Archive for the ‘Psychology’ Category
Are you keeping things too private?
In today’s growing “social” world where websites like Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, Twitter, Wikipedia, and now Friendfeed all encourage this thing called “sharing”, should we be more focused on keeping things private or encourage sharing and the collaboration of minds?
One could argue that for startups, there is the need for privacy and to not let their “sacred ideas” get out before they get a chance to make something of it. So-called as going into stealth mode, founders try to keep as much as possible on the downlow until launch and boom from there. But this would also mean not getting other people’s view on things and being very selfish over things.
Recently I took my SAT and did pretty well (2330) so came the onslaught of “Ooh whatdya get’s?” from my friends. But no matter what I got I would have told them without embarrassment. Some of my friends on the other hand, refuse to reveal their elusive score in fear of criticism or who knows what. If they did bad, I would understand not telling the score and I instantly know it from the expression on their face so its ok.
But some cases, geniuses usually, choose not to say anything after “Ooh whatdya get?” probably in fear of competition. I know how their mind works, if they reveal what they got then I would know and if its better then I would take the test again and try to do better. Or if its worse then I can wallow inside on the sense that I did better. Or maybe they just don’t want to reveal how smart they are even though everyone probably knows they got a perfect score. Wrong, wrong and wrong, keeping it to themselves is just being selfish and conceited cause they don’t want others to do better themselves. In my case, I would never express any of the aforementioned reactions cause I honestly do want all my friends to do better and go to great colleges with me.
So I say embrace the idea of sharing and collaborating, the web sure has. Using tools like wiki’s makes things easier than ever. Of course you won’t want to reveal that super master plan for success to others but the basic ideas and concept should be out on the open market. A great example is Jessica Mah using a wiki last week to collaborate ideas for a speech she was presenting. She got the opinions of many others that crafted an even better speech.
I’m willing to bet the future will hold a lot more of this idea of sharing.
~Kevin Xu
Photo courtesy of photoai
Why aren’t we more happy?
The age-old question keeps coming up again and again. Why aren’t we more happy? You would think that happiness is so easy to obtain and you are right, it should be. But for most humans, depression comes along every now and then making life seem like the most miserable thing out there.
TEDLife is an ingenius conference gathering some of the greatest talkers in the world to discuss one thing: their ideas. One of my favorites is this video from Dan Gilbert in which he provides an answer to this question. He suggests that happiness is simply getting what we want compared to not getting what we want. He then goes on about synthetic happiness vs natural happiness. Synthetic happiness is when you make yourself believe your happy while normal happiness is when you actually get what you want. He concludes that both happinesses are actually on the same level although society places synthetic division on a lower level and he proves this with an experiment with amnesia patients. Well I won’t spoil the best parts for you as he is a pretty comical speaker as well. Enjoy the video
~Kevin X
Everybody has a story and it’s impossible to understand
Did you know that everyone has a story? Everyone has their dreams, their strengths, their weaknesses, their fears, and their history? Every person that you meet, whether they are in car, work as your waitress, or the person behind the counter, there is a reason that they are there. The people that you interact with, do you know what they are doing when they go home? Or do you realize how many people’s stories have been altered because of something you have done? There are more than 6 billion different stories out there and no human mind can comprehend that.
One can say that this is because of the monkeysphere, a limitation on the human brain that will only let us comprehend up to 150 of these stories. No matter how hard you try, you will only be able to truly care about 150 people including your family, closest friends, neighbors, and yourself. The garbage man will only be in your mind as the ‘garbage man’ and it will be impossible to understand that he probably has a loving family, his own hobbies, and a reason why he needs his job. All the garbage men in the world could have died and you wouldn’t really care but if your best fried died you would cry but aren’t they both human? So why the limitation?
I really want to try to understand more people’s stories. On one of my travels, I saw a malnourished 10 year old girl working in a pawn shop. I kept wondering to myself, “Why is she there? Is she treated alright? What does she do for fun?” And during that same week I met with a major financial tycoon and his son. The same questions were running through my head. This world is so diverse and I wish I can learn about more people’s stories. Web 2.0 and blogs only give you the very tip of someone’s whole stories. I am writing my dream and my story on this blog so right now it’s Can The World Hear Me… but it should also be Can I Hear The World?
~Kevin X
Why do we do the things we do?
Why is this called CanTheWorldHearMe instead of Can The World Hear Me?
Now I’m going to go into human psychology in this post but it does have a lot of relevance to what entrepreneurship is all about! But honestly why do we do the things we do? Probably many have pondered this philosophical question but few have answers. Even I don’t have a simple answer and I’m not going to force one onto my readers. But the main idea behind this question is what we do affects other people.
As I’m writing this post, I’m thinking about what people’s reactions will be and how they will feel afterwards. I might add a little bit of humor in hopes you laugh. Or I might write very seriously in hopes you will take me seriously. But the common motive in everything I write is to get the right reaction from my audience and I realize that every time I write. I realize that what I write is directly related to what type of reaction I want. I recognize that I typed “we are different than other bloggers” in hopes that people really think we are different even though we might not be but we are definitely trying to be by writing that and then writing about realizing that. Wow wasn’t that a mouthful.
The thing that gets to me the most is when people would say their thoughts out loud in that voice that’s soft enough so it seems like you’re talking to yourself but just loud enough for other people to clearly hear you in hopes they do hear you and react. I mean really why? They’re your thoughts so they should belong in your head and if you really want others to hear you then just speak up!
But then again, this blog is basically my thoughts and how I want the world to hear me. In the entrepreneur business, it’s all about pleasing the customers with your service or product. You have got to find ways to appeal to people and persuade people with a technique called rhetoric (new word I just learned). So it’s not enough just to understand how the human psych works and to manipulate it in others but also realize that you are doing it all the time.
Now we are still a newbie blog and one day might grow corrupt and only write to get mass amounts of traffic. But for right now I want to stay as pure as possible and write for the sake of CanTheWorldHearMe. I will not add keywords to this blog like “apple iphone” or “vanessa hudgens nude” just to generate a lot of traffic. We rate ourselves by the quality of our content and will continue to do that for as long as possible.
Now this is just my take on it and of course it’s open to debate. I want your opinion to be heard so please feel free to leave a comment.
~Kevin X
Edit// Why did I spend 3 hours on this blog and not study until 2:00am? Example of me affecting myself.