Some, for instance, were fed stories early in the week like this one from BBC News titled, “May urges ‘greater restraint’ by Israel after Gaza Violence.” And if you keep clicking you then get directed to: “Gaza’s Deadly Day in Pictures” and “Why Trump and Jerusalem Was Not About Peace” to name a few.

Others may have seen this CBS interview with the Prime Minister of Israel or this Times of Israel article titled, “Hamas Official: 50 of the 62 Gazans killed in border violence were our members.”

If you notice, one side grossly fails to acknowledge the participation of a terrorist organization inciting riots and bribing citizens, and the other side doesn’t mention that these people were displaced from their homes (rightfully or wrongfully, not the point) in 1948 and have been pissed off about it ever since.

There are two sides to every story and the news continues to fail at painting a holistic picture every day. The worst part comes next: everyone then shares those articles that most closely align with their own confirmation biases to their social networks, who most likely agree with them already.

While this recent international example of the news polarizing us forced me to think about this issue and write this piece, we’ve got a much, much bigger issue here at home.

The 1976 U.S. Presidential Election

Two short years after President Richard Nixon got busted for Watergate, Gerald Ford was set to run for the Republicans against Jimmy Carter for the Democrats. Ford was a government veteran, playing up his experience in what they like to call in politics a “rose garden strategy,” but he’d never really had to win the support of the people on his own before then. Jimmy Carter on the other hand was the Governor of Georgia and made the fact that he was “untainted” by Washington a cornerstone of his campaign.

Carter went on to win the electoral votes 297–240, but only won the popular vote with 50.1%.

Sound familiar? Fast forward 40 years.

The 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

The Political Veteran no one really loved vs. the Outlaw “untainted by Washington.” Trump won the electoral votes 304–227, and didn’t even win the popular vote with only 46.1% to Hillary’s 48.2%.

However, here’s where it gets interesting. Let’s rewind and take a look at this breakdown of votes by county in the 1976 election:

You see a whole lot of blue, but you also see a whole lot of red. Yeah, the South won Jimmy the election, but there’s no real distinct patterns when you break it down by county. Every state (besides his home state of Georgia, Alaska and Hawaii) has both blue and red counties that won. When our parents were growing up, people all over voted for the candidate they felt was best qualified to run our nation.

Now take a look at the same breakdown by county for the 2016 election:

You’re probably looking at that, as I did the first time, and thinking to yourself, “How in the hell did Hillary win the popular vote if the map looked like that?” Well, here’s a nicely done cartogram that adjusts for population size in those counties:

Ah, now it makes sense. All the urban, highly populated areas seem to be blue, while the red areas look rather thin, suggesting a lowly populated, not so urban area. The divide is evident.

What happened in those 40 years? People all of the sudden just decided to choose political sides based on geography and never look back? Basically. Well, not exactly.

Silicon Valley is Tearing Us Apart

While we saw in our example from this week how the news can paint two totally different pictures for their audience, at least most of us are aware of those biases when we turn on the TV or pick up the newspaper. What you may have not considered is how the decision makers at all of these big social media companies, sitting in Silicon Valley, are doing the same thing — but worse.

President Barack Obama describes the issue perfectly on David Letterman’s new Netflix special, My Next Guest Is. While he highlights how key social media was in his 2008 victory, he criticizes it for this past election,“What the Russians exploited, but it was already there, [was] we are operating in completely different information universes. If you watch Fox News, you’re living on a different planet then if you listen to NPR…If you’re getting all your information from algorithms being sent through a phone and it is just reinforcing whatever biases you have, that is the pattern that develops.”

He then illustrates his point with a mini-experiment that was done during the revolution in Egypt. A man in Tahrir Square asks a conservative, liberal and a moderate to google “Egypt” and see what appears first. ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ came up for the conservative; ‘Tahrir Square’ came up for the liberal; ‘Vacation spots on the Nile’ came up for the moderate.

“Whatever your biases were, that’s where you’re being sent,” he reaffirmed. “It gets more and more reinforced over time. At a certain point you just live in a bubble, and that’s part of the reason our politics are so polarized right now.”

Spot on, Mr. President.

So How Do We Fix It?

Ever try to put dry playdough back together as a kid? You can’t. Once it hardens, there’s no meshing it back. It has to be malleable, workable to even engage in whatever other play dough you want to mix it with — and that’s what needs to happen to our country. We all need to be a little more malleable.

It Starts By Listening

Part four of five in Mike Steib’s, The Career Manifesto, is titled: “People: Achieve Impact with Others.” He discusses why the only way to really bring someone from your “Familiar Network” to your “Intimate Network” is by listening. “Most of us have developed an incredible ability to pivot any conversation back to ourselves,” he points out. While he acknowledges it’s a “natural human desire,” he articulates the fact that if you’re talking, they aren’t. You have no clue what they have to add and therefore, you can’t learn.

If we don’t engage with the other side, we have no clue what they have to add, and we will never learn.

Don’t Get Emotional

I used to think it was just a kid thing. Kids can’t engage in civil discourse because it gets so incredibly heated, but then I grew up a little and saw adults can be even worse. It’s similar to tunnel vision, when you just let your biases take over and shut out all other opinions. As Mike pointed out, confirmation bias is a “natural human desire,” so the key is being aware of it. If we know our instinct is to block out things that we don’t agree with, we have to make the conscious effort to be open to hearing them. You can’t know that you disagree without rationally hearing the other side and making an un-emotional decision. Don’t harden like dry playdough — be malleable.

Be Transparent

As I alluded to in a previous post, transparency is key in so many parts of life — particularly this one, when so often only one side of the story gets told. If we can’t count on the newsrooms and Silicon Valley to be transparent, to give us all the facts, to tell the whole story, then I guess we’re going to have to search for them ourselves. With a holistic, non-bias viewpoint of the facts, people then can make informed opinions for themselves.

Make the effort to reach across the aisle and maybe, just maybe, this country won’t split in two entirely.

While I understand sports consumed probably his entire young life and he doesn’t want to impose his own interests on his kids, I was shocked that someone who knew the intricacies of sports so well would even question their utility.

It forced me to reflect on my own experiences playing sports growing up and I realized it may have been the single best thing my parents ever did for me. Every day I spent on the field was a day I was preparing for the “real world.”

Teamwork, Competition, Self-Esteem

It started with Youth Soccer in Kindergarten. We could barely pass or dribble, but for the first time I was part of a team. I made friends, I learned how to communicate and I was taught how individuals could come together to work towards a group goal. For the first time, I was taught teamwork.

But we didn’t always succeed. Sometimes we lost. And sometimes we won. That’s competition. But either way, we’d line up to shake hands with the other team at the end of the game. As upset as I may have been as the competitive six year-old I was, there was another game scheduled for next weekend all the same. It wasn’t the end of the world, and for my six-year old self esteem, that was incredibly important to build early on.

Preparation, Reacting, Winning

But that didn’t last long — just ask my friends, they’ll reassure you Soccer is not my sport. It didn’t take me a while to move on to Little League Baseball. For those that are utterly bored by Baseball, it may be because it’s a mental sport above all else. The first step was learning the incredibly complex game and its rules. Tagging up with less than two outs, where the play was going with runners on the corners, who gets what cut off, etc. Our coaches would tell us very simply to prepare before each play. “When you’re in the field, think about where you’re going with the ball before each play. Be prepared.”

And then when it comes, react — with zero hesitation. In baseball you don’t have enough time to field a ground ball and think about it. You just need to let it fly like it’s second nature or the runner will get to the bag. Just like in life, sometimes you must react before it’s too late.

I was pretty good at Baseball too. For the first time, I found out what winning was really like. Yeah, it may have just been some plastic trophies to symbolize those two YBNR Championships, but I’ll never forget that feeling. And I’ll definitely never forget a certain father batting me last in the All-Star game out of jealousy of our “Big Red” championship. I put my last at-bat at Pinebrook Field over the left field fence — and he was forced to hand me the MVP trophy at the end of the game.

Commitment, Humility, Relating

However, it wasn’t until I started playing Basketball that I made a real commitment. In 5th grade, playing for Ward Elementary School was the first time I ever had practice multiple times a week and then I was exposed to it again playing for Albert Leonard Middle School a few years later. It seems like an easy life lesson — you make a commitment, just show up. But it was more than that — you had to show up to work, because the guy next to you was ready to bust his ass. There’s limited spots on a basketball team, so there were cuts. If you didn’t want to work, there was another kid who did.

I wasn’t the best on any basketball team I ever played on, but that didn’t stop me from giving it everything I had. I realized that while I wasn’t going to be the leading scorer, I could contribute in a million different ways — creating for my teammates that were scorers. Whether it be setting a pick, throwing the right pass or coming to help on D, I learned to put my teammates first. I learned how to make someone else shine; I learned humility.

And my god was that ALMS team good. We didn’t lose a game that year and had a ton of fun doing it. There were only three white kids on the team, but growing up in New Rochelle, that never mattered. Being on that team forced us all to spend time together and consequently, we all became close friends. It didn’t matter what side of town we were from, we were after the same goal. And that, we could relate to. In turn, I learned how to relate to a wide variety of people.

Discipline, Toughness, Accountability

That same year I started playing Football. If you ask anyone who had Coach Collins for Social Studies to describe him, I guarantee ‘hard ass’ would be somewhere in their description. Now, imagine him on the Football Field. This man cared about two things — making us better men and winning. His tactic? Discipline. If you missed your assignment on a play, you ran. If you spoke out of turn, you ran. If you got in trouble in school, the whole team ran.

And if you shied away from contact — forget about it. You had to be tough. Mentally and physically. Here I was strapping up the pads for the first time as a 7th grader and lining up across 8th graders that were literally twice my size and had been playing Youth Tackle League at City Park since they could walk. But I learned to embrace the contact and deliver some blows myself. On defense, I played Linebacker. I learned how to read the Tight End motioning across the line to come take me out on a down block — before the play. So when their QB said hike, I was meeting him head on, delivering the blow like a bulldozer before he could. It was kill or be killed.

On Offense, I played Quarterback. Let me preface this by saying my teammates could not remember their plays for the life of them, but as the leader of the Offense, I was accountable for everyone. In 7th and 8th grade, we’d get in that huddle, I’d call the play and everyone would look at me like I had three heads. I’d then have to tell 7 out of the 10 guys looking back at me what their assignments were, on just about every play. It’s because I took accountability and made sure we were all on the same page that we didn’t lose a single game in Middle School. Well that, and a whole lot of talent everywhere else on the field.

Work Ethic, Leadership, Luck

After I got into Football, Coach Violante came to me as the Spring season was approaching and said, “You love contact way too much; you definitely don’t belong on the Baseball Field.” And it was right then my love for the game of Lacrosse started.

Coach V went on to coach me for the next six years. When he moved up to coach Varsity my 9th grade year, I did too. Everyone was bigger than me. Everyone was better than me. I didn’t have much of a left hand, and I was a Long Pole Defender. How the hell was I about to guard the multiple First-Team Section One Seniors every day in practice, let alone our opponents in a game where everyone was usually better than us?

I’ll never forget the very first day of practice. It was my turn to go for Ground Ball drills and Willie, a Senior, a Captain and our biggest and best Defensemen cuts everyone in line and steps right up to go against me. Coach V rolled the ball out and I sprinted for it with everything I had. I kicked it out further in front of me, because Willie was a big guy and I figured I could use my wheels to beat him. I thought I had it — until I took a quick peek back. He was right there on my tail one second and the next second, just as I went to scoop the ball, he put his shoulder into me and sent me flying about 10 yards. A total yard sale. He grinned, “Welcome to Varsity, kid.”

After that day I knew I had a long way to go to get my game to that level. And I busted my ass for the next four years to be the best player I could. I was training in the off-season like my whole life depended on my lax game. For the first time, I really knew what it was like to push myself beyond what I thought I was capable of. For the first time, I found my true work ethic.

Being on the team for Freshmen and Sophomore year allowed me to learn the ins-and-outs of our schemes, Coach V’s style of coaching and how I needed to lead as Captain when I became an Upperclassmen. He allowed me to be vocal, to coach, and to motivate. Whether it was keeping the constant chatter on the field, correcting my teammates in film sessions, or hyping up everyone in the locker room pregame — there’s nothing like leading a sports team. Our defense operated as one unit and I was in command.

But as good as we were, and as hard as we worked, some things didn’t always go our way. There was no New Rochelle Youth Lax Program at the time, so all the other towns in Westchester had years of experience playing together on us. However, we battled. Every faceoff, every ground ball, every game. I played in an incredible amount of low-scoring overtime games in high school, including two quadruple overtime games. One vs. Hastings; One vs. Scarsdale. We won one; we lost one. And as heart breaking as that loss to Scarsdale was, I realized you can put your everything into something, battle all you want, but sometimes the ball doesn’t bounce your way. Sometimes luck isn’t on your side. But hey, that’s life.

So, Corey, sign your kids up for sports. They may not make it to the NFL like you, but I bet they’ll learn a whole lot more about life than they will in the classroom.

Consequently, we don’t want things hidden from us. We want transparency. And we want it in every aspect of our lives, starting with what we buy.

Building Trust with the Customer

During the Michigan Fashion Media Summit this past April, executives from some of the hottest brands in retail discussed the importance of transparency with today’s customer, including Alex Drinker, VP of Marketing at Shinola. When asked how they’re revolutionizing retail, he responded, “For us, it’s the transparency of our business,” and backed it up by disclosing, “We sell our products at 4 times what they cost.” As unusual as it may have been to hear at first, the audience soon realized he was pulling back a curtain. “I think people do care where they’re made, how they’re made and what it costs to make them.”

And he’s right. Just ask Forbes, who did a survey where 94% of millennials agreed. We’re worried about the brands we associate ourselves with, the impact our actions directly and indirectly have on the environment, and definitely our wallets. But, be straight up about it and we’ll pay for the premium. Be transparent and you’ll build our trust.

Building Authenticity in the Workplace

Everyone’s heard Google’s motto, “Bring your whole self to work,” but at first glance, that seems like horse shit. Who wants to be that transparent with their boss? We both know you’re too much of a clown to bring your whole self to work. But then I heard the story of David McKnight, a gay black man trying to make it in Corporate America.

First, I’d like to acknowledge that while his story resonates, I’ll never know struggle like that. Here’s a guy that was great at his job, very friendly and would dress (and I assume act) very conservatively because he was so nervous about what people would think. However, he kept running into career road blocks that wouldn’t move. Until one day, in a performance review, his manager told him his team “didn’t really know who he was.”

Ironically, the wall of secrecy that he’d hid his life behind was exactly what was getting in his way. How can he be asked to lead when no one wants to follow? He started opening up, showing people more of who he was and the connections in the workplace came much, much easier. “When people uncover by choice, they feel more open, and the workplace becomes more inclusive,” he said.

And what if people don’t like who you turn out to be? Well, that’s probably not the place for you. But by being transparent, you get to find out and you eventually will end up where your authentic self belongs.

Building Rapport on Social Media

Ever think about why athletes, influencers and artists alike are posting ‘Behind-the-Scenes’ videos on Instagram and Snapchat constantly? That small 10 second peep into their lives immediately connects them with their followers on a deeper level. We know exactly how weird OBJ is off the field, who @somethingnavy’s kids are (and when her next one’s due), and what flowers DJ Khaled is planting in his backyard. They do it for the same reasons we do—to show off what’s going on in their lives. But, it’s very real and it builds “rapport” as Morgan J Ingram, would say.

Hold on. Who’s Morgan J and what the hell is he talking about? For those that haven’t been on LinkedIn in a while, he’s one of the leading SDR (or Sales Development Rep) professionals killing the content game on LinkedIn. By using video, he takes his pitches straight to ‘face-to-face’ building rapport, or a mutual understanding/better communication between two people, faster and more efficiently. You get the all so important ‘body language’ I alluded to in my first post.

But all the best sales people are doing it too, posting videos and written content about their experiences, their wins, their losses, because the transparency with their LinkedIn community builds “rapport,” which 1) allows everyone to communicate and learn from each other and 2) will translate to sales when applied with clients.

Which ties back in to why I’m writing in the first place. Not to sell anything, but to build rapport, through being transparent about my experiences and thoughts, which in turn, will hopefully produce some feedback and turn some heads.

Building Empathy in Your Life

Life is hard to do alone. Well actually, it’s impossible. You need help and you won’t get good help without empathetic relationships in your life.

One of my favorite parts of living with all my boys at college is the genuine empathy everyone has for each other. It’s easy to see in those big moments — when someone finally gets that job offer or tragically loses a family member. Good or bad, we ask, because we care. And we’re transparent in our answers, because we treat each other like family. Good or bad, we’ll be there.

But we take it to another level of transparency with the small things. “How’d your day go? How was that test? What happened with that girl last night?” It doesn’t matter if you’ve got something awesome or shitty going on, you can tell it like it is in our squad. These small things create real, true transparency on a habitual level and in turn, have led to the empathetic group I’m lucky enough to call my friends.

Our generation’s obsession with transparency is both very much real and even more worthwhile. While our parents will always fear the openness of information in the hopes we don’t put something dumb out there on the web, we will use it to transcend the world. So, let people see right through you. It will make you as solid as a rock — immovable and unbreakable in your endeavors.

Transparency is the one constant that, when adopted correctly, can build trust, authenticity, rapport and empathy in a person’s life and I think we all can agree, the world can use a little more of all that today.

Because everyone thinks they can write — and few people truly can. And unfortunately for you, already reading this, I am not one of those who can. Or at least not yet. But I want to be, because writing may be the most overlooked tool in the tool belt.

Everyone writes all day long. In texts, in emails, in status updates, in captions. We’re all writing all the time, but how many people write with the intention of “deliberate practice,” a term I’m borrowing from Cal Newport, author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You. His book is about “The Craftsman Mindset” and he says, if you continuously work on a skill, seek feedback and correct your mistakes, you will improve, you will own that skill and in turn, you’ll find yourself in a career that makes you want to get up in the morning.

As an optimistic 22 year-old, I’ll buy it. Moreover, I’ll put it into practice. But the first step, as Newport would suggest, is gathering background info. You have to know where others have been, to know where you’re going.

So what are the keys to good writing? Here’s my top 3, in order:

1. Logically Ordered Thoughts

Because what’s worse than reading something all the way through, putting it down and saying to yourself, “What the hell did I just read?”

In my very first semester of college I was lucky enough to get one of those try-hard professors for English 125. Everyone at the University of Michigan hopes and prays for the ‘easy A,’ but hindsight is 20/20 and I’m very fortunate to have had Professor Hinken.

He starts the class by tearing apart the ‘5-paragraph format’ that every high school kid is accustomed to. For those that haven’t been to high school in a while, the ‘5-paragraph format’ is an intro, conclusion and three body paragraphs, which correspond directly to your thesis that includes three major points. It’s like giving a child a coloring book and just telling them to stay in between the lines. There’s no room for creativity, you just fill everything in as quickly as you possible can and hand it in to your teacher who will skim through it to make sure you checked off the boxes. While it seems archaic, my professor compared it to training wheels, because you have to know how to ride the bike before you can take them off.

But then we got into the real stuff, which for me at the time, was eye-opening. No one had ever said to me, organize your writing the way you want — the way it makes sense, the way you’d think about it. “When your thought is over, end the paragraph.” As long as one thought, one conclusion, logically leads to the next, you’ll continue to captivate the reader.

The first step, he said, was outlining. “Outline and order your thoughts,” as I so often do now. In turn, you’re creating your own lines within your own coloring book. Filling it in is the easy part.

I began creating my own coloring book — breaking up paragraphs in untraditional places, using conjunctions to start sentences and including short phrases for emphasis. Why not?! As long as it was clear, concise and had a logical pattern, the words on the page would resonate with the reader.

It was time to take the training wheels off. It was time for real writing.

2. Transition Invisibly

However, you have to be careful when you’re speeding down that hill for the first time with no training wheels. It’s pretty easy to crash and burn. How can you hold it all together?

Transitions. The segue between thoughts. If you go back and look at some of your favorite things to read, I’d bet good money on the fact that the transitions are spot on.

While the teacher’s guide to transitions will just tell you to use conjunctions such as ‘and, but, if,’ the difference between being good and great is the ability to transition without them. We all know what conjunctions are, so for better or worse, subconsciously your brain gets flagged when you see them. You know you’re moving onto the next thought in whatever you’re reading. Although, it isn’t always a bad thing, I particularly enjoy not knowing you’re on the next point till you’re already there.

One way writers do this is by mentioning something that already came up, whether it be a word or a subtle thought. My psychology professors would say they’re creating repetition in the working part of your brain, which if done enough times, will make it’s way to your long term memory where that little tiny piece of info can be stored forever. Professor Hinken would simply say the author is tying it back in.

But it’s those tie ins that create that moment when you’re truly trapped in a good book. Your mom could be calling you to say, “dinners ready,” but you don’t hear her. You’re so seamlessly being taken on a trip from one point to the next that you forget about life for a second.

To bring a reader to that place, you can’t interrupt their flow. You need seamless transitions.

3. Catch the Little Mistake That Can Fuck Everything

And part of not interrupting the reader is having 0 grammar or spelling mistakes. They’re so off-putting as a reader, but as a writer it’s so hard to catch every single one. Odds are I’m going to find one in this piece later, but that doesn’t mean I don’t comb through everything I send out.

While a piece like this doesn’t matter, when you’re writing that email to your next boss — it will. My friend Rachel shared a great learning moment with me once about a young kid who screwed up an email to a potential employer. The guy had a double letter in his name, and the kid missed one of them. He responded, “I would’ve helped, but next time spell my name right. Best of luck on your future endeavors.”

Brutal, but that’s life. Misspelling a name, a title, a company can be seen as so disrespectful, even though, regardless of the scenario it was most likely an honest mistake.

Spelling and grammar errors really are just that off-putting. If you read it casually in a published book, you’d stop and think to yourself, “Caught em!” If someone spelled your name wrong in an email, you may think to yourself, “Fuck that.”

All it takes sometimes is patience, spellcheck and a second read through, but I promise you, going through your email before you send it is worth it every time.

So why does this all matter? The WHERE we’re communicating no longer is the priority in today’s world when everyone is creating channels, trying to be the platform, so the HOW must matter. How you execute on that communication is everything.

It’s really hard to get across exactly what you mean in a text, because so much of human communication is non-verbal. It’s all body language, but ironically, you lose that when you need to write. So, your writing better be pretty damn good in today’s day and age if you want to get your message across.

Stick around on this writing journey with me and if you’re feeling inspired to write something, hit me up. If you agree, hit me up. If you disagree, DEFINITELY hit me up. This is all about deliberate practice and feedback must come from everywhere. Either way, stay tuned, I intend to stay at it.