Be Awesome.

Attitude. Awareness. Authenticity. These are the three A’s of awesome. Neil Pasricha talks about these and his book in his TED talk. He begins with a brief summary of his life, hitting you the emotional blow of his divorce and a friend’s suicide. He then begins to talk about making his blog and how he came out of that tough time. He used the three A’s. The first one, attitude, seems like the one I connected with the least. He said that no matter how hard something is, you need to grieve and then look to the future. This is very hard for me and I think a lot of other people struggle with it as well. When something bad happens it is very hard to look at the positive. I admire Neil Pasricha for his ability to start a blog about what is awesome. I wish I could find that strength in me sometimes to be able to see the good in every situation. This makes me realize that maybe if I worked at that and tried to change my attitude that maybe things would work out better for me. When Pasricha started talking about awareness it really clicked with me. He mentioned finding your inner three year old. Kids are so curious and when they see things for the first time it amazes them; and it is always simple things. I feel like people need to harness this idea. If we let ourselves be amazed with the world and the small details then we can fully appreciate everything around us. His last idea about authenticity I thought was really interesting. A lot of people today are always trying to impress people or be a certain way. I think that if people just embrace who they are they will be happier. I know there are a lot of times when I’m trying to impress my friends or my parents so that they think I’m good enough for them. This is also a source of a lot of bad moods for me. I think people need to feel like they are good enough for themselves and no one else. If people would stop living for other people and start living for them then they will be more content with their lives. If people love who they are and do what they love, then they will love life. What matters is being yourself and that being good enough for you. People need to stop living to impress and start living to satisfy themselves. Neil Pasricha used these three A’s to come out of a tough time and now he’s giving a TED talk. Talk about a huge turn around. Imagine if everyone could come out of tough times like this and turn it into something inspiring for the world; people would constantly be changing for the better. I feel like bad times may seem like steps back at the time- but in the long run they make you grow and become stronger. That sounds cliché but I feel like it really is true. Bad times really do help us and when we look back we are always happy it happened. Life is an amazing thing that should be appreciated in its entirety for the short time we have it. Neil Pasricha closes with this idea that life is short and talks about how is dad always thought it was amazing that foods could be shipped from all around the world to right down the street from his house. This story made me laugh because I never realized how amazing that really was. It all relates to perspective and how you see the world. I think people need to use the three A’s and see the world for a beautiful thing rather than a source of unhappiness. This will create success and happiness in the world.

See the talk here