Finals are finished and the summer has already snuck up on me. After seriously take deep relaxation and catching up on sleep lost during finals week, its time to evaluate what I want to do this summer. I normally coast through summer with no defined goals and things to accomplish.

Sure everyone has the basics; like saving money, travel and to leave with memorable and fun times, maybe complete summer school. For many college students, the summer can be the perfect launch pad for the near future. With a surplus of free time, summer goals can help position yourself to reach and accomplish your big long term goals for the next couple years . I plan to use this summer to experiment in practicing lifestyle design, along with goals to making a better, newer, stronger version of myself. So here are a few of my goals to accomplish this summer….in no particular order.

• Build solid relationships with new people, and enhance present relationships
• Meditate 15 minutes each morning
• Thoroughly read and study 1 book a week – expand my library
• Find an ideal apartment/condo downtown or in midtown, near Sac State
• Experience Yosemite
• Watch David Beckham and the LA Galaxy play live
• Continue building my website
• Maintain work out regimen, 3 times a week
• Learn to play the acoustic guitar
• Practice and improve my Spanish
• Revamp and restart the Financial Fraternity
• Get published in a newspaper and magazine
• Find more mentors and meet new influential people
• Start savings for my 2010 South Africa trip for the World Cup
• Attend 3 seminars

Definitely take the time, preferably with a good friend or a goal buddy, and map out clearly defined goals to accomplish this summer. Goals do not have to be serious and all business; make goals to have fun and experience enjoyable times with good people. Become a better, faster, stronger version of yourself by making goals to have a kick-ass summer.

I will be posting my progress of certain goals throughout the summer. Chances are, I will be constantly adding more goals to the list as during my summer encounters.

Taking Macro and Micro this semester, plus a personal finance class, I have been formally introduced to Opportunity Cost = the highest valued alternative that must be given up to engage or do an activity. For instance, if I decide to buy new shoes ($65) over a nice dress shirt on sale ($25), the opportunity cost of buying the shoes would be a nice dress shirt and $35 in my pocket.

With a focus on economics this semester, I start to recognize the concepts and ideas everywhere in everyday life. Opportunity cost is a big obvious one. We all face scarcity with every decision, besides maybe breathing air, since air is an  unlimited resource, at least for now. So every decision we make, we are giving up or missing out on other opportunities. We all use opportunity cost sub consciously, but if we actually thought about the true opportunity cost of our everyday decisions, I think we would make more efficient decisions.

The main point is this; really try and acknowledge opportunity cost in your everyday real life decisions, and I believe you would all choose the more efficient and beneficial decision relative towards our goals and aspirations. Just don’t use opportunity cost for financial decisions, but for other aspects of life, like relationships and health. Did you ever think of the opportunity cost of hanging out with the same person or crowd, when you could split the time and meet new people or join an organization or club? If you were a business major, would you rather volunteer for an internship or work part time at job that may not cultivate the skills relative to your major or goals? Before choosing to take an unnecessary nap over studying, or choosing a weekend getaway over saving money, analyze the real opportunity cost of each decision.

Applying the concept of opportunity cost to my every day decisions will encourage me to make more efficient and beneficial decisions relative to my goals and aspirations. What do you think? Do you agree?

Browsing through blogs, I found a interesting topic from FOBlog – A Student’s Entrepreneurial Journey, about starting his semester of college off on the right foot. I must admit, even though I still maintained to make the honors list and earn good grades, I found myself lacking in essential skills to maximize my education experience. I have finished my general ED in 3 semesters, and now have a full semester to fill with classes of my personal interests before I transfer. Loaded with fun classes, and working only 20 hours a week compared to 40+ last semester, I have jotted down a few goals and guidelines for this semester.

• Turn in Assignments a day early – After reading the 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss, I will achieve better time management by aiming to be productive instead of busy. So a new mind trick I am going to play is to just give myself less time to complete assignments, as it seems I produce way more on assignment or essay when I have a matter of hours left compared to a matter of days to complete it. Plus, by getting these assignments out of the way, I gain more personal time.
• Get my money’s worth and Take advantage of the professors – This is one aspect of college that I always regret after each semester. Depending on whether your professor is awesome and enlightening, or just hates teaching and ruins the subject for you, I want to make more connections and build relationships with the professors I fancy. Especially with this semester jam-packed of subjects that interest me, I am looking forward to putting more effort towards asking the professors questions, hang out for a bit after class, and take advantage of the wealth of knowledge these people can potentially offer.
• Read the text….. daily and nightly – This is also due to boring subjects that just don’t appeal to me, but that’s still a pathetic excuse. If I’m gonna get financially gang-banged by overpriced textbooks, I am gonna read them and enhance the lectures with the reading. I always seem to replace textbook reading with my personal reading, but I plan to balance the two together this semester.
• Pack my lunches, save some money – I am going to wake up just 10 minutes earlier each morning and make some snacks, hey, maybe even make myself a sandwich, to bring with me to school. I spend, specifically waste, about 5 dollars a day on a Sobe and French fries. Save money, eat fruit and be more healthy.
• Make more authentic relationships – I always try to find at least one or two people in each class that I relate to and or create an authentic friendship with. By “authentic” friendship, I mean not just a guy I will BS with before or during class, but a mutually beneficial relationship. Study partner, a friend or partner that will push me in the right direction, and grow an authentic relationship that can grow for the years to come.

Those are the goals of this spring semester, and I’ll post updates to track how I am exhibiting these goals. Any suggestions? Any goals of your own for your semester or new endeavor in life?

Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them. ~Confucius, Analects

A new year has just kicked off, so it seems appropriate to set some goals into place. Among the hundreds of goals flooding my mind this week, there was one that is most apparent; breaking down the bad habits and develop new ones.

Throughout the past few months I have recognized that my habits, which seem so small since I have programmed them into my subconscious for the past years, ultimately dictate my life and represents my character. I have been attending a social group that meditates and incorporates Buddhist practices into everyday business and stressful situations, and I have noticed the same message constantly.

“Free of Attachment” – in my perspective, means for myself or anyone to be free from negative habits, prejudices, bias, stress, the list goes on and on. One the of key reasons to practice meditation is just to free yourself from everything and just “be”. Still learning to “just be”, I have realized that habits can make or break a person. Countless times I find myself sluggishly hit snooze on my alarm clock, wasting 15 minutes that I could spend, who knows, doing push-ups or making myself an actual breakfast. Instead of wasting time exploring Wikipedia, I can plan my next day or hang out with friends and family. Eliminating and freeing myself from these bad habits and forming new good habits in their place is my goal.

One big reason for this specific goal is replacing the bad habits with good habits that will better service my overall perception in everyday life. One of the books I’m currently reading, Having it All, by John Assaraf, states that “seeing is not the same as perceiving”. According to Assaraf, the brain collects what we see, and whether the images are familiar or not, any information we don’t need, is basically thrown out from our consciousness.

“Our beliefs and habits act as filters that get in the way of truth and possibilities.” Another point I liked, “We talk, act, and pretend out the prejudices of our beliefs.” Our prejudices and beliefs dictates our self-esteem, our personal relationships, and even our mental and physical health. Our conscious mind takes in about 11 million pieces of information! And we are actually only aware of 40-2,000 pieces. Our habits condition our brain to drop out and not even see or recognize the other 10 million + information.

Keeping that in mind, I want to eliminate the negative habits that are fixed into my subconscious and form new positive habits that will allow myself, or my subconscious, to perceive and pick up more important information relevant to my goals, tasks, or situation at the time. Tim Ferris, author of the 4-Hour Workweek, promotes Selective Ignorance, where I should focus on the real important information that matters or info that is relevant, and ignore all the millions of crap information thrown at us from all directions. For more information on using Selective Ignorance as a tool, read about RRS – Really Simple Syndication – for the internet, from Ryan Holiday’s post. I need to follow this advice, and stop taking in or paying time and attention to irrelevant and unimportant info that I seem to draw myself into courtesy of my bad habits.

Like watching stupid videos on YouTube due to my bad habit of procrastination, and spend time taking in important info relevant to my goals and educating myself, now courtesy of my new positive habit = starting this blog.

To sum it up, my ultimate goal for 2008 is to replace my bad habits and condition new positive habits that will allow my subconscious to perceive and recognize the important and relevant info of the 11 million pieces thrown at me daily. With more efficient perception, I can be open to more possibilities and be more creative, and be free from my past prejudices and negative habits. To top it off, I’ll incorporate Selective Ignorance into my daily life to cut out the crap and focus more on the good stuff that benefits me. I believe that habits can either make or break a person. We all have some negative habits, and I think it is always important to recognize them, eliminate, then replace them with new positive habits. Equipping myself now with the right positive habits will allow myself to conquer and accomplish any of my goals and dreams.

Quote of the Day relevant to the post:

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”