I think the opposite of being grateful is complaining. When you complain you focus on what you don’t like versus recognizing what is going well. While it’s easier to criticize, I think one will be happier if they regularly and consciously note the positive, awesome side of their circumstances.

Today I’m grateful for music, in all it’s many forms. Music can make you laugh, cry, run faster, dance, jump, shout, sweat, scream, and just make you feel really freaking good. My current favorite song is Happy Ending, by Mika.

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In addition to Gratitude Sundays I’m also introducing People Are Inherently Good (PaIG) Wednesdays.

My gut tells me that human beings are naturally good creatures. Yes, we have to make sure our basic needs are satisfied, but once those are covered I think people generally have the desire to help others and add positively to the world.

Under quality leadership groups can achieve, design, and build amazing things.

And so to help remind everyone that Life is Pretty Awesome, every Wednesday I’ll be posting examples from my life or from the Internet on how People are Inherently Good.

This week: Wikipedia

If you’d talked to the best economists 10 years ago and told them “hey, I want to make an encyclopedia, let everyone read it for fre, and let anyone edit it as they see fit” they would have told you it’d never, ever work. Who’d write for free? How would you ensure quality content?

There’s tons of reasons why Wikipedia shouldn’t work.

But as we know, it does, and remarkably well. All 91,000 active contributors work for free. Every year Wikipedia’s founder asks for donations to keep the site alive, and every year individuals’ donations exceed the budget.

It’s a massive labor of love that also serves as an example of how People are Inherently Good.

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I love Shopify.com because they make it so easy to create an online store.  With no coding experience necessary, Shopify’s customers create professional online stores that include everything from order forms, payment processes, and automated fraud detection to real-time statistics, compatibility with analytical services, and unlimited bandwidth on secure servers. This all comes at a straightforward monthly price that requires no contracts and can be canceled at any time.

While there are other stores that provide similar services, Shopify is generally known as the de facto Golden Standard.

They win Entrepreneur of the Week because of a contest they recently hosted with Tim Ferris (author of The 4-Hour Work Week): Award $100,000 to the website that earns the most revenue in two consecutive months using Shopify’s software. The contest rewards everyone involved; Shopify gets tons of publicity, people who had an idea but needed an extra incentive to start a store get a final push, and consumers are given access to some really cool cool stuff (my favorite being these engraved bamboo iPhone cases).

I love capitalism.

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On my 25th birthday I wrote that gratitude is underrated and listed some of the things for which I am grateful.

And while we might complain sometimes, I think most Americans are grateful for being members of this awesome country. It’s a privilege and a blessing to live here, and so I think it important to occasionally take a moment and remember everything we can be thankful for.

So, while I normally shy from talking about my ideas, ambitions, or future plans (for reasons that you’d probably shrug at) I wanted to say that I plan on making the 1st day of the week “Gratitude Sunday.” Hopefully you’ll also feel inclined to reflect on how great your life is.

And so, without further ado, here’s why I’m grateful today:

1. My parents. It’d be hard to imagine more loving, supportive people. They’ve done their best (despite my rebellious efforts) to raise a rocking family, with children who love and support one another. They constantly sacrifice their own desires and goals for those of their 6 (six!) kids. That alone wins them Parent of the Year awards. And while of course they’re not perfect, they do nail the some of the most important aspects of parenthood: creating a home of love and respect, a place to which I can retreat if things “outside” aren’t going my way.  A haven, if you will. Indeed, my parents are some of the best.
2. My church. If you don’t know I’m a Mormon, then you probably don’t know me, which probably means you’re new to the blog… so welcome! Thanks for reading. My church has influenced me tremendously, nothing more so than my 2-year mission to Oaxaca, Mexico. If being Mormon has taught me nothing else, it’s that serving others is the shortest way to a happy, fulfilling life.
3. My future job with KPMG. After interning in their Mountain View, California office in the winter of 2009, they were nice enough to offer me a full-time job starting October 6th. A job offer a year and a half in advance, during the worst economy of recent memory… that’s kind of a big deal, no? So props to them for taking on a guy like me. I look forward to making new friends and contributing in whatever form possible come this fall.

That’ll do it for today. I figure no matter who you are or how bad life gets, there’s always something good going on, it’s just a matter of remembering.

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So get used to it! No matter who you are or where you were born, there are people who were blessed with a lot more and a lot less than you.

The goal should be to make the most of what you have, not to compare yourself to others.

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There’s no situation in the human experience that can’t get a little better by having a healthy sense of humor.

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A little background: Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York) wrote an open letter to Steve Jobs asking Apple to “provide iPhone 4 customers with a clearly written explanation of the cause of the reception problem and make a public commitment to remedy it free-of-charge.”

This bothers me for three reasons:

1. He’s using a high-profile company’s problem to gain free publicity.
2. He’s using the government to interfere with the operations of business. Let Apple do as it pleases; if people don’t like the phone, they can take it back for free.
3. Senator Schumer has no experience in business, becoming a member of New York’s State Assembly at the age of 23 and continuing in politics ever since.

I operate with the assumption that Americans don’t have to be babied by their government.  Maybe it’s a large generalization, but we’re smart, proactive people who know how to take care of ourselves. So if we don’t like the iPhone 4, we’ll take it back and buy something else.  Really.

So please, Senator Schumer, don’t tell Apple how to appease us.

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Apple’s iPhone 4 has been a phenomenal success, selling over 1.7 million units in 3 days.

Shortly after the phone was released, however, people realized they could significantly reduce reception by covering the bottom left of the phone, the so called “death grip.”

Apple then released a public letter saying the problem wasn’t a hardware issue, but that “the formula [Apple] use[s] to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong.” The letter goes on, saying they’ll even make “bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see” (emphasis mine, and how nice of them to do us that favor, yes?).

So ever since the original iPhone, released in June of 2007, there’s been a huge bug that incorrectly displays the number of bars. I find it incredibly unlikely that such a visible feature have a bug that went undetected for three years, but once noticed by consumers was easily tracked down in only a matter of days.

To be honest, the whole bad reception thing doesn’t bother me.  I don’t hold my phone like that, I don’t make that many calls, and AT&T has always been fine for me anyways. I also don’t think it bothers very many people, period. It mainly bugs the techie crowd who, for obvious reasons, are extremely vocal online.

I just wish Apple hadn’t tried to cop out with this letter, claiming the problem was a software issue. To their credit, they’ve changed their return policy, saying that you now have 30 days to return the phone and don’t have to pay a restocking fee. So if you feel duped by Apple, at least you can take the phone back.  Sounds fair enough to me.

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Google and developers everywhere just don’t get it.

Apple doesn’t care about pleasing its developers. It just doesn’t. They’re fine with creating a platform and saying “if you want to program with us, you have to do it our way.” Apple’s created such a money machine in the App Store that many developers are in fact willing to suck it up and do it the Apple Way. If the App store weren’t such a large opportunity for developers you wouldn’t have so many of them complaining about Apple policy.

Apple’s success has come by creating products that offer remarkable user experiences. If they feel the need to create and enforce strict rules to preserve that experience they’re going to do it. They are dedicated to their customers first, and their developers second.

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Khan Academy is the education of the future. Its founder (and sole employee, professor, etc.) has created over 1400 YouTube videos on subjects ranging from pre-algebra, to the housing bubble, from entropy to 401(k)’s.

Sal Khan at Gel 2010 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

Watch this video to gain a better appreciation as to why video works so well for education. Well worth your time.

Also, here’s a list of the guy’s credentials from his site:

Sal received his MBA from Harvard Business School. He also holds a Masters in electrical engineering and computer science, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and a BS in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Impressive.

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In a recent conversation with Thomas Fong, one of ten federal Assistant Chief Immigration Judges , I learned that the United States generally allows 400,000 immigrants every year on working visas (this doesn’t include people who are getting married to US citizens or people who have an employer requesting their admission to the US). Only 20,000 can come from any given country.  Countries like China and Mexico have waiting lists of 15 to 20 years for people waiting to enter.

I bring that up because, for as many problems as the United States has, it appears people everywhere still want to come to the “Land of Opportunity.” I feel people desire to come here because of the bountiful opportunity that exists.  We generally believe we are only limited by our imagination and hard, smart work.  We are given the choice of who we will become.  And through our choices, we are given the opportunity to learn and grow, which is the ultimate source of happiness.  Why do people become happier when they are accepted into college, get a promotion, hike a mountain, or run a marathon?  They’re improving themselves.  They’re growing.

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