Advice

We always look to other people for advice. Never to ourselves. We give advice to others. Never to ourselves. I think there are times when we don't trust ourselves to make the right decisions. We need others to justify our decisions for us. I think it's time to start trusting ourselves.


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It's true. I give advice, and I ask for advice. Sometimes I just need to take my own advice. But it's not always that easy is it? For me, it's easier to trust in other people than it is to trust in myself. I often doubt myself, second guess my actions and decisions. Coming to UWF for example. I'm constantly questioning whether I should have done this or not. I need to stop doubting myself though because I'm here and that's not changing anytime soon. So I'm going to start taking my own advice of living in the now and enjoying life as it comes along. Part of that life will be challenging myself... so here's the start of my 30-day challenges.

30-Day Challenge #1: TED Talks
Day 1.

I've decided that my first 30-day challenge is to watch and share one TED talk each day. For those of you unfamiliar with TED talks, I encourage you to become familiar with them. TED is a non-profit organization with the tagline of "Ideas Worth Spreading". It started out with a conference to bring people together about Technology, Education, and Design. TED talks are videos of ideas presented at TED conferences, all of which are ideas worth spreading. The talks are entertaining, educational, empowering, inspirational, and a lot of other wonderful adjectives.

My idea for doing 30-day challenges came from a TED talk I watched by Matt Cutts. I thought of using it as my Day 1 TED talk for this challenge, but that seemed too easy. I've already watched it anyway, so why not start with a different one. However, if you're interested in watching the talk by Matt Cutts you can do so here. This idea for my 30-day challenge was also a result of me coming across the TED iPhone app. I don't think this will be a very difficult challenge. They shouldn't be huge, difficult challenges. I hope to learn a lot from these TED talks so I think this will be a very good challenge.

So for Day 1 I've decided to go with a TED talk I came across today called "We can recycle plastic" by Mike Biddle. If you know me, then you know I love the environment. I truly believe it is a privilege to live on this earth, and therefore we must do our part to protect the environment. Recycling is one way that we can protect the planet. Too much waste goes into dumps, into the ocean, and just gets scattered across the ground. I recycle. It's not a difficult thing to do, especially if you have curbside recycling pickup. I live in an apartment complex, and don't have curbside pickup. So there's a pile of broken down cardboard boxes in my living room and a box of plastics and metals in my kitchen. A few times a month I gather up these recyclables and drive down the road to the fire station and toss these things into the proper recycling dumpsters. It's a little more effort than curbside pickup, but to me it's worth it. This talk shows us that plastics can be recycled, and it can have positive economic and environmental effects.

Mike Biddle: We can recycle plastic.



Plastics are a big problem on our planet. I could get up on a soapbox and tell you many reasons why. I'll spare you of that though. If you are interested in it though, I recommend watching the documentary Tapped, which is all about the bottled water industry.