Do Cool Sh*t (4 page)

That night I called the number and Irish picked up after the third ring.

“You all right?” he asked again.

I told him I was going to a pub down the street from where I was staying and asked if he wanted to come. (Why not, right? I was in foreign territory.) He paused and then agreed with what seemed like not much enthusiasm. Though I could tell there was curiosity in his tone of voice.

What I didn’t know was that after their soccer game, he and the entire team had been at a pub and I was a main topic of conversation—me and my “interesting” approach. Was it a dare? Why them? Apparently I had ridden my bike smack into a bunch of philosophers and physicists who studied at the prestigious Imperial College London. Hot
and
smart? Jackpot!

After Irish hung up with me, he proceeded to call every single dude on the team and every one of them showed up. I couldn’t believe it. From that day on, Irish, Chris Sims, Richie, Elliot, and the rest of the Imperial College gang became great friends of mine. During my time there, I went to Stonehenge to visit Chris’s family and traveled to Rhyl, Wales, to visit Elliot’s family. These were the kinds of experiences I had dreamed of having when I originally considered living in another country. I now had my buds.

Do Cool Shit Takeaway

• Never be afraid to stray from the pack if you see an opportunity for a new experience.
  
• Fake it till you make it. Feeling insecure in a new setting is natural, but it can stop you from making a group of amazing new friends. Just go for it. People will generally be thrilled to meet a new person.
  
• No regrets! Imagine looking back on your life years from now. You want to be proud of your ability to embrace new opportunities.
  

Do Cool Shit Challenge

Meet a group of complete strangers on your own

Step 1: Wear a cool, eye-catching outfit.

Not to be superficial, but would you be more receptive to someone in an oversize, unflattering T-shirt and baggy jeans or someone in a really stylin’ outfit? Plus, it may offer a topic for conversation! Go to urbanoutfitters.com or vogue.com to find out what’s in season and add a personal twist to it. Or go to thrift stores and find clothes that match the current style if you can’t afford to get things new. Thrift stores will never go out of style.

Step 2: Always approach people with a
big
smile!

It sounds so cheesy but it’s
so
important! If you’re frowning or neutral, people will mirror your expression, but if you go into a conversation with a big ole smile on your face and a twinkle in your eye, people will smile back and will respond to your positive energy. It disarms people and warms them up. If you need a second (and timeless) opinion, read Dale Carnegie’s legendary book
How to Win Friends and Influence People
. It has a whole chapter about why smiling is so important.

Step 3: Think of some questions or icebreakers to kick-start a conversation.

A good trick is to ask people for advice. It gives people the opportunity to be an expert and take you under their wing. One example: “Hey! I’m new to the area and trying to figure out what’s fun to do in this town. Got any ideas? I’ve gotten some bad ones so far, and you guys seem like you probably know where to go.” Then smile again. (Compliments just don’t get old.) Or go in with a funny joke to cut the tension of the room. My personal favorite:

Q: What does an angry pepper do?
A: It gets jalapeño face. [It gets all-up-in-yo face.]

Run this experiment and post your experience on docoolshit.org. I’d love to hear your stories!

OK, back to my British adventure.

Though my social life in London was going fantastically, the PR firm where I was interning was turning out to be the opposite. I spent all my days stuffing envelopes, making copies, and getting coffee for bosses who were bitchy, boring, and worse, had no interest in teaching me the business at all.

Now, I understood what an internship is. It’s rarely a perfect experience, yet important to get your foot in the door of an industry that interests you, and for you to learn a bit about the day-to-day business in order to evaluate whether it’s a potential career for you. But this was bad. For a month, I really tried to add value to their business. I let them know that I was willing to do other tasks and was ready to take on more responsibility. I tried to offer fresh ideas and ask smart questions, but they just wanted me to do my job and not make waves. Don’t get me wrong, I was all about working my way up and starting from the bottom, but I couldn’t do it without the respect of any of the people in the company and the knowledge that more learning was to come.

I could read the writing on the wall. I realized that this adventure in Europe was becoming a rote mind-numbing job and that I had more to offer. The thought of doing this for five more months was impossible. I decided that it was up to me to make the most out of my limited time in London and knew what I had to do.

Do Cool Shit Takeaway

It was in London that semester that I discovered the importance of the
MB
experience: the
mutually beneficial
experience.

Everything in life and business needs to be MB. When you buy something, it needs to be MB for the buyer and seller. When you build relationships with friends and colleagues, they need to be MB for both parties. If you’re working for free as an intern, you need to get something out of it. When you think about the companies that succeed right now, they are MB companies.

Please ask yourself these questions:

• Is your current work/friend/romantic situation an MB experience?
  
• If it’s not an MB experience, don’t assume that your friend/teacher/boss is reading your mind. Have you
  asked
  for more responsibility/time/etc.?
  
• If you’ve done everything you can yet see the writing on the wall, is it time for you to start creating a better situation for yourself?
  

In order to do cool shit, all experiences and relationships must be mutually beneficial. Of course, you must “put in your time,” but there must always be something to look forward to!

As for my hellish internship, I was not having any of it. I walked up to the head of the team, thanked her for the opportunity, and told her that I would not be interning for the company anymore.

I knew that there were serious consequences for quitting an internship, including the possibility of being sent home. So far, no student in the history of the Boston University internship program had ever quit a job. I would be the first one to stray.

I then went to the head of the internship program, Ranald Macdonald (not kidding, that’s his name) and explained to him why I was just miserable at this internship and that I couldn’t go back. He matter-of-factly explained to me that I might be sent home the next day, and I told him I understood. I spent one long night with my new British friends, explaining that it might be my last night there.

The next day Mr. Macdonald called me into his office.

“You know, there
is
a Lord in the House of the Lords looking for someone to help him with his British curriculum. Would you be interested in working with him? He is not often available, so you will have to do a lot of work alone.”

Lord? British curriculum? Work on my own? Yes, please!

I accepted right away and proceeded to spend the next five months working for Lord Hugh Thomas, creating a visual-art project for him that described the history of England so he could use it in the classes he taught to foreign students. I got to do this on my own time. I could wake up when I wanted, set my own schedule, and mostly just work for myself. I had deadlines to meet but that was about it. It was my first taste of entrepreneurship, working independently, and motivating myself on my own. I loved working in this way, and in the end, the internship allowed me to travel, create a meaningful project, and deepen my friendships.

This experience made me
realize how important it is to trust your gut, eliminate toxic situations, and surround yourself with positive, hardworking, inspiring people, which will inevitably make you want to elevate yourself as well.

With that in mind, here is a system I call
BET
(bullet, eliminate, take on)
to help you stray from the group and get the results you want.

STEP 1:
Create a bulleted list of commitments, affiliations, relationships, and individuals —those who
inspire
you on one side and those who
deplete
you on the other.

When I say
inspire
, I mean people who love life, who have the confidence you’ve always wanted, who have relationships that you admire, people you admire for their compassion or abilities, who are achieving amazing things in their life, and people who really support and care about you.

When I speak of people or relationships that
deplete
, I mean people who make you feel bad about yourself, or those who have a negative attitude, or who make you feel insecure, guilty, unsuccessful, or deflated.

I took a hard look at my friends at age twenty-five, and I discovered that there was a clear line between the people who made me feel good and those who made me feel bad. I wrote out the list of good and bad relationships and chose to reinvest my energy where it would be the most rewarding.

Keep in mind, some of the people on these lists may be popular in your friend circle, but let’s be honest—sometimes bitches
are
popular. Really examine the nature of the relationship and if the negatives outweigh the positives, write that person’s name down under your “deplete” list.

It’s also OK if, once you write your list, you don’t have a lot of people in the “inspire” column. I’ve had to start over a few times with only a few people who I could truly count on, and having a few true and loyal friends is better than a bunch of negative acquaintances any day.

It’s important to take time every so often and think about your relationships. The people who bring positivity to your life are the ones you should choose to invest your energy in.

STEP 2:
Eliminate the bad relationships and nurture the good ones.

All right. Now draw a big
X
through the people on the “deplete” list.

I don’t mean to be simplistic. I know it can be complicated. But I also know that if you allow yourself to live or work with someone who makes you feel bad, it will hold you back.

If it’s a friend who you need to eliminate, it may not seem easy at first, but when you start to really examine the relationships, you will become aware of how you
feel
when you are spending time with them. If you feel bad every time you see them (or guilty or negative or exhausted afterward), it’s time to step away. Begin to take steps to spend less and less time with them until you can phase them out entirely. And if it’s really bad, and they’re a consistent and significant negative influence on your life, find their contact info in your phone and just press
DELETE
.

Or maybe you cared for this person at one point but they changed. Maybe they’re Jekyll and Hyde. At some point, after the “I didn’t mean it” and “give me another chance,” you’ll say, “Enough is enough.”

In those moments,
deplete
equals
delete
.

This may sound really harsh. And you may be thinking, “It’s a lot more complicated than this.” The person who makes you feel bad could be a business partner or a boss. It could be a spouse.

Just think about it. Maybe you already tried being nice, attempting to reason with them in the past, but it backfired on you. Maybe you had a conflict that really never got resolved and you can tell that there were grudges still being kept. Or maybe, no matter how hard you tried to communicate, you just can’t see eye to eye.

I had a friend from college who would almost always put me down when something good happened to me. If I met a new guy, she’d point out every one of his faults. If I got a really cool summer job, it was “luck.” It took me a long time to realize that she wasn’t my friend at all; she was just someone who was around and who had somehow become a consistent part of my life even though I didn’t want her to be.

Don’t worry about it. You’ll see that with each person on the “deplete” list who you eliminate, you’ll feel lighter and have more space to bring good into your life. Once you eliminate negative people from your life, it will free you up to devote more time and energy to cultivate the great friendships and relationships you have or want. You only have a limited amount of time to devote to your friends, so pick them wisely.

My kick-ass friend Marie Forleo has a saying that I firmly believe in: “Everything is figure-out-able.” I promise your life will be so much better without the constant negative energy, and you will find love, a better-suited business partner, employees, and much better friends.

In the end, you’ll wonder why it took you this long. Every time you make a decision on eliminating a toxic relationship in your life, you
will
get stronger and you’ll have so much space for good shit to happen.