Neil Pasricha: The Author of Awesome (Part 3: Father-Daughter Bonds, Six Failed Websites, and An Airplane Confession)

        Hello, it's me, no need to get into Adele here, but I am still feeling a little musical (and emotional) after the 62nd Grammys aired last night. Alicia Keys hosted for the second time, and of course, had to pay tribute to basketball great Kobe Bryant and his teenage daughter Gianna, who passed away from a helicopter accident earlier that day. It was truly a night full of tributes and moving moments. But what really moved me was Camila Cabello (whom I mentioned, in an earlier post of mine, I absolutely love) performing her song "First Man" in front of her dad. I cry every time I hear that song, so the performance made me want to hug my parents, so badly! It was just to let them know that I will always be there for them, notably my dad, because he is a very special person in my life for many reasons. So to all the fathers and daughters out there, who haven't seen the performance, you should most definitely revisit it, because what's more powerful, than family itself? Okay, I'm getting off-topic here, so now I'll present Part 3 of...

..."Neil Pasricha: The Author of Awesome"

"You Are Awesome" by Neil Pasricha

        Welcome again, it's Part 3! In this post, I will talk about Secrets 5 and 6 from "You Are Awesome", as promised (because if it was never a promise, I probably would be blogging about something else now. An 18-year-old who took over the Grammys, maybe?). If any of you watched Neil's Ted Talk "The Three 'A's of Awesome" (which I linked to in Part 1), you may remember him discussing the success of his blog 1000awesomethings.com, saying that the first viewers of his blog were his parents, and it grew into thousands of other views. He even won the Webby Award for Best Blog that year (Awesome!). But as I'll explain with my Secret 5 recap, the website wasn't his first. Also, keep reading, because Secret 6 features a morning routine (that I haven't tried yet).

Secret 5: Lose More to Win More

        It all began when Neil was fifteen, and his math teacher invited him for a week-long tour of Queens University. He signed himself up for a Computer Science mini-course on website building. At the time (1995 to be exact), the internet was just getting started, so professional website builders like Blogger, WordPress, and SquareSpace didn't exist...yet. Throughout the course, Neil learned "basic HTML and JavaScript". And so, his first website "Neil's Haven of HTML and JavaScript" was born. He kept checking the website's views, only to find out that most of them were from him, while he was still building the site! Website number 2 was "WIWAK (When I Was A Kid)", which he made with his friend Chad. It consisted of one-liners like "I thought those green power boxes at the end of my street were where they printed newspapers." It failed, since no one but Neil's sister uploaded their own WIWAK. Website number 3 was "LabelZero.com", where artists could upload music for free, and the users will have to watch an ad or complete a survey before downloading a song (early version of SoundCloud?). That failed too, since Neil and his friends had no way to approach artists. "Ambitions exceeding abilities", he calls it. Website number 4 was "Ghettohouses.com", which got some success from its many submissions about the student ghetto near Queen's University. Website number 5 was his LiveJournal blog "Taut Twisted Tightness", and it failed, again. Neil made his sixth website with a writer for David Letterman, called "The Big Jewel", which kept going for four years, and failed. Finally, his seventh website was the Webby-Award-winning "1000 Awesome Things". The main idea of this success story: to succeed, you have to fail, a lot! Neil also mentions the thing that every commencement speech gets wrong. They say "Do what you love.", but really he thinks they should say, "Do you love it so much you can take the pain and punishment, too?" To conclude, he states three ways to better lose more to win more.

1. Go to parties (where you don't know anyone)

2. Have a failure budget

3. Count your losses

Secret 6: Reveal to Heal

        To begin this section, Neil recalls his flights from Toronto to Boston during his time as a Harvard student. On one flight, his "seatmate" was a forty-something bald and bearded man, who I'll refer to as Seat Mate. Near the end of the flight, Seat Mate made a confession to Neil, that he doesn't feel "intellectual connection" with his wife. "That's hard," Neil responded. A year later, they saw each other again, and Neil figured that Seat Mate had decided to stick with his wife. This is a story about "contemporary confession", the act of letting out all our inner demons straight at someone else's face. "Yet even though confession is an incredible mental release, many of us don't use it.", due to the growth of secularism in our society. So how do we reveal to heal? We can simply speak to another person (or God if you are actually that religious). We can also use this simple "two-minute morning practice" that Neil absolutely recommends. All you have to do is grab some paper, and write the following three prompts (the power of three continues!):

1. I will let go of _____(ex. telling myself I'm not an expert at so-and-so)

2. I am grateful for _____(ex. the amazing meal I had last night)

3. I will focus on _____(ex. organizing my workspace)

As Neil says, "We're all awake for about 1000 minutes a day. That's it! So isn't it worth taking two of those minutes to help the other 998 be as good as possible?"

Next time on "Neil Pasricha: The Author of Awesome": The series finale (a.k.a Part 4)! Instead of two secrets, as usual, I will recap three! Secrets 7, 8, and 9 are about going big in a small world, going uninterrupted for long periods of time, and going forward, always.