Month: March 2018

Why Your Flaws Are Actually Your Strengths

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flaws and strengths

Your flaws are actually your strengths

Take a moment to think about what makes you unique. What’s that one thing that makes you feel different from other people in your life? Don’t let yourself get away with believing you aren’t unique because that’s never true. I’m not talking about something that makes you one-in-a-million unique — this isn’t a fairytale, this is real life. I mean, what makes you stand out from your friends or coworkers? It doesn’t have to be anything extreme, but I do believe it’s there, and if you get honest with yourself, you believe it too.

Maybe there’s a trait you’re not thrilled about. Maybe you’re quiet and a bit uncomfortable in large social groups. Sure, that can be a disadvantage in certain situations, but that’s only one side of the story. People who feel socially awkward are usually a bit too “in their head” to act normally without overthinking things. Thinking too much feels like a flaw in those situations, but having a lot going on in your head can be a huge advantage in other parts of life. You might make a really good writer, comedian or entrepreneur. You probably have a great analytical mind that lot of people don’t.

Embrace your uniqueness

It’s far too common that people shy away from what they’re good at because they see it as a flaw. Whatever your unique “flaw” is, there’s a path where you can make it work for you. For my whole life, I’ve talked too much. If there’s silence, I fill the void by rambling, and when I catch myself, I feel embarrassed for not being able to just “play it cool”. I get so excited and then it’s almost out of my control. Until I considered writing and starting a podcast, it felt like a major personality flaw, but now my non-stop brain chatter is being funnelled into something productive and (hopefully) helpful to some people. I only had to learn how to reframe my flaw to make it something I’m proud of, and you can do the same. This is 2018 — whatever you’re passionate about, you can build a life around it with enough time and persistence.

Fortunately, everyone likes different things, so something you love might be something others can’t stand, and that’s an opportunity. Some people love numbers and problem solving, and some hate those things, but love gardening and cooking. Embrace your uniqueness and let it drive you forward into a place of fulfillment.

Failure is still progress

Even if you try something and fail, you’ll be in a much better place. If you want it badly enough, you’ll get back up and keep learning. If you realize it’s actually not what you thought it would be, then you can rest your mind knowing that you gave it a shot. If you fail initially at something you genuinely love, you won’t feel like giving up. You might be discouraged, but if you care about it, you will accept that everyone has to start somewhere. You’ll get back up and try again until you break through that barrier, and you’ll thank yourself for doing it.

Think about the difference between someone born into wealth and someone born into modest surroundings. The wealthy person may never really need to work. They might be able to relax their whole life, while the other has to work hard for everything. The thing is, working hard in life is like exercise for your mind. It strengthens your muscles for gratitude and fulfillment. Have you ever gone to the gym or done something physically exhausting? When did you feel better, before or after? The wealthy person’s life might be “easier”, but easy is the wrong goal. Fulfillment is the right goal.

Confronting your fear

Fear inside you is an indication of a deeper desire, and it’s not going away unless you face it head on. Ignored fears only fade when they turn to regrets. When you break down what you’re afraid of, the worst case scenario is never as bad as you think. Your fears almost never match up with what you’re losing by listening to those fears. There’s so much to gain and so little to lose, so take that next step today, whatever that is for you.

Pat Kelly is a self improvement writer, entrepreneur and host of The Pat Kelly Podcast. He’s passionate about helping people find true happiness right now and in the future. You can listen and learn more at www.patkellypodcast.com

You’ve read Why Your Flaws Are Actually Your Strengths, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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The House of Broken Angels

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There’s nothing quite like a funeral to set a novelist’s wheels in motion: All those characters forced into one place, all those chances to explore the performative nature of family relationships, all those lies and secrets to expose, all of our mortality to contemplate. In his fifth novel, The House of Broken Angels, the pleasure is in watching Luis Alberto Urrea submit to every last opportunity the setup offers—it’s a big-hearted family epic that radiates with the joy of telling stories, undercut by the knowledge that the story eventually ends. Graham Swift knew it in Last Orders. Marquez knew it in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Faulkner knew it in As I Lay Dying.

Miguel Angel de La Cruz, the patriarch at the center of Urrea’s story, is facing death twice in two days. The novel is set during the funeral for his mother and his 70th birthday party the day after, events that he privately considers his farewell; he’s been diagnosed with cancer and has weeks to live. So he savors his San Diego home becoming a gathering spot for his large extended family—three siblings and many in-laws and grandkids who together form of cross-section of the American experience. His estranged son Yndio is a “non-cisgendered, non-heteronormative cultural liberation warrior.” His half-brother Gabriel, aka Little Angel, is an English professor in Seattle, studying his Mexican heritage from an academic remove. His son Lalo is an Iraq War vet mourning the death of another son, Braulio, to gang violence.

All this is the legacy of Big Angel successfully bringing his wife across the Mexican border decades before, “when it became obvious that only hunger and dirt and rats and evil police waited for them in the poorest of the colonias where they could afford to live.” But while Broken Angels is broadly a novel about the Mexican-American experience, that conceit breaks apart like a pointillist painting . At every turn Urrea is striving to unsettle assumptions about what “Mexican-American experience means”—simple summaries are for Donald Trump and lesser stand-up comics. Big Angel, he writes, was “so famous for punctuality that the Americans at work used to call him ‘the German.’ Very funny, he thought. As if a Mexican couldn’t be punctual. As if Vicente Fox was late to things, cabrones.”

The gringo culture that spins such stereotypes is mostly off to the side in the novel—a snippet of raw-throated talk-radio chatter, a passing insult in a supermarket aisle. But Big Angel’s enclave is plenty diverse in itself. Nearly all of the characters have multiple nicknames (Little Angel is “the Assimilator,” Lalo is “Hungry Man”) as if to highlight their complex and multitude-containing status, the way a person changes depending on who’s doing the looking. Urrea carries all of this lightly, though, even sentimentally. The vibe of the novel isn’t an elegy for the end of a clan that’s lost its sense of identity, but a tribute to a family that has acquired the freedom to make multiple identities for itself.

“Little Angel thought it was all turning into an end-of-semester project for his multicultural studies course,” Urrea writes. The line is funny because it’s true: the party is filled with Dreamers, gangbangers, grandmas, and women “as magnificent as a velvet painting of an Aztec goddess in a taco shop.” And the line is serious because Little Angel has missed the point—a family is not a petri dish for pat notions about diversity. Urrea is consistently working through this tension throughout the book, keeping the tone upbeat while acknowledging the stormclouds in his characters’ stories, sometimes decades worth of them. His strategies for lightening the mood can be shameless in their contrivance. A nephew of Big Angel sings in a black-metal band called Hispanic Panic and tourettically spouts headbanger mottos, while Little Angel’s ivory-tower seriousness is undone by his lust for a sister-in-law. And Big Angel maintains a notebook in which he lists the things he’s grateful for, moments where the strings swell ever-louder: “wildflowers after rain,” “a day without pain,” “a kiss from my brother.”

But another strategy Urrea uses is to not stay in one place too long: The silly scenes give way to the richly comic ones, the sentimental ones to the moments of somber pathos. And he’s rightly confident that the mix of storytelling forms will cohere. The House of Broken Angels isn’t exactly plotless—it recalls Don DeLillo’s quip that all plots tend toward death. But Urrea wants to assert a status, not a trajectory. Big Angel is an everyman, “a rolling laugh riot … arbiter of bad jokes, spiritual insight, ice cream money, and shelter when they were bounced out of their houses or were let out of jail or rehab or needed to come in off the streets at midnight.” And likewise, Urrea’s novel is hat’s a retort to what such a novel ought to be

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At 10,000 feet above sea level, Cedar Breaks National Monument…

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At 10,000 feet above sea level, Cedar Breaks National Monument gets you just a little closer to the moon. With epic night skies, unique red rock canyons and excellent wildlife viewing, Cedar Breaks is another must-see on your next adventure. Winter activities include snowmobiling, snowshoeing and cross country skiing on miles of awesome trails. Photo by Richard Cozzens (www.sharetheexperience.org).

 

In the Review Archives: 1963–1965

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Fifty-five years ago, The New York Review published its first issue. To celebrate the magazine’s emerald anniversary, in 2018 we will be going through the archives year by year, featuring some of the notable, important, and sometimes forgotten pieces that appeared in its pages. That first issue included a short note, addressed To the Reader: “The hope of the editors,” they wrote, “is to suggest, however imperfectly, some of the qualities which a responsible literary journal should have and to discover whether there is, in America, not only the need for such a review but the demand for one.”

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Going on A Date? 6 Tips In Planning A Cruise for The First Time

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So, you have spotted that perfect girl that makes your heart race every time you see her. You asked her out on a date and she said yes. Now, the next thing is to plan a perfect date that will impress her and get her to think some nice things about you.

One of your best options is a dinner cruise.

If you’re looking for an exhilarating way to see London’s riverside sights, then opt for a high-speed RIB cruise on the Thames River. In a rigid inflatable boat, soar past the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, and Shakespeare’s Globe while listening to a high-octane soundtrack.

Thinking about whether you ought to get an inside lodge or an overhang room?

Try not to sweat it. Galleries are extraordinary but inside lodges can be great, too.

If these things and planning a cruise for the first time overwhelm you, here are a few tips you can use.

Plan

plan a cruise

You need to plan how everything is going to go. Women like men who are organized and know what they are doing.

You need to know what will happen throughout that day so that you do not disappoint her. This way, your woman can be relaxed when she is with you since she knows that you have everything under control.

Get some money

Figure out how much money you are going to spend on the date and make sure that you have enough. You can try saving up for a couple of weeks to get all the cash that you need. Remember to stop by the ATM before you leave.

Let her know ahead of time

You have to call her in advance so that she can plan and prepare herself. If you wait until the last minute to inform her of your plans, she might already have made other plans.

Let her know the date and the time that she should be ready. You can also let her know where you are taking her so that she’ll be able to dress appropriately. This way, you won’t embarrass her.

Send her a reminder on that date or the day before so she won’t forget.

Show up on time

If you are picking her up, show up at her door on time. Do not keep her waiting endlessly without telling her where you are. If you are going to be late, call ahead of time and let her know. However, don’t be too early as she might probably not be ready yet.

When you see her, make sure to tell her that she looks good. Most women spend a lot of time and money in prepping for a date. Show appreciation for all the effort she put in.

The drive

On your way to your dinner, you can talk in the car or you can listen to some music. If you want to listen to music, keep it classy and play some soft music so that you can relax and enjoy each other’s company.

At the date

dinner cruise

Keeping things simple is one of the best rules in planning a cruise for the first time. Talk to your date and enjoy her company. Make sure that you are the one who pays. If she offers to pay, turn her down nicely.

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5 Unbelievably Easy Hacks To Instantly Boost Your Confidence

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It’s no big mystery…most people understand that confidence is critical for getting what you want in life. Whether it’s building your business, getting that promotion or sparking those first feelings of attraction…confidence is the name of the game. But for most of us, being confident is easier said than done, right?

Most people think becoming more confident is some long, daunting path that will take forever to achieve. They think that confidence comes with the end result; therefore, they don’t take action. And I get it! It’s not motivating if you have to wait THAT long.

But here’s the thing. You don’t need to wait at all. You can feel more confident immediately. And I’ll show exactly how to do that in this post. Here are five unbelievably simple hacks that will instantly boost your confidence. And when is say instantly, I mean INSTANTLY.

1) Find Your Confidence Costume And Wear It.

If we’ve learned anything from Tony Robbins, it’s that our body and our mind are linked. How we feel affects our physiology. But our physiology also affects how we feel, in a heartbeat. That means that if you change your body language, you instantly change how you feel.

Try this exercise. Stand with your hands in the air like after a victory, with a big smile on your face, and try as hard as you can to feel sad. It’s impossible. Why? Because your body and mind are linked. You can’t feel sad when you have happy body language.

Here’s a great exercise that will boost your confidence instantly.

Step 1: Remember a time that you felt really confident. It doesn’t matter what the reason was. Maybe you just started your business, or got promoted, or cooked a delicious steak.

Step 2: Relive that moment and remember your physiology. How are you breathing? What is your facial expression? How are you standing or moving?

Step 3: Now that you’ve calibrated your confident physiology, use it all the time. Put on your confident facial expression. Put on your confident body language.

I call it your confidence costume. When you wear it, you’ll instantly feel confident.

2) Use Magic Costumes.

Here’s another incredible hack to instantly boost your confidence. Just like you imagined wearing your confident costume in the previous exercise, you can also imagine wearing someone else’s costume. I call these Magic Costumes, because they magically transfer someone else’s confidence to you.

Here’s how it works.

Step 1: Just pick a role model who is very confident. It can be a friend, a relative or even a movie star.

Step 2: Then imagine you’re that person. Imagine you wear that person like a costume.

And there you go, you instantly feel confident!

3) Use Power Posing.

Professor Amy Cuddy discovered that there are certain positions that make us feel more powerful. She calls it power posing. The beauty of power posing is that it just takes two minutes. It’s a great exercise for situations where you need a quick confidence boost-like right before a presentation, a job interview or a first date.

Here’s a power pose exercise you can use right away.

I call it the Superman pose.

Just stand like Superman. Stand with your feet shoulders’ width apart and put your fists on your waist. Stand like this for two minutes et voila…you feel more confident.

4) Use Thought Loops.

In 1960, Dr. Maxwell Maltz wrote a book called “Psycho-Cybernetics”. In this book, he reveals what he learned through his work with his patients: that positive self-affirmations change people’s self-image.

Thought loops are a step up from affirmations, because unlike affirmations you don’t say them out loud. Therefore, you can use them whenever you need them without looking like a goofball. You can use thought loops as a daily ritual, and you can use them for quick confidence injections when you need them.

Here’s how it works.

You loop them in your head. For example, you can loop this in your head: “I’m totally confident. I’m totally confident, I’m totally confident.” etc.

If you do that for three minutes, your state will change and you’ll feel more confident.

5) Do Pushups.

Doing pushups will release testosterone. And testosterone makes you more confident. Just do three sets of 20 pushups and notice how you feel. You’ll feel more confident immediately after you’ve done them.

There you have it. Now you know five ways to instantly boost your confidence.

If you want to know more about how to build core confidence or if you want 100 more tips like the five you’ve just read, I’ve included a killer bonus package for you in my bio below. Check it out now.

Nick Neeson is the world’s #1 dating coach for introverted men and the highest-paid dating consultant on the planet. He founded Introverted Badass to help smart, introverted men become badass with women, without being someone they’re not. Introverted Badass is the global market leader for introverted men looking to improve their dating skills naturally and without using lies, tricks, or manipulation. Go to IntrovertedBadass.com/Pick-The-Brain-Special-Bonus/ to get a special bonus package related to this post. This bonus is exclusively for readers of Pick The Brain

You’ve read 5 Unbelievably Easy Hacks To Instantly Boost Your Confidence, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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Within sight of the New York City skyline, Jamaica Bay Wildlife…

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Within sight of the New York City skyline, Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge is an 18,000-acre wetland estuary bordered by Brooklyn and Queens. An area almost equal to the size of Manhattan, this stunning getaway consists of numerous islands, a labyrinth of waterways, meadowlands and two freshwater ponds. Part of Gateway National Recreation Area, the refuge provides an accessible and unique environment for both wildlife and urban recreation. Photo by Micael Fano (www.sharetheexperience.org).

 

The B&N Podcast: Tara Westover

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Every author has a story beyond the one that they put down on paper. The Barnes & Noble Podcast goes between the lines with today’s most interesting writers, exploring what inspires them, what confounds them, and what they were thinking when they wrote the books we’re talking about.

In her riveting memoir Educated, Tara Westover describes her childhood on an Idaho mountainside, in a family in which “home-schooling” meant no lessons, but determined isolation from the modern world Tara’s parents turned away from. The author — who left that insular life behind to earn her PhD in History at Cambridge — joins Miwa Messer on this episode of the podcast to talk about her improbably journey, and what she’s learned along the way.

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Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her “head-for-the-hills” bag. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged metal in her father’s junkyard.

Her father distrusted the medical establishment, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when an older brother became violent.

When another brother got himself into college and came back with news of the world beyond the mountain, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. She taught herself enough mathematics, grammar, and science to take the ACT and was admitted to Brigham Young University. There, she studied psychology, politics, philosophy, and history, learning for the first time about pivotal world events like the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty, and of the grief that comes from severing one’s closest ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one’s life through new eyes, and the will to change it.

Like this podcast? Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher to discover intriguing new conversations every week.


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The Death and Life of a Great American Building

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I am one of the last tenants of the St. Denis, a 165-year-old building on East 11th Street, just south of Union Square in New York City, that is in the process of being emptied and readied for gutting. For decades, the St. Denis has been a haven for psychotherapists of every sort, but a seismic shift is taking place and the therapist buildings are getting squeezed. Imagine a future Manhattan without shrinks. What will happen to the psyche of that city?

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How to Maximize Space in A Dorm Room

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Most dorm rooms are really tight. Without the right strategy and failure to know how to maximize space in a dorm room, you’ll have a hard time fitting everything you need in your space.

If you are about to transfer or you’re redecorating your room, here are some great tips you can use.

Utilize the Storage Space Under Your Bed

storage under the bed
Via Pinterest

Many students looking for more space to store their belongings will just stuff things underneath their beds. If you are like those students, consider getting more organized by using storage containers. They are effective in conserving and maximizing space at the same time.

Before you actually place your items in their respective containers, make sure to do vacuum packing first. It can take away the excess space your things will occupy, allowing you to keep more items in your containers.

Tip: Store your seasonal items you won’t need to clear up more space.

Use Your Dorm Room Door

If you are like most students who like to bring several pairs of shoes to college, you can get a shoe rack which you can hang near your doorway. Most of those shoe racks can keep around 9 to 12 shoes at a time, saving you a lot of floor space.

You can also get storage bins which you can attach to your door. Those bins can give you enough space to store your miscellaneous items.

Tip: You may have two doors in your dorm room. Use both of them to get more space to keep your things.

Keep Things On Your Walls

Using a small area on the wall for a coat rack will allow for more space. However, most college dorms won’t let you nail or screw anything into their walls. If that is the case, you can use sticky hooks which you can buy them from your local stores.

You can also find sticky baskets which you can stick to your wall. You can use those baskets to keep your keys, coins, or even small pens. The more organized and easier it is for you to find them, the less likely you’ll have to scramble for them when you’re running late for your class.

Tip: Tuck away your coats and jackets you won’t need for the season under your bed. Put them in your bins after they’ve been vacuum sealed.

Declutter Your Deskorganized desk

Most students have desks that look like a bomb hit them. This is especially true with students who are in the middle of preparing for exams.

Now, how to keep your desk more organized?

Consider investing a desk lamp with little compartments for your paperclips, pens, and scissors. This can greatly reduce the clutter on your desk.

Installing a file sorter can also help. You can use it to store all of your files and papers. You can use the other drawers for your books and other miscellaneous items.

Utilize Your Sitting Area

If you frequently have friends dropping by, consider getting ottomans. They aren’t just great for comfy seating but they can also serve as storage boxes. Ottomans have removable tops which you can take off if you need to keep things inside the boxes.

In Conclusion

These are just some of the things you can do to maximize the space in your dorm room. If you are still having problems fitting everything into your space, sit down and go through each of your items. Find out which of them are really necessary to keep and which ones you don’t really need.

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