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Maybe you want to start a business. Maybe you want to change careers. Maybe you want to get fit, or gain a new path, or in some way take your life in a new direction. To do that, sometimes all you need is a little push, a little nudge. A little burst of motivation and inspiration. Here are fifty of those nudges. Pick the one that makes your skin tingle, your heart race, your motor rev, and place it somewhere you'll see it every day: your monitor, your screen saver, your background, and let it help take you to the place you've always wanted to go.
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Geeks—the two of us might fit the profile. Yes we have tendencies to contemplate things that probably shouldn’t be contemplated. We question. We prod. We poke…at everything. And, we’ve been known to engage in long, seemingly meaningless conversations about random things like: “Is the love of curry a genetic disposition or a socially experiential acquisition?” Or, what is the real meaning of the word “of?” That’s a valid question, right? Or, is it just geeky? Being geeky, according to research by Imgur, is actually cool in today’s world—especially among Millennials. In fact, 60% of the 83 million Millennials consider themselves geeks compared to just 38% of GenXers and Boomers. And, the study also shows that geeks are the trendsetters and influencers (84% of geeks say people look to them for advice while only 60% of non-geeks say they get asked for advice). This is, of course, welcome news for all of us who happen to randomly know Peter Parker’s height and weight (yes, we’re referring to the fictional character who turns into Spiderman). But, more than that, it’s also welcome news for all of us who geek-out about our own work—passionately probing to innovate, improve, dissect, and lead others to the discovery of their best selves.
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Self-help advice isn’t exactly in short supply. There are research-backed tips out there for boosting confidence, resilience, risk taking, and adaptability. The message is pretty clear: Feel better about yourself or change your beliefs about what you’re capable of, and you’ll excel. Indeed, ample scientific evidence supports each of these claims. Nevertheless, most self-improvement strategies focus too much on the person who’s trying to do the improving. Much of the time, the same outcomes you’re trying to achieve by changing your own habits, attitudes, and behaviors depend on how you view other people.
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Ever zone out while someone is talking? Of course. We all do. The average human has an eight-second attention span. With electronic distractions competing for your time and an abundance of responsibilities at work, it makes listening attentively to someone else speak pretty difficult. “We are living in a time when it’s more challenging to be consistently aware and intentional because so many things are demanding our attention. Our brains haven’t caught up to the technology that’s feeding them,” says Scott Eblin, author of Overworked and Overwhelmed: The Mindfulness Alternative. “The impact of this leaves people in a chronic condition of fight or flight.”
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You stare at a blank screen for what seems like hours, waiting for your brain to come up with a brilliant idea, and it never comes. There has to be a better way to brainstorm, right? There is--and it might be as simple as doing the laundry. In the new book The Net and the Butterfly: The Art and Practice of Breakthrough Thinking, Olivia Fox Cabane and Judah Pollack--former faculty members of Stanford's Start X incubator program--explain how breakthrough insights come about. The two describe these insights as "that feeling of sudden clarity when you feel the answer staring you in the face." "The biggest misconception about breakthroughs is that they're accidental or that they're spontaneous," says Fox Cabane. "But in reality that aha! moment is just the tip of the iceberg. It is the single conscious moment you have at the end of a very long, complex, unconscious process." To understand how to prime the human brain for creative breakthroughs, one must first understand what parts of the brain help power them. As Fox Cabane and Pollack explain, the brain has two networks: the executive network, which is the "goal-oriented" part of your brain that you access to complete an action; and the default network, the part of your brain that's home to what the authors call the "genius lounge," or the place where creative insights lie. But, to access the genius lounge, your brain needs to tune out the executive network.
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Emotional intelligence is the prerequisite to great relationships. Here's how to teach kids to develop them. Step 1: To be happy and successful, they need to develop great relationships. Step 2: To develop those relationships, they need adequate emotional intelligence. Step 3: To develop emotional intelligence, it helps if their mentors (especially their parents) model good behavior in love and partnerships. 1. Teach them to "turn toward." Relationships are dynamic. They're made up of an uncountable number of small interactions. Julie and John Gottman, a husband and wife team of psychologists who are experts in this area, describe these interactions as "micro-behaviors" and "bids for attention."
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Are you dreaming big dreams? The most successful people among us dream big dreams while being awake. They set out to bring their dreams to reality by taking action. They know they have the potential to accomplish anything and avoid putting limitations on themselves. Most important, they don't wait for the perfect time to start dreaming big and making their dreams come true. How can you embark on the journey of dreaming big dreams and making them come true? Here's a helpful guide.
Via The Learning Factor
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A decade ago, I was a fresh-out-of-college entrepreneur trying to convince a Sri Lankan tea seller to make a deal with me. It wasn’t going very well. I wanted the seller, who owned a boutique tea company, to become a supplier for the loose-leaf retail tea business I was trying to get off the ground. I could sense the man’s skepticism—in fact, his first instinct was to refer me to his distributor—but even so, he heard me out. Rather than a flat-out “no,” be basically told me, “not yet.” Eventually, I managed to convince him to give me a shot. This ended up being the right decision for both of us. His teas helped fuel my startup’s early growth, and he now enjoys a huge contract as one of the suppliers to DAVIDsTEA.
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I’m a big to-do list person. I’ve probably been making daily to-do lists on yellow Post-its for close to 15 years now. Every night before I go to bed I pen a bulleted list of all the things I need to accomplish the next day. However, inevitably, at the end of the next day I usually have a few items that aren’t scratched off the list. Those items get added to the top of tomorrow’s to-do. Yet the same thing happens the following day: I move a few uncompleted items to tomorrow’s list . . . and repeat the next day . . . and the next.
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I’ve been asked on a number of occasions the “secret” to harnessing mental toughness to overcome adversity. The “secret,” I tell them, isn’t a secret but a fact that they don’t want to hear because it’s simple. But simple isn’t easy. That secret is this: make a decision and go with it. That’s it. I remember waiting for Hell Week to begin in BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training) and students asking the instructors—in a somewhat uncommon cordial setting—what the secret was to making it through five and a half days of constant, nonstop activity. Here’s what the instructors said, “The secret to making it through BUD/S, is knowing you’re going to make it through BUD/S.” It’s belief. You need to believe that you’re the type of person who has the skill and will to make that goal happen, and then make it happen. Don’t worry about what’s right and don’t wait for the perfect opportunity because “perfect” doesn’t exist—it’s an excuse to procrastinate.
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Think about the last time you solved a business problem, such as coming up with a new product idea, formulating a new marketing plan, or deciding which job candidate to hire. How did you do it. Did you sit down with the facts and figures, make pro/con lists, and analyze the situation until you found the solution? Or did it come to you as a sudden insight--an "Aha!" moment, as some people call it? It turns out many problems can be solved either of these two ways. But the two methods are not equal. In a fascinating experiment, a research team at Northwestern University led by Carola Salvi, set out to learn whether analysis or insight leads to better problem-solving. To find out, they presented more than 200 students at Northwestern and the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy were given various problems to solve that included word puzzles, anagrams, rebuses, and a puzzle where you had to identify a partial image of an object.
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As my fellow Inc.com columnist Michael Simmons has pointed out, all incredibly successful people share one common trait: They're constantly learning. Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Mark Zuckerberg all make space in their super demanding schedules to ensure that each week they're just a little bit smarter than they were the week before. You might not have time to go back to school or read a library's worth of books, but you most certainly have time for the techniques below, which can help you keep learning no matter how busy you are
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It's virtually impossible to imagine life without learning. We come into the world armed with little more than a bunch of primitive survival instincts, but it’s thanks to our ability to learn that we start adapting to the environment, going from helpless infants into semi-autonomous children before maturing into young adults. Still, when it comes to how we learn, most of us differ considerably at every stage in that process. Now scientists are learning more about that variation and what's behind it. Psychologists have studied learning for over a century, but research in this area has really taken off in the last two decades. Most studies indicate that our personalities largely determine the ways we like to learn. In other words, who we are shapes how we learn. Here's what some of the latest research has uncovered about the most common learning styles and the ways we can learn to our fullest potential.
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There is no shortage of material that needs to be read in business including marketing copy, business plans, contracts legal documents and of course business books. I love to read but not all business reading is particularly entertaining or well written. And some of the most important stuff is dense, dry and dreadful no matter how much achieving success requires you read it. So when my inbox is full of necessary reading that I know will put me to sleep, I have to make a special effort to power through it. First, I set aside time with no distractions. No phone, email or TV to draw my focus. Then I find a place with lots of natural light. Lastly I turn on mellow music that I know well so I can get into rhythmic groove. Before you know it the stack is gone and I feel better for having been productive. Here are more ways to tackle that tough material from my Inc. colleagues.
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Actions spring from thoughts -- the right thoughts.