Winning, Pinball, Socrates and Hamlet - Green-Eyed Guide on Goals, Part Two

In Part One of The Green-Eyed Perspective on Goals we learned it’s possible the Green-Eyed Guide and Charlie Sheen are both obsessed with winning. We also discovered the caveats to setting grandiose goals.

At some point in your life, you may get the sudden shocking realization you aren’t sure what your goals are. Perhaps you feel something is missing from the Big Picture that is your life, but you aren’t sure exactly what that missing piece is. Sometimes trying to pinpoint why you feel incomplete or unfulfilled is like trying to see through fog, or trying to hear a song when the radio is cutting out. What do you do when only the outline of an object is visible? How do you enjoy the song when there’s so much static interference? How do you proceed toward your goals if you’re not exactly sure what they are, or why you’re pursuing them?

 Step One: Pinball Wizard meets “Identity Capital”

Step Two: Activation Energy

Step Three: Failing and Feedback

Ten years ago I wanted to write a guide to energy drinks (check); I also wanted to get married by age 25, live in San Diego and be a community college teacher. I underestimated how much more confident and grounded in my identity I would feel a few years after 25, that I’d leave San Diego for Long Beach, and that I’d turn down two college teaching offers for a research and development position I find both challenging and rewarding. Life is funny sometimes.

Personally, I think setting goals involves channeling your inner Pinball Wizard. If you are lucky enough to have a clear image of what you want, go after it. Just be prepared for your path to change, or for the goal itself to move. If you’re not sure what you want to do for the next ten years, how about the next two? This is where Identity Capital comes in.

Read the rest at: Part Two - Green-Eyed Guide on Goals

THE POWER OF A HUG

A good hug makes you smile, but a great hug stays with you, like the warmth of a long hot shower. Not everyone is capable of giving a great hug, and not everyone is lucky enough to receive one. There are those who insist they're not huggers, there are those who give the awkward sideways hug, those who can't seem to get the arms right and choke the other person, and then there are those who give close tight hugs.

The most powerful hugs it seems are hugs of comfort. Whether it's between a parent and child, between a couple or maybe just between best friends, in these hugs time slows. The arms of the one providing the comfort act almost like a shield and, for just that moment in time, optimism takes hold, inner strength builds and the stress of the situation just melts away.

Hugs of comfort are extremely powerful but hugs of adoration are equal in their ability to convey a hundred words without speaking. Hugs of adoration usually exceed hugs of comfort in their tightness and duration, and almost always eliminate the space between the two parties. Chest to chest, you can almost feel the other person's heart beating. You can feel their warmth, smell their hair, and simply bask in the radiance of their presence.  While these hugs aren't catalysts of optimism and strength like comfort hugs, adoration hugs often represent powerful opportunities and turning points. Face to face, you can look at someone the eye, say goodbye or give in to the passion of the moment. 

Great hugs like these are more rare than one might think. When they do come along, embrace it – literally. Savor the hug for as long as it lasts. It'll be over before you know it and all you're left with is the memory, the warmth and hopefully a smile. That is the power of a hug. 

Flugtags, Taurine and the Truth Behind the Slogan: Three Things You Didn't Know About Red Bull

Across the nation on September 21^st, 2013, hundreds of teams will compete in the Red Bull Flugtag event. Five cities, one day. On that day, teams will launch their hard work off a pier in hopes of taking flight. "Red Bull gives you wi-ings", they'll shout…as their contraptions fall toward the sea. While the trajectory of most flugtag creations is predictable, consider these surprising facts.

ONE. For one man, Red Bull's popular slogan was more than just hype. Chaleo Yoovidhya was born into poverty but died in March 2012 as the third-richest man in Thailand. As the co-creator of Red Bull, his rise to success brings new meaning to the slogan "Red Bull gives you wings". Yoovidhya's berry-flavored concoction of caffeine and taurine was called Krathing Daeng, meaning Red Water Buffalo. After Yoovidhya formed a partnership with Austrian salesman Dietrich Mateschitz, the drink was reformulated with added fizz, renamed Red Bull and launched in Austria in 1987.

TWO. Taurine gets its name from the genus and species characterization of ox, Bos Taurus.  The chemical we now know as taurine was first isolated from ox bile in 1822. Regardless of your astrological sign, you have a significant amount of taurine in your body. Taurine can help the heart by keeping it from getting too excited. Being awake and alert is a good thing, but it's not good to become so alert and so hyper that your heart starts beating too fast for your body to function. Taurine helps restore the right sodium/potassium balance in the body, and it also helps balance the levels of calcium inside the heart muscle cells. This regulation protects the heart from dangerous calcium imbalances that can lead to cell death and heart muscle damage. In fact, congestive heart failure is the top use for taurine supplementation listed in the prestigious Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database.

THREE. September 21, 2013 is the First National Red Bull Flugtag but there have been over 20 events like this since the inaugural stateside Red Bull Flugtag in San Francisco. In German, "flugtag" means "Flight Day" so, as Red Bull points out on their Flugtag History page, unofficial flugtags have been going on since Leonardo Da Vinci.

Guaranteed to make a splash, stay tuned for the Green-Eyed Guide's Long Beach Flugtag report (with plenty of photos)

For more information on taurine - Energy Drink Guide

Updated Sept 23rd - See pictures from Flugtag here:
Green-Eyed Guide Meets Flugtag Flyers! 

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TAKE THE QUIZ: ARE YOU A MONSTER OR A ROCK STAR?
Test Your Caffeine IQ 

The Jellyfish Effect: 5 Tools to Deal With Traffic

There's a line in the cult classic Clueless where Cher's father tells her she has 20 minutes to get home. As he explains, "Everywhere in L.A. takes 20 minutes." If you've ever had the opportunity to drive through Los Angeles, you'd know this line is funny because it's so wrong. At times, driving through LA reminds me of trying to get out of the parking lot of a baseball stadium at the end of a playoff game. Other times, driving on LA freeways reminds me of trying to speed-walk through a mall populated with groups of 4 friends that insist on all walking side by side. Honestly,…

Some of you from New York or New Jersey are probably yelling at me right now, "Oh pu-lease! You think Los Angeles is bad!?!" Instead of trying to agree on which city has the worst traffic, can we all just agree that traffic is aggravating and exasperating? We all have different ways of dealing with road congestion and while The Most Interesting Man in the World reportedly cures Road Rage, here are my personal tools for dealing with those times I can't drive 55.

Energy Drink of the Month - September 2013

It's the beginning of football season, and the end of the regular baseball season. It's the end of summer and the beginning of colder months, all which coincidentally end with a "burr". September is a curious month. A clever man once said, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end," but to many, the beginnings and ends September brings are significant. 

 

Like the trajectory of a Red Bull flugtag contraption, many start September with an optimistic lift of energy and determination…before losing momentum and dropping quickly to the ground. I have to plan for Halloween already?!? The sun has set already?!? Midterms, already?!? Don't give into the fall, rise. You may be powerless to stop the evening fog from rolling in, but you can combat the fog that creeps into your mind – rise. 

If you haven't guessed already, the Energy Drink of the Month for September 2013 is Rize. 

Designed by a biochemist with a passion for athletic events ranging from Mud Runs to Marathons, Rize is not your typical "energy drink". In fact, one would dare to say Rize symbolizes the New Era of energy drinks. Rize is just one of the products you could point to anytime someone makes one of my favorite blanket statements, "Energy drinks are bad."

Oh yeah? Well, let's just take a look at this one, shall we?

Like most energy drinks, Rize contains caffeine (*SHOCKER*) and B-vitamins. However, there are three major ingredients that set this drink apart from the other 500 products marketed as "energy drinks". (This is neither an exaggeration nor a typo. According to Forbes Magazine there were over 500 energy drinks on the market worldwide in 2006. This stat is precisely why the blanket statement, above, irks me so.)

1 – Trehalose

No, not the fort you'd build in the limbs of a tree, trehalose ("trey-ha-lohs") is a special kind of sugar. Don't panic, it's nothing foreign to your body. Trehalose is made from two regular average glucose molecules (glucose is the most basic building block of carbohydrates). In trehalose, however, the two glucose molecules are holding hands in a different way than two glucoses normally would (say, in a starch molecule). This tiny deviation from the norm is enough to change taste and metabolism.

Too. Much. Science…

Okay, okay, so here's the important part: trehalose doesn't create blood sugar spikes like other simple sugars would. Trehalose has a unique sweetness that's different than sugar but not metallic like Stevia, plus it's free of the controversies surrounding Aspartame and Sucralose. In essence, trehalose provides the yummy part of sugar, without the rise and fall of blood sugar levels. The result is sustained energy, the natural way.

2 – Green Tea Extract and Green Tea's caffeine

The following is an excerpt from the book ARE YOU A MONSTER OR A ROCKSTAR: a guide to energy drinks:

Green tea is probably the healthiest drink on the planet, second to water. Loaded with antioxidants and other phytonutrients you've probably never heard of before, green tea is continuously glorified for its health benefits. Plus, it just looks healthy with that green hue, doesn't it?

The only downside to consuming green tea is that it's only good for you if you drink it, and the bitter taste is a deal-breaker to many, including yours truly. If you can't stand the bitterness of green tea, green tea extract seems like the next best thing. Green tea extract is an isolated, purified version of the major antioxidants in green tea. Green tea has more nutrients than green tea extract, but green tea extract has all the star players, like the 25-man roster in baseball.

So how does green tea extract work? What, exactly does it do in the body? How do green tea extract and caffeine interact? For these answers and the rest of this discussion on the amazing benefits of Green Tea Extract, check out this handy guide.  Rize contains both green tea extract and caffeine from green tea, giving it an advantage over the stereotypical "energy drinks".

3 – Huperzine

Not only is Huperzine a fun word to say out loud, it's the X-factor that distinguishes Rize from all the other "energy drinks". Supposedly, this natural compound helps memory, focus and cognitive function. There are even double-blind clinical studies to prove it. HOWEVER, those studies gave this compound to people over a period of 8 weeks! I don't know about you, but I don't think I could commit to drinking the same energy drink for 8 weeks straight. First of all, that goes against the 5 Levels of Fatigue – the system that categorizes fatigue into levels of severity, then outlines which particular ingredients to look for to best suit that particular level. For example, someone who needs a jolt in the morning should not be drinking the same product as someone who needs to pull an all-nighter.

This drink is a Level 2 product. For an example of the Levels of Fatigue in action, see previous blog post [July's Energy Drink of the Month]. For the full system, see this handy guide.

If you constantly reach Level 2 and rearranging your schedule to get more sleep isn't feasible, then it's possible Huperzine could improve brain health. Then again, so will other things, like this Alzheimer's Association sponsored puzzle book by Terry Stickels . Nonetheless, this ingredient is the third component that distinguishes this product from the rest.

BOTTOM LINE

 

Trehalose is not a new discovery, but it's not the most affordable ingredient out there in the world of sugars and sweeteners. As a product developer and food scientist, when I see a company using trehalose it makes me believe these guys are willing to pay for quality. They could've stuck with green tea and brain-boosting Huperzine, but they decided it was worth it to use trehalose as well. Not only does this earn my respect as a food scientist and fellow biochemist, it makes the product unique in sweetness.

 

The two biggest drawbacks are availability and ambiguity. Thus far, this product is only available in the eastern half of the US, in Meijer stores.Rize Store Locator. Of course you could always order a case and get it shipped to you, but it's not as convenient as purchasing a competitive product from your local supermarket or gas station. Furthermore, this product does not disclose the amount of caffeine per can and it's ridiculously difficult to find this information online. Fear not, it's only a matter of time before Energy Fiend comes to the rescue.

For the full Rize Story: http://www.rizeenergy.com/TheRizeStory.aspx


***UPDATED: 9-16-2013:
Energy Fiend assessment of this product:
Energy Fiend on Rize Energy Drink

New Recommendations and Notable Quotables - Every 7th of the Month

See what the Green-Eyed Guide has been reading:
here

Can't find the right words? Borrow these ones:
Notable Quotables

AIM FOR THE MOON or the dust?

Crap, I thought out loud. I'm on the losing team. Fantastic. This is NOT what I signed up for!

It was Opening Day of the Adult Kickball Fall season and half my team didn't even show up. The other half that did show up were, shall we say, a little woozy from their morning mimosas. I have nothing against mimosas for breakfast, but I'm not a big fan of losing, and I hate forfeiting. As I started to get worked up and frustrated with the prospect of being the Houston Astros of the kickball league, I was saved by a simple rhetorical question, a turtle and a boxer.

My Baby: Now available on Amazon and B&N!

For those who love or loathe energy drinks, this book will change how you consume caffeine, how you check labels of your favorite fruit smoothy or other non-caffeinated "functional beverage", and how you react when you feel like you need a pick-me-up.
Now available on Amazon:

Amazon Book Link.

and Barnes & Noble:
B&N Book Link