8 ot of 10 Toys are Made in China?

Recently I took a class, a career seminar, where we essentially visited local businesses to get a feel for employment issues, concerns, and needs. I learned a great deal in this one week seminar (which I meant to talk about earlier), but recently I was reminded of one specific comment made by an HR member from one of the local business. The company specialized in some kind of manufacturing that seemed to have a focus on energy. The man was talking about the trend of going green and seeking alternative fuel sources and he told us "We will need to do something because so much of U.S. money is being spent overseas for oil, etc., so eventually some sheik will own the U.S." This comment really made me think because, well, it seemed like a strange thing to say, but also because I had never really given it much thought until he phrased it that way. It's obvious business common sense though- if we are importing more than we are exporting, we are sending out more money than we are taking in - not good obviously. It made me think...

A few weeks later, my kindergartner and I were sitting on her bed when we started talking about where toys were made. I decided this conversation may be a good lesson for her. So I asked her to look around her room and tell me where 10 of her toys are made. One Disney poster was made in Canada and she picked up one figurine that was hand painted in the U.S., but the rest...China. The bottom line, from what I could see based on this little tiny experiment, is that Barbie is a main contributor to the killing of U.S. dollars. Now, I am not saying I will never buy Barbie or Disney stuff ever again because I, well, am wondering if that is even possible; plus, I know there would still be ramifications on U.S. jobs that way as well. Additionally, with the economy, I realize people are going to buy whatever is cheapest and Barbie is still relatively cheap (probably because it is made elsewhere). I mean, I know first hand, I have been to some of those cute shops with local clothes and toys and I simply don't have the money to buy a $50 doll, $60 sweaters, or $25 locally made underwear from some fancy boutique for my daughter. I do think we should really take a look at what we are buying and definitely choose local when we can; however, I think it would be great if we as a society could figure out a way to make things more reasonably priced here at home because I don't want to give all of our money away to other countries either. I also think this would be a great lesson we could implement in our educational system for our kids because, after all, they are our future manufacturers, designers, business owners, and government officials. The conclusion I have come to in the mean time is based on another lesson I learned from this week long seminar - self-reliance and creativity are key - Own your own business if you can and try to buy locally. Give your business a creative edge that Barbie and others just can't top. The more locally own businesses we have and use, the more likely they will be forced to have competitive prices to one another. Anyway, it's just something on my mind...

*****************

Some of the other things I learned the week we toured all different sorts of business including a microbrewery, a power plant, and the local correctional facility:

Anything that can fit into a box has a chance of being outsourced according to one of our interviews with a local businessman.

Those who are right-brained vs. left brained may have an advantage because left-brained jobs are more likely to be outsourced or eliminated by computers. Creativity allows a person to go with the flow, adapt, change, and enhance marketability.

Thoroughly research any company that you go into an interview with. Companies find it offensive when you don't know anything about them. Interestingly, this has changed some with the Internet because researching wasn't always so easy. Now, the Internet makes it easier for someone to have an edge over you by spending a little extra time researching things.

Internships are a great way to get your foot in the door and to see if something is what you want to do. You don't necessarily need a degree to do this.

Attitude is key to getting a job. Make sure you fit your personality to the job you are applying for or you will both be miserable.

Creativity and persistence (without stalking) pays. One company said a girl brought them fresh baked cookies everyday for two weeks. I also heard about a girl who sent a cake to the HR department that said "Hire Jane" (or whatever her name was).

A good bet for the future is in green jobs.

Compared to some other nations, the United States places a lot less emphasis on hours spent toward education; yet, the U.S. seems to have a better insight into extracurricular activities and socializing, networking, etc.

Walmart is actually doing a lot to make their stores greener and more efficient, which also helps the bottom line. Which brings up another good point: As a business owner, if you take a hit, get back up and make the changes necessary to recreate a better public image.

I think that is it? Oh, if you ever want to work at the county jail, be honest on your resume and in the interview because they would rather you have a blemish on your record than to find out you lied about it. Okay, that is it...for now!

Expanding Your Conversational Top Five

The other day I was hanging out with a few other moms while we watched our little ones interact on a group play date. The thing is, these play dates really seem to be less about the kids, as much as these outings are an excuse for other moms to relate to one another, compare notes about child development, and to complete a general sanity check-in. So as we were sitting there talking, one of the mothers brought up an interesting game (for lack of better words) her and fellow coworkers were playing. Essentially, the idea is that we all have a list of roughly the top five topics we can boil our everyday conversations down to. I can't really remember her list specifically, but I can imagine it wasn't much different than my list: (1) My daughter; (2) My husband; (3) Fatigue; (4) Stress; (5) School (most people probably could probably find something else to substitute easily into these fields for their own lives, such as their crazy coworkers, money, health, etc.).

So this list made me really think about how we as humans get into a rut in which everything on our list is always the same. Keep in mind, this isn't a list of the most important things in our lives, it's a list of items we converse about the most. I also noticed that the majority of the items on the tops of our lists (I have checked in with several people now as part of an unofficial experiment) are negative things: Stress, being tired, lack of money, etc. This is actually kind of interesting when you start grilling others about what their list might say, or, making your own private list for others vs. what they say, since we tend to mirror the attitudes those around us. Even better, try to think of what others in different aspects of your life might say about you: Are you different at work, home, school, etc.? My husband's list was interesting to me, for example, because I don't hear him talk about me that often, but I was on his list. Hmmm... My list for him? Our daughter, Money, Sports, News, and Work. Interesting...

So what do we do to make these lists have a more positive feel? This may possibly have something to do with the diversity of our "Top 5" list or maybe the thing to do is what pretty much every self-help book that exists suggests: "Focus on the positive." Complaining is negative and negativity generates/attracts more negativity and the next thing you know you are swimming in a cesspool of negative thoughts. In my quest to discovering how to be a happier and a livelier person (this is my new quest by the way), I think I may be onto something here. I think I will try to diversify my "Top Five" list.

It makes sense...We diversify our stock portfolios because we don't want to put all of our eggs in one basket, so it stands to reason that this same philosophy would apply nicely to life as well. We also don't throw all of our money into stocks that are in the negative, so why do we put our thoughts there? I have decided that in order to increase my happiness value I am going to focus my time and energy on a "Top Five" that is more suitable to who I want to be. Then, each day I am going to go back through the day's conversational activity and generate a "Top Five" list to see if I am adequately choosing more diverse and positive conversation that is more congruent with the new happier life I want to live.

I am hoping that by diversifying my thoughts and conversations, I will decrease my general boredom throughout the day as well, but also, by monitoring my “Top Five” I will: (1) Decrease my boredom and the boredom of those around me from listening to me; (2) Diversify who I am as a person and the things I do; (3) Learn to see the big picture of my life, rather than focusing on the same few things; (4) Have a better perspective of how others see me; and (5) Become happier by focusing on the positive.

Split Personalities

Okay, so I have been a bad, bad blogger lately. I have finally had some spare time since being out of school for most of the summer, but I have filled up that spare time with other stuff essentially. : ) Anyway, I found this article and I felt like sharing it as a way of slowly working my way back into posting on my blog. I may eventually talk about how Facebook seems to be a great way for someone shy (like me) to get out of their comfort zone socially, but this particular article discuses the different personalities people portray simply by posting a Facebook status update. In fact, sometimes a Facebook status can be totally incompatible with who a person is in real-life.

The article just gives a fun overview of what your status says about you and how a person can spice things up a bit. I know I have certainly been the "Tired" poster for example. This article will really make me think twice when I post a status update and, at the very least, I may try to make it more interesting when I say something about being tired. For example, a friend recently posted a status update about being exhausted from getting up and getting dressed in the middle of the night after setting her alarm clock without her glasses, but she did it with humor and a little light-hearted self deprecation that made it interesting. Anyway...
Facebook Personalities Article

Marshmallow Trick and the Money Saving Pig...

Awhile ago, my class was visited by an incredible speaker who presented at least three hours worth of exercises counselors can use in group therapy. I mean, this wasn't some boring presenter who had us sticking toothpicks in our eyelids to keep them open like in the cartoons. He was from New Orleans and seemed to be a mix of a counselor and Matthew McConaughey in the way that he was all over the map and had a cool, smooth talking southern accent. We were all depressed when his speaking time was up, but there was still so much more for us to learn. He set all of his props (mousetraps, etc.) all around the room and had us choose which topic we were most curious about learning. On my way home that night, I started thinking that someday when I had time I would relay some of the cool things I learned that night and I figured I could start with the Marshmallow study...

The Study: Marshmallow Study (I chose this article because it is simple, but I also really liked the money saving, delayed gratification piggy bank! There's a link...)

Essentially, there was a study done on small children where the children were placed one at a time in a room with a marshmallow and were told by an adult that if they didn't eat the marshmallow, when the adult returned in 10 minutes, they would receive another marshmallow to eat (so two marshmallows total). I guess some kids didn't even make it through the directions before they were shoving their faces with marshmallowly goodness. Others occupied the 10 minute duration by singing to the marshmallow, licking the bottom and setting it back down, talking to it, and some, well, some just ate it.

Some time after the study, the conductors of the study did a couple of follow up sessions and discovered consistent results among the participants. The ones who ate the marshmallow (the instant gratification kids) had troubled lives, which usually meant divorce, jail time, lower income, etc. The ones who waited (the delayed gratification kids) had consistently better lives, which meant anything from higher education to longer marriages.

So with that said, I kept wondering when the speaker was telling this story, what my own child would do. I mean, she is half me (waits to spend a gift card until I am really, really sure I want something and waits 24 hours before making any major purchases when I see something I want) and half of my husband (can't stand the thought of a gift card burning a hole in his pocket). So I went home that night and decided to see how my daughter reacted to a mini-test. I didn't have marshmallows and she doesn't really like them anyway, so I used Cadbury Mini-eggs instead. Before I could even explain the directions, my just-home-from-gymnastics and wired little girl gobbled the egg up in one gulp! So then I thought "Well, that's okay, she didn't hear the directions and wasn't paying attention when I handed it to her" so I tried again. I set the egg on the table and explained the directions thoroughly to her. I set the timer and decided to start dinner. Two minutes later she had walked away, so I looked over to see how the egg was doing. It was still there, but it had giant chunks of chocolate taken out if it (keep in mind this is an egg smaller than a quarter). The sweet pastel coating had been licked and the faint blue color was all over the kitchen table. Two minutes after that, I looked over to see my daughter with her tongue stuck out as far as it could reach, slowly approaching the top of the egg. That is when I finally gave in and told her to take the egg. I figured out that she was set up to fail and that this wasn't the most scientific of experiments. She was hyper and tired. She was hungry and loves chocolate. Most importantly, she was my own child, so that alone means she wasn't going to do what I said. I think if I had to redo this, I would use another adult to explain the directions and I would choose a location that was more conducive to conducting egg experiments. Oh well! Anyway, it provided a bit of a laugh for our family and my daughter got some chocolate before dinner, so she was happy.

I did realize the importance of teaching delayed gratification to my daughter since she is definitely the princess of our family. I mean, when I lecture my husband for giving into her he says "...but she's cute!" So I think I definitely have my work cut out for me!

More Smiles...

According to the book Bluffer's Guide to Psychology by Warren Mansell (I know, don't ask, I was bored of the music on my iPod, so I listened to Jed Rubenfeld's psychological and somewhat fictional thriller based on Freud's theories of a murder mystery Interpretation of Murder, which led me to search for other such books, which led me here, sort of. So, anyway, keep reading...), Children laugh about 400 times a day, but adults apparently laugh only 18. Today I am sure I have laughed at least 18 times because my coworker is hilarious, but also because my daughter is the most purposefully (and sometimes not so purposefully) funny person I have ever met. So I was wondering if children laugh 400 times and normal adults laugh 18 times, if adults with children don't laugh more than a typical adult? I think you almost have to have a better sense of humor than average to have a child. I mean, anyone who has to stay up all night with a newborn, clean up spit up, throw up, and other such gross stuff has to have some kind of sense of humor.

So this made me wonder if adults with children aren't just more emotional in general than a typical adult. I mean, if children laugh 18 times a day, depending on their age, they also fall down and cry at least that amount. They also cry over toys, losing games, eating peas, etc. So essentially, they are living, breathing emotional roller coasters and I am just wondering if they are taking us along for the emotionally turbulent ride. I know there must be some reason that I am emotionally drained at the end of each day. So, I guess what is truly important is that the laughter outweighs the crying? In other words, there should be more ups in the roller coaster of life, than downs. So far, for me, there are...

Smile and Say Princess!

The Today Show just had a story recently about smiles in childhood photographs in correlation with the likelihood of divorce later on in life. Apparently the more you smiled in your childhood photographs can directly correlate to how well your marriage does. The theory, although there is nothing concrete, is that smiles are contagious and the attitudes of those around people who smile more are impacted for the better.

I thought this was an interesting story mainly for selfish reasons: Recently the new girl at work told another coworker and me that she thought my daughter looked "sad" because of the pictures I have hanging on my bulletin board at my desk. Mind you, she has never met my daughter, so she doesn't know anything different than what she has seen from those pictures. Obviously this is all about perceptions, but I can honestly say this never, ever occurred to me! I love my daughter and her smile, but artistically speaking, the pictures I love the best of her are the less traditional ones. I am soooo not a fan of awkward, cheesy school pictures that look like the child is being forced to smile at gunpoint. I do like pictures with my daughter smiling, but I especially like the ones that show her character, such as her "I am a princess and you should treat me as such" attitude or her fantastic sense of humor. That and it is very near impossible to get a candid picture of her smiling. When I point the camera in her direction, she constantly poses for pictures by doing her "pouty" look, or her "serious" look, or "surprised" look - you get the idea. So I guess, for the sake of her future relationships, we need to work more on her "happy" look. No problem! She has an incredible smile!

Another note on perceptions: I feel like I should have been more aware of how others view my daughter's pictures because this is basic human nature stuff here. For my work, I had to attend one of those personality seminars where they explicitly tell you that some 60% of your results will be what you think, but 40% is based on what other people think. The truth is, whether or not we like it, perception is everything. No matter what we see in ourselves, it does no good unless that is the image we are portraying to the outside world - often it is not. Often, we think we are this fantastic person that everyone should love, but in actuality we have idiosyncrasies that people really do notice. I can't speak for myself, because I am perfect (kidding, only kidding), but I work with people who definitely think they are much more agreeable and easygoing than they actually are. Anyway, it's all about perceptions and I am going to try my best to be more aware in the future!

The Power of Words...

So I was on the way to work this morning when the song "Creep" by Radiohead came on the radio. I was listening to a fairly edgy station, well, for public radio and I suddenly had a realization that I don't listen to normal radio that often. My husband has Sirius and I am usually listening to my iPod, kids CD's, or language CD's for my daughter, so I just don't really have the opportunity to listen to "normal" radio that often. Anyway...the point that I am trying to make is that while listening I noticed the radio station bleeped out the "F" word (Does Blogger let you say that word? Not sure) and I suddenly had an epiphany about language: We have the power to let language and words affect us. What if we just let people say the "F" word and other such words. Wouldn't these words lose their potency after awhile and, in turn, wouldn't these words lose the power they have over us? Why do we jolt when someone utters a swear word? Don't those "jolts" simply highlight the fact that these words have so much power in our language, which in turn allows the user of the words to have that much more of an impact on us?

I mean don't get me wrong, I swear my fair share, it's just that this fleeting thought I had about the power of language led to another thought about how this is true for a lot of things in life. The more we give in to these tactics that are designed to shock us, the more the "Shockers" will continue to get their kicks at our expense. For example, look at the way the media manipulates so many people into paranoia just for ratings. Or, what about teeny bop magazines that make little girls think they are less than perfect if they don't look like Taylor Swift? As long as we continue to let people get in our heads, they will. I mean, we might as well clean out some space in the insecure part of our brains and say "Hey, welcome, come on in." Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we as individuals or even as a culture allow people to impact how we think of ourselves and at what point are we going to take away the power others have over us? Another thing... What can we do to change this epidemic seeping into the minds of people all over the world? Sadly, I don't know... I guess I have some thinking to do...we all do. In the mean time, I recently rediscovered a relatively simple solution from my five-year-old daughter: "I'm rubber you're glue, what ever you say bounces off me and sticks to you." I mean, I can't really see saying this out loud to anyone, but there's nothing wrong with thinking it. It could be a secret mental inside joke used to repel negative thoughts. Who knows, it just might work!