now my mother can say, "I told you so"

As this year comes to a close I thought it appropriate to look back and recall all the things that I’ve learned in 2010. Reading over the list now, I find it funny how much of it I was told by my mother over the years and yet somehow I still managed to have to learn these facts of life the hard way.

Much of what I have to say in this post is inspired by the wise advice of many of my loved ones. If I directly quote or paraphrase anyone, their initials will be noted.

These are not in order of importance. They are all equally important.

1. You are only as strong as your principles.

2. Stop waiting for your life to “start.” News flash: it started a long time ago.

3. Even if you’re never alone, it does not mean you’re not lonely.

4. What you want and what you need are very rarely in alignment.

5. Sometimes, a new handbag IS what you need to feel better. It’s not a crime to indulge in moderation .(ZH)

6. When making decisions about love, make sure your heart and your mind agree. They’re both crucial to making love work. If you only decide with your heart, love may fade as life and responsibility get in the way. If you only decide with your mind, love is not necessarily guaranteed to grow. (LB)

7. Do not give everyone your time. Not everyone is worth it.

8. Kneel. It’s the closest way to reaching the stars. (OI)

9. Your job will never love you back.

10. Be flexible. Plans you set 5 years ago may not necessarily fall into place. That’s ok, life goes on and it may take you to even better places than you originally planned.

11. There will always be someone worse off than you, so be grateful. There will also always be someone better off than you, so be humble.

12. Kindness is not difficult.

13. Your life is a train. Passenger capacity is not unlimited, so you need to be ok with letting some people get off to let others get on. Of course, some will stay with you for the whole ride. Cherish them. (LB)

14. On the days when it’s hard to get out of bed, just think of the people who don’t even own a bed. Your problems will seem much smaller then.

15. Money may not be everything, but it is important. Be smart with your finances.

16. Some mistakes are irreversible. Be careful what you say, what you do, and who you hurt.

17. Let go. Grudges only absorb your positive energy and there is not enough of that in the world to waste on issues of the past.

18. Some people in your life are like gravity, they will only keep you down. You need to let go of them too.

19. The best of friends are the ones who know when not to give advice.

20. Sometimes it’s ok to take the easy way out. Not everything has to be a crusade or a struggle.

21. Do not judge others' decisions. What is right for you is not right for everyone.

22. And finally: Don’t sweat the small things, but do enjoy the little things.

So here's to a 2011 full of new experiences and fresh mistakes. I cannot wait to make this list again next year and see what else my mother was right about.

the green tea revolution

“You need to reduce your stress levels,” my doctor told me today after finishing an endoscopy on my stomach. “You’ve developed a nervous stomach that is physically reacting to stress in your daily life--you need to relax.”

Does that mean I can get a prescription for a chill pill?

Now, I’m not a firefighter, or a doctor, or a police officer. Nobody’s life depends on my work, but I’ve been conditioned to believe that somehow the world is going to collapse if my work isn’t perfect all the time. Sometimes it’s hard to step back and realize that the cold hard fact is that my job, while I am passionate about it, is really just a job. It’s not my life and it’s not the definition of who I am.

Many of my college peers have moved on to high flying careers. Late nights spent at the office have paid off, as many have excelled in their jobs. However, the more I look at the big picture, the more I wonder if the true cost of these promotions and raises isn’t only our time, effort, and social lives. I wonder if maybe we’re paying for it with our health.

In recent months I have heard my friends complain of health problems that in my mind were isolated to our parents and their age bracket. Slipped disc, stomach ulcers, and high cholesterol are only a few of the different conditions that have begun to plague the younger generation. The saddest part is that most are attributed to work related causes, such as long hours in front of a computer or high stress levels at the office.

To put things simply, our jobs are killing us.

I’m unsure if our parents encountered the same amount of stress we do at our age, but I do know for a fact that high cholesterol was among the last things on their minds when they were 24. In my yoga class, the instructor constantly reminds us that we need to listen to our bodies, and never push them further than they are ready to be pushed. While I adhere to this during downward dog and sun salutations, I find that I mute my body during the rest of my life. Instead, I shut it up with coffee and trudge on despite its weary cries.

And so my body seems to have decided that desperate times call for desperate measures and descended these cries upon my stomach. It took fear of an ulcer for me to step back and realize that I really do need to slow down, that I do need to respect my body more.

Maybe in modern times it’s no longer just a work/life balance that eludes us. Maybe now it’s the work/life/health balance.

At a conference I recently attended, there was a presentation about new global trends. The one that piqued my interest the most was a movement toward conscious efforts to slow down our fast paced lives. To illustrate the point, the speaker showed us a product called Slow Cow (www.slowcowdrink.com), which is a drink that parodies Red Bull. The drink’s main ingredient is L-Theanine, a derivative of tea leaves that produces a “feeling of relaxation.”

I was amazed by the insight that this product was built upon, this constant urge to slow down in a world that is forever telling you to run faster. It’s almost a need for rebellion against a society that had taught us that take-away coffee is no longer a novelty, it’s a necessity.

So is the era of travel mug coffee over? Are we ready to listen to our bodies and take a few extra minutes every day to slow down the clock? Will we really accept replacing Red Bull with Slow Cow?

If you ask me, I’m ready. I do still think I need that chill pill prescription, though, because green tea and Slow Cow are definitely not enough to fuel my internal revolution.

it may be your party, but crying isn't going to do you much

I can’t stand whining. Harsh as this may sound, I have no patience for people who throw themselves pity parties on a regular basis. What irks me even further is when these parties continuously have the same themes. Regardless of what awful thing they are lamenting, it always boils down to one ubiquitous statement among whiners: poor me.

Funny enough, they spend more time and energy complaining than they ever do to change their situation. We live in a world soaked with the desire for instant gratification at low cost. We want everything now, and we want it without having to pay. For some reason, we all feel entitled to more. Some work for it, and some whine for it.

What these grumblers so often forget is that complaints rarely ever change anything, even when there’s a Complaints Department that’s paid to listen to you whine. These customer service agents are there to reassure you that it really is an awful situation you’re going through, and they sincerely apologize for that. Sympathy oozes from their tone, and they make you feel vindicated, as if justice has already been served simply by someone acknowledging that you have been wronged.

If you’re complaining simply to fish for sympathy, you’re fishing in a pond of goldfish. When you get one it’s nice at first, swims around aimlessly in circles for a while but usually dies quickly and is fated to be flushed down the toilet. That’s just about how useful sympathy is.

If your boyfriend doesn’t appreciate you, dump him. If you think you’re heavy, join a gym. If you hate your job, look for something else. Stop hiding behind cries of stability, slow metabolisms, economic crisis, and a million other obstacles that tie you down to the comforting status quo of your misery. So few situations are actually out of our control, yet so many people use them to justify their resistance to doing anything that will help them reach for more with their lives. They position the injustice as a permanent hindrance to happiness, whereas it’s usually a temporary hurdle that can easily be jumped over.

That is, if you want to make the leap.

There’s one big rule in my life: if I don’t wake up every morning happy to be doing whatever it is that I’m going to do then there is something wrong. Something has to be changed. Identifying the problem is often tough, but the bigger challenge is actually changing it. Change is never easy, as it brings with it uncertainty on a path that’s often not lit.

And of course, some people are just afraid of the dark.

Do the world a favor and think the next time you are about to put negative energy out into the universe. Dissatisfaction is actually an extremely powerful tool when used properly, so don’t waste it. Instead of just voicing it and letting it bounce off the walls, you are completely capable of turning it into a force that will help you change your life.

That is, if you’re really willing to change.

I work, therefore I am

Ask anyone these days how life is and chances are her answer will begin with a recap of how her job is going. Life sucking can generally be attributed to work not going as smoothly as she would hope, and life being great can often be linked to a hard earned promotion she was recently given. Rarely does the low down on life start with anything other than a career update.

And for most this seems normal, myself included, but when I began to notice this trend with others, I started to monitor my own behavior more closely. Time after time I found that whenever I was asked how my life was going I would give a quick rundown of how work was going (“super busy” have been the key words lately) before launching into anything more personal. I was consistently responding to the question of “how is life?” with an answer more suitable to “how is work?” By the process of deduction the shocking revelation becomes that to me and most others I know life = work.

How utterly sad.

At university I don’t recall ever defining the status of my life by how well my classes were going. Rarely did I respond to “how are you?” with “crap. My classes are absolutely horrible this semester.” Instead, half a dozen other topics of conversation would come to mind before classes were mentioned as an afterthought. My life did not solely consist of my academic career.

My actual career seems to be a different story.

After graduation, I chose to not take a break before jumping into the deep end of the real world. Excited at the prospect of becoming a real adult with real responsibilities, I tossed aside anything non-work related and focused completely on building a foundation for my career. With each brick laid to build this career, however, I was actually removing bricks from the house of my former self. I approached my new job not as what I did but as who I was to become.

I stopped playing volleyball. I stopped reading. I stopped writing. Essentially, I stopped everything that did not have to do with work and purely had to do with my own personal interests. Instead, my life became an endless cycle of long hours in the office followed by socializing. Not surprisingly at all, the socializing did not stray far from work, as the main topic of conversation among my friends was so often our jobs.

Where was the me time?

As 2010 approached four months ago, I thought about my resolutions of 2009 and realized I hadn’t made any. I hadn’t made any agreements with myself about the betterment of my life because I was too busy thinking about the betterment of my career. Instead of focusing on nurturing my soul, I was throwing myself further and further down a corporate hole and sucking any semblance of personal aspirations down with me.

So the question became, was I even a person anymore? In my quest to become a real adult, had I weakened my status as a real person? Instead of being a multifaceted individual I had become a single minded corporate suit. I was no longer Maya, I was employee 264.

And so I promised myself that 2010 would be the year of change, the year I would reinstate the things that used to inspire me outside of the four walls of my cubicle. I joined a volleyball league, began my blog, and bought stacks of books of actual value instead of the beach reading material I had been passing off as literature over the past two years. I began to seek new experiences that would form the memories I would recall years from now. I was learning about myself again, and about all the things that made me tick outside of my billable hours.

But, despite all this, I still find myself answering “how are you” with a quick overview of life at the office and not life in general. Maybe that’s something I’ll never be able to shake, which I guess is normal considering I spend over 70% of the time I am awake at the office. For now, as long as I’m consciously dedicating the remaining 30% to the advancement of myself as a person, and not to the advancement of my career I’ll be happy.

Oddly enough, that task seems a lot more difficult than anything I've ever been given at work.

the semi charmed kinda life

“Are you happy?” my friend asked me today as we were discussing various topics I could write about for my blog. “Yeah, I am hamdillah,” I replied immediately, not thinking twice about the answer. Raising her eyebrow at me she responded, ”Really? Happy or just settling?”

While in my heart I was quick to affirm my happiness to her, her question began to echo in my mind. My answer had not been phony or forced, yet her use of the word “settling” jarred me slightly and caused me to second guess myself. Was I settling? Am I truly happy?

In today’s world we are conditioned to believe that we can always have better. Living in a city like Dubai, the standards are not any different, as we live a fast paced life where it seems like someone is always ahead of you in the race. When I grow too comfortable in the status quo, I always find myself questioning if I’m doing enough with my life and if there’s something I can be doing better. Rarely do I reflect on where I am and say, “you know what? I’m doing damn well right now.”

So maybe that’s why I somewhat felt ashamed to admit I was happy. When asked if I was settling, I began to question whether my standards were actually too low. Could I have a better job? A better car? A better life? Maybe. But do I need it? Have we grown so cynical that we believe that happiness is always one step ahead of us like the proverbial carrot that drives the horse forward?

Or maybe we don’t want to admit out loud that we’re happy, for fear that if we put that fact out there that this elusive happiness that we’ve been chasing all our lives will be snatched from us in the blink of an eye. Being a big believer in jinx, I know that’s definitely a deep rooted fear of mine, but this fear seems to have evolved into something greater, as it now somewhat causes me to wonder whether I should even admit to myself that I’m happy. In the back of my mind there is now this paranoia that if I pause too long to bask in the glow of this happiness that I’ve attained that I will find myself falling behind in life’s race while others charge ahead never stopping once to breathe a sigh of relief when they hit each milestone.

But then I remember a quote I read years ago by Chicago Times columnist Mary Theresa Schmich, “don’t waste your time with jealousy—sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long, and in the end it’s only with yourself.”

In essence, the only true and objective measure we have of ourselves or our happiness is our past and where we want to be in the future. If in this moment you are exactly where you want to be and you have grown from the person you were before then what more can you ask for? Happiness is not just a word on a poster that we hang on the wall, but can actually be something you’re missing in your life not because it’s not there but because you simply overlook it when you’re too focused on believing that you need to do more to earn it.

empty plates, empty hearts

When eating good food, I tend to rush through it. Often I find myself filling my mouth with another bite before I’ve even had the chance to swallow the last. I can’t help myself, when I taste something good I just want to eat it all.

But before I realize it, it’s all gone. Whether it’s a piece of rich chocolate cake or a delicious bowl of pasta, I always eat it so quickly that before my mind registers how savory it was I’m staring down at an empty plate. Disappointment always prevails, as we all know you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

When I think about it, it becomes clear that I do that with a lot of things. I always put a song I love on repeat till I can’t stand it anymore, visit a fabulous cafe till I’m sick of its menu, and spend every minute I can with that new someone special because I can’t get enough of their company.

And a lot of the time, that beginning spark of something special ends up fizzling, because when lighting a fire, you have to blow gently. If you blow too hard you just end up putting the fire straight out and are back to sitting alone in the cold.

When we meet someone new that interests us, our immediate reaction becomes that we want to see them constantly. We sneak out of the office for quick lunches with this Mr. X and push aside our regular routine to accommodate more dinners and coffees. We find ourselves writing things down in our agendas in pencil and not pen, because you never know when something might spring up and we’ll get another chance to spend a few more hours with Mr. X.

But soon you find that the interest fades, from one side or the other. Your phone either starts to ring too much for your liking or stops ringing at all, because the interest that was there was wiped clean in such a short time span. If you eat all the cookie dough before it goes in the oven, you never really get the chance to find out how good the cookies could have tasted. Sometimes it pays off more to wait patiently, pace yourself, and then you’ll get to settle down comfortably with a plate of warm biscuits.

Cheesy metaphors aside, I may sound like I’m advocating playing games or hard to get, but I’m not really. The only thing I’m pushing is the idea that you may not want to be that song that somebody grows sick of. Don’t put yourself on repeat.

They didn’t lie when they said you can’t have too much of a good thing. You literally can’t—if you’re not careful, it disappears before you know it.

one important agreement

While I am not a woman who feeds her soul through talk shows, I have to say that sometimes on an idle Friday afternoon I do find myself in the company of an Oprah or Dr. Phil rerun. While most of the time the shows are filled with topics that barely tickle my interest, sometimes these TV sages present something that truly strikes a chord with me.

And sometimes it’s only a few words.

That happened with Oprah years ago, when in her book club segment she was discussing a book by Mexican writer Don Miguel Ruiz called The Four Agreements. The book focuses on four agreements you make with yourself to alleviate the negative energy that weighs down your life in order to attain the happiness you’ve been seeking. While I’m generally skeptical of the self-help genre, one of these agreements mentioned on the show forever changed the way I think.

Agreement Number Two: Don’t take anything personally.

So often those words had been said to me before, but Ruiz’s explanation was simply so pragmatic that I couldn’t help but feel silly for burdening myself with indignation throughout my whole life. His argument was that people view the world through their own sets of filters, and so what someone says to you is generally intended in a completely different way than you interpret it due to the difference in your filters. It is rare that you ever know the full context of someone’s thoughts, and so the series of triggers that go through their mind and lead to certain comments is unknown to you. For this reason, you can never be sure of what anyone really means. As we have been conditioned into a cynical state by the world we live in, we hardly ever give people the benefit of the doubt and assume they honestly meant no harm.

And so we bring the harm upon ourselves, turning the comment over and over again in our minds trying to create hidden meanings and agendas that were probably never even there to begin with. We analyze tone and body language, without ever thinking to stop for one second to just take comment at face value. In the end, we succeed in doing to ourselves exactly what we thought the other person intended—hurting ourselves.

If you never take things personally, you begin to realize how much easier life becomes. You free yourself of the constant self-doubt that envelops when you believe that others are scrutinizing your every move. Truth is, most people have enough of their own problems to even care enough about your flaws to criticize them.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen to constructive critique, it simply means that if someone actually does mean to insult you, let them make more of an effort to actually do it. Stop doing their work for them.

white noise

My cousin likes to sleep with the ceiling fan on. She keeps it on not for its cooling ability but to maintain a certain degree of white noise at night. Otherwise, she claims, she cannot fall asleep.

While sharing a bedroom with her, I would lie awake at night watching the fan spin endlessly and will myself to go to sleep. Tossing and turning, I could not comprehend how someone could need noise to feel at ease, while I could barely block it out.

After a few nights with the fan on, I stopped hearing it. The gentle murmur evolved from something foreign to my ears to something almost comforting. The fan simply became part of the background like the TV we turn on when we’re doing housework, or the radio in the car when we drive to the office. It wasn’t so much that we want to watch or listen, but instead we simply want something to drown out the deafening silence.

It is rare in this day and age that we are left alone with ourselves in complete and utter silence. At work we are surrounded by people, at home we have a plethora of technology to distract us, and even when we go jogging our i-Pod is our constant companion. Only in the few moments when we fall asleep at night are we encompassed by the flurry of thoughts that run through our mind, and even then we are often counting sheep or the turns of a fan. The truth is, we all claim to want nothing more than “peace and quiet” but we actually work so hard to ensure that we never have it.

What exactly are we trying to escape in the silence? Our own thoughts?

My friend recently told me that on her latest trip she had a 3 hour layover which she decided to use as an opportunity to write in the journal she had been neglecting. Deciding to write without her music on, she found herself pouring out thoughts that had no idea even existed in her mind. What she was writing when her surroundings were completely cleared of any white noise was almost shocking to her, as these were all the thoughts she had worked so hard to deny.

And I’m sure she’s not the only one. When I’m left alone in a darkened room unable to fall asleep, the thoughts I try not to think creep up from my subconscious to take a prominent place in the forefront of my mind. Often the questions that arise in those moments of fleeting silence I have no answers to, and the uncertainty that leaves me with almost frightens me.

Is white noise the bandaid we place over our deepest fears in the hope that if we change the dressing enough we may never actually have to deal with our darkest thoughts? Are we afraid of what we might actually think if we leave ourselves alone in the silence?

muffin top and other misfortune

On a recent trip to the US, I budgeted a large amount of time and money to shopping, as any normal woman with a fashion fetish would. After making the trip all the way across the Atlantic with an empty suitcase in tow, I was not planning to return with one ounce less than Qatar Airways would allow me to bring on board.

Hitting the stores in my first week there, I was pleased to find that judging by the clothes that were fitting me, I seemed to have dropped to a size four from my regular size six. Scooping up my purchases from the first store, I headed over to DKNY to continue reveling in my new measurements. Here, however, my emotions transcended pleasure to turn into shock. I was able squeeze into a size two dress, a feat I had never accomplished in my entire life. There had to be something wrong.

As I admired my “size two” figure in the mirror, I remembered a Consumer Behavior course that I had taken in business school. During one of the sessions, my professor had discussed with us a sizing phenomenon that was sweeping the US retail scene. What these retailers had discovered was that consumers tended to shop less when they were unhappy with their size and would instead hold off until they lost some weight in order purchase new clothing. As weight loss is often a long process, the increasing amount of obesity was drastically affecting the retailers’ sales so they decided to take matters into their own hands.

They decided to lose the weight for us.

So while my size two was an inspiration to shop, it was anything but real. Clothing brands have actually started to reduce the size numbers on their clothing in order to seduce us into believing we have the body we have been working so hard to achieve and thus deserve to pamper ourselves with new clothes. Size 8 becomes a size 6, size 6 a 4, size 2 a 0, and 0 became 00.

Points for ethics: 0/10. Points for effectiveness: 10/10. No woman can resist the urge to flaunt a smaller figure, even if it is an imaginary one.

Now as far as I can tell through my research both online and in store, this shocking development in the fashion world is currently limited to the US. Regardless, however, it makes me wonder what that says about us. Have we become so obsessed with our sizes that we disregard what actually looks good on us in order to pinch ourselves into our ideal size? Is this how muffin top was born?

The effect that the fashion industry and their double-zero models have had on us is nothing new, but the fact that we have become so fixated on size that we actually allow ourselves to be fooled into believing we are smaller than what we are is nothing short of alarming. Why is it that women often prefer to wear their ideal size and look terrible in it, when they can actually wear their real size and look almost as slim as they want to be? No one can convince me that the discomfort of too-tight jeans is worth the ability to gloat to your friends about your “new” size.

While I myself would love to believe that I am truly a size 2, I, along with women across the world, have to face the facts and stop beating ourselves up over a number that sits inside your clothes, hidden from everyone in the world but you. Buy your real size, ladies, and I promise it will look far better than any back-roll, muffin-top inducing size 2 dress ever will.

Looking on the bright side, I do have to say that there is one positive outcome of the retailers' new strategy and that is that it goes to prove that size really is just a number.

"back off," my plant said

In a bid to add some life to my apartment, I bought a plant last week. Knowing very well that I am not blessed with a green thumb, I only invested in a small one to sit on the windowsill of my kitchen. With pride I brought it home and perched it on its new pedestal, already feeling like another soul had moved in.

In my excitement, I would water my little friend a tiny bit every morning while I was having my own breakfast. The poor thing had been so limp and dry when I bought it, that I felt it needed some extra TLC to get it off its feet. I was so eager to see its flower bloom and thought that if I gave it additional attention it would reward me more quickly.

In no time, I found my new roommate beginning to wither, its flower curling back into itself and withdrawing from me. Heartbroken, I reached for the watering can again in an attempt to breathe some life into the plant. In the moment I was about to pour the water, I remembered once reading that you shouldn’t water plants more than twice a week. I stopped myself instantly.

I had suffocated my new friend by caring too much.

As I backed off in dejection, I found irony in the situation. I consider one of my biggest flaws to be that I care excessively about the people in my life. I invest far too much in all my relationships, giving over 100 percent to all those who I surround myself with. Repeatedly, I find myself disappointed with the lack of equal reciprocation, and my plant has proven no different.

A friend once told me that I expect far too much of the people in my life, as I should not anticipate that everyone is capable of pouring so much of themselves into their relationships. In that moment, I refused to believe that people were incapable of returning what they receive. I am adamant believer in give and take, and in my mind it’s only logical to give back as much as you take. They don’t call it the Golden Rule for nothing, after all.

But thinking about it now, perhaps he was right. Just like we as humans have thresholds for pain, maybe we also have thresholds for affection. Perhaps people can only handle a certain quota of love, be it platonic or otherwise, and past that point, which I’m sure varies for each individual, they feel a need to pull back. Is there an unspoken boundary that we should not cross in our friendships and relationships, for fear of not getting the same in return? Is it wiser to give less than you want to in order to protect yourself from disappointment?

Even while asking myself this question now, I know that I could never come to terms with being that person. Should this mean that the people in my life will be limited to a precious few, then so be it. Those are the ones to be valued anyway, a kind of survival of the biggest hearted.

As for my relationship with my plant, I think I’ll play hard to get for a while and see how it goes.

the 80/20 rule

In Business School the Pareto Principle, more commonly known as the 80/20 rule, is a basic rule of thumb that you are taught to strategically assume across many different situations in business. 80% of the world’s goods are consumed by 20% percent of the world’s population, 80% of your business will come from 20% of your clients, and 80% of your time should be dedicated to 20% of your tasks. The list goes on and is quite extensive, as somehow the 80/20 rule seems to apply to almost anything in the corporate world.

Interestingly enough, however, the most intriguing application of the 80/20 rule that I’ve ever heard was not presented to me by one of my professors, but instead by a cheesy Janet Jackson movie that I came across while channel surfing one night. While the movie was terrible, as one would expect a Janet Jackson movie to be, it did offer an extremely enlightened version of the theory.

It arises when a character in the movie is discussing his infidelity with his friend and is justifying his affair with the fact that he believes this new woman is everything that his wife is not. To this his friend replies with an ingenious application of the Pareto Principle. He explains to his cheating friend that when in relationships, we can only expect that our partners will fulfill 80% of whatever we perceive to be ideal. Over time, when the missing 20% begins to escalate in importance and wear the relationship down, our perception tends to become skewed.

Then along comes the 20. The 20s, my dear friends, are people we have all met. They step into our lives when we are at the peak of our frustration with our current relationship and offer to us exactly what we’ve been lacking: the missing 20%. In this moment, the 20 radiates with perfection. In utter delusion and a bit of temporary insanity, we begin to regard the 20 as our ideal 100%.

And in this way, many of us make the mistake of leaving more for less. Blinded by the temporary fulfillment, we are unable to see that the 20 is purely just that: only 20% of what we desire. Soon enough you discover that you have forsaken someone who gave you 80% of what you needed for someone who will disappoint you far more than you’ve ever been disappointed in your life.

In business, that’s called a bad investment.

Since watching this movie, I have reflected quite extensively upon this version of the 80/20 rule. While the theory is technically not a correct application of the economic principle, it was surprisingly insightful for a horribly b-list film.

In the case of the 80/20 in relationships, hindsight is definitely 20/20.

to mba or not to mba

Forgive me for the cheesy title, but my brain is too tired from studying for the GMAT to think of anything more clever. Just preparing for the exam makes me wonder if I even want to be a student again, poring over books and taking notes. Is it really expected that I remember from my high school days that to find the length of the third side of a right angle triangle you have to solve A2+B2=C2? I mean, honestly, who remembers that (and don’t answer that question if you do)?

I’d always considered my MBA as a non-negotiable milestone to hit in my life. Back in the days when I was still at university, I thought I would work a maximum of 2 years then head back to school in full force. A bit naïve I must admit, as I knew I would love the corporate world, but I never imagined just how much.

Now, as I’m about to round off my third year out of college, I feel it’s now or never. If I don’t go back to do my MBA now I will find a million excuses not to in the future. While discussing this with a friend who is also preparing to take the GMAT, he asked a very thought provoking question, “do we just convince ourselves that an MBA is important when in fact it’s pretty much unnecessary once you have a job you actually love? Are we just getting sucked into the path that everyone else is taking?”

Naturally, this got me to wondering the same thing. I had a professor at university who always used to say, “I don’t understand your generation’s obsession with the MBA. In my day, we would only go to grad school to plump up our CVs if we couldn’t find a decent job. Now, you are all actually leaving your great jobs to pursue MBAs. Why?”

His logic stumped me. Has an MBA become another task on our life’s to do list that is really just another box to tick? Is it just another expectation like high school, university, marriage even? I think the best description of an MBA I’ve heard to date is from another friend of mine who actually finished his by 24, “an MBA is just a way to brand yourself.”

Doesn’t matter what you actually learn, all that matters is where you go to learn it.

In the end, this whole debate begs the question: Is an MBA really a powerful asset for success in the business world or will you just become another fish in the grad school sea?

hallmarketing

As a marketing professional, it’s hard not to grow cynical. When you learn how to make a product, create a need for it, and then gloss it over with a shiny coat to make it almost irresistible to an end consumer, it becomes hard to believe anything you read in a brochure or on the back of a package.

With Valentine’s Day upon us today, I think we are all in agreement that it floats high at the top of the list of the most well marketed products known to man. Take a random day, create a cute little half naked boy who shoots arrows dipped in a love potion, and add an overwhelming heaping of romance to the mix and you’ve got a winning recipe that will have women high on expectations and men scrambling to buy what’s left of the overpriced roses by 6 pm.

Make no mistake, I’m not against the concept of Valentine’s Day, but I’m actually in awe of the marketing team that concocted the notion. To convince masses across the world that this day holds some symbolic meaning of love and that no other day can match it is a feat that they impressively overcame. That is definitely something I would love to add to my CV. Of course, I am aware that there is a history behind St. Valentine and that this day is his namesake, but in the present time that history is pretty much moot. Today, it takes less history and more Hallmark.

The majority of men dread Valentine’s Day, but I’m of the opinion that it can actually pan out to their advantage if they view it from the right angle. If we have grown so convinced that romance can only truly exist on February 14 of every year, then that’s a free pass for men! Just get it right on that one day and the afterglow will carry over for the next 364! Mess it up, and I would most definitely not want to be in your shoes.

Now, in case the men reading this actually believed me for a second, let me state for the record that I am most definitely exaggerating. While we are all guilty of dreamy ideals, most women don’t really fall for the hype and are not satisfied with romance as a one day special that is only served on the Valentine’s menu. All I’m doing is trying to prove a point to merely ask us all to step back and think that maybe going to an overcrowded restaurant to see cheesy red balloons and eat a ridiculously expensive meal only truly benefits the restaurant owner who will most likely serve you food that is low on quality and high on margin.

Try eating in this year. Light your own candles on your balcony and buy your own red napkins. You may be surprised by how much more you enjoy it.

Now, on a more personal note: I will still gladly accept flowers on this day. You know, in case you were wondering.

the grass is greener....where exactly?

I came across a website the other day called http://www.istillbelieveindubai.com/ that was created in an effort to counter the massive negative publicity that Dubai has faced in the last few months. The concept of the website is to get locals, residents, and even people who simply admire the city to pledge that they still believe in Dubai and what it stands for, despite all the heat it has been facing recently. The pledgers are given the opportunity to list the reasons why they believe in Dubai, and all the entries will then be collated into a logbook that will hopefully be sent to the local government as a token of appreciation for the opportunities that Dubai openly offers to people from around the world.

Not only did this website get me to smile, as I am a huge fan of Dubai, but it also got me to thinking. What more could people possibly want out of a city? Now, I realize that the bad press that’s been haunting Dubai is obviously a result of various things, none of which I care to discuss at the moment but my point is that even before events like the collapse of Dubai World, I had heard so many people bemoaning Dubai. It was never fun enough, or green enough, or cultural enough. Dubai could never live up to “back home,” and was always falling short on one front or another.

To these naysayers I always roll my eyes. Honestly, how much more do you need to be satisfied? Dubai offers people opportunities unparalleled by any other city in the Middle East. Not only can you build a strong career here with one of the many multinationals who have set up their regional headquarters in this burgeoning city, but you could maintain a healthy social life filled with any type of recreation you choose. Go off-roading in the desert on Friday morning, followed by a night out at one of the many glamorous hot spots. On Satuday, enjoy a full on brunch at the JBR walk and then go for a whirl on a jet ski. Motorsport fantatic? No problem, hit up the Dubai Autodrome. Sky diving? We got it covered. Thousands of happy flyers served to date.

Hit back at one of these whiners with such facts and you’re more than likely to be faced with the worn out argument “Tayib, Dubai has no culture!” Erm, you do realize that you are watching the creation of the culture, right? You are witnessing history in the making every single day, as the buildings that you complain are rising too quickly will soon be iconic landmarks to last for decades to come. Of course Dubai isn’t going to be blossoming with cool urban culture like New York City, as to be fair it has a couple centuries to catch up on.

The funny thing is that everyone acknowledges that living in Dubai raises your standards so high that often you find yourself unimpressed with anything less than 7 star. Travel abroad and the service you receive will disappoint you more often than not, as Dubai makes you expect only the very best out of everything and everyone. Is it possible that we've developed such refined taste that even Dubai itself doesn't make our cut anymore?

My friends, we are watching a grand city being built right before our eyes. If you are aware of this and are still not content then the solution is simple really: pack your bags and go home. Nobody is forcing you to stay, but I have a sneaky feeling you would regret it if you left.

why we can't say no to chocolate or dangerous men

I’ve always been a firm believer that chocolate is the epitome of the phrase “life’s not fair.” The logic of chocolate is beyond me, as the math just never adds up. On average, it takes a maximum of five minutes to devour a bar of savory cocoa delight. These five minutes of fleeting bliss generally result in the ingestion of over 200 calories, which take a 40 minute walk to work off. Not only is that not fair, it’s just plain cruel.

Unfortunately, I am one of the many who disregard all logic and continue indulging in the sweet madness. I went through life perplexed by the injustice, yet never found the will to give up my Godiva, Galaxy or Ghraoui. My confusion ended, however, when I was exposed to the Chocolate-Love Theory.

In 1981, two New York psychopharmacologists (imagine their business cards), Donald Klein and Michael Liebowitz stumbled upon a theory while they were studying the chemistry of love. The scientists were working to identify love’s effect on the human brain and concluded that the “rush” that was felt during love was caused by a release of high levels of an amphetamine-like brain chemical called phenethylamine (PEA). The increase in PEA results in an almost intoxicating feeling, which we humans who have IQs of less than 170 tend to call “love”. After digging a little deeper, the scientists discovered the link that solves the chocolate mystery for me: Chocolate is chock-full of PEA (pun most definitely intended), and thus they hypothesized that people seek chocolate in order to emulate the effects of love.

It all makes perfect SENSE now! When else do humans forsake any semblance of logic besides during the consumption of chocolate? LOVE! Chocolate is that bad boy you know you should avoid like the plague, yet you find yourself being drawn to uncontrollably. Whirlwind romances of mere weeks with these dangerous men can result in months of pain, a reality which you can clearly forecast, yet willingly ignore. Of course, you will only end up hating yourself when those weeks come to a screeching halt, just like you will want to kick yourself when sweating the chocolate off on the treadmill. You thought it would be worth it, but hindsight is always in harsh disagreement.

I wish I could say that at least the calories are always easier to get rid of than heartbreak, but that would be a lie as those last few pesky pounds are often more difficult to get rid of than the memories of a bad relationship.

The irony of it all is that when going through heartache, we tend to eat more chocolate. Out of the frying pan and into the fire? I think so.

I’m telling you, there’s just no logic to either.

spellcheck made me stupid

I used to pride myself on my spelling, grammar, and overall grasp of the English language. Years of longhand essay writing at school and university for hawkeyed professors made me extremely wary of losing any points to simple spelling errors. I couldn’t afford it back then, my grades were at stake. When I entered the corporate world, the whole ballgame changed.

It started at first with misspelling words like conceive or receive. It was so easy, Microsoft would just fix it for me immediately, without even asking for my permission or advice. Genius.

Then it got more serious; I started to forget to capitalize. Well maybe not forget, per se, but more like purposely not make the extra effort to extend my pinky finger to the shift key in order to capitalize. And why should I? Spellcheck did it for me automatically and saved me from increasing my chances of an early onset of arthritis in at least one of my fingers.

I got lazy. Real lazy.

But the problem never struck me until I had to write an email in a browser that was not blessed with the brilliance of spellcheck. No squiggly red lines to alert me of my mistakes, no green flashing in my face to tell me when I was being grammatically incorrect. I found myself questioning everything, even the spelling of the most basic of words. Did I really have to capitalize on my own now? How could this be?

Strangely enough as my frustration with this backwards interface grew, so did my clarity. Has everything just become too easy for us? Online banking, home delivery, anything you want right at your fingertips or at your doorstep. No need to do your own chores, or to correct your own mistakes. All the options to veer us back in the right direction are presented to us on a platter by spellcheck. Suggestions on how to make things right again. It’s no wonder that’s what we begin to expect in real life.

Too much effort has become the number one deal breaker in today’s world, relationships included. Investing time and thought into something seems so unnecessary, inconvenient even. Why won’t relationships just fix themselves? It has become that we almost expect that someone will magically present us with an array of politically correct things to say when fights erupt. If it’s not easy, we don’t want it.

And yet we wonder why things never seem to work out. We scratch our heads and think, “what could have possibly gone wrong this time?” But it only takes one incident to give you that answer in plain black and white. That one email written incorrectly in a browser that just does not want to help you out, or the relationship lost because you were just too stubborn to think it was you who should exert the energy. You begin to stop seeking the aid of spellcheck, and begin to rely more on yourself and even give more of yourself.

And so my resolution to try harder is born. I can’t say that at times I won’t still cheat. I admit that it will be difficult to resist the temptation of using the thesaurus to avoid racking my brains for a better word when urgent reports are due, but in real life I will try harder, and maybe next time it’ll work out. Maybe.

On a final note, the word “spellcheck” is marked as incorrect in Microsoft Word. Go figure.