Graduation is just 33 days away! Are you prepared?
Have you:
Caring for somebody is the ultimate form of freedom. Whenever you genuinely care for somebody else, you’re setting yourself free. Free from judging, free to accept the other one exactly for who she/he is, free to express your love without a reason. Caring is also one of the rarest attitudes in the modern world, where most of the time is perceived as a form of weakness, if not as plain stupidity. To such an extent that people almost forgot how to express it. Here are 33 ways to help you remember how to care.
Don’t just look at the other, acknowledging from a distance his actions, his intentions, his ideas. Support her/his actions. Put yourself into the other person shoes. Help that person, if you can. Say something nice, at least. Or just do things that will ease or support her/his activities. Be there somehow in flesh and bones.
People say or do things that you may not like. But remember that all people are ok. Their actions may not be in sync with what you want or with what you expect. That doesn’t mean the people who performed those actions are not worthy of your attention. On the contrary. Maybe that’s the time they’ll need you the most.
People have their own minds, their own expectations, their own lives. Give advice only when it’s needed, otherwise you will obtain the opposite effect. Your genuine intention to help will be in fact perceived as a pressure. Sometimes, the best thing you can do for somebody is to let him hit his own wall.
Rejecting crap (in all of its forms: words, actions, attitudes) is not only a form of self-respect, but also a way to show them that you really care: “I understand you and I see what you’re doing, but I’m not taking it”. Eventually, they’ll realize there’s something wrong somewhere. If you find it difficult to avoid crap, start practicing your “No”’s.
Share a nice word. A good joke. A meal. A book you’ve recently read. A place on the bench in the park. Share your good mood and your ideas. Share your memories and experience. Sharing your life with other people will enrich them at least as much as it will fill you with joy and comfort. Sharing IS caring.
When there’s too much pressure in a relationship, that compressed energy tends to explode uncontrollably in fights. Don’t go there. A fight is an act of selfishness: “look, I’m so pissed off that I need to let out steam and I don’t care about you”. Instead, find ways to recycle that aggressiveness and balance your energies.
If you received a nice word, give it back. If you received a gift, give one back. If somebody smiled at you, return the smile. If you don’t reciprocate, you break a subtle channel of energies that are building our day to day experience. Soon, you’ll be disconnected. Not able to receive or to give care anymore.
Things can break down. Relationships can lose momentum. Feelings can fade away. Everything can disappear, dissolve, get lost, unless you don’t actively protect it. Pay attention to your stuff. Fortify your relationships. Nurture you feelings. Protect what you really care for. What you give will come back to you somehow.
Sometimes you gotta understand that you’re the one that’s holding things back. You are the obstacle in the other person way. For the sake of “good old times”, or just because you’re feeling insecure. The best thing to do for somebody is to set her/him free. Get out of the way and let them break free. You’ll be ok. They’ll be ok too.
As often as you can. There is no imaginable context in which you cannot say “thank you” when somebody does something for you. Or at least I can’t imagine such a context. Saying “thank you” is not only the simplest form of respect, but also the easiest way to show that you’re just caring.
At least as much as you talk. If you don’t listen, something strange will happen: soon you’ll run out of things to talk about. Listening is what feeds your thoughts, what triggers new ideas, what confirms your suppositions. Remember how you felt last time when somebody listened to you? That’s what I’m talking about.
If you can. Give to the other person all the freedom she/he’s asking for. Even if that freedom crosses the boundaries you’d be willing to accept. That’s the only way to find out if you’re in a healthy relationship. If you don’t have reasons to trust the other, then don’t. In this case, you will show that you care about yourself.
Forgiveness is an incredible gift. Unfortunately, it’s heavily underused. We still don’t understand the benefits of forgiveness as a mundane, daily act. We either push it into the religion realm, taking its life away by making it a dead, dogmatic concept, either avoid it all together as a social “faux pas”. Just let go. The person who’s freed by forgiveness is you.
One of the miracles of life is that you are at the same time the observer and the player in this huge game. You can watch, but you can also do. Getting involved means helping the game going on. Being just an observer and experiencing feelings of compassion will never help you genuinely care about somebody. You can’t really care if you’re not there.
If you learned something, don’t keep it to yourself. Go out and teach others. Maybe you think your life is not worthy of such an honor, maybe you think you’re just an ordinary person. And that might be true. But there are millions of ordinary persons in this world who can benefit from your experience.
Sometimes all you have to do is to live a life of freedom. Live the adventure, become extraordinaire and others will pick up. It’s called inspiration. Focus on what you do better and in the end, other people will tune in to your vibration and start to do extraordinaire stuff by themselves. Be a great blogger a loving father or just you. But be great at being you.
If inspiration is not enough, don’t be afraid to push it further, to motivate directly. Motivation does not last, they say, but so it’s bathing. This is why is recommended to be done every day (Zig Ziglar said that, not me). Make a list of what motivates you and share it. You’ll be surprised how many people will care about it.
To what the other one is doing. Just look at how he talks, how he looks, what actions he performs. Your attitude will channel a flow of invisible energy which will somehow validate and support her/him. Your attention, your focus, is what builds your reality. Putting your focus on the other one will make her/him alive.
It’s not only about birthdays or special days from your shared history. Although those are utterly important too, of course. But it’s also about what the other one likes or doesn’t likes. About what she/he thinks about certain things. Remembering all those details is like reinforcing your commitments: “I know and I accept what you want”.
Might seem totally counter intuitive and awfully against this post topic. But it’s not. A mindless altruism is the shortest path to decay. Don’t give away your time, your actions or yourself foolishly. Instead, be well so you can help others be well too. Be balanced so you can bring balance to others too. Be self sustained so you can help others achieve self-sustainability too.
In everything. Real things are not unfolding instantly, they need time to grow, to manifest. Be patient with the other one if she/he is going through some tough times. It will help getting over the heat. Be patient with the other one if she/he is on the peak of its career. It will make the happy days taste even better.
All the time, in all the imaginable situations. Say out loud you liked or didn’t liked something, but give feedback. As the name implies, feedback will feed something. In this case, the actual relationship. If you don’t care about a relationship, the easiest way to break it is to stop giving feedback. It will die in a few weeks.
Too much time and attention are wasted on useless, not important things. Either by uncontrollable addiction, either by lack of personal values. Ignore what’s unimportant about the other one until you get to her/his real, indivisible core. That’s where you should put the attention. Learning to ignore should be taught in schools.
Break the flow of the predictable events in her/his life with small surprises. Might be just an unexpected end of the evening or a sudden trip to the countryside. Surprises are a way to fracture the other one familiar reality and fill the crack with pleasant, enjoyable life slices. The bigger the surprise, the more enjoyable the life slice…
You do what you repeatedly tell to yourself to do. Your actions are a direct consequences of your thoughts. If you keep having supportive thoughts about the other one, your actions will eventually follow. The root of everything you do or experience is in your thoughts. Don’t let them wander at lost.
Making plans will always make God laugh, that’s true. But that doesn’t mean you should stop doing them. On the contrary, you should keep God laughing for as much as you can, wouldn’t you? 
Projecting a new reality together is an incredibly powerful form of caring. You may never be there, in that new reality, but at least your tried together.
Ask questions. Respond to questions. Say yes or no. But do talk. Keep the communication channels opened. Don’t think the other one should guess what you want, what you need or what you may want to happen in your life. Give clear answers, and ask clear questions. An uncomfortable truth shows more caring than a comfortable but deceiving silence.
As often as you can. There are persons who are somehow killing your smile before it’s even born. With pessimism, anger or just constant irony and arrogance. Smile in their presence even more, regardless of the fact that it will take incredibly more effort from you. Smiling is the cheapest and most effective act of caring.
Doesn’t necessarily have to be a full letter. Leave a note on the fridge. Send a short email out of the blue. Even the message doesn’t have to be something deep, or serious or fundamental. Just a simple “wish you a good day” or “I’m thinking at you” will do miracles. Start now. 
Sharing food used to be an ecstatic and spiritual experience. Traces of this my be found in our modern society, when inviting somebody over to dinner has most of the time hidden meanings. Again, doesn’t have to be an exotic meal, but the mere fact of feeding the other one will trigger some deeply buried feelings of security and comfort.
Giving presents is a great way to mark special occasions, but giving presents out of the blue will make any occasion a special one. The only thing you should pay attention to is not to buy your way to the other one’s heart, because it wouldn’t last long. But a genuine, carefully taught present, will always leave a positive mark.
If you don’t agree with something, speak up. Maybe the other one doesn’t realize that her/his path is a wrong one. If you sense something bad, it’s not only an act of kindness to point (politely and gently) to the other one’s mistakes, but also a respected act of responsibility. An honest and good critique always ends up with a “thank you”.
People are people.Don’t act like they follow a certain algorithm. They will never do. People are doing strange things. They will surprise you, amaze you or disappoint you. Eliminate all expectations and just be happy because you share this moment, this place or this life. Life is not fair sometimes, that’s true. But it’s always beautiful.
Posted in Look & Feel Great
Tagged Best 4 Last, Chapman, Chapman Graduation, Chapman Univeristy, College, Family, Jordan, Jordan Beck, Reminders, School, Stress
“On Tuesday the Clothesline Project will be on display from 10 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. This exhibit is a powerful visual depiction of sexual violence in our community. The project will span much of the campus and is composed of T-shirts made by survivors of sexual assault and those who want to take a stand against violence. All are invited to contribute a shirt to our Chapman University Clothesline project.”
This project travels around the country andis displayed in various schools and public areas to help draw attention to the problems facing our community. 
Make sure to take this opportunity to remember you can make a difference in our community and take a stand against violence.
Posted in Events
Tagged Ashley, Ashley Murray, best4last, Chapman, Chapman Univeristy, Clothesline Project, College, Events, Reminders, University
Make sure to help our fellow internet marketers out his weekend at Coachella! Check out GenerationY’s blog about FourSquare Day!
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Ashley, Ashley Murray, best4last, Chapman, Chapman Univeristy, Coachella, Entertainment, Events, Festival, GenerationY405
Not quite sure what music you feel like listening to? Tired of the same playlists on your iTunes account? Give this website a try:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2IGzxF/musicovery.com/index.php%253Fct%253Dus
Posted in Entertainment
Tagged Announcements, best4last, Chapman, Chapman Univeristy, Commencement, Entertainment, Graduation, Jordan, Jordan Beck, School, Stress
As an email service provider we are constantly throwing around terms that sometimes our customers may or may not know. So I decided to pick 11 email marketing terms and give you the low down on what they mean. Don’t be offended if you know some of these, I’m trying to cover a lot of bases here. Here goes!
ROI (Return on Investment) – Your ROI is the measure of the profit you make and/or costs saved at your business. For your email marketing campaigns you calculate cost of sending email plus time.
ROI = [(Payback – Investment)/Investment)]*100
So if you made $780 on your email campaign, your time was worth $50 to create it and it costs $15 to send it it would look like this:
(($780 – $65)/$65)*100 = 1100% ROI (which is really good!)
If you want to take it a step further subtract your cost of your products or services as well.
Open Rate – Your open rate is simply the number recipients who opened your HTML emails. It is typically measured as a percentage of the total number of emails sent, although calculation methods may differ. The open rate is considered a useful metric for judging response to an email campaign but it should be noted that open rates for text emails can’t be calculated AND some email clients don’t display images as a default which would under report your total number of opens.
Above the Fold – The bottom of your browser window or the bottom of your email before you have to start scrolling is commonly referred to as the “fold”. These viewable areas should be where your most important information should be located since it’s the first thing your viewer will see.
Preview Pane – Email programs like Microsoft Outlook, Entourage, and Mac Mail allow users to view email through a preview pane before your recipient clicks to open. The preview pane is important to bear in mind when composing the opening lines of an email so you can get your recipient’s attention fast.
Copy – Your copy is simply the text of the email you write.
Hosted Email – A hosted version of an email allows users to view the email message as a web page, ensuring that all formatting remains intact. VerticalResponse does this for you for free you just need to include the “hosted version” link. Hosted versions of your email are also great for you to send your Twitter and Facebook followers to when you launch your campaign.
Spoofing – Email spoofing involves forging a sender’s address on email messages. It can be used by malicious individuals to mislead email recipients into reading and responding to deceptive mail. These fake messages can jeopardize the online privacy of consumers and damage the reputation of the companies purported to have sent the messages. Spoofed email often contains phishing scams. VerticalResponse doesn’t allow for this in our systems.
Phishing – In a phishing scam, a spammer, posing as a trusted party such as a bank or reputable online vendor, sends email messages directing recipients to Web sites that appear to be official but are in reality fraudulent. Visitors to these Web sites are asked to disclose personal information, such as credit card numbers, or to purchase counterfeit or pirated products.
Targeting – Targeting gives you the ability to deliver emails to those most likely to respond to your emails, based on a variety of things like their geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioral information.
Whitelists – Whitelists are usually created by an ISP (internet service provider) and are made up of commercial emailers (including ESPs) who have been approved to send email through their gates. The ISP requires a list of IP (internet protocol) addresses that email will be sent from, and in some cases a test period where the commercial emailer will be approved or rejected. VerticalResponse is on all available whitelists.
Web Friendly fonts – Almost all web browsers are capable of displaying four primary fonts properly: Times, Arial, Helvetica, and Verdana, as well as their variants (Arial Narrow, Times New Roman, etc.) If a web developer decides to stray from one of these fonts he or she risks browser compatibility problems and the prospect that their pages may render inaccurately when viewed through certain web browsers.
Posted in Look & Feel Great
Tagged Announcements, best4last, Chapman, Chapman Univeristy, College, Homework, Jordan, Jordan Beck, Reminders, School, Studying
Leave your thoughts here 🙂
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1ZHSxF/littlegreatideas.com/willyou/index.php%253Flast_id%253D411100
Always a fun stress reliever!
Posted in Entertainment
Tagged best4last, Chapman, Chapman Univeristy, College, Fun, Jordan, Jordan Beck
Does that ToDo list seem to continually grow with each second?! Check out this website with an all in one ToDo checklist! Set it as your homepage on your computer and never forget to turn that essay in again!
Posted in Top of Mind
Tagged best4last, Chapman, Chapman Univeristy, College, Homework, Jordan, Jordan Beck
The ten websites your homework hates the most! This post was found on StumbleUpon.com, surprisingly enough 🙂
2. StumbleUpon.com
I learned about this website a couple of years ago and I have weaned myself from it because it was taking up too much of my life. Now that I return I am dangerously close to returning to my addiction, as it has now been linked with Facebook so you can see what sites your friends stumble upon. It’s basically a big database in which you choose from a long list of interests and it finds websites related to things that interest you. Say you are interested in art, it could bring you to a forum where people share their art, it could bring you to an article about a specific type of art, it could bring you an artistic YouTube video, or sometimes it could just bring you to a cool photo.
3. Sporcle.com
Their tagline: “Mentally stimulating diversions”. Perfect. It is a site full of timed quizzes on just about anything you can imagine. There are different categories you can look through, or you can hit “Random Quiz” until you find something that appeals to you. Each quiz will show your score at the end and, if you want, you can view how you compared to others who took the quiz. This site is also fun to do with friends because the brain power between multiple people can only increase your score and the excitement.
4.KillSomeTime.com
This website was chosen for the list while similar websites were not because it has just about everything in one place. It has funny videos and pictures like CollegeHumor but also has the wide array of stupid, yet extremely amusing, computer games such as featured on AddictingGames. It is a great source for popular and hilarious videos, but they are easier to discover than on YouTube. Plus, the name of the website just works perfectly for this list.
5. TheOnion.com
Why read real news articles when you can instead read rather hilarious, satirical versions? The Onion is a website of news articles that are completely made up but sound legitimate. You may wonder why you would want to read factious stories when you could be educating yourself on topical issues. Most of the things written on The Onion are based off of true events but made with ridiculous twists. Kind of like The Daily Show. The best fun to be had with the website could quite possibly be showing these articles to gullible friends and watch them become outraged at what the world seems to be coming to.
6. TextsFromLastNight.com/FMyLife.com
For those of you who still live in the prehistoric ages, Texts From Last Night is where people send in outrageous texts that they receive for the world to see and FML is a series of stories of people’s unfortunate lives. Both have on several occasions caused me to LOL at inappropriate times, (i.e. using a computer at the library, during class, etc.). Ever heard someone say “Eff my life!”? That spawned from this website. UMass also has its own TFLN group on Facebook, strictly chronicling the crazy nights at the Zoo, although I think everyone has forgotten about it because it’s mostly just ridden with spam now. I believe we should change that! (I spent way too much time procrastinating on there.)
7. Yayeveryday.com
Not quite as many people have heard of this site before; that makes me happy to be a pioneer in all things procrastination! Everday collects cool artsy photos and videos for your enjoyment. I think their database goes on for just about forever. (Actually 262 pages as of right now.) I like these photos better than the ones on Kill Some Time because they’re done by really talented people and are really appealing to look at. This site is also great because you can click on the photo or video to see where it’s from, and I have found some pretty neat blogs this way. They also add new things constantly so it’s difficult to ever get bored.
8. Wikipedia.org
No, Wiki is not just for writing misinformed papers anymore. Ok, well so it is, but I also find myself spending way too much time on this website accidently. I type in something I want to know more about; such as sporks or Billy Corgan, and with all of the blue highlighted words I end up reading encyclopedia articles about things that have nothing to do with what I originally searched. Not only this, but now Wiki has a bunch of spin-offs, such as WikiQuote and WikiAnswers. I actually just searched “procrastination” and found this lovely quote, “it is estimated that 80%-95% of college students engage in procrastination.”
9. Yahoo.com
This may seem like an odd thing to put on this list. But I’m telling you, I’ve never before spent so much time on Yahoo except when it was my go-to search engine. My favorite part of Yahoo aside from the free email server is the news section. I’m not huge into news that involve politics or really big words but Yahoo always seems to have a good stream of interesting articles that change every day. Had it not been for Yahoo I wouldn’t have bothered to see what Katy Perry was supposed to wear on Sesame Street nor would I know that Peter Jackson has been given the ok to film “The Hobbit”. Awesome.
10. CuteOverload.com
I don’t know about you, but nothing brightens my day like adorable baby animals. This blog has readers submit cute photos or videos of animals and the site administrators add funny captions. New blog posts are up every day. Even if you believe that you are just too manly to have others see kittens on your laptop screen, just remember, girls LOVE baby animals.
Posted in Top of Mind
Tagged best4last, Chapman, Chapman Univeristy, College, Finals, Fun, Homework, Jordan, Jordan Beck, Stress, Studying
best 4 last 