Degree Is Not Important To Be Successful Quotes

Sure, we'd faced some things as children that a lot of kids don't. Sure, Justin had qualified for his Junior de Sade Badge in his teaching methods for dealing with pain. We still hadn't learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something. Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind - gradutaing, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expecations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens. And if you're very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realized that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last - and yet will remain with you for life. Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it. Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's a part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.

Commitment gives you freedom because you’re no longer distracted by the unimportant and frivolous. Commitment gives you freedom because it hones your attention and focus, directing them toward what is most efficient at making you healthy and happy. Commitment makes decision-making easier and removes any fear of missing out; knowing that what you already have is good enough, why would you ever stress about chasing more, more, more again? Commitment allows you to focus intently on a few highly important goals and achieve a greater degree of success than you otherwise would.

Be brave. Even if you're not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference. Don't allow the phone to interrupt important moments. It's there for your convenience, not the callers. Don't be afraid to go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is. Don't burn bridges. You'll be surprised how many times you have to cross the same river. Don't forget, a person's greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated. Don't major in minor things. Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Helen Keller, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. Don't spread yourself too thin. Learn to say no politely and quickly. Don't use time or words carelessly. Neither can be retrieved. Don't waste time grieving over past mistakes Learn from them and move on. Every person needs to have their moment in the sun, when they raise their arms in victory, knowing that on this day, at his hour, they were at their very best. Get your priorities straight. No one ever said on his death bed, 'Gee, if I'd only spent more time at the office'. Give people a second chance, but not a third. Judge your success by the degree that you're enjoying peace, health and love. Learn to listen. Opportunity sometimes knocks very softly. Leave everything a little better than you found it. Live your life as an exclamation, not an explanation. Loosen up. Relax. Except for rare life and death matters, nothing is as important as it first seems. Never cut what can be untied. Never overestimate your power to change others. Never underestimate your power to change yourself. Remember that overnight success usually takes about fifteen years. Remember that winners do what losers don't want to do. Seek opportunity, not security. A boat in harbor is safe, but in time its bottom will rot out. Spend less time worrying who's right, more time deciding what's right. Stop blaming others. Take responsibility for every area of your life. Success is getting what you want. Happiness is liking what you get. The importance of winning is not what we get from it, but what we become because of it. When facing a difficult task, act as though it's impossible to fail.

It was the general opinion of ancient nations, that the divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men... and modern nations, in the consecrations of kings, and in several superstitious chimeras of divine rights in princes and nobles, are nearly unanimous in preserving remnants of it... Is the jealousy of power, and the envy of superiority, so strong in all men, that no considerations of public or private utility are sufficient to engage their submission to rules for their own happiness? Or is the disposition to imposture so prevalent in men of experience, that their private views of ambition and avarice can be accomplished only by artifice? — … There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, any more than those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandize or agriculture: it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. As Copley painted Chatham, West, Wolf, and Trumbull, Warren and Montgomery; as Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, and Humphries composed their verse, and Belknap and Ramzay history; as Godfrey invented his quadrant, and Rittenhouse his planetarium; as Boylston practised inoculation, and Franklin electricity; as Paine exposed the mistakes of Raynal, and Jefferson those of Buffon, so unphilosophically borrowed from the Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américains those despicable dreams of de Pauw — neither the people, nor their conventions, committees, or sub-committees, considered legislation in any other light than ordinary arts and sciences, only as of more importance. Called without expectation, and compelled without previous inclination, though undoubtedly at the best period of time both for England and America, to erect suddenly new systems of laws for their future government, they adopted the method of a wise architect, in erecting a new palace for the residence of his sovereign. They determined to consult Vitruvius, Palladio, and all other writers of reputation in the art; to examine the most celebrated buildings, whether they remain entire or in ruins; compare these with the principles of writers; and enquire how far both the theories and models were founded in nature, or created by fancy: and, when this should be done, as far as their circumstances would allow, to adopt the advantages, and reject the inconveniences, of all. Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind. [Preface to 'A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America', 1787]

When you have set out the goals that you are claiming is yours in life and, more importantly, relentlessly taking the actions to produce, it’s only a matter of when. We are wired to win. You are wired to win. Define your game. Embrace the challenge. And strive to understand yourself in deeper and more meaningful ways. True understanding of yourself and your personal constraints allows for ever unfolding degrees of freedom and success. The more aware you become of your hard wiring, the more space and opportunity become available in those areas. Step out there. Trust yourself. Give yourself fully to your vast capacity for victory. Set the the challenge of winning in new and exciting ways. Demand your greatness of yourself and repeat after me: I am wired to win.

The all-powerful Zahir seemed to be born with every human being and to gain full strength in childhood, imposing rules that would thereafter always be respected: People who are different are dangerous; they belong to another tribe; they want our lands and our women. We must marry, have children, reproduce the species. Love is only a small thing, enough for one person, and any suggestion that the heart might be larger than this may seem perverse. When we are married we are authorised to take possession of the other person, body and soul. We must do jobs we detest because we are part of an organised society, and if everyone did what they wanted to do, the world would come to a standstill. We must buy jewelry; it identifies us with our tribe. We must be amusing at all times and sneer at those who express their real feelings; it's dangerous for a tribe to allow its members to show their feelings. We must at all costs avoid saying no because people prefer those who always say yes, and this allows us to survive in hostile territory. What other people think is more important than what we feel. Never make a fuss--it might attract the attention of an enemy tribe. If you behave differently you will be expelled from the tribe because you could infect others and destroy something that was extremely difficult to organise in the first place. We must always consider the look of our new cave, and if we don't have a clear idea of our own, then we must call a decorator who will do his best to show others what good taste we have. We must eat three meals a day, even if we're not hungry, and when we fail to fit the current ideal of beauty we must fast, even if we're starving. We must dress according to the dictates of fashion, make love whether we feel like it or not, kill in the name of our country, wish time away so that retirement comes more quickly, elect politicians, complain about the cost of living, change our hair-style, criticise anyone who is different, go to a religious service on Sunday, Saturday or Friday, depending on our religion, and there beg forgiveness for our sins and puff ourselves up with pride because we know the truth and despise he other tribe, who worship false gods. Our children must follow in our footsteps; after all we are older and know more about the world. We must have a university degree even if we never get a job in the area of knowledge we were forced to study. We must never make our parents sad, even if this means giving up everything that makes us happy. We must play music quietly, talk quietly, weep in private, because I am the all-powerful Zahir, who lays down the rules and determines the meaning of success, the best way to love, the importance of rewards.

...successful research doesn't depend on mathematical skill, or even the deep understanding of theory. It depends to a large degree on choosing an important problem and finding a way to solve it, even if imperfectly at first. Very often ambition and entrepreneurial drive, in combination, beat brilliance.

People hate thinking systematically about how to optimize their relationships. It is normal to hear someone say: “I will just wait for something to happen naturally” when talking about one of the most important aspects of their life while genuinely believing that this approach has reasonable odds of success. Imagine if people said the same thing about their careers. It would sound truly bizarre for someone to expect a successful career to “just happen naturally” and yet it is entirely normalized to expect that good relationships will. People pay tens of thousands of dollars to receive degrees in computer science, marketing, and neuroscience. They make tough sacrifices with the understanding that the skills and knowledge they build in these domains will dramatically affect their quality of life. Ironically, people spend very little time systematically examining mating strategies—despite the fact that a robust understanding of the subject can dramatically affect quality of life. We will happily argue that your sexual and relationship skills matter more than your career skills. If you want to be wealthy, the fastest way to become so is to marry rich. Nothing makes happiness easier than a loving, supportive relationship, while one of the best ways to ensure you are never happy is to enter or fail to recognize and escape toxic relationships. If you want to change the world, a great partner can serve as a force multiplier. A draft horse can pull 8000 pounds, while two working together can pull 24,000 pounds. When you have a partner with whom you can synergize, you gain reach and speed that neither you nor your partner could muster individually. Heck, even if you are the type of person to judge your self-worth by the number of people with whom you have slept, a solid grasp of mating strategies will help you more than a lifetime of hitting the gym (and we say this with full acknowledgment that hitting the gym absolutely helps). A great romantic relationship will even positively impact your health (a 2018 paper in Psychophysiology found that the presence of a partner in a room lowered participants’ blood pressure) and increase your lifespan (a 2019 paper in the journal Health Psychology showed individuals in happy marriages died young at a 20% lower rate). 

To the accomplishment-oriented mother, what you achieve in life is paramount. Success depends on what you do, not who you are. She expects you to perform at the highest possible level. This mom is very proud of her children’s good grades, tournament wins, admission into the right college, and graduation with the pertinent degrees. She loves to brag about them too. But if you do not become what your accomplishment-oriented mother thinks you should, and accomplish what she thinks is important, she is deeply embarrassed, and may even respond with a rampage of fury and rage. A confusing dynamic is at play here. Often, while the daughter is trying to achieve a given goal, the mother is not supportive because it takes away from her and the time the daughter has to spend on her. Yet if the daughter achieves what she set out to do, the mother beams with pride at the awards banquet or performance. What a mixed message. The daughter learns not to expect much support unless she becomes a great hit, which sets her up for low self-esteem and an accomplishment-oriented lifestyle.

We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The Predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile, helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don't do so... I have been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to you that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner! "This was an energetic fact for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico ... They took us over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance. just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, the predators rear us in human coops, humaneros. Therefore, their food is always available to them." "No, no, no, no," [Carlos replies] "This is absurd don Juan. What you're saying is something monstrous. It simply can't be true, for sorcerers or for average men, or for anyone." "Why not?" don Juan asked calmly. "Why not? Because it infuriates you? ... You haven't heard all the claims yet. I want to appeal to your analytical mind. Think for a moment, and tell me how you would explain the contradictions between the intelligence of man the engineer and the stupidity of his systems of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behaviour. Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of belief, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success or failure. They have given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal." "'But how can they do this, don Juan? [Carlos] asked, somehow angered further by what [don Juan] was saying. "'Do they whisper all that in our ears while we are asleep?" "'No, they don't do it that way. That's idiotic!" don Juan said, smiling. "They are infinitely more efficient and organized than that. In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the predators engaged themselves in a stupendous manoeuvre stupendous, of course, from the point of view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous manoeuvre from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now." "I know that even though you have never suffered hunger... you have food anxiety, which is none other than the anxiety of the predator who fears that any moment now its manoeuvre is going to be uncovered and food is going to be denied. Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. And they ensure, in this manner, a degree of security to act as a buffer against their fear." "The sorcerers of ancient Mexico were quite ill at ease with the idea of when [the predator] made its appearance on Earth. They reasoned that man must have been a complete being at one point, with stupendous insights, feats of awareness that are mythological legends nowadays. And then, everything seems to disappear, and we have now a sedated man. What I'm saying is that what we have against us is not a simple predator. It is very smart, and organized. It follows a methodical system to render us useless. Man, the magical being that he is destined to be, is no longer magical. He's an average piece of meat." "There are no more dreams for man but the dreams of an animal who is being raised to become a piece of meat: trite, conventional, imbecilic.

What we hadn’t known about, back then, was pain. Sure, we’d faced some things as children that a lot of kids don’t. Sure, Justin had qualified for his Junior de Sade Badge in his teaching methods for dealing with pain. We still hadn’t learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you’re just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something. Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There’s the little empty pain of leaving something behind—graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There’s the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There’s the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn’t give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There’s the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens. And if you’re very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last—and yet will remain with you for life. Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don’t feel it. Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it’s a big part, and sometimes it isn’t, but either way, it’s part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you’re alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.

Successful research doesn't depend on mathematical skill, or even the deep understanding of theory. It depends to a large degree on choosing an important problem and finding a way to solve it, even if imperfectly at first. Very often ambition and entrepreneurial drive, in combination, beat brilliance.

Even in recent times, the empirical evidence does not support the claim that trade liberalization or incentive neutrality leads to faster growth. It is true that higher manufacturing growth rates have been typically associated with higher export growth rates (mostly in countries where export and import shares to GDP grew), but there is no statistical relation between either of these growth rates or degree of trade restrictions. Rather, almost all of successful export-oriented growth has come with selective trade and industrialization policies. In this regard, stable exchange rates and national price levels seem to be considerably more important than import policy in producing successful export-oriented growth

Gerontologists studying the aging process find increasing evidence that most of us will age with a fair degree of success. There’s far less institutionalization and disability than one might have guessed. While the size of social networks shrink with age, the quality of the relationships improves. There are types of cognitive skills that improve in old age (these are related to social intelligence and to making good strategic use of facts, rather than merely remembering them easily). The average elderly individual thinks his or her health is above average, and takes pleasure from that. And most important, the average level of happiness increases in old age; fewer negative emotions occur and, when they do, they don’t persist as long. Connected to this, brain-imaging studies show that negative images have less of an impact, and positive images have more of an impact on brain metabolism in older people, as compared to young.

The main factor which determines success or failure in human life is the acquisition of certain powers, for Happiness is just the exercise or putting forth of these in actual living, everything else is secondary and subordinate. These powers arise from the due development of certain natural aptitudes which belong (in various degrees) to human nature as such and therefore to all normal human beings. In their developed form they are known as virtues (the Greek means simply "goodnesses," "perfections," "excellences," or "fitnesses"), some of them are physical, but others are psychical, and among the latter some, and these distinctively or peculiarly human, are "rational," i e, presuppose the possession and exercise of mind or intelligence. These last fall into two groups, which Aristotle distinguishes as Goodnesses of Intellect and Goodnesses of Character. They have in common that they all excite in us admiration and praise of their possessors, and that they are not natural endowments, but acquired characteristics But they differ in important ways. (1) the former are excellences or developed powers of the reason as such—of that in us which sees and formulates laws, rules, regularities systems, and is content in the vision of them, while the latter involve a submission or obedience to such rules of something in us which is in itself capricious and irregular, but capable of regulation, viz our instincts and feelings, (2) the former are acquired by study and instruction, the latter by discipline. The latter constitute "character," each of them as a "moral virtue" (literally "a goodness of character"), and upon them primarily depends the realisation of happiness.

In life, as in chess, learning must be constant - both new things and fresh ways of learning them. The process will invariably involve a certain degree of unlearning, and possessing the readiness to that is utterly important. If your way of doing things isn't working, clinging to your conclusions is only going to hold you back. You have to get to the root of a snag in order to make a breakthrough, because it's possible that what you thought you knew isn't actually the way it is. Unlearning is perhaps the hardest thing to do, but it is a necessity if growth and success are your goals.

You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something.  Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind—graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.  And if you're very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last—and yet will remain with you for life.  Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something im-portant about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.  Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.

Commitment gives you freedom because you’re no longer distracted by the unimportant and frivolous. Commitment gives you freedom because it hones your attention and focus, directing them toward what is most efficient at making you healthy and happy. Commitment makes decision-making easier and removes any fear of missing out; knowing that what you already have is good enough, why would you ever stress about chasing more, more, more again? Commitment allows you to focus intently on a few highly important goals and achieve a greater degree of success than you otherwise would. In this way, the rejection of alternatives liberates us—rejection of what does not align with our most important values, with our chosen metrics, rejection of the constant pursuit of breadth without depth.

Focus on People, Perseverance, and Passion These “Three P’s” are the keys to successful entrepreneurship. People are the most important, particularly in the first year of a venture. To maximize their value, spend as much time as you can assembling the best possible team that really complements your skill set and can lead a little bit into where you’re heading, not just where you are. Creating the right kind of dynamic in terms of culture and commitment is really critical. Perseverance: never underestimate the value of really caring about your idea and being unwilling to drop it. If you have a big idea, and you know in your heart it’s going to happen (Passion), but know there will be roadblocks and challenges along the way. In this regard, a high degree of passion and commitment is extremely important. In my experience, really big ideas often take a decade to reach fruition. Sign

This is a small book about a very important subject. A lot has been written about trust: about what it is and what it can do for people, families, companies, communities and countries. As an executive coach and consultant I often find myself engaged by companies where good work is being sabotaged by interpersonal conflict, political infighting, paralysis, stagnation, apathy, or cynicism. I almost always trace these problems to a breakdown in trust. It not only kills good work, it also inevitably creates some degree of misery, annoyance, fear, anger, frustration, resentment, and resignation. By contrast, in successful companies where people are innovative, engage in productive conflict and debate about ideas, and have fun working together, I find strong trusting relationships. As a result, I’ve come to believe having the trust of those you work with is too important not to be intentional about building and maintaining it.

Sound waves, regardless of their frequency or intensity, can only be detected by the Mole Fly’s acute sense of smell—it is a little known fact that the Mole Fly’s auditory receptors do not, in fact, have a corresponding center in the brain designated for the purposes of processing sensory stimuli and so, these stimuli, instead of being siphoned out as noise, bypass the filters to be translated, oddly enough, by the part of the brain that processes smell. Consequently, the Mole Fly’s brain, in its inevitable confusion, understands sound as an aroma, rendering the boundary line between the auditory and olfactory sense indistinguishable. Sounds, thus, come in a variety of scents with an intensity proportional to its frequency. Sounds of shorter wavelength, for example, are particularly pungent. What results is a species of creature that cannot conceptualize the possibility that sound and smell are separate entities, despite its ability to discriminate between the exactitudes of pitch, timbre, tone, scent, and flavor to an alarming degree of precision. Yet, despite this ability to hyper-analyze, they lack the cognitive skill to laterally link successions of either sound or smell into a meaningful context, resulting in the equivalent of a data overflow. And this may be the most defining element of the Mole Fly’s behavior: a blatant disregard for the context of perception, in favor of analyzing those remote and diminutive properties that distinguish one element from another. While sensory continuity seems logical to their visual perception, as things are subject to change from moment-to-moment, such is not the case with their olfactory sense, as delays in sensing new smells are granted a degree of normality by the brain. Thus, the Mole Fly’s olfactory-auditory complex seems to be deprived of the sensory continuity otherwise afforded in the auditory senses of other species. And so, instead of sensing aromas and sounds continuously over a period of time—for example, instead of sensing them 24-30 times per second, as would be the case with their visual perception—they tend to process changes in sound and smell much more slowly, thereby preventing them from effectively plotting the variations thereof into an array or any kind of meaningful framework that would allow the information provided by their olfactory and auditory stimuli to be lasting in their usefulness. The Mole flies, themselves, being the structurally-obsessed and compulsive creatures that they are, in all their habitual collecting, organizing, and re-organizing of found objects into mammoth installations of optimal functional value, are remarkably easy to control, especially as they are given to a rather false and arbitrary sense of hierarchy, ascribing positions—that are otherwise trivial, yet necessarily mundane if only to obscure their true purpose—with an unfathomable amount of honor, to the logical extreme that the few chosen to serve in their most esteemed ranks are imbued with a kind of obligatory arrogance that begins in the pupal stages and extends indefinitely, as they are further nurtured well into adulthood by a society that infuses its heroes of middle management with an immeasurable sense of importance—a kind of celebrity status recognized by the masses as a living embodiment of their ideals. And yet, despite this culture of celebrity worship and vicarious living, all whims and impulses fall subservient, dropping humbly to the knees—yes, Mole Flies do, in fact, have knees!—before the grace of the merciful Queen, who is, in actuality, just a puppet dictator installed by the Melic papacy, using an old recycled Damsel fly-fishing lure. The dummy is crude, but convincing, as the Mole flies treat it as they would their true-born queen.

We do a thing in America, which is to label people “workaholics” and tell them that work is ruining their lives. It’s such a widespread opinion that it seems like the premise to every indie movie is “Workaholic mom comes home to find that her entire family hates her. It’s not until she cuts back on work, smokes a little pot, and takes up ballroom dancing classes with her neglected husband that she realizes what is truly important in life. Not work.” Working parents have now eclipsed shady Russian-esque operatives as America’s most popular choice of movie villain. And to some degree, I understand why the trope exists. It probably resonates because most people in this country hate their jobs. The economies of entire countries like Turks and Caicos are banking on US citizens hating their jobs and wanting to get away from it all. And I understand that. But it’s a confusing message for kids. The reason I’m bringing this up is not to defend my status as someone who always works. (I swear I’m not that Tiger Mom lady! I don’t think you need to play piano for eleven hours with no meals! Or only watch historical movies, then write reports on them for me to read and grade!) It’s just that, the truth is, I have never, ever, ever met a highly confident and successful person who is not what a movie would call a “workaholic.” We can’t have it both ways, and children should know that. Because confidence is like respect; you have to earn it.

What is it like to be made vice-president? On one level, it's a nearly hallucinatory degree of success. I was barely forty years old, and a shaky, sixty-three-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the entire Western world. It was also like throwing up in convention-hall bathrooms before giving speeches, and after. It was sitting through dinners with men and women with whom I had nothing in common. Spending an enormous amount of time on trains. Promising thins and agreeing to things as advised by people I had barely met, on very little sleep. Huge sums of money were changing hands and everything happening on the grandest scale imaginable while still in most moments remaining pointless and usually outright seedy. I pretended to learn to fly-fish; I watched sporting events. In Maine I was assaulted by a lobster; it seized my lapel in a threatening manner. I tasted local foods and admired factories,farms, department stores, hotels, and (unless I'm misremembering) several empty plots of land.... It was like being given what was almost the nation's highest honor by a man you held in infinite esteem and regarded with perhaps a certain amount of terrified suspicion, a man who disliked you and clearly wanted nothing to do with you, who would scowl and change the subject at the mention of your name. And then being given a very important and very nasty job by that person, and despised for it, almost as much as you despised yourself.

When we feel frustrated, our first inclination is to change whatever isn't working for us. We can try to accomplish this by making demands on others, attempting to alter our own behavior, or by a variety of other means. Having moved us to action, frustration will have done its duty. The problem is that life brings many frustrations that are beyond us: we cannot alter time or change the past or undo what we have done. We cannot avoid death, make good experiences last, cheat on reality, make something work that won't, or induce someone to cooperate with us when they may not feel like it. We are unable to always make things fair or to guarantee our own or another's safety. Of all these unavoidable frustrations the most threatening for children is that they cannot make themselves psychologically and emotionally secure. These extremely important needs — to be wanted, invited, liked, loved, and special — are out of their control. As long as we parents are successful in holding on to our children, they need not be confronted with this deep futility, fundamental to human existence. It is not that we can forever protect them from reality, but children should not have to face challenges they are not ready for. Peer-oriented children are not so lucky. Given the degree of frustration they experience, they become desperate to change things, to somehow secure their attachments. Some become compulsively demanding in their relationships with one another. Some become preoccupied with making themselves more attractive in the eyes of their peers — hence the large increase in the demand for cosmetic surgery among young people and hence, too, their obsession with being fashionably chic at earlier and earlier ages. Some become bossy, others charmers or entertainers. Some bend over backward, turning into psychological pretzels to preserve a sense of closeness with their peers. Perpetually dissatisfied, these children are out of touch with the source of their discontent and rail against a reality they have no control over. Of course, the same dynamics may also occur in children's relationships with adults — and all too often do — but they are absolutely guaranteed to be present in peer-oriented relationships. No matter how much the peer-oriented child attempts to change things by making demands, altering her appearance, making things work for others; no matter how she tones down her true personality or compromises herself, she will find only fleeting relief. She'll find no lasting relief from the unrelenting attachment frustration, and there will be the added frustration of continually hitting against this wall of impossibility. Her frustration, rather than coming to an end, moves one step closer to being transformed into aggression.

In opting for large scale, Korean state planners got much of what they bargained for. Korean companies today compete globally with the Americans and Japanese in highly capital-intensive sectors like semiconductors, aerospace, consumer electronics, and automobiles, where they are far ahead of most Taiwanese or Hong Kong companies. Unlike Southeast Asia, the Koreans have moved into these sectors not primarily through joint ventures where the foreign partner has provided a turnkey assembly plant but through their own indigenous organizations. So successful have the Koreans been that many Japanese companies feel relentlessly dogged by Korean competitors in areas like semiconductors and steel. The chief advantage that large-scale chaebol organizations would appear to provide is the ability of the group to enter new industries and to ramp up to efficient production quickly through the exploitation of economies of scope.70 Does this mean, then, that cultural factors like social capital and spontaneous sociability are not, in the end, all that important, since a state can intervene to fill the gap left by culture? The answer is no, for several reasons. In the first place, not every state is culturally competent to run as effective an industrial policy as Korea is. The massive subsidies and benefits handed out to Korean corporations over the years could instead have led to enormous abuse, corruption, and misallocation of investment funds. Had President Park and his economic bureaucrats been subject to political pressures to do what was expedient rather than what they believed was economically beneficial, if they had not been as export oriented, or if they had simply been more consumption oriented and corrupt, Korea today would probably look much more like the Philippines. The Korean economic and political scene was in fact closer to that of the Philippines under Syngman Rhee in the 1950s. Park Chung Hee, for all his faults, led a disciplined and spartan personal lifestyle and had a clear vision of where he wanted the country to go economically. He played favorites and tolerated a considerable degree of corruption, but all within reasonable bounds by the standards of other developing countries. He did not waste money personally and kept the business elite from putting their resources into Swiss villas and long vacations on the Riviera.71 Park was a dictator who established a nasty authoritarian political system, but as an economic leader he did much better. The same power over the economy in different hands could have led to disaster. There are other economic drawbacks to state promotion of large-scale industry. The most common critique made by market-oriented economists is that because the investment was government rather than market driven, South Korea has acquired a series of white elephant industries such as shipbuilding, petrochemicals, and heavy manufacturing. In an age that rewards downsizing and nimbleness, the Koreans have created a series of centralized and inflexible corporations that will gradually lose their low-wage competitive edge. Some cite Taiwan’s somewhat higher overall rate of economic growth in the postwar period as evidence of the superior efficiency of a smaller, more competitive industrial structure.

PATTERNS OF THE “SHY” What else is common among people who identify themselves as “shy?” Below are the results of a survey that was administered to 150 of my program’s participants. The results of this informal survey reveal certain facts and attitudes common among the socially anxious. Let me point out that these are the subjective answers of the clients themselves—not the professional opinions of the therapists. The average length of time in the program for all who responded was eight months. The average age was twenty-eight. (Some of the answers are based on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being the lowest.) -Most clients considered shyness to be a serious problem at some point in their lives. Almost everyone rated the seriousness of their problem at level 5, which makes sense, considering that all who responded were seeking help for their problem. -60 percent of the respondents said that “shyness” first became enough of a problem that it held them back from things they wanted during adolescence; 35 percent reported the problem began in childhood; and 5 percent said not until adulthood. This answer reveals when clients were first aware of social anxiety as an inhibiting force. -The respondents perceived the average degree of “sociability” of their parents was a 2.7, which translates to “fair”; 60 percent of the respondents reported that no other member of the family had a problem with “shyness”; and 40 percent said there was at least one other family member who had a problem with “shyness.” -50 percent were aware of rejection by their peers during childhood. -66 percent had physical symptoms of discomfort during social interaction that they believed were related to social anxiety. -55 percent reported that they had experienced panic attacks. -85 percent do not use any medication for anxiety; 15 percent do. -90 percent said they avoid opportunities to meet new people; 75 percent acknowledged that they often stay home because of social fears, rather than going out. -80 percent identified feelings of depression that they connected to social fears. -70 percent said they had difficulty with social skills. -75 percent felt that before they started the program it was impossible to control their social fears; 80 percent said they now believed it was possible to control their fears. -50 percent said they believed they might have a learning disability. -70 percent felt that they were “too dependent on their parents”; 75 percent felt their parents were overprotective; 50 percent reported that they would not have sought professional help if not for their parents’ urging. -10 percent of respondents were the only child in their families; 40 percent had one sibling; 30 percent had two siblings; 10 percent had three; and 10 percent had four or more. Experts can play many games with statistics. Of importance here are the general attitudes and patterns of a population of socially anxious individuals who were in a therapy program designed to combat their problem. Of primary significance is the high percentage of people who first thought that “shyness” was uncontrollable, but then later changed their minds, once they realized that anxiety is a habit that can be broken—without medication. Also significant is that 50 percent of the participants recognized that their parents were the catalyst for their seeking help. Consider these statistics and think about where you fit into them. Do you identify with this profile? Look back on it in the coming months and examine the ways in which your sociability changes. Give yourself credit for successful breakthroughs, and keep in mind that you are not alone!

Chinese family businesses instinctively thought of ways of hiding income from the tax collector. The situation is quite different in Japan, where the family is weaker and individuals are pulled in different directions by the various vertical authority structures standing above them. The entire Japanese nation, with the emperor at the top, is, in a sense, the ie of all ies, and calls forth a degree of moral obligation and emotional attachment that the Chinese emperor never enjoyed. Unlike the Japanese, the Chinese have had less of a we-against-them attitude toward outsiders and are much more likely to identify with family, lineage, or region as with nation. The dark side to the Japanese sense of nationalism and proclivity to trust one another is their lack of trust for people who are not Japanese. The problems faced by non-Japanese living in Japan, such as the sizable Korean community, have been widely noted. Distrust of non-Japanese is also evident in the practices of many Japanese multinationals operating in other countries. While aspects of the Japanese lean manufacturing system have been imported with great success into the United States, Japanese transplants have been much less successful integrating into local American supplier networks. Japanese auto companies building assembly plants in the United States, for example, have tended to bring over with them the suppliers in their network organizations from Japan. According to one study, some ninety percent of the parts for Japanese cars assembled in America come from Japan or from subsidiaries of Japanese companies in America.43 This is perhaps predictable given the cultural differences between the Japanese assembler and the American subcontractor but has understandably led to hard feelings between the two. To take another example, while Japanese multinationals have hired a great number of native executives to run their overseas businesses, these people are seldom treated like executives at the same level in Japan. An American working for a subdivision of a Japanese company in the United States might aspire to rise within that organization but is very unlikely to be asked to move to Tokyo or even to a higher post outside the United States.44 There are exceptions. Sony America, for example, with its largely American staff, is highly autonomous and often influences its parent in Japan. But by and large, the Japanese radius of trust can be fully extended only to other Japanese.

even in recent times, the empirical evidence does not support the claim that trade liberalization or incentive neutrality leads to faster growth. It is true that higher manufacturing growth rates have been typically associated with higher export growth rates (mostly in countries where export and import shares to GDP grew), but there is no statistical relation between either of these growth rates or degree of trade restrictions. Rather, almost all of successful export-oriented growth has come with selective trade and industrialization policies. In this regard, stable exchange rates and national price levels seem to be considerably more important than import policy in producing successful export-oriented growth

Time Is the Most Important Asset Time is unique because it’s the one true equalizer. Some people are born rich, others born poor. Some have Ivy League degrees, while others are high school dropouts. Some are genetically gifted athletes, others physically challenged. But we all have the same minutes in a day. Time is the lowest common denominator.

By contrast, a modern person lives surrounded by strangers who are doing things they may not understand. We cannot rely on our instincts and our relationships to keep society working. So it’s more important than ever to make sure that we get the rules right. If we want our economy to grow, it means looking for ways to support experimental risk-taking by trading a little more than we may instinctively be comfortable with. It means offering big payoffs to those who are willing to take big risks but also making sure that the unlucky don’t starve. In short, it means accepting that a high degree of unpredictability goes with the hunting ground.

The Importance of Becoming Metacognitively Sophisticated as a Learner Whatever the reasons for our not developing accurate mental models of ourselves as learners, the importance of becoming sophisticated as a learner cannot be overemphasized. Increasingly, coping with the changes that characterize today’s world—technological changes, job and career changes, and changes in how much of formal and informal education happens in the classroom versus at a computer terminal, coupled with the range of information and procedures that need to be acquired—requires that we learn how to learn. Also, because more and more of our learning will be what Whitten, Rabinowitz, and Whitten (2006) have labeled unsupervised learning, we need, in effect, to know how to manage our own learning activities. To become effective in managing one’s own learning requires not only some understanding of the complex and unintuitive processes that underlie one’s encoding, retention, and retrieval of information and skills, but also, in my opinion, avoiding certain attribution errors. In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977) refers to the tendency, in explaining the behaviors of others, to overvalue the role of personality characteristics and undervalue the role of situational factors. That is, behaviors tend to be overattributed to a behaving individual’s or group’s characteristics and underattributed to situational constraints and influences. In the case of human metacognitive processes, there is both a parallel error and an error that I see as essentially the opposite. The parallel error is to overattribute the degree to which students and others learn or remember to innate ability. Differences in ability between individuals are overappreciated, whereas differences in effort, encoding activities, and whether the prior learning that is a foundation for the new learning in question has been acquired are underappreciated.

MODEL 2: Multiple Stakeholder Sustainability, Fons Trompenaars and Peter Woolliams (2010) PROBLEM STATEMENT How can I assess the most significant organizational dilemmas resulting from conflicting stakeholder demands and also assess organizational priorities to create sustainable performance? ESSENCE Organizational sustainability is not limited to the fashionable environmental factors such as emissions, green energy, saving scarce resources, corporate social responsibility, and so on. The future strength of an organization depends on the way leadership and management deal with the tensions between the five major entities facing any organization: efficiency of business processes, people, clients, shareholders and society. The manner in which these tensions are addressed and resolved determines the future strength and opportunities of an organization. This model proposes that sustainability can be defined as the degree to which an organization is capable of creating long-term wealth by reconciling its most important (‘golden’) dilemmas, created between these five components. From this, professors and consultants Fons Trompenaars and Peter Woolliams have identified ten dimensions consisting of dilemmas formed from these five components, because each one competes with the other four. HOW TO USE THE MODEL: The authors have developed a sustainability scan to use when making a diagnosis. This scan reveals: The major dilemmas and how people perceive the organization’s position in relation to these dilemmas; The corporate culture of an organization and their openness to the reconciliation of the major dilemmas; The competence of its leadership to reconcile these dilemmas. After the diagnosis, the organization can move on to reconciling the major dilemmas that lead to sustainable performance. To this end, the authors developed a dilemma reconciliation process. RESULTS To achieve sustainable success, organizations need to integrate the competing demands of their key stakeholders: operational processes, employees, clients, shareholders and society. By diagnosing and connecting different viewpoints and values, their research and consulting practice results in a better understanding of: The key challenges the organization faces with its various stakeholders and how to prioritize them; The extent to which leadership and management are capable of addressing the organizational dilemmas; The personal values of employees and their alignment with organizational values. These results help an organization define a corporate strategy in which crucial dilemmas are reconciled, and ensure that the company’s leadership is capable of executing the strategy sustainably. It does so while specifically addressing the company’s wealth-creating processes before the results show up in financial reports. It attempts to anticipate what the corporate financial performance will be some six months to three years in the future, as the financial effects of dilemma reconciliation are budgeted.

And yet I believe I have taken the theory almost at its best— almost in its most testable form. One might say that it “almost predicts” a great variety of forms of life.283 In other fields, its predictive or explanatory power is still more disappointing. Take “adaptation”. At first sight natural selection appears to explain it, and in a way it does; but hardly in a scientific way. To say that a species now living is adapted to its environment is, in fact, almost tautological. Indeed we use the terms “adaptation” and “selection” in such a way that we can say that, if the species were not adapted, it would have been eliminated by natural selection. Similarly, if a species has been eliminated it must have been ill adapted to the conditions. Adaptation or fitness is defined by modern evolutionists as survival value, and can be measured by actual success in survival: there is hardly any possibility of testing a theory as feeble as this. . . . Now to the degree that Darwinism creates the same impression, it is not so very much better than the theistic view of adaptation; it is, therefore important to show that Darwinism is not a scientific theory, but metaphysical. But its value for science as a metaphysical research programme is very great, especially if it is admitted that it may be criticized, and improved upon.

Attestation is the process, thereby which certificates and documents are declared genuine in terms of legality and other aspects. In some countries the process of attestation is also known as authentication and legalization. Taking into consideration, the present scenario, the need for attestation has grown over the years. As a result, there has also been a growth in the number of agencies offering certificate attestation services. The needs for certificate attestation are many. Whether you are looking at settling down in a foreign land or get enrolled into a prestigious institution abroad, you will have to get your documents testified by a concerned authority in power. There are two ways through which you can accomplish the attestation process. One of them is to take the entire responsibility on oneself and get the documents authenticated. The second option is to involve an agency to get your documents testified. The benefits of engaging an agency to attest your documents is that you need not run from pillar to post to find the right authority who can authenticate your documents. Hiring an agency also spares you from a lot of unnecessary hassles. However, the challenge is to spot a genuine agency who can get your documents testified efficiently within a stipulated period of time. Attestation of certificates includes attesting the birth certificate, degree certificate or the marriage certificate. Besides these there can be other kinds of certificates as well that require authentication from a recognized authority. Different processes are followed for attesting the different certificates. For example, if you want to admit your kids in a school, it is mandatory to attest the birth certificate. It declares the genuinty of the date of birth. A birth certificate has to be first attested in the state from where the certificate was issued, then by the ministry of external affairs and finally by the embassy of the country in which your kid will be admitted into a school. Similarly, attestation of the marriage certificate is needed to apply for a family visa abroad. You must be aware of the fact that without a valid attestation of the marriage certificate it is impossible to get a family visa. The authentication of your degree certificates, on the other hand, is important to make you eligible for a job in a foreign land. Some documents which are mandatory for successfully completing the attestation of all these certificates are copies of passport, visa copy and all other relevant documents in accordance to the certificate that will be authenticated. The bottom line is hiring a certificate attestation service provider will surely reduce your tension before you leave the country. But before you submit all your documents to any such agency, try to find out adequately about them. If required you can search online for reviews or consult your friends and family for advice. Once you have shortlisted a service provider, try to have a detailed discussion with them about the procedures they will follow and the time they would require to complete the authentication of all your documents.

Elliott argues that enhancement technologies fascinate and aggravate us because they alert us to a contradiction in our national value system. On the one hand, America prizes success, and life here is organized around the heated pursuit of it. America is a democracy with a high degree of social mobility; we’re all searching for anything that might give us a competitive edge over our neighbors. (We are also, most likely, looking over our shoulders at whatever our neighbors might be using to get ahead, simultaneously judging them for using it, and wondering where we can get some ourselves.) On the other hand, Americans are also devoted to the idea of personal authenticity. We believe it’s important to be our “real” selves and are ever fearful of losing touch with our inmost natures in the push of worldly ambition. Self-discovery and self-actualization aren’t just enjoyable activities; they’re social demands. In America, Elliott believes, we tend to think of life as a never-ending process of figuring out “who we are” and then striving to live in such a way that we can enact the interests and proclivities that make us unique. This focus on the self as a guiding principle may partly stem from the secular nature of our society. In America since the late nineteenth century, Elliott writes, “finding yourself has replaced finding God.”29 Being who we really are is nothing short of a moral imperative—maybe the strongest one we modern Americans have. These two drives—on the one hand, to succeed; on the other hand, to be who you really are inside—often come into tension.

We still hadn’t learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you’re just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something. Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There’s the little empty pain of leaving something behind—graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There’s the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There’s the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn’t give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There’s the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens. And if you’re very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last—and yet will remain with you for life. Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don’t feel it. Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it’s a big part, and sometimes it isn’t, but either way, it’s part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you’re alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.

To interfere with the free development of talent, to obstruct the natural play of supply and demand in the teaching profession, to foster academic snobbery by the prestige of certain privileged institutions, to transfer accredited value from essential manhood to an outward badge, to blight hopes and promote invidious sentiments, to divert the attention of aspiring youth from direct dealings with truth to the passing of examinations,– such consequences, if they exist, ought surely to be regarded as drawbacks to the system, and an enlightened public consciousness ought to be keenly alive to the importance of reducing their amount. Candidates themselves do seem to be keenly conscious of some of these evils, but outside of their ranks or in the general public no such consciousness, so far as I can see, exists; or if it does exist, it fails to express itself aloud. Schools, Colleges, and Universities, appear enthusiastic over the entire system, just as it stands, and unanimously applaud all its developments. I beg the reader to consider some of the secondary evils which I have enumerated. First of all, is not our growing tendency to appoint no instructors who are not also doctors an instance of pure sham? Will any one pretend for a moment that the doctor's degree is a guarantee that its possessor will be successful as a teacher? Notoriously his moral, social, and personal characteristics may utterly disqualify him for success in the class-room; and of these characteristics his doctor's examination is unable to take any account whatever.

Study Questions Define the terms deaf and hard of hearing. Why is it important to know the age of onset, type, and degree of hearing loss? What is the primary difference between prelingual and postlingual hearing impairments? List the four major types of hearing loss. Describe three different types of audiological evaluations. What are some major areas of development that are usually affected by a hearing impairment? List three major causes of hearing impairment. What issues are central to the debate over manual and oral approaches? Define the concept of a Deaf culture. What is total communication, and how can it be used in the classroom? Describe the bilingual-bicultural approach to educating pupils with hearing impairments. In what two academic areas do students with hearing impairments usually lag behind their classmates? Why is early identification of a hearing impairment critical? Why do professionals assess the language and speech abilities of individuals with hearing impairments? List five indicators of a possible hearing loss in the classroom. What are three indicators in children that may predict success with a cochlear implant? Identify five strategies a classroom teacher can use to promote communicative skills and enhance independence in the transition to adulthood. Describe how to check a hearing aid. How can technology benefit individuals with a hearing impairment?

On the one hand, and in contrast to ordinary goods, when elites buy extravagant education, they directly diminish the educations that everyone else has. When the rich buy expensive chocolate, this does not make the middle class’s cheap chocolate taste worse. But when the rich make exceptional investments in schooling, this does reduce the value of ordinary, middle-class training and degrees. The parents who buy test preparation for their children reduce everyone else’s chance of getting into Hunter High, and the intensive education that Hunter High provides to its students reduces everyone else’s chances of getting into Harvard. Every meritocratic success necessarily breeds a flip side of failure. On the other hand, educational competition within the elite removes an important brake on consumption that restrains demand for ordinary goods in the face of rising incomes. The rich become sated on chocolate, but they do not become sated on schooling. Instead, they invest more, and more, and more in educating their children, in an effort to outdo one another. The maximum is set only by physical and psychological constraints on the children’s capacity to absorb training—in the crassest limit, the fact that schools and the parents who pay for them can hire only one teacher to engage their students at a time and that children, for their part, can study only so many hours in a day. Meritocratic education inexorably engenders a wasteful and destructive educational arms race, which ultimately benefits no one, not even the victors.

actors, politicians, business professionals, athletes, and plumbers—often struggle to achieve a higher income, more recognition of a certain degree of professional competence, only to find that their drive to achieve their goal blinded them to the things that really mattered most and now are gone. How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and, keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most. If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster. We may be very busy, we may be very efficient, but we will also be truly effective only when we begin with the end in mind. If you carefully consider what you wanted to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success. It may be very different from the definition you thought you had in mind. Perhaps fame, achievement, money, or some of the other things we strive for are not even part of the right wall. When you begin with the end in mind, you gain a different perspective. One man asked another on the death of a mutual friend, “How much did he leave?” His friend responded, “He left it all.

Black Girls… I dare you to take your education seriously! I dare you to stay in school and get your high school diploma. I dare you to go to college and obtain a degree. I dare you to believe in your ideas and become an entrepreneur or start your own business. I dare you to create multiple streams of income for yourself. I dare you to read, learn, and educate yourself. I dare you to save and invest your money wisely. It’s important to invest in YOU. You’re NOT too young to walk into your GREATNESS. I dare you to succeed without apology!

...successful research doesn't depend on mathematical skill, or even the deep understanding of theory. It depends on large degree on choosing an important problem and finding a way to solve it, even if imperfectly at first. Very often ambition and entrepreneurial drive, in combination, beat brilliance.

Groups are, in a sense, a microcosm of the real world. In all groups, there are leaders and followers . . . and many people who fall somewhere in between. Some groups are professionally led, and some are self- or volunteer-directed. In every group, there will be people you like and people you don’t, people who seek you out, and people who do not. Understanding and joining in the group process and making it work for you is what is important. Experiment with several groups, if you like, to find the ones that you enjoy the most. Strive to find a group in which you think you would feel comfortable expressing yourself or interacting with others and which has an appropriate meaning for you (a self-help group should address your particular issues; a hobby club should focus on something you enjoy). Attend the group a few times to get a sense of how members interact with each other. If the thought of doing so still causes you anxiety, continue working on stress management, and remain fairly passive in the group until you feel more comfortable. In my own social therapy group program, our purpose is to help individuals learn how to control social anxiety and refine their interactive skills. Social anxiety is a people-oriented problem, which makes group experience important both theoretically and practically. Some traditional therapists have called my program unorthodox because it encourages patients to talk to and learn from each other—as opposed to the isolation and protection offered by many of the more conservative therapies. But I say that social interaction is something you learn by doing. My groups are places to practice, make mistakes, and experience success in a supportive yet challenging environment. Of course, even in such a supportive setting, resistance still arises. In a “friendly” forum, stressors can be explored and confronted more easily, however, and I have found that the degree to which a person uses the group is often a good indicator of how well he or she is progressing therapeutically. Good attendance shows effort and commitment; poor attendance indicates that a person is giving in to anxiety. I’ve heard all the excuses and manipulations—canceling plans is typical of people with avoidance problems related to social anxiety. (I’m sometimes tempted to open a garage to repair all those cars that break down on group night!) Yet often, after overcoming the initial stage of anxiety, many participants enjoy the process. As you consider the option of incorporating various kinds of groups in your community into your self-help program, remember that groups can be a very important component of your map for change. Groups can provide you with the opportunity to practice the skills that are crucial to your success. Make sure that your expectations are realistic and that you understand the purpose and the limitations of whatever group you join.

There is a very important lesson for human evolution hidden in figures 9.3 and 12.1. At the cortical level, the three levels of processing are special to the human. Rolls has discussed the evidence that rodents do not have these successive levels; in fact, they have only a tiny area equivalent to the OFC for Level 2 processing. Experiments have reported that in the rodent, sensory identification and reward evaluation are combined and occur even before reaching the cortex. This means that the cortical processing of independent streams of sensory input at successive levels of behavioral analysis is a primate, and perhaps most highly developed human, invention. It is of adaptive value in enabling humans to carry out a more detailed analysis of food and drink flavors. Humans thereby are able to differentiate themselves to a greater degree in terms of flavor preferences. It supports the proposal in Neurogastronomy that humans are more adapted for flavor perception than are other species. It also supports our hypothesis that wine tasting takes advantage of this ability, developed for survival in selecting foods, and uses it to discriminate and enjoy the flavors of wine.

Finally, every society develops a system of aesthetic standards that get manifested in everything from decorative art, music, and dance to the architecture and planning of buildings and communities. There are many different ways we could examine artistic systems. One way of thinking about it is to observe the degree to which a society's aesthetics reflect clear lines and solid boundaries versus fluid ones. Many Western cultures favor clean, tight boundaries whereas many Eastern cultures prefer more fluid, indiscriminate lines. In most Western homes, kitchen drawers are organized so that forks are with forks and knives are with knives. The walls of a room are usually uniform in color, and when a creative shift in color does occur, it usually happens at a corner or along a straight line midway down the wall. Pictures are framed with straight edges, molding covers up seams in the wall, and lawns are edged to form a clear line between the sidewalk and the lawn. Why? Because we view life in terms of classifications, categories, and taxonomies. And cleanliness itself is largely defined by the degree of order that exists. It has little to do with sanitation and far more to do with whether things appear to be in their proper place. Maintaining boundaries is essential in the Western world; otherwise categories begin to disintegrate and chaos sets in.13 Most Americans want dandelion-free lawns and roads with clear lanes prescribing where to drive and where not to drive. Men wear ties to cover the adjoining fabric on the shirts that they put on before going to the symphony, where they listen to classical music based on a scale with seven notes and five half steps. Each note has a fixed pitch, defined in terms of the lengths of the sound waves it produces.14 A good performance occurs when the musicians hit the notes precisely. In contrast, many Eastern cultures have little concern in everyday life for sharp boundaries and uniform categories. Different colors of paint may be used at various places on the same wall. And the paint may well “spill” over onto the window glass and ceiling. Meals are a fascinating array of ingredients where food is best enjoyed when mixed together on your plate. Roads and driving patterns are flexible. The lanes ebb and flow as needed depending on the volume of traffic. In a place like Cambodia or Nigeria, the road space is available for whichever direction a vehicle needs it most, whatever the time of day. And people often meander along the road in their vehicles the same way they walk along a path. There are many other ways aesthetics between one place and another could be contrasted. But the important point is some basic understanding of how cultures differ within the realm of aesthetics. Soak in the local art of a place and chalk it up to informing your strategy for international business.

Commitment allows you to focus intently on a few highly important goals and achieve a greater degree of success than you otherwise would.

Our school system is largely geared toward the set-up: the emphasis on factual knowledge and certifications makes it seem like life is primarily about getting the best possible grades and giving our careers the best possible jump-start. Yet the connection between degrees and workplace success is growing ever more tenuous, while the ability to self-correct is growing ever more important—even though it’s hardly taught at school.

In addition to saddling many young people with massive debt for decades, studies have shown that a college education really doesn’t guarantee success. And does a college degree guarantee high performance on the job? Not necessarily. Times are changing fast. While Internet giant Google looks at good grades in specific technical skills for positions requiring them, a 2014 New York Times article detailing an interview with Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior vice president of people operations, notes that college degrees aren’t as important as they once were. Bock states that “When you look at people who don’t go to school and make their way in the world, those are exceptional human beings. And we should do everything we can to find those people.” He noted in a 2013 New York Times article that the “proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time”—on certain teams comprising as much as 14 percent.

In life, as in chess, learning must be constant - both new things and fresh ways of learning them. The process will invariably involve a certain degree of unlearning, and possessing the readiness to that is utterly important. If your way of doing things isn't working, clinging to your conclusions is only going to hold you back. You have to get to the root of a snag in order to make a breakthrough, because it's possible that what you thought you knew isn't actually the way it is. Unlearning is perhaps the hardest thing to do, but it is a necessity if growth and success are your goals.

Rather than chasing more, what if we discovered enough right where we are? This is an important question to consider when making decisions, because for some of us, our yes and our no depend upon the degree to which we believe our choices will lead to the life we think we want—or worse, the one we’ve been taught to believe we should want, whether that be a summer night on a giant boat, a successful career, a white picket fence, and on and on.

A handsome, cosmopolitan forty-three-year-old, Gebhardt had been a decorated World War I flying ace, serving in the squadron of Manfred von Richthofen, the legendary “Red Baron.” Following the war, he had earned his doctorate degree in political economy from Frankfurt University with a dissertation on “The International Trade in Machinery.” After a brief teaching stint, he had gone into business, earning a fortune in the automobile and locomotive industries before establishing a highly successful import-export firm that specialized in “exchanging German raw material for American commodities.” Charming, cultured, fluent in several languages, he also harbored political ambitions and had hopes of being named German ambassador to the United States—a fair expectation, given his close friendship with high Nazi officials, particularly Hermann Göring, a fellow Richthofen pilot during the Great War.9

Think Motion. The perfect project timeline is only slightly less elusive than the Holy Grail. It takes some effort to figure it out, but once you do, you’ll have created a template that promotes success. You may not be the person tasked with creating timelines, but you can try to influence those who are. This is the kind of thing that most people just accept, but they shouldn’t. The right timing is as important as the right people. Always be wary of the “comfortable” timeline—it’s just a fact of life that a degree of pressure keeps things moving ahead with purpose. With too much time in the schedule, you’re just inviting more opinions, and more opportunities to have your ideas nibbled to death. Keep things in motion at all times.

Once the manufacturer achieved a degree of success, it saw itself in the imperial role, while relegating the importer to that of a mere supplicant.

For us to solve our problems as quickly and painlessly as possible, we want to be completely clear about the real problem hidden underneath the roots. Asking “What is the real problem you are trying to solve?” sounds simple. Knowing the true problem you are trying to solve and then solving it, however, isn’t always easy. Experts in air navigation understand how important it is to stay perfectly on course. If a pilot steers a plane one degree off course, they will be 92 feet off course by the time they’ve traveled one mile. Pilots don’t get to miss the runway by 92 feet. The clearer you are about your own problem, the more likely you are to land in the right spot.

Commitment gives you freedom because you're no longer distracted by the unimportant and frivolous, it hones your attention and focus, directing them toward what is most efficient at making you healthy and happy. Commitment makes decision-making easier and removes any fear of missing out; knowing that what you already have is good enough, why would you ever stress about chasing more, more, more again? Commitment allows you to focus intently on a few highly important goals and achieve a greater degree of success than you otherwise would. In this way, rejection of alternatives liberates us - rejection of what does not align with our most important values, with our chosen metrics, rejection of the constant pursuit of breadth without depth. Breadth of experience is likely necessary and desirable when you're young - after all, you have to go out there and discover what seems worth investing yourself in. But depth is where the gold is buried. And you have to stay committed to something and go deep to dig it up. That's true in relationships, in a career, in building a great lifestyle - in everything.

The attitude of John reflects that of all of Christ’s followers. As you minister to others, investing yourself in their lives, your objective remains the same: “He must increase and I must decrease.” To the degree that you call attention to yourself, you draw attention away from Jesus. As you minister to others let this be your job description, the gauge of your success: You and your opinions become less and less important while Jesus becomes more and more important.

In 1966 Israel invited a California scientist, Sidney Loeb, to spend a year at Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva (the new Hebrew name for Beersheba). Loeb had worked for industry after taking an undergraduate degree in engineering in 1941. Feeling restless, he quit his job at the age of forty and went to graduate school at the University of California at Los Angeles. Like the researchers in Israel, scientists at UCLA had been seeking practical desalination methods. Loeb joined the quest with another student, a Canadian named Srinivasa Sourirajan. They developed the first successful reverse-osmosis process in 1960—“successful” in the sense that it worked in a laboratory, not that it could be deployed in the real world. Sourirajan soon ran into visa problems and Loeb continued alone, constantly tweaking the all-important membrane. By 1965 the technology had advanced enough that Loeb was able to build a commercial reverse-osmosis plant—the first in the Americas—in Coalinga, a town of about six thousand in the San Joaquin Valley. So thick with salts was its groundwater that residents had always brought in potable water by tanker cars. The

They all have a high degree of professionalism, they all have an understanding of the importance of confidentiality in the legal profession, and they all have a significant measure of self-confidence. These qualities are essential in any successful paralegal.

The relative success of British and Irish economic performance since the 1990s has helped to give credibility to a more Anglo-Saxon approach in social matters—based on deregulation and flexibility, rather than interventionist policies (see Box 4). But more important still has been the sustained success of the American economy, with its low unemployment and high growth, from which the conclusion could be drawn that flexibility suits the current stage of technological development. While the degree of laissez-faire in the American approach to social policy is resisted, a certain consensus may be emerging in the EU that methods such as bench-marking and peer pressure are more suitable than social legislation for reducing unemployment, as well as for some measures to create a dynamic and competitive economy.

It is from the point of view of how does a culture meet the needs of human beings and how does it promote healthy or unhealthy development that we have to judge any society. Now we have the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), this is how we measure success and wealth. In a materialistic society we measure success by the possession or the control or the production of matter, of materials. That's what it means to be materialistic, it is materials that matter. Well, is that really the true measure of a human society? It is one measure, but is it a true measure of a successful society? Can a society be called "successful" because it produces more matter or controls or owns more matter than some other society? I would suggest that an equally important measure of a society and a culture and a system is to what degree does it meet human needs and how well does it promote healthy human development and to what degree or in what ways does it undermine it. So what is the nature of human nature? Well.. again, in this system, it is believed and often thought that human nature is essentially selfish, individualistic, aggressive and competitive. That's human nature. And so when somebody behaves that way, you say "oh well.. what can you do.. it is human nature.." But I believe that to speak of that is to make a rather elementary mistake. Which is to take this society as the standard over how human beings are supposed to be. It's true that we are taught to behave that way, as a matter of fact, not only we are taught to behave that way, the most successful people in this society do behave that way. That's how they become successful. But what if that is not human nature? What if that is a distortion of human nature? What if, in fact, our nature demands something else entirely? To look at human nature, we need to look at how human beings developed through aeons and then we have to look at what are the needs of the human child and what needs does the human being actually have. And rather than trying to determine the nature of human nature from our human behavior in certain situations, let's look at it from the point of view of their needs. And then, what I think we will find, it is not so much that there is human nature that predicts certain behaviors, because there are so many different human behaviors.. I mean you can have a Hitler or you can have a Jesus or a Martin Luther King. These are all human beings. So what then is human nature? What if we understood that there isn't so much a human nature that predicts human behavior, but what there actually is, is a human nature that means that we have certain needs. And if those needs are met, we are going to behave in predictable ways. And if those needs are not met, we are also going to behave in predictable ways. So it is not our behavior that defines our nature, but our needs that define our nature. And the behavior reflects the degree to which those needs are met or they are not met. What if we look from that point of view? Well.. what do we find from that point of view? And how would it looking at human nature from that angle lead us to understand what we call physical or mental pathology? And I say "what we call" because diagnoses and pathology and so on are just a certain way of looking at something. It doesn't necessarily reflect reality. Or it might describe a certain reality but it doesn't necessarily explain reality. And we have to make a distinction between descriptions and explanations.

Even though an agent has no direct control over this factor, he does, of course, have indirect control by virtue of his having the power to choose which deals he works on.  Which gets back to the strategy of working hard to find makeable deals rather than working on a lot of unmakeable deals in the hopes that one will accidentally close.  In reality, the degree of financial desperation on the part of the seller is the single most important factor in determining how makeable a deal is.  The more financial problems the seller has, the more success you'll have in keeping Legalman off the playing field.

While the reasons why hunter-gatherers became farmers may still be the subject of debate, the most important consequences are now established. This change in the means of subsistence initially represented great success for the human species: according to some authors, the global population increased tenfold from 8 million at the start of the Neolithic to 85 million in 5000 BCE.6 At the same time, a gradual process of sedentarization and hence the accumulation of goods occurs, firstly of food and subsequently also of household effects and even valuables. It started with the semi-permanent establishment of hunter-gatherers in places that were so rich in natural nourishment that they no longer had to constantly hunt for their food. But this only became possible for larger parts of humanity with the development of agriculture. This, too, was a lengthy process. In many parts of the world, farmers who employed the slash-and-burn method remained highly mobile. Every year, or every few years, an area of forest was burned down and crops were sown in the fertile ash. These farmers were thus continuously changing land. The specialization of certain farmers as pastoralists also involved a high degree of mobility. Finally, permanently established farmers could decide to move for all kinds of reasons – as evidenced by the immigration from the Old to the New World following Columbus’s discovery of that continent.7 These caveats aside, it remains the case that, since the Neolithic, humanity has become considerably more place-bound, which has had an enormous impact on the organization of work. It was a

So here is what I tell young Scouts or young adventurers who ask me what the key is to living a fulfilled life. I keep it pretty simple. I call them the five Fs. Family. Friends. Faith. Fun. Follow your dreams. None of them requires a degree, and all of them are within our reach. Just make them your priority, write them on your bathroom mirror, let them seep into your subconscious over time, and soon they will be like a compass guiding you to make the right decisions for your life. When faced with big decisions, just ask yourself: ‘Will this choice or that one support or detract from the five Fs in my life?’ Family - sometimes like fudge: mostly sweet but with a few nuts! - but still they are our closest and dearest, and, like friendships, when we invest time and love in our families, we all get stronger. Having good Friends to enjoy the adventures of life with, and to share the struggles we inevitably have to bear, is a wonderful blessing. Never underestimate how much good friends mean. Faith matters. Jesus Christ has been the most incredible anchor and secret strength in my life - and it is so important to have a good guide through every jungle. (Go and do an Alpha Course to explore the notion of what faith is and isn’t) Fun. Life should be an adventure. And you are allowed to have fun, you know! Make sure you get your daily dose of it. Yes, I mean daily! And finally, Follow your dreams. Cherish them. They are God-given, dropped like pearls into the depths of your being. They provide powerful, life-changing purpose: beware the man with a dream who also has the courage to go out there and make it happen. These five Fs will sustain and nurture you, and I have learnt that if you make them your priority, you have a great shot at living a wild, fun, exciting, rich, empowered and fulfilling life. And, finally, remember that the ultimate success in the game of life can never come from money amassed, power or status attained, or from fame and recognition gained. All of those things are pretty hollow. Trust me. Our real success is measured by how we touch and enrich people’s lives - the difference we can make to those who would least expect it, to those the world looks over. That is a far, far better measure of a human life, and a great goal to aspire to, as we follow the five Fs along the way.