The best way to have fun at parties isn’t the small talk. It’s having a deeper, more meaningful conversations in smaller rather than larger groups. The problem is that you often meet people you only see every so often. The rest are strangers. So how do you spark some intelligent, meaningful conversation and cut past the small talk? In this article I will share some of the successful methods I have been using to do just that.

Newspapers and magazines often show you headlines of the greatest scientific discoveries ever made. But what of that is true? In a recent conversation with a doctor, he told me how they review certain articles from popular medical journals on mistakes made in the process. They then compare them to the headlines, which often lead to astounding insights in wrong methodology or overly optimistic conclusions. Oftentimes the conclusions shown in media headlines are taking the most positive outcome possible and displaying just that to the world.

In the middle of moving I couldn’t find enough time to sit down and write for this blog. Fortunately, with all that long past, I’m back and ready to keep on going. In this post, I want to continue with minimalism and how it was to start being more minimalistic. As might be clear from the title it was somewhat tougher than anticipated, especially when you decide you’re moving and you want to take about half of your stuff with you to a bigger living space.

This will be the first article in a series where I start practising minimalism. This week: what is minimalism and what can I do with it? For a while now, minimalism has been an exciting concept to me. It is a life philosophy that states that the unnecessary should be removed, with the idea that a simpler life is a happier life. And it’s true that there’s beauty in simplicity. But minimalism also seems like a hip movement, something that all the cool kids are doing. Is it really what it sets out to be?

We’ve all read the countless posts telling us to get out of our comfort zones. The countless images saying your life will begin outside the comfort zone. It was about a year ago that I decided to test those statements. What does it mean, getting out of your comfort zone? What good or bad does it bring? I set out to answer those questions.