Here’s a quick mind test to see if you’re too stressed:

• Do you have a hard time starting the day?
• Do you have a hard time ending the day?

If you answered with two yeses, you’re a little bit too stressed. Just one yes and you’re moderately stressed, and zero yeses means you’re living life the way it’s meant to be lived.

Right now I’ve got one yes.

• Beni Hana – Get a $30 gift certificate for the month of your birthday
• Tucanos – Free meal voucher mailed to you the month of your birthday
• Red Robin – Free burger certificate mailed to you two weeks before your birthday

Know of any more places that’ll slaughter the cow for free? Leave them in the comments.

Yesterday I talked to my grandma on the phone. She asked me how I was doing. I told her, “Life’s pretty good for me right now. I don’t have any midterms this week, I’m not sick anymore, and I’m not behind at work.” Cool beans.

But there’s one problem: I defined my happiness by what I’m not. I’m NOT SAD, therefore I’m HAPPY.

For many people, life really does work that way. Yet as I grow older (and hopefully wiser), I realize more and more that happiness cannot be determined by what you’re NOT. If that were so, you’d find yourself really depressed when things start getting tough.

So, what is happiness then? Introducing… the happiness manifesto.

The Happiness Manifesto

1. Happiness is a product of your own making.
2. Happiness is not a result of your environment, or what you’re NOT.
3. Happiness can come from ignorance, but it’s probably good to avoid this one.
4. Happiness comes from treating yourself right. This includes eating right, exercising often, and indulging in your favorite TV show now and again.
5. Happiness is best when shared with others. Hugs can transfer happiness quite efficiently.
6. Happiness is like matter — it is neither created nor destroyed. It is only present or absent, depending on your perspective.
7. Happiness can always be brought into any situation.
8. Happiness is contagious — surround yourself with it, and you’ll find that it infects you.
9. Happiness means being satisfied with who you are TODAY. Start with that as a baseline before you try and change yourself.
10. Happiness means looking for the best in everyone — and everything.
11. Happiness means eating at the chinese buffet or drinking the occasional soda — life is short, so you might as well live it well.
12. Happiness is something you CAN have. Today.

What else would you include in your happiness manifesto? Leave your ideas in the comments.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children the right to study paintings, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

Most people refuse to believe this, but shortcuts don’t really exist. And when they do exist, they’re usually just hack jobs that get you by.

After all, when was the last time you equated a quality job with an easy job? These are two conflicting ideas that can’t really occupy the same space in your brain at the same time.

So, next time you’re starting something new, ask yourself whether you want quality or easy. Because you can’t have both — that’s like dividing by zero.

Didn’t get the job? Well, you probably screwed up the interview.

In order to get a job in today’s economy, you have to be a genius. Fortunately, being a genius is easy: you just have to do things differently. That’s what makes you stand out.

So next time you’re in a job interview, try to shake things up a bit. Here’s a genius line that will make any potential employer’s jaw drop:

“Oh, I can do that in my spare time. Let me do that project for you for free, and you can hire me if you like my work.”

Good teachers are rare. Extremely rare. I bet you’re a horrible teacher.

Why? You’re boring. You don’t engage your audience. You don’t even think about your audience. You’re just trying to fill up time as you vomit useless words into your listeners’ ears (and expect them to learn something).

Take church for example.

It’s no wonder why most people don’t like it. As a missionary, I often felt bad for the people that I invited to church because it was so boring. Three hours of sitting in a chair, not understanding a word… yeah, that’s great.

Maybe that’s why so many people flock to those big, gaudy churches with the entertaining ministers. As a church teacher, if you’re not compelling enough to make people want to listen to you, no one is going to come.

Why didn’t anyone show up to Elder’s Quorum on time on Sunday? Why were 90% of the people in Sunday School surfing the web on their iPhones? Uh-huh. Boring.

School is even worse.

Because we all pay tuition to be there. Why, other than to receive a piece of paper called a diploma, would I pay to listen to someone read me a few powerpoint slides? Why would I pay to go to class, when I can just read the textbook? If you don’t give your students added value by going to class, no one is going to come.

And even if they do come, they’re just going to surf the internet in class. If you’re a professor, don’t be so naive in thinking that all those students with laptops are actually taking notes. They’re not.

But here’s what really scares me.

Parents don’t know how to teach their children. And if parents don’t teach their children, society will. The drug dealer that sits next to your kid in class will.

Want to know why your kid does bad things? You taught him, whether passively or actively, to do so. Want to know why your child doesn’t love you? Because you never taught her how to love.

Teaching skills are not talents used to entertain audiences. They’re easily developed skills that can save society.

So let’s get it on it.

“Instead of having “answers” on a math test, they should just call them “impressions,” and if you got a different “impression,” so what, can’t we all be brothers?”

-Jack Handy

Everyone knows that first impressions are powerful. When meeting new people, trying new foods, or even visiting new places, our off-the-cuff reactions tend to hang around for a very long time.

Like school. For me, a professor has exactly one class period to make or break an entire semester. If that first lecture is dreadful, I immediately know it’s going to be four long months of toil and pain.

Or like restaurants. If I don’t like a dish on my first time eating somewhere, I’ll probably never go back. The other dishes on the menu might be inexplicably divine — but I’ll never know that, now will I? I’m already in my car, driving away.

Fortunately, not all of our opinions are finalized by first-time encounters.

As humans we maintain an invisible spreadsheet of perceptions in our heads. Not only do we add new rows to this spreadsheet, but we constantly update and delete rows as well. Thus, our first impressions can be revised accordingly (which, in the case of dating, might save most of our lives).

Yet some of us aren’t good enough with ‘invisible Excel’ to make these kinds of changes. Well, it’s time for a crash course in spreadsheet basics. Here are five easy steps to change your impressions on just about anything:

Step 1: Open Your Heart

Gut-level reactions are actually our most natural responses, so our hearts are inherently closed to changing them. Realize that there may be a better way/opinion/frame of thought, and become willing to consider accepting it.

Step 2: Eliminate the Noise

You can’t appreciate Mozart at a rock concert. To see the good (or bad) in something, get rid of the miscellaneous and focus on what’s important. Do you dislike your daughter’s boyfriend 1) because he looks like a hoodlum or 2) you’re not used to your daughter being old enough to date yet? The latter is an example of noise.

Step 3: Start From the Beginning

Nearly any movie can become dreadful if you start watching it halfway through. Rewind the DVD and start judging it from the very beginning. The same can be said of a good meal, a decent boyfriend, or a business deal.

Step 4: Put in Your Share of the Effort

Some habits (or even relationships) require a large investment before they start to pay off. Jogging, for example, is usually quite miserable the first time you do it. Forming your opinion at this stage will always lead to disaster. Continue putting in your share of the effort before giving up completely.

Step 5: Accept the Results, No Matter What.

If you’re an overly negative person, perhaps you thrive off of bad first impressions. Trying to change something that’s in direct contradiction with who you are will never work. So don’t try it.

Surprise: you can apply these steps anywhere in your life.

After I wrote the five steps above, I realized that they can be applied to almost anything in our lives. Got a bad relationship? Use the five steps. Want to actually have a relationship? Use the five steps.

Got a problem at work? Five steps. Can’t seem to kick a bad habit? Five steps.

You can change your life. Sometimes you have to move in small steps, but it’s definitely worth it.

Yesterday I almost smacked someone because they complimented me on my computer programming skills.

It’s not that I’m a bad programmer. I’m actually pretty good. But complimenting someone on their computer programming is like complimenting a chef on his meal: “Wow, this tastes good! You must have really nice pots and pans.”

Any chef can tell you that it’s the love, instinct, and passion that make a meal what it is. Food has its personality, and a good chef can release that personality with less-than-shiny frying pans.

The same goes for computer programming. A good computer program is an infusion of design, data, and determination that form a rhythmic poem in the heart of a computer nerd. Well-written lines of code alone doth not a good program make.

What compliments irk you? Do you ever feel like your skills are undervalued, even when they’re acknowledged?

Society makes life really hard for us introverted people. It makes us believe we have to go to parties, be social butterflies, and constantly seek after the praise and recognition of others.

That’s not all. Here are 20 more LIES that society tries to make us introverts believe:

1. You’re a loser if you stay at home on a Friday or Saturday night.
2. Dances and clubs are a good way to meet people.
3. It’s easy to ask someone on a date.
4. Making small talk is easy — after all, it’s small!
5. You shouldn’t have just one best friend.
6. Meeting good people requires meeting a lot of people.
7. Approaching someone you don’t know is easy.
8. Performing on stage gets easier the more you do it.
9. Public speaking is scary only because you’re afraid you’ll mess up.
10. Being quiet means you’re shy.
11. Being quiet means you have nothing to say.
12. Being quiet means you don’t like the people you’re with.
13. Meditation and contemplation are reserved for religious fanatics.
14. You have to talk while driving in the car.
15. Not wanting to talk to someone is rude.
16. Networking with people requires the exchange of business cards.
17. Introverts don’t like to be around people.
18. Pausing to collect your thoughts makes a conversation awkward.
19. You are either introverted or extroverted. Nothing in between.
20. You have to use Facebook and Twitter for producing information, not just consuming information.

Be strong, fellow introvert! You can make your own way in this world. Don’t fall victim to the knavery of those pesky extroverts.

Got any more lies? Leave ‘em in the comments!