Palms sweaty. Heart racing. You know the feeling. Whether it’s five people or fifty, public speaking is a gut-wrenching experience for most of us. Before co-founding my startup, I had a huge fear of speaking in public. Any time I had to present something in front of more than a handful of people, my stomach would turn to knots and my throat would get so...
As a collegiate student-athlete for many years, I was constantly reminded to think positively. Recently, “The Secret” emphasizing positive thinking was an incredible commercial success. ‘ Your thoughts become things’ was the central thesis of “The Secret” and is the main philosophy taught in most mental health disciplines. Personally, the whole positive thinking thing never really struck me as a realistic mental technique in...
With just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice, you can go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. That’s the message from Josh Kaufman, author of The First 20 Hours. In the video above, he reveals the four steps to learning any new skill, fast. It’s a long, 20-minute TEDx Talk, but entertaining and enlightening too. The four steps in Kaufman’s method are: Deconstruct...
Our lives are defined by our ability to make decisions. Our careers, relationships, health—anything and everything about our present selves boils down to the decisions we’ve made in the past, yet some of us struggle with decision making. We may have access to data, plenty of options, and generally have everything going for us, but when crunch time rolls around we seize up. We...
A Hungarian psychology professor once wrote to famous creators asking them to be interviewed for a book he was writing. One of the most interesting things about his project was how many people said “no.” Management writer Peter Drucker: “One of the secrets of productivity (in which I believe whereas I do not believe in creativity) is to have a VERY BIG waste paper...
In an eye-opening demonstration of nature’s ingenuity, researchers at Princeton University recently discovered that exercise creates vibrant new brain cells — and then shuts them down when they shouldn’t be in action. For some time, scientists studying exercise have been puzzled by physical activity’s two seemingly incompatible effects on the brain. On the one hand, exercise is known to prompt the creation of new...