This peculiar and modern structure is located in a scenic preservation zone at the foot of a trail that leads up to Bukansan, a mountain on the northern periphery of Seoul, South Korea in the Jongno District. It was designed by local Studio Poly.m.ur, keeping in mind that it would be a home that should suit both the architect and his son’s young family. Their owners wanted to have the..
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May 4th
Why Curiosity Is Important and How to Develop It
Are you curious about the world? Do you follow your curiosity?
A while back, there was a talk featuring Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Interestingly, when asked about an important trait they have, they both had the same answer. Their answer was curiosity. They both said that curiosity plays an important role in their success.
Why Curiosity Is Important
Why is that the case? Why is curiosity important?
They said that curiosity pushes them to keep exploring the world and updating their model of the world. The model then helps them make the right decisions that lead them to success.
To a much lesser extent, I can also attest to the power of curiosity. In my case, it usually leads me to new opportunities. I know that has been the case with many other people as well.
For instance, I was curious about computer programming when I was in high school. This led me to develop simple games and eventually have my own app business.
A few years after graduating from college, I was curious about blogging. This led me to start this website which eventually allowed me to leave my day job.
I often don’t know where my curiosity would lead me. I just follow it because it’s fun! But more often than not, it takes my life to the next level.
So there are at least three reasons why curiosity is important:
- It helps you make better decisions by updating your model of the world.
- It helps you find new opportunities.
- It makes your life exciting.
How to Develop Your Curiosity
Now, what should we do? How can we develop curiosity?
Here are some tips.
1. See the World as Full of Hidden Treasures
If you aren’t curious about the world, that’s probably because you think you have already found all the good things. You don’t think there are still interesting things that you haven’t found.
Curious people see the world differently, though. In their view, the world is full of hidden treasures yet to be found. There are exciting things out there that they haven’t discovered. This belief makes them eager to explore the world around them. They want to find the treasures. And they often do.
If your level of curiosity is low, instill this belief in you: “There are a lot of hidden treasures out there. I should go and find them!”
2. Avoid Labeling Something as Boring
People who aren’t curious often label something as boring. But curious people don’t. Instead of labeling something as boring, they wonder what hidden treasures may lie behind it. Even if they don’t dig into it right now (because there are many other interesting things at the moment), they keep the possibility open to come back to it.
Labeling something as boring is just the opposite of what curious people do.
3. Follow the Lead
When you become curious about something, don’t ignore it. Instead, follow your curiosity. Read articles on the topic, watch videos on YouTube, find books about it.
I often do this when I come across something that seems interesting. Without planning it before, I could spend a lot of time digging into it.
For instance, I came across an article about Jeff Bezos a while back. I ended up watching videos and reading articles about him and his business philosophy. It was unplanned, but it was exciting and gave me new insights.
4. Create Side Projects
If you want to really grasp something, it’s not enough just to consume information about it. You need to do something. A good way to apply that is creating side projects.
This website, for instance, started as a side project of mine. I was taking my master’s degree at the time, but I got interested in blogging and personal development, so I created this website. Now, more than ten years later, this website is still alive and well, and has taken my life to the next level!
Not all side projects would become successful, though. I also have side projects that didn’t go anywhere (such as this game). But that’s fine. I did it for the fun of it, so I don’t really lose anything. Plus, failure is an option.
5. Be Prepared to Change Direction
This might not happen often, but if your side project becomes successful, you might consider changing your life’s direction. This happened to me in 2009 when this website gave me enough income. I decided to leave my day job then and that’s a decision I never regret.
***
What about you? How do you develop your curiosity? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
Related Resources (special offer)
- Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It
- Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life
#motivationalquotes #cute #lovequotes #relationship #inspirationquotes
#motivationalquotes #cute #lovequotes #relationship #inspirationquotes
5 Steps to Rethinking Success
You’re reading 5 Steps to Rethinking Success, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Success if defined by the individual that is pursuing it. Unfortunately, too many people settle for less than their full potential and struggle with regrets later in life. I have found that many people do not take the necessary time to identify what success means to them. If you have not defined success for yourself, you will most likely borrow another person’s definition of success and spend your life comparing yourself to them. Here are 5 steps to rethinking success:
1) Spend a lot of time discovering your definition of success. You need to know what makes you feel happy and secure. One person may want to make a certain amount of money while another person’s definition of success is owning a farm and living off the land. If either one of these individuals pursued the other’s definition of success, they would most likely not have a lot of passion and thus never reach that goal. You will fail before you start if you pursue success that you are not passionate about.
2) Accept that you will experience adversity on the path to success. If you think true success is easy and you plan to spend most of your time searching for the path of least resistance, success will continue to elude you. If you expect challenges along the way, you will be less likely to be thrown off track when it occurs. As you get better at this step, you will learn discomfort is necessary to accomplish great things, and you will start pursuing challenges as opposed to just dealing with them as they come.
3) Do not think small. I have met many people that settle for less than their full potential because they don’t believe a higher level of success is possible for them. My family faced a lot of adversity when I was young and as a result I believed that a high level of success was not possible for people like us. Broaden your perspective by reading books, interviewing professionals and becoming a student of the things you enjoy. I enjoyed finance, so I started learning about the most successful people in that field and realized I could take the same steps they took to their success. I could not achieve that success over night, but if I was willing to work hard it was not impossible.
4) Success is much harder on your own. All successful people need others to reach their full potential. Identify your weaknesses and find people that can help you in those areas. For example, one of my weaknesses is processes. I enjoy coming up with the vision and having technical knowledge about subjects, but I don’t want to track paperwork or plan events. I have team members that thrive performing those tasks and as a result I can focus on the larger vision of our company.
5) You do not have to sacrifice everything else in your life to be successful. I have learned that intentional times allow me to accomplish much more in a day than most people. I am laser focused when I am working because I want to be successful in multiple areas of my life. When people find out that I run a successful financial advisory firm, that I have written a book and I get home at 5:30 p.m. on most days to be with my family, they wonder how it is possible. I have the same amount of time in my day as they do, but they can’t seem to figure it out. Make every minute of your day count!
STEN MORGAN graduated from Linfield College in Oregon with a bachelor’s degree in finance and economics. In college, he interned at Northwestern Mutual selling life insurance and quickly rose to the top 10 percent of the group. After college, Morgan applied for his dream job at an investment firm and was hired on the spot. A prodigious student of the financial industry, Morgan earned his investment licenses in record time. After a few years, he decided it was time to build his own financial practice, Legacy Investment Planning. “The Seven Mindsets of Success” is his first book. Learn more at www.stenmorgan.com
You’ve read 5 Steps to Rethinking Success, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
#lifequotes #lovequotes #inspirationalquotes #motivationalquotes #girlyquotes #may2
#lifequotes #lovequotes #inspirationalquotes #motivationalquotes #girlyquotes #may2
Iran: The Miracle That Wasn’t
Iran’s presidential election on May 19 will in all likelihood be won by the incumbent, the moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani. In 2015, two years after he came to power, Rouhani pulled the country back from the brink of confrontation with the West when he guided Iran toward the historic nuclear deal with the Obama administration. But the economic miracle that was promised by the Rouhani government hasn’t happened, and the sense of anti-climax is palpable—a disillusionment that has broadened into a general contempt for politics, politicians, and promises that aren’t kept.
How We’re Harmed by Our Dissatisfaction with Ourselves
By Leo Babauta
Over the last five years or so, as I’ve worked with thousands of people on changing their habits, I’ve come to a realization: dissatisfaction with ourselves is a pretty universal phenomenon.
We are unhappy with who we are, sometimes in small ways but often in very fundamental ways.
We doubt ourselves, feel inadequate, dislike our looks, criticize our failing harshly, feel uncertain about whether we’re worthy of praise or love.
The result is anxiety, procrastination, fear, and the inability to change our habits. I’ve seen so many people who are unable to stick to an exercise program or healthy diet changes because they don’t believe in themselves. At the heart of their failure to make positive changes is a deep feeling of unworthiness and inadequacy.
Every time we fail, we are harsh with ourselves, and we see it as just more evidence that we suck. Every time things are less-than-ideal, we blame ourselves (or, if we don’t want to be blamed, we blame other people).
What if, instead of beating ourselves up (or blaming others), we just accepted what happened and then took appropriate action? What if we took this as an opportunity to see our humanness, to love ourselves, to see ourselves as innately good?
This dissatisfaction with ourselves doesn’t just hurt our health habits … it hurts our productivity and ability to focus on meaningful work. We doubt whether we’re up to facing this task filled with discomfort and uncertainty, so we look for relief from all of it instead of just trusting that we’re up to the task. We procrastinate, seek distraction, try to run from the uncertainty.
Our relationships are also harmed by this dissatisfaction with ourselves — when we don’t believe in ourselves, we are insecure in our relationships. That can result in jealousy, anger, fear of losing someone, and treating the other person with distrust. That’s not a good recipe for a good relationship, and if the relationship becomes shaky, we often either blame the other person or see it as more evidence that we suck.
Our happiness is marred by this dissatisfaction with ourselves— if we don’t like ourselves, don’t trust ourselves, don’t see ourselves as worthy of love … then how can we truly be happy in each moment? Underlying each moment is a dissatisfaction, a lack of contentedness, a wish that things would be different.
These are just a handful of ways that dissatisfaction with ourselves is harming us. This problem actually affects every area of our lives, from jobs to finances to parenting and more.
The Way Out: Loving Ourselves
Instead of harming ourselves with this self-doubt, this constant feeling of inadequacy … what if we loved ourselves instead?
What if we trusted ourselves, believed in our basic worthiness, believed that we would be OK even if things didn’t work out as planned, believed that we are loving, kind, and innately good human beings?
That would change everything: we’d be more trusting in relationships, we’d procrastinate less because we knew we could handle uncertainty and discomfort, we’d become healthier because we would see healthy food and exercise as just two more ways to love ourselves. We’d seek ways to love others, to serve the world with meaningful work, to enjoy the basic goodness of every moment. We’d be happier, and in the times when we’re not happy, we’d still be able to find contentment in the middle of difficulty.
Of course, that’s much easier said than done. We have so many years of experience in disliking ourselves, in being harsh with ourselves, that loving ourselves can seem impossible. It’s not. You can do this.
It starts with the simple intention to love yourself, to see yourself as adequate and worthy of love, to wish for your own happiness and the relief from pain and stress.
Once you have this intention, you can practice a daily session of wishing for your own happiness, wishing for an end to your pain. A daily session of gratitude for the good things about yourself.
You can start to see the basic goodness in everything you do, even if it’s less than perfect (as all humans are). You can see the good hearted nature in every one of your actions, even the ones that are harmful. You can start to see the good-hearted nature in what everyone else does as well.
This is the practice, and it takes lots of practice. But loving yourself might just be the most important project you’ve ever undertaken, because it will change your world.
My New Course: How to Love Yourself
I’m happy to offer a new course, called “How to Love Yourself,” as part of my Sea Change Program.
I invite you to join us in this 4-week course, by joining Sea Change today.
Sea Change is my monthly membership program for changing habits, learning mindfulness and changing your life. Each month, we focus on something different, and this month it’s procrastination.
What you’ll get with this course:
- Two video lessons per week
- A challenge to do a short compassion session six days a week for the whole month
- A weekly check-in for the challenge so you stay accountable
- A live video webinar where you can ask me questions
I encourage you to join me and have your efforts to change your old patterns be supported by me and more than a thousand other Sea Change members.
11 Secrets To Building High Self-Esteem To Find Happiness
A high self-esteem means you know what you’re worth and can hold your head high when others are losing theirs. This definition is relatively basic but, in life, so many people still don’t understand what they are worth.
Building self-esteem is like forming a new habit. It takes small incremental efforts before it can become second nature. To help you out, here are some of the tips you can use.
Learn To Improve Yourself
Cherish opportunities to improve yourself. Start by acquiring knowledge and living through life experiences. This way, you’ll be able to appreciate your abilities and make good judgments that can inspire other people. Building self-esteem requires you to constantly experience self-improvement.
Know What You Want
Most people who have low self-esteem do not know what they want. They look to other people and wonder how others can be so successful.
If you want to boost your confidence, you should know what you want. Set clear goals and be passionate about meeting them. Even just one cleared goal should improve your self-esteem dramatically.
Believe In Something Worth It
What do you stand for? What do you believe in that is worth protecting and, if need be, dying for?
To build high self-esteem, you need to answer these questions. Unless you believe in something worth it, you will be swayed by anything. As soon as you believe in something worth it, you will be able to understand your limitations and know what to avoid when your belief is challenged.
Exercise Regularly
Those who engage in regular physical exercise will experience a remarkable improvement in self-esteem. Regular exercises will help you stay in shape and boost your confidence.
See Also: 19 Ways to Get Motivated to Exercise
Learn To Be Yourself
I have seen so many people try to live their lives as others do, without considering exactly what they want. This is a prelude to unhappiness.
To start building self-esteem, you need to learn to be yourself and not someone else. Those who have high self-esteem are unique people. They do, see, think and act differently. Their uniqueness comes from within.
They are not moved by ephemeral things. They do what they think is right and they do not listen too much to what others might say.
Learn Perseverance
You need to learn to persevere. This will help you go through those periods when the flood of discouragements, failures and opposition mounts.
Failures and setbacks will surely come, but your ability to persevere is what will see you through. Perseverance will help you appreciate hard work and gain confidence.
See Also: Don’t Be A Quitter: Perseverance Is One Of The Most Underestimated Skills of Successful People
Understand Life
To build high self-esteem, you should fully understand life, its purpose and what it truly means. Many people consider acquiring many cars, houses, jewelry and other material things as being successful. Your inability to understand life will make you hold onto things that do not matter. It’s like chasing shadows and going after the wind.
Avoid Discussing People
Avoid discussing people if you seek to boost your self-esteem. People who put others down or work to discredit others are insecure beings. As humans, it’s normal for people to commit mistakes. This, however, doesn’t mean that they’re bad.
Look at yourself before criticizing others. Will you be happy when people discuss you behind your back or discuss your mistakes in a way to ridicule you? If you will not be happy, then don’t do it. Focus on issues and use your time wisely. Instead of wasting time discussing people, work on achieving your goals.
Help Others Succeed
There is so much competition in the world today and people are competing with one another in almost every aspect of life. As much as possible, do not take part in this trend.
Instead, think of ways to help others. Most people with high self-esteem are adding value to people’s lives and inspiring them to succeed. They are always thinking of how to make the world a better place. When you help others succeed, you will also succeed.
Learn Something New
One way to build your self-esteem is to constantly update and build your knowledge. Reading is a good example. When you read, you learn something new and you improve yourself in the process.
Another way to learn something new is to accept feedback from mentors and colleagues. You can use what they have to say to improve, grow and gain more self-confidence.
Be Generous
What are you giving to others?
Being generous to others can help boost self-esteem. Remember, givers never lack.
These are the ways I have gained high self-esteem over the years. Practice them consistently and you’ll find building self-esteem a lot easier.
The post 11 Secrets To Building High Self-Esteem To Find Happiness appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
Inbetween Architecture Completes a Home Renovation in Doncaster, Australia
This house, dating from 1970, was recently remodeled to make it suitable and comfortable for a family of five members. It is located in Melbourne’s Doncaster suburb, in Australia, and one of its wonderful advantages is the view over Lake Ruffey. Its remodeling was completed by Inbetween Architecture, who had the enormous task of converting a dark and old house into a place full of light and with all the..
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Sig Nordal 