Merce Cardus's Blog, page 68
October 13, 2015
What Really Leads to Lasting Personal Transformation
rcame a significant, chronic, intractable problem that had challenged you for years,until somehow you managed to completely turn things around in such a way thatthe change has persisted to this day. How did this happen, and what was it that made the greatest difference? Changeis a mystery. There is no panacea, no one answer to how and why some people can alter their behavior, while others cannot, and even amongst the world’s experts there is little co...
At 92, Norman Lear’s Got Some Great Advice For You About How to Live a Happy Life
The legendary TV writer and producer Norman Lear, author of Even This I Get to Experience
urges viewers to not get too caught up on past mistakes and messy history
Two of the most important words I think are over and next.
I would advise anyone including myself that any moment you understand your life is good then everything that led up to it was worthwhile. And the reason I say that is not that I haven’t made mistakes. I’ve made some glorious mistakes and I’ve suffered in the life for those...
HUMP DAY LINKS ~ Reads on Writing, Self-Publishing & Better Living: The Game
Photo Credit: Shi_ver via Compfight cc
Quote of the day
In life, people tend to wait for good things to come to them. And by waiting, they miss out. Usually, what you wish for doesn’t fall in your lap; it falls somewhere nearby, and you have to recognize it, stand up, and put in the time and work it takes to get to it. This isn’t because the universe is cruel. It’s because the universe is smart. It has its own cat-string theory and knows we don’t appreciate things that fall into our laps.
~...
October 12, 2015
Mysterious Sparks: Getting The Right Words at the Right Time
In Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success
, a
ward-winning journalist Matthew Syed reveals the hidden clues to success—in sports, business, school, and just about anything else that you’d want to be great at.
Shaquille O’Neal
Shaquille O’Neal was seventeen years old when he heard the words that would change his life. He had just spent his su...
A Mentor Invest in You as a Person
Success is easier to attain when you’ve received advice an
d guidance from a mentor, writes Dixie Gillaspie, author ofJust Blow it Up: Firepower for Living an Unlimited Life
. Gillaspie explores several actionable strategies for getting the most out of a mentorship.
1. Don’t deify your mentor.They’re humans, not gods. Find the right level of respect without worshiping the ground they walk on.
2. Accept guidence, not direction.Just because your mentor found success doing X, Y, and Z doesn’t me...
TUESDAY LINKS ~ Reads on Writing, Self-Publishing & Better Living: The Antidote
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Quote of the day
Who says you need to wait until you ‘feel like’ doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn’t that you don’t feel motivated; it’s that you imagine you need to feel motivated. If you can regard your thoughts and emotions about whatever you’re procrastinating on as passing weather, you’ll realise that your reluctance about working isn’t something that needs to be eradicated or transformed into p...
October 8, 2015
What Makes a Gut Feeling Work?
Intuitive feelings seem mysterious and hard to explain
–and most social scientists have steered clear of them. InGut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious
,Gigerenzer goes a step further by explaining just why our gut instincts are so often right. Intuition, it seems, is not some sort of mystical chemical reaction but a neurologically based behavior that evolved to ensure that we humans respond quickly when faced with a dilemma?
Even books that celebrate rapid judgments why away from...
Here’s Why That Coffee Just Isn’t Working For You
We tend to operate as if “paying attention” is uniform across human nature. A
s Angie McArthur, coauthor of the new bookCollaborative Intelligence, explains in this video, the brain’s hard wiring point to several different states of attention.
So the first strategy of mind patterns is really about how we each uniquely communicate, understand and learn. This is like the hardwiring of your brain. It has nothing to do with personality, it’s really the operating system of your mind. And it st...
WEEKEND LINKS ~ Reads on Writing, Self-Publishing & Better Living: How To Win Friends
Photo Credit: Gerd Trynka via Compfight cc
Quote of the day
It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.
~DALE CARNEGIE, author ofHow to Win Friends & Influence People
WRITING
I am sure that you have heard of Chekhov’s Gun. Anton Chekhov says, “Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first cha...
October 7, 2015
Incongruity Generates a Desire To Comprehend
Professor Jim Davies’ fascinating and highly accessible book, Riveted: The Sc
ience of Why Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry, and Religion Makes Us Feel One with the Universe
,reveals the evolutionary underpinnings of why we find things compelling, from art to religion and from sports to superstition.
Incongruity often generates a desire to comprehend
In spite of what you might think of your fellow human beings on a day-to-day basis, we are the most intelligent and intellectually curiou...
