The Power of a Moment

Moments stick into our minds.  Moments sometimes have power over us.  Moments of fear cripple us, moments of joy sustain us, moments of confusion confuse us.  We live out our lives moment by moment.  The importance of moments sometimes escape us, so it's always good to remember this:

Sometimes, the moment you are in contact with another person can stick with them for the rest of their life.  This is the case with me as someone yelled to me "Keep it up, You're saving lives!" after I gave her a hug.  It is this kind of presence in moments that I try to live my life.  The impact of my momentary actions have lasting impacts on other persons. This blogpost is going to be short because I only have a couple free moments to work on it.  I hope you enjoy it even with its momentary read.

Hugs,
David Melia (Professional Free Hugger)

The Future of Economic Equality

Hey there Friend!

What does economics have to do with Free Hugs you ask?  Well the answer is really inherent in the mission of Free Hugs.  One of the main reasons of giving away free hugs is the dent that it puts into the capitalist idea that we need money for everything.  It is a daily reminder that some things are free.  Some things we can't buy with money.  Some things are priceless.  This being said, money is an important part of any human's life.  We do need money to survive.  We need money to live in this capitalist world that we have created.  Recently I have learned some off-the-wall facts about the distribution of wealth here in the United States have alarmed me.

Lets go over some crazy facts:

• The top 1% of people in the United States have 40% of the total wealth of America
• The bottom 80% of people in the United States have 7% of the total wealth of America 

I am just going to give you some time to contemplate those numbers.  Just take a moment to read those facts over again.  You may also want to take this time and watch this short video about the topic. 

I have recently been seeing a lot of press and comments about Starbucks attempting to pay its employee's in a specific location, less than the law in that city allows.  There has also been a lot of talk about the 'living wage' and minimum wage and what the best thing to do there is.  As an entrepreneurship major, business owner/future business owner, I am fascinated by these questions as I am embarking on a couple of my entrepreneurial endeavors and my entrepreneurial studies.   

The numbers are something that is hard to look past.  The crazy disparity between the rich and the poor seems almost untouchable.  It might seem like there is no hope.  I want to say that there is hope.  I don't know if you have ever heard of Moo Cluck Moo but this fast food startup company is an example of progress.  With a starting salary of $12 an hour, assuming an $8 minimum wage, that is $4 above the minimum wage.  And lets remember, Moo Cluck Moo is a startup company which means substantially less profit margin. Moo Cluck Moo is setting a precedent for our countries fast food chains.  If a startup company can afford to pay their workers more than they are currently paying them.  The process of creating change is happening right now.  It is all of us as persons who have the power to help or hinder the cause in our daily life.  The protests, boycotts, and actions of the people against the big corporations in-spite of the overwhelming odds in sense gives me hope. 

As an entrepreneur, I think that through the increased interest in entrepreneurship and starting their own companies and implementing their own ideas, the distribution of wealth will come soon to follow.  The more people who create their own business's the more economic stability more Americans will have.   The increase in education opportunities and awareness of entrepreneurship as a career choice gives me hope for a more evenly spread distribution of wealth which will happen sooner than we realize. The increase in entrepreneurship is crucial to the redistribution of wealth in this country. 

This quote by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. expresses all that I have been trying to convey throughout this whole post.

Therefore, I guess I didn't need to write it because this pretty much sums it up.  I hope you enjoyed reading it anyway.  

Hugs 'til Next Time, 

David Melia (Professional Free Hugger) 

P.S. Thanks to The Harry Potter Alliance for sharing this picture on their Facebook page.  You should go check them out.  They have some pretty cool stuff going on. 

Daily Disciplines: What I am learning.

Starting a new year, almost all of us have things that we want to change about ourselves.  We come up with grand ideas about how we are going to be better people in the year 2014, about how our lives will change, about how this will be our year.  The new year brings about that longing for a new me.  A new person.  New year, new person.  We all know the story.  Once we get a couple months in, that new person resorts back to our old ways and 2014 is the same year as 2013.  In order to fall out of this trap, daily disciplines.  Daily disciplines allow us to reflect on the direction of our life on a daily basis.  To make sure that the decisions which we make line up with our vision of the future.  To understand that in order to achieve a goal, we need to make progress on that goal, no matter how small, everyday.

I just read a post by my friend Ali about the importance of the seemingly insignificant, small things and how each of those seemingly insignificant things are actually big things (click here to read her post). They are HUGE! I have never actually set aside time each day to consciously write down what I have done that day or reflect on my decisions to understand where I am right now and where I am going and if my decisions that day have helped or hindered that ultimate goal.

I am currently working on trying to design a worksheet for myself in order to have something to fill out daily which will be able to serve as a time for me to plan out my day, reflect on the daily activities, and allow me to have something concrete to look at and map out my thoughts and be able to see myself change throughout the process (hopefully changing for the better... I think that is the ultimate goal, right?) I have been a little bit spotty here at the beginning of the year in my filling out of these worksheets and am still in the process of creating something that will benefit me each day, but I think this will always be the case.  It will always be something that changes from day to day, and so I hope that I will be able to sit down and focus everyday in an attempt to understand what kind of person my decisions are crafting me into.

It is the daily choices that we make that create our character.  I am challenging myself to create daily disciplines for myself to follow.  I challenge you to do the same.  Do something small everyday in order to achieve a goal in your life.  In addition to your everyday activities whether it be work, school, projects, dedicate 15 minutes a day to thinking, to dreaming about something that you want to make happen, and then another 15 minutes on writing, or planning different concrete steps to try and reach that goal.  Good luck!!

Hugs,

David Melia (Professional Free Hugger)

A New Year's Resolution Post (Maybe, Maybe not)

Hey Friend,

Here are 2014 goals and projects that I will be working on starting a few days ago.

Penny Bet Goals

• Get a working website and app available to start raising money for charities
• Raise $20,000 to be donated to charity. 
• Write Penny Bet Business Plan 

Free Hugs Goals

• Redesign a website that allows for Free Hugs merchandise to be sold
• Design an app that will allow for free huggers to log their hugging counts and share where they gave away those hugs in an attempt to find the most huggable city in the United States
• Create a list of Free Hug friendly organizations around the world 
• Give away/ receive 20,000-30,000 hugs  in 2014

Social Leadership Academy

• Create and craft and be a part of world changing projects including Free Hugs and Penny Bets. 

Everyday People project with Megan

• It's going to happen! :) I am grateful to be a part of it. 

Teaching Entrepreneurship

• Learn and Teach stuff. 
• Have fun.  

This is a general overview of my goals in 2014, the big goals.  I am currently working on smaller stepping stone goals.  2014 sounds exciting to me.  Let me know what you think! 

Hugs, 

:David Melia (Professional Free Hugger) 

Reflections on 2013

Hey Friends,

2013 was a year full of a lot of new and crazy rides.  It was cool to be living it in my shoes.  In the beginning of the year I was working on finishing writing the rough drafts of my Free Hugs: It's More Than A Campaign--It's A Lifestyle book.  During my winter quarter at DePaul University, I went about the self publishing process with the help of Outskirts Press, a self publishing company.  I spent more money getting the book published than I have made back from book sales so far, but I think that the process of getting a book published and distributed via Amazon and other outlets was well worth the investment.  Having a book published about Free Hugs gives me a lifelong product to help generate information and revenue for my free hugs projects.  It also shows my dedication to my free hugs projects.

I used the money that I did earn from book sales in order to go on a Free Hugs Tour during my summer break.  I took public transportation to get to most of the places that I toured.  This was a very new and different experience than traveling around the country via car.  I had to depend a lot more on other people and met more people due to the increased amount of people that I came into contact with.   My tour was planned for the whole summer (26 cities in just under 90 days- June 12-September 8), I only was able to complete about half of it (13 cities in about 45 days) before I was drained of money, and emotionally drained.  On this trip I gave away about 2500 hugs and most of the trip is documented earlier in this blog.  Near the end, I found it harder and harder to set aside the time and write about it.  At the time I was really devastated that I couldn't muster up the strength to finish out the tour.  After I thought about it for a while though, 90 days of straight traveling and Free Hugging without much rest time was a bad idea.  I learned that smaller trips and planning free time not including Free Hugging as the prime motive is key for my Free Hugs tours.  Even though I failed greatly in my original plan, I learned a lot on this tour, met a lot of new and amazing people.  Each failure is a stepping stone on the road to success. As Robert F. Kennedy once said, "Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." I think I am in a good place.

I abruptly ended my tour the first couple days of August.  This also allowed me to attend my brothers 18th birthday party with his and my long time friends at Medieval Times.  At the end of August I found a job helping out at an after school program.  It has been a blessing to be a part of the After School Care team.  This next year I will actually be teaching an entrepreneurship class to some of the middle schoolers, sharing my passion for entrepreneurship and growing in my academic, entrepreneurship knowledge.  This is my major at DePaul University so it will also fit right in with my classes and help me organize and build my entrepreneurial endeavors.  More on this to be included in my next post about what 2014 brings with the new year.

Speaking of entrepreneurial endeavors... in October of this year I was fortunate enough to be a part of the Search 7 retreat brought about by Catholic Campus Ministry at DePaul University.  This retreat was one of the greatest retreats that I have ever been on.  It allowed me to search for what I was searching for, very specific i know, but that is all I can tell you.  It was a great 'retreat' from the real world grind, and allowed me to refocus in a quarter full of writing and stress.  From that experience, a friend of mine and I came up with an idea.  This idea is named 'Penny Bets'.  It's pretty self explanatory, you bet someone something for a penny.  This can range from anything across the board, but just bet it for a penny.  Once you have a lot of pennies, you donate the funds to a charity of ones choosing.  I was talking with some friends about Penny Bets when they challenged me to create a website and an app for penny bets to increase its impact.  Therefore, I am currently working on designing and developing a Penny Bet website and mobile application.   More information to follow as well.

Stay tuned for an organized blog post with all of the projects and endeavors that I will be starting and working on in 2014 that I am aware of thus far into the year!

Hugs,
David Melia (Professional Free Hugger)