Food for Thought

In order to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, simply allow yourself to fall in love with the world. Live in the moment, laugh as much as you breathe and love as long as you live to result motivation to be great. I am going to personally share with you my perspective on how I view the world in the midst of branding Danielle.

I am a person who delights in life’s simple pleasures and recognizing them comes from being spontaneous especially on Saturday afternoons. To give you a dose of Danielle, over the past month Saturday’s have consisted of waking up to 10 inches of snow on the ground after a blizzard from the night before. Then going out to take pictures while playing in fresh powder like it was for the first time. One Saturday, my housemates and I went to see Valentine’s Day at Princess and for dinner dipped crab legs into warm butter, scrapped the flesh from mussels and the tender bits from artichoke leaves with a side of authentic Parmesan risotto. I visited home in Toledo for my 21^st birthday celebration with the family, that morning I woke up to the smell of my dad’s notorious banana pancakes and freshly brewed Starbucks coffee. I took a long walk in the park with my parents and sister then came home to baked brie melting in brown sugar topped with toasted almond slices. Warming up by the fire with a gla

ss of red wine, we enjoyed a dramatic ‘blue ray’ movie. Now those are what you call simple pleasures.

Simple pleasures allow you to fall in love with the world, to notice details and to appreciate the people around you. Turn the ordinary into extraordinary. Try looking at life in a different angle. Have precision in your goals and what you want to get out of your day. Living in the Miami bubble is what you make of it. Think of capturing the moment in a photograph. Focus in with the camera lens; compose the image in your mind’s eye, focus and set the shot clearly, then snap the shutter. With precision, you get the results you want by accomplishing fewer things at a higher level. You won’t accomplish your goal maybe the first time around or the second; it does not take one shot, but multiple, countless tries until you find the right one. So the question is, which angle of life are you willing to take? Is your angle the ordinary shot picture from afar or are you going to break up the pattern to capture the extraordinary?

BRAND YOURSELF.

"It's this simple: You are a brand. You are in charge of your brand. There is no single path to success. And there is no one right way to create the brand called You. Except this: Start today. Or else." -Tom Peters (Fast Company: A Brand Called You)

As college students, we are still young, impressionable, and we have more to offer than we think. If we are open-minded, we will meet more people, gain more insights and more opportunities will arise. As simple as taking a picture, the photo won’t take unless we snap the shutter ourselves. We have the power to be in charge of our Brand and we have the power to create our Brand using our own imagination.

There is no right way to create the Brand called You. In order to be irreplaceable, we must find our market niche, determine how we are different or better or more accessible than the competition. We should use our imagination to develop our Brand to make it the BEST it can be. Walt Disney, coined the term ‘plussing’ as a way of making an idea even better. He would say, “even when you think you have nailed it, you can always plus it.”

Think of Apple’s iPad, a small device with the ability to read emails, surf the web, watch videos and take pictures. We all know the iPad will be ‘plussed’ numerously in its lifespan, which is why many consumers will wait for the better version to come out. Never settle, but thirst learning something new each day. Reach out to get to know the people within the organizations we’re involved in.

Don’t wait any longer to create your Brand, create it now!