WordUp by Chad Gramling

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I finished reading “Design Your Self: Rethinking the way you live, love, work, and play” by Karim Rashid several days ago . . . and I am just now getting around to blogging about it (I’m so ashamed). I am not one to do a “review” of books, movies, music and such, but I always like to mention a few things about them.

The book was suggested by my good friend, Dan, who has very rarely (if ever) read anything I’ve suggested to him. Anywho, for those who don’t know, Rashid is a very successful designer of pretty much everything and is very in tune with culture, society, life and technology among many other things.

In this book, he offers his opinions upon how we as individuals can create our identities and suggests we should live without fear of being ourselves. Though I do not know this to be fact, I would guess that Rashid has very little regard for spiritual dogma’s and living according to the “rules” of any God or supreme being.

That lacking component aside, there are many good things that can be drawn from the text. For me, one of the most important appears near the end in which Rashid suggests we should not cling to our failures or setbacks. Additionally, he points out that life is not always fair and even sometimes, it is our own fault that can be overcome:

A friend of mine was on antidepressants. He said something very revealing once. He said that the drugs didn’t change the world, they only changed the way he responded to the world. they helped him be less depressed. He realized that the world was still there, and that it hadn’t changed. The only thing that had changed, thanks to the antidepressant, was the way he responded to hit. When he figured this out, he tossed the drugs and changed his attitude.

Now, I am not suggesting you throw away all your medicines and say “I’m better because I have a better outlook on life,” but I do think there is a lot of truth to this passage. We create many of our own prisons in life because we cannot let go of things. Either we are wronged by a person, event, struggle or addiction and we seek revenge, repercussion or even an opportunity to redo it.

But is that the answer? I don’t think so.

Thoughts anyone?

Tags: Karim Rashid, Self Improvement, Design, Drug Dependence, Living, Life, Individualism