Sunday, July 13, 2014

7 Hard Lessons Everyone Needs To Learn About Success

It seems logical that if you go to a great school, you work hard, and you stay positive, you'll become successful.

But the truth is that life is a whole lot more complicated than that.
Taking a well-tread path to success doesn't mean you'll have an amazing career, and even if you're lucky enough to have one, it doesn't guarantee you'll be happy.

On Quora, users addressed the question: "What is the most difficult thing to learn and accept about life?"
We've collected some of the best answers that concern the pursuit of money and status. Here are some hard lessons that everyone needs to learn about success:

1. The universe doesn't care if you succeed or fail.
When you're on top of your game, it can seem like the world is on your side; when you're at your worst, it can seem like the world is out to get you. The truth, says Quora user Tom Wills, is that neither is true. You're responsible for yourself.
2. The biggest obstacle to success is often yourself.
And once you recognize that you're not the center of the universe, Wills adds, you may realize that the main thing holding you back is your own behavior. You're probably guilty of this if you can always find reasons for why you got fired from your job, why your startup fell apart, etc.

The user Manas J. Saloi quoted author J.K. Rowling, who struggled with poverty and personal setbacks before becoming a famous writer and millionaire, on this point: "There is an [expiration] date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you."

3. You're not owed anything.
Wills says that he also realized that nobody owes him anything. In terms of advancing in your career, it's advisable that you do whatever you can to treat people ethically and help out your coworkers. This can build your professional network and give you a good reputation, but it certainly does not guarantee that your good deeds will always be returned.

4. Luck plays a huge role in success.
Catching a big break that leads to landing your dream job, for example, often depends on being in the right place at the right time. All you can do is foster professional relationships and develop your skills to increase your odds of getting lucky.

"People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control," user Aditya Gupta writes.

5. Everything you've worked for can disappear in an instant.
When your career goes well and you make enough money to buy a house and put your kids through college, you should enjoy it. Quora user Ankit Sharma writes that what you have today isn't necessarily yours forever. That's why it's important to live in the present, and be grateful for your accomplishments.

6. You can do, say, and think all the "right" things and still not succeed.
Getting a degree from an elite university and putting in countless overtime hours does not mean that you will be adequately rewarded for your hard work, says user Jon Mixon. And even if they do lead you to influence and money, he says, you can still be perceived as a failure.

7. You define what "success" means.
A big paycheck and the respect of your coworkers are great things to have, but there's a danger to narrowing your definition of success down to them, argues Mixon, because they mean nothing to your happiness or self-fulfillment if you destroy relationships along the way.

"It is difficult for most people to accept the fact that they are only as happy as they allow themselves to be," says user Gary Stein.




7 Bad Speaking Habits That Turn People Off

Not even the best ideas can put you on the path to success if no one will listen to you.

Speaker and author Julian Treasure gave a popular TED Talk last year that explained how anyone can speak effectively, whether in a conversation or in front of a crowd. How well you influence others is as much about you do say as what you don't.

Here are the bad habits you need to avoid if you want people to listen to you, which Treasure calls the "seven deadly sins of speaking":

1. Gossiping
Speaking badly of somebody else seems to have a chain reaction, Treasure says. If you engage in gossip, you can give yourself a bad reputation and inspire others to start gossiping about you.
2. Judging
If you fill your conversations with judgments of others, you're making the person you're speaking with self-conscious of being judged themselves, Treasure says. They'll be afraid to open up to you and may shut down completely.

3. Being negative
"My mother, in the last years of her life, became very, very negative, and it's hard to listen," he says. "I remember one day, I said to her, 'It's October 1 today,' and she said, 'I know, isn't it dreadful?'" Choosing to be optimistic will make you more enjoyable to talk to. Plus, it's better for your health.

4. Complaining
Complaining easily becomes a habit, and before you know it, you'll be known as the person who complains about the weather, the news, work, and everything else. It's what Treasure calls "viral misery."

5. Making excuses
Some people have a "blamethrower," Treasure says, putting the blame on anybody and anything except themselves when met with failure. While others may let the occasional excuse slide, a constant stream of them reveals that you do not take responsibility for your actions.

6. Exaggerating
Exaggeration "demeans our language," Treasure says. Adding dramatic flair is essentially a form of lying, and "we don't want to listen to people we know are lying to us."

7. Being dogmatic

It's dangerous when opinions and facts become confused. Nobody wants to be bombarded with opinions stated as if they were true.

In his talk, Treasure also goes into how the best speakers control their voices to keep audiences intrigued. Here's the full video:


What your sleeping position tells about you?

What do sleeping positions tell about couples’depth psychology?

Which one is your sleeping position?

The woman falls asleep in her boyfriend’s arms. →Their relationship is still fresh and exciting. Gradually, this state of condition will probably come to an end.
(2)The couple faces each other. →They wish to communicate with each other more
(3)The woman hugs the man. →This kind of sleeping position can be found among men who appear to be macho when they go out.
(4)The couple sleeps in a prone position together. →Is everything alright? It is highly likely that you may have some problems.
(5)The woman takes up more of the bed. →The man is hen-pecked.
(7)The man hugs the woman. →It is the ideal sleeping position for women and it shows they are in a stable relationship.
(8)The couple sleeps back to back. →The distance between two hearts is proper and the relationship is rather stable.

Ten Things You Don’t Know About Fat

Our understanding of fats – including which ones are actually good for us – is evolving. We know for example that red meat and meat products, cakes and biscuits, which are rich sources of saturated fatty acids, are associated with an increased number of cardiovascular deaths. Conversely, nuts, oily fish and milk products, which are high in saturated fats, are associated with lower risk.

There are four main types of fats in our foods: polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, saturated and transfats. Each has different chemical and physical properties. Vegetable spreads and cooking oils – mainly rapeseed, sunflower, soybean and olive – usually contain the first two but relatively small amounts of saturated fat. But palm oil, which has a higher melting point and is now used in many products, is highly saturated.

Dietary advice, then, has moved away from the simplistic mantra that we should just eat less saturated fat, salt and sugar, towards a more discerning pattern that emphasises fruit, vegetables and low-fat dairy food, includes wholegrains, poultry, fish and nuts, and contains less red meat, sweets and sugar-containing beverages. But where do fats fit in? Here are ten things you may not know.

1. Fat is an energy food
Most of the energy in our diet comes from carbohydrates. But fat supplies between a quarter and two-fifths of an adult's energy intake and half for a newborn. In babies, a high fat intake promotes fat deposits which insulate against heat loss.

Adding fat to food can double its energy content. Removing fat, from products like meat and milk, can substantially reduce it. Fat provides 9kcal/g (kilocalories/gram) in energy compared with 3.75kcal/g, 4kcal/g and 7kcal/g for carbohydrates, protein and alcohol.

2. Less energy intake, bigger weight loss
Reducing energy intake rather than increasing physical activity is the most effective means of reducing body fat. This can be achieved by using lower fat versions of existing foods, trimming fat from meat and using oils sparingly. There is not much difference in fat content between grilled and fried meat. Restriction of energy intake also requires limiting the intake of carbohydrates and alcohol.

3. Where it is in the body matters
Excess accumulation of body fat is most harmful if it is in the abdominal cavity or liver and is causally linked to developing type 2 diabetes. The use of a waist measurement (more than 80cm for women 94cm for men) indicates central obesity and is useful for predicting risk of type 2 diabetes. Women have more subcutaneous fat stores than men, so men store this visceral fat around the mesenteric blood vessel in the abdomen. When energy stored in fat cells is released, the fat mobilisation process leads to fatty acids entering the bloodstream. Visceral fat is more rapidly mobilised than subcutaneous fat and can accumulate in the liver. Fat also accumulates in the liver if the intake of alcohol or sugar is high.

4. Body uses carbohydrate for fuel not fat
Obesity results from the excess accumulation of dietary fat in the body. Very little fat is made in the body from carbohydrates (including sugar) or alcohol because they are used as fuel in preference to fat. But if you have excess fuel on board you deposit it as fat because we have a limited capacity to store carbohydrates.

5. Women need fat for fertility
Body fat plays an important role in female fertility. Between 20-30% of a healthy mature woman's body weight is fat – twice as much as men. If the level drops below about 18%, ovulation stops but if it raises to very high levels – typically about 50% of her weight – it also results in infertility. A hormone called leptin is secreted by adipose (fat) tissue into the blood in proportion to the amount of fat it stores. The brain detects the blood leptin signal and this promotes ovulation when the level is high enough.

6. Some fatty acids are essential
We need certain polyunsaturated fatty acids, aptly named essential fatty acids (linoleic and linolenic acids), in our diet for healthy skin. These also contribute to maintaining cardiovascular health as well as brain and visual function. We mainly get these from vegetable oils, nuts and oily fish.

7. We need fat to absorb some vitamins
About 30g of fat is required every day to promote the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, which we also get from fatty foods. Vegetable oils are an important source of vitamin E and oily fish is the best dietary source of vitamin D. Provitamins are substances that can be converted within the body into vitamins. And adding a little oil to green vegetables and carrots actually improves the absorption of carotene (pro-vitamin A).

8. Big scale effect on blood cholesterol
A population's average blood cholesterol level is a major determinant of coronary heart disease risk. Trials show the replacement of saturated fatty acids with polyunsaturated fatty acids lowers blood cholesterol and reduces the incidence of disease but not mortality. These days high cholesterol levels are more effectively treated with statins, but the public health goal is to reduce average cholesterol levels.

9. Not all saturated fat is bad
Not all saturated fats increase blood cholesterol. The cholesterol raising effects are confined to lauric, myristic and palmitic acids (the latter is found in palm oil). These raise low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) in decreasing order of potency compared to carbohydrates (including all types of starches and sugars) or unsaturated fatty acids. It is generally more effective to lower cholesterol by replacing saturated fatty acids with oils rich in monounsaturated (olive, rapeseed) or polyunsaturated fatty acids (soybean, sunflower oil) than lowering carbohydrates. For example, replacing butter or lard with olive oil as your main source of fat can lower LDL-C by about 10%.

10. Saturated fat intake is stable
Food and nutrition policies have changed the food supply. In the UK, energy intakes of fat and saturated fatty acids respectively fell from 42% and 20% in the early 1970s to 35% and 12% by 2000, where they have remained since. Between 1987 and 2000, average blood cholesterol levels fell from 5.7mmol/L to 5.2mmol/L. Despite the continuing rise in obesity and diabetes, death from cardiovascular disease fell from 141 to 63/100,000 of the population between 1994-97 and 2009-11, owing mainly to better treatment and improvements in control of risk factors such as blood pressure, smoking and cholesterol.



8 Bad Work Habits That Can Ruin Your Career

Wondering why you're not advancing in your career more quickly, or why you always seem to be overlooked when it comes time for raises, promotions, or important projects?


The answer might be that you're holding yourself back, through one or more of these eight career-killing behaviors.
1. Not promoting your own work.
Your work might be fantastic, but if no one knows about it, it won't help your reputation, your salary, or your advancement opportunities.
Make sure that your manager knows about your accomplishments, whether it's kudos from a hard-to-please client, waste you uncovered and fixed, or anything else that goes above and beyond your normal work.
2. Getting defensive.
If you get defensive when you get less than glowing feedback on your work, you might be striking a death blow to your career.
Many people simply give up on having meaningful interactions with defensive people, so your co-workers may avoid you, and your manager may stop telling you how you can improve. "That sounds great," you might respond — but it means that you'll destroy the relationships you need to advance in your career and denying yourself the information that you need to grow professionally.
3. Making rash decisions.
Whether it's walking off the job because the boss said something you didn't like or taking a job offer without thinking it through carefully, impulsive decision-making has no place in your career.
The decisions you make about work will have far-reaching ramifications on your wallet, your reputation, and your daily quality of life.
4. Not being assertive.
You might think that not making waves is the best way to succeed professionally, but being unassertive is more likely to hurt you.
If you believe a decision is wrong, or a project is headed for disaster, or that you deserve a raise, good managers will want you to speak up. There's a difference between being assertive and being obnoxiously pushy, of course, but voicing your opinions in a professional way is key to professional success.
5. Being too negative.
If you're constantly complaining about new projects, your company's policies, and why it's taking IT so long to fix the network, you're probably creating an unpleasant environment for people around you.
The same goes for negative humor — if you're regularly snarking about your boss or the new guy down the hall, chances are good that — even if people are laughing — you'll get a reputation for being bitter and having a bad attitude.
6. Lying.
If you get caught in a lie — even if it's small or if it can't be proven — you'll destroy your credibility, and that's something you can never get back. You could be scrupulously honest for the next three years, but you'll still be remembered as the person who lied and can't be completely trusted.
7. Being chronically disorganized.
People pay attention to whether you do what you say you're going to do, by when you say you're going to do it — whether it's as small as forwarding the document you promised in a meeting or as big as meeting a project deadline.
If you do, they notice and you build a reputation as someone reliable and someone they can have confidence in. If you don't, they conclude that you can't be counted on to keep your word.
8. Not learning new technology.
You might feel that you're perfectly comfortable with your existing ways of doing things, thank you very much, and therefore have no need to learn the latest technology … but if you resist new ways of doing things, you'll soon be left behind by colleagues who aren't so change-resistant.
If you find yourself printing out emails to read them or heading to the library to look something up rather than Googling it, you're likely to be overlooked by employers in favor of your more technologically savvy competition.