons and get our hair dyed blonde so we can fit in with the rest of the pack. We don’t do this to get noticed. We unconsciously do this to look like everyone else.

Even the subculture of Goth do it.

Goths rebel against societal norms and pride themselves of being nonconformists. However indirectly they are conforming to the subculture of nonconformists. In other words, by nonconforming, they create a subcultural group of nonconformists with its members conforming to the culture of a nonconformist group… phew!

(Side Note: If you’ve never met a Goth make the effort to go out of your way and meet one. If you’re in London go to Camden tow, you might find a goth or two : ). Some of them are incredible people. A Goth friend had taught me some valuable lessons in life… especially about not judging others by appearance)

Elephants and Peacocks

That’s not to say that conforming or being part of the pack is a bad thing. On the contrary, it’s mostly a very good thing. It gives us a sense of belonging, safety and sometimes direction. It’s a human need that’s wired in us.

That’s why you don’t see young men leaving everything behind and going to live alone in the jungle like teenage elephants do. And even if they do, which is very unlikely, like teenage elephants at one point in time they will return to their pack when they mature. And those who don’t… well… they die, unheard of.

Still, at the same time, like peacocks we like standing out and being unique, because that too is a need wired in us.

So Now What?!

If we’re wired to be part of a pack but are also wired to want to stand out at the same time, what are we supposed to do?

That very much depends on what you want and why you want it. Because that dictates how much precedence you can give looking unique over other things.

If for example you want to become a great leader, loved and followed by your people, know that the best and most inspirational leaders of the world who their followers had literally sacrificed their lives for them looked as normal as everyone else. And with that normalcy came great humbleness that elevated them in the hearts and minds of their followers.

If on the other hand you want to look different and unique just for the sake of it, or for whatever reason, you can do that too.

I’m going to tell you exactly how you do it in the next post. But be warned there are consequences. You probably won’t like it, but I’ll tell you anyway. So if you truly want to look unique, stay tuned for my next post.

Until next time,

Tarek

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Are You Judged By Your Dimensions

Yesterday as I was surfing TV channels I came across the last 10 minutes of a show called ‘Dirty Dancing Something Something’. It was almost over and the winners have already been declared. Then one of the judges, apparently flattering the winning couple, declared: “they’ll fit with the dancers they’re going to be competing against”

Did I misunderstand this? Or did she indirectly admit that to win the competition, the competitors had to fit the standard of looks dictated by the dance industry over them and their competitors.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised to hear these words come out on a dance TV show from an LA dance studio manager.

Unfortunately this mentality seems to not only affect shallow TV shows but also some of the smartest and most successful people.

She Made Us Look Stupid

When Susan Boyle first set foot on stage, everyone in the audience rolled their eyes. What was worse is that even the judges, who are considered to be smart, successful and even idealised by many also rolled their eyes!

Many days later and during an interview with Oprah, Simon confessed that he was quick to judge Susan Boyle based on how she looked But then after he heard her sing, Simon admitted: “It was a wake-up call, and I was happy she made us look stupid, because we deserved it.”

Simon is smart enough to have answered the wakeup call and realised his mistake. This, I’m afraid isn’t true to the masses of people that are hypnotized by what they see on TV, read in magazines or online.

It seems that we’ve gotten to a point where we have standards set to what beautiful is and we’ll accept or reject people straight away based on these standards that we didn’t set but we did accept. It’s a scary thought, but there is evidence of this everywhere!

As I grew up, we had a kid in school with very hairy arms. Students made fun of him all the time and outcast him. It makes me sad to this day when I think about it. Later in life, I met one of my best friends. He’s got a clearly visible but noncontagious skin condition. And you cannot imagine the looks he gets from people all the time as he walks down the street.

I Like Your…

I remember this one time when I was on a night out with the guys. I somehow ended up being cornered by four young ladies insisting on me telling them what I liked about them. I had met them for less than half an hour so there wasn’t really anything significant for me to like about them yet. Trying to get out of it, I told the first I liked her eyes, the second her smile, the third her hair. They were very pleased to hear the compliments except the fourth one.. when I told her I liked her personality! And I really did.

She pouted (I thought women stopped doing that after the age of 5). It seemed she wanted me to have admired something shallow and external instead, like I did with her three other friends who I couldn’t find anything else about them to admire apart from their looks.

And with the barrage of media hypnosis drilling in our heads what we “must” think of as beautiful and admirable, it’s no surprise that my liking her personality didn’t mean a thing to her.

Just now I decided to research what defines beautiful women when I came across the picture you see to the side. It’s from an online modelling agency. You can now choose what size, height, cup size, waist size, eye colour etc. you want a model to be! (Too bad my search returned zero results).

So if you’re a woman, according to British Association of Model Agents (AMA) you’re only model-beautiful if you’re: “at least 5ft 8ins tall (1.73cms) and more or less 34-24-34(86cm-61cm-86cm)”

Am I the only one who finds this incredibly ridiculous?

How do you define beauty? Let us know in the comment box below.

I’ll be the first to admit that I was a shallow teenager when it came to the opposite sex. Beauty for me was narrowly defined. And when people told me: “beauty isn’t everything”, I thought they’re stupid. Well… unlike Simon, I’m afraid it took more than one woman to make me feel stupid!

I’ve fell for very few women in my life and all, with the exception of one, were not what I expected I’d fall for. They were either darker, taller (much, much taller actually), older or whatever. I’ve also met a lot of women that were gorgeous according to every standard. But I just couldn’t wait to finish that cup of coffee and run away.

That taught me a very valuable lesson. It taught me to always have a friend call you in the middle of date in case you needed an escape plan.

But more importantly, it taught me that what media has planted into societies’ minds on beauty is simply not true. And that yes, beauty as defined by media or yourself is really NOT everything.

So next time you meet someone that you feel you’re about to judge based in their looks, pause. Stop for a second, think, and give YOURSELF a chance. Not them, yourself. Because it’s only when you do that, you’ll allow yourself to grow and see beyond what others have programmed you to see. And it’s only then when you’ll feel beyond what you have programmed yourself to feel. And most importantly, it’s only when you stop judging others by their dimensions, that others will stop judging you by yours

Until next time,

Tarek

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