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Jeans should fit. Gloves should fit. #Love should fit. What your job is and your passion, in a perfect world, should fit. Shit in life should fit. We leave something behind when we are fitting into everything though. Friends.

Wait.

I’m not talking about your soccer friends you grew up with since you were six.

I’m not talking about your crew from college.

I’m talking about the people you meet, that motivate and energize the HECK out of you. Like stupid-crazy energize you. The people that you come across and you’re just like %&# &*!% #^%^ #LOUDNOISES #$^& %#&@ !%$&.

I’m all about timing. Damn, so much in life is defined by it. Here’s the rad thing about timing though: not all of it is out of your control. I’m not even going to argue what the percentage split is on uncontrolled vs. controlled — that isn’t the point. So relax, no need to get puffy-chest syndrome. 

Well I met one of my #LOUDNOISES friends early last week. And by “met” I obviously mean came across online and immediately became enamored with. Her name is Jen Friel aka @JenFriel. She’s the founder of a blog called Talk Nerdy To Me Lover. 

Let’s digest that for a second.

Seriously? How flippin’ rad is that URL? I thought my buddy Joel’s website MakingLoveToYourEarVagina.com was a badass URL. Then I found Jen’s. 

I read the first post that brought me to her site, a story about 103 #OkCupid dates in 9 months. It wasn’t a new post or anything, someone I followed on the Twitter reposted it for some reason. I clicked to read it because I was fascinated by the title of said post. 

Fast forward an hour, and I haven’t stopped reading. Post after post I was consuming stories and was more entertained than my favorite episode of my favorite show. This chic was beyond cool. The why? Because she plain and simply didn’t give a flip. She went after everything her heart told her to. Fear wasn’t a word she allowed herself to hear, emotion she let her body feel, or thought she let her mind have.

I instantly became angry.

(Angry you say Ryan?)

Yea angry.

I had always considered myself a fearless go-getter. And my new “friend” had just proven to me over the last hour, that beyond a shadow of a doubt, I wasn’t.

So I immediately felt challenged and accepted the challenge. (We still have yet to even tweet communicate and Jen had energized me to the point that I went and ran a quick mile just to get my thoughts in order)

And damn did I feel good. There was some kind of new motivation I was feeling inside that wasn’t there hours prior. 

How can that be? Someone I didn’t even know of a couple hours ago, who I’ve still yet to actually communicate with, and who WAS NOT Steve Jobs — had literally woken up a side of me that I didn’t know had been laying dormant. 

And then it hit me: Jen was a friend fit for me. Whether she ever felt the same or not, it was #Fact. She was someone that motivated, energized and otherwise challenged me to be a better me. And there wasn’t anything that was ever going to change that. The damage had been done.

Had I mentioned yet that she was gorgeous?

(No you hadn’t)

Okay well, she is. And I’m sure that had something to do with my attraction to her as a person, but it was one of those scenarios where that was just an added bonus — because her killer instinct to life was one of those awesome feelings you never want to lose. 

Whether its business or pleasure, people that make you feel like this are worth their weight in diamonds. If it was something we could bottle and sell, it’d cost more than your Macbook per ounce. It can’t be manufactured, wished or stolen — it can just be felt.

So operation #befriendjen went into motion, and to my surprise, she only impressed me more. We quickly hit it off, and even made public pledges to visit each other in 2012. And play Duck Hunt. Why you ask? Because #nerdsunite … that’s why. #done

Everything in life should fit. From your jeans, to your friends. People that make you want to totally kick ass and be a better you — those are the people to get close to. Your life is going to be so much better when you do. And when those people show you that they really care? Like, the “why is this person so nice for no other reason than to be nice” care … it makes you want to be the exact same way. There are a kagillion different types of #Love. And they all win.

So thank you Jen. Thank you for being so damn you and so damn invigorating that it made me want to tackle impossible, and give it a noogie.  

In the end…everything in life should fit. #nerding 

Hey Jen…Psst: 

Guest post: Laura Petrolino of Ignite Venture Partners.

Since I’m a guest on this blog I feel it is only fair to warn you upfront about what lies ahead.  Today you innocently came to this blog, unaware of what you were about to encounter. “Oh look at the cute, little blonde”, you say to yourself, “I wonder what nice things she has to say….”. Little did you know that you had stumbled upon (cue music) THE OPTIMISM MANIFESTO!!!!!!! (please be aware that any reference to THE OPTIMISM MANIFESTO!!!!!!! must be all in caps like that with the ‘lucky 7’ exclamation marks afterward).

I’ve written several times before about optimism and the benefits of an optimistic perspective in both your personal and professional life. Those who know me know I am an eternal optimist. I acknowledge that life can be tough, but I also truly deep down believethat the laws of physics weigh in favor of good things happening. Therefore, most of the time, in my own life, they do!

Sadly, I find that by living a life as an optimist, I’m often misunderstood, maligned and simply found ignorant and annoying. I find this a bit of a sad reflection on a world that is becoming increasingly mistrusting and negatively focused. After all, if you don’t LET a light shine, you can guarantee that it won’t, and for me, that is no way to live.

Thus, I have created this OPTIMISM MANIFESTO!!!!!!! Hopefully it will make you rethink where you stand on the ‘glass half full’ spectrum and re-examine how that position affects you in both your personal life and your business.

Lesson One: Optimism is about perspective

A really wise man named Winston Churchill (you might have heard of him? He was a pretty important world leader during a fairly difficult and chaotic time in our history) said, “You create your universe as you go along”. This idea is one of the key tenants of optimism.

Like everyone, I’ve gone through some fairly crappy things in my life. I’ve been disappointed by ‘unfortunate’ situations, let down by people I trusted (and I tend to be trusting to a fault, so this has happened more than I’d like to accept), and otherwise frustrated by seeming ‘misfortunes’ in my life. When these ‘negative’ situations occur (I’d like to point out the quotation marks around all the negatively focused adjectives) we are each faced with a few decisions:

a) The Pessimist’s Choice: Be upset, defeated, angry, distrustful. This negative situation has simply re-enforced the fact that the world is out to get you. Bummer :(

b) The Optimist’s Choice: Be upset, but accept the fact that, in the present it is impossible to determine what is unfortunate in life.

This is a very simplistic condensation, but I’ll try to further define the optimistic position .

I understand that negative, seemingly unfortunate things WILL happen in life, however, I also accept that everything that happens to me further leads me down the path that I’m suppose to take. Negative things don’t happen in a vacuum and when something bad happens I can either let it defeat me OR I can see it as an opportunity for something good. I trust that I will end up where I’m supposed to be, even if, sometimes I don’t understand the path I take to get there.

You can’t always control what happens to you in life, but you can control your perspective. Being optimistic and realistic (and yes, these two things do go together) about situations allows you up take back control of unfortunate situations.

Lesson Two: Optimism is about letting go.

Another pretty smart man (perhaps not quite Churchill-esque, but a force to be reckoned with in his niche) named Kenny Rogers was know to say, “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away and know when to run”. An important part of being optimistic is knowing when to hold on to (a situation, person, event, memory, business deal, mistake) and knowing when it is time to let go.

Often people accuse optimists of being foolish, of not taking reality into account in business or in life because they live in a lala land of unicorns and rainbows. Let me clear something up here folks, that isn’t optimism, that is one of three things:

1) Ignorance

2)  Stupidity

3) Drugs

Being an optimist is NOT about being careless or foolish. Quite the contrary in fact.  Optimists might take more chances than pessimists, but that doesn’t mean that optimism equates to jumping into a pool of hungry piranas, blindfolded and hoping to swim across (I’m sorry for any piranas I might have just offended with that comment). It is about seeing the world as a place where good things are just waiting to happen…waiting for you to take advantage of them and MAKE them happen. It means having a solid plan and smart strategy and going for it with confidence and the intention of succeeding. It is also about knowing when to walk away from a failure, re-evaluate, learn from your mistake and jump back in more intelligent than before.

It is very invigorating and motivating to truly live in a world where there is no glass ceiling. Where no one is out to get me. Where people are cheering me on and it all depends on ME to create my own success.

I don’t live in a world with blinders on, instead I believe that good things will happen to me. I believe this so strongly, that I make them happen. I work hard, become aware of the opportunities AND roadblocks that are ahead of me, and venture in head first KNOWING that there will be success.

Lesson Three: Optimism is having faith

Please be aware that faith is not the same thing as religion. Faith is something in and of itself and in my mind probably the most powerful thing that humans have going for them. My favorite quote of faith comes from Martin Luther King, Jr. (Geez, do you know how excited Winston Churchill and MLK, Jr. are right now that they are being mentioned right along side Kenny Rogers! That’s something to write home about!) who said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

Having a strong faith is one of the most important characteristics all optimists share. The sense of peace that comes from knowing that you are always headed in the right direction is an extremely important part of being able to ride through life’s misfortunes.

As an optimist, I live in a world that is tilted in my favor, not because I’m lucky, but because I’m able to SEE and BELIEVE there are endless amazing opportunities out there just waiting for me to find them.

The End. Congratulations, you have now completed THE OPTIMISM MANIFESTO!!!!!!!

Now it is your turn, where do you lie on the optimism/pessimism spectrum? How does it affect your life? your business? And are you happy with those consequence?