Authentic and Eudaimonic 8 Acts Of Authenticity "It's the best way to figure out what it feels like to be in someone else's head—and that's what helps us to distinguish our own identity ." — "Meditative absorption creates moments of happiness not contingent on outcomes or external factors or manipulation of the environment . "Authenticity consists in being aware that you have choices and consciously choosing what you do "People often make better decisions when they don't think about them. "Quiet and time for the self are a big plus. "Community is an outlook toward life in which you define yourself in relation to the world around you, rather than only in connection with yourself. "Whether it's taking an art class, playing basketball, running, or just hanging out with friends, doing something you really enjoy allows you to express who you really are "Feelings of inauthenticity are heightened by a lack of a philosophy that allows failure to be part of life. The New, True, Eudaimonic You
This and That...: Top 40 Useful Sites To Learn New Skills The web is a powerful resource that can easily help you learn new skills. You just have to know where to look. Sure, you can use Google, Yahoo, or Bing to search for sites where you can learn new skills , but I figured I’d save you some time. Here are the top 40 sites I have personally used over the last few years when I want to learn something new. Hack a Day - Hack a Day serves up fresh hacks (short tutorials) every day from around the web and one in-depth ‘How-To hack’ guide each week.eHow - eHow is an online community dedicated to providing visitors the ability to research, share, and discuss solutions and tips for completing day-to-day tasks and projects.Wired How-To Wiki - Collaborate with Wired editors and help them build their extensive library of projects, hacks, tricks and tips.
6 Ways to Minimize Interruptions When You Need to Focus You’re racing through your work, totally in the zone, when… … the phone rings. You stop, and answer it. Wrong number. After a few minutes, you manage to get back into your work. … a colleague wanders past and strikes up a conversation. It takes you ten minutes to get rid of him. In almost every sort of work, we need periods of highly-focused concentration. The problem is, in most workplaces, it’s hard to get a few hours of uninterrupted time. It might seem like interruptions are out of your control: after all, you can’t get rid of your colleagues, or stop clients from phoning. Here’s how: #1: Close the Door While You’re Working Okay, this one only works if you have your own room with a door – but if you do, then make sure you close the door when you want to focus. Closing the door also helps reduce noise from outside your office – and it can help encourage you to stay at your desk and work, when you might otherwise be tempted to get up and wander around. #4: Let Your Phone Go to Voice-Mail
Need Some Motivation Right Now? Read This IMMEDIATELY — Think Traffic If you’re in desperate need of some motivation, we’re going to fix that problem, right here, right now. Prepare yourself. WARNING: I’m going to swear and yell a little in this post. Desperate times call for desperate measures. You said you needed motivation. If this isn’t the kind of motivation you need, leave now. Alright. Here goes. Do you want some motherfucking motivation right now? I SAID, do you want some MOTHERFUCKING MOTIVATION RIGHT NOW? Do you want to get some seriously useful shit done today? Do you want to get off your ass and start producing instead of wallowing in despair, depression, self pity, fear, doubt or whatever is holding you back? Are you sick of not getting anything done? Let’s DO THIS. The point of this exercise is to give you motivation to do something right now. Follow the steps below carefully. 1. The world doesn’t care. And if you’re feeling depressed or down, stop feeling sorry for yourself while you’re at it. We all face obstacles. Did you catch that? Period. 2. 3. 4.
Shane Koyczan Reversing Regrets All of us have regrets at some time. It may be spending too much time in a problematic relationship, buying something you realize is not what you thought it would be, wearing a tie that clashes with your jacket, or eating too much dessert. For me, it was buying Lehman Brothers stock before the company crashed. We all find ourselves at times caught in an endless loop of negative self-recrimination -- "I could have, should have, would have." We would have to be immune to learning from experience to say that we never regret something we have done. How can we move beyond the moment of regret so that we don't get stuck? Is there any advantage to continuing your regret? Keep in mind that good decision making is acknowledging a mistake, learning from it, and making life better in the future. For more by Robert Leahy, Ph.D., click here. For more on mindfulness, click here.
Dont Pay for Technology: 25 Freebies for Students - StumbleUpon Jun 29, 2009 In today's economic climate, paying for technology isn't prudent, and for some students, it isn't even an option. Fortunately, there are plenty of freebies on the web that can help with document creation, research, writing, storage, collaboration, studying and more. Here are 25 free web apps and software programs that may be useful to students. Document Creation Zoho Office - Zoho Office is an amazing suite of web-based productivity and collaboration tools. Research and Writing Schoolr - This meta search engine combines other academic search engines to make research faster and more efficient for students. Online Storage and Collaboration ADrive - Offering more than 50 GB of free storage, ADrive is one of the best places to upload and store files online. Study Help and Web-Based Learning Mindpicnic - Mindpicnic is helping to revolutionize the way students learn by providing free courses and study materials online. Miscellaneous Tech Tools
How to Prioritize Tasks in Your Life Getting control of your life and knowing which tasks to do is one of the most useful skills you can learn. It doesn’t matter if you can work 12 straight hours unless you know why you are doing it. Learning how to prioritize your tasks is the natural intersection between short term planning and long term planning and it helps beating procrastination because you are always using your energies on what matter the most to you. Fortunately it’s easy to know what’s important to do if you follow these steps: Focus on the essential. Keep in mind that this process is really simple in reality and you should focus on it only 5 minutes a day, and take action in the remaining time. An example of todo list Here’s a practical example of todo list I made this morning for the entire day: - Watch paid to exist seminar – Business planning – Work on blog template – Work on priorities post – Think of a new guest post – Comment on other blogs I also ordered my tasks in a way that felt natural for me.
7 Lessons in Manliness From the Greatest Generation Every generation has its share of men who fully live the art of manliness. But there may never have been a generation when the ratio of honorable men to slackers was higher than the one born between 1914 and 1929. These were the men that grew up during the Great Depression. Tom Brokaw gave them that name, and while it’s a bold claim, I wholly support it. When I was taking a tour of the USS Slater in Albany last summer, Uncle Buzz and I were looking at the tiny, closet-sized kitchen where a couple of men prepared meals for hundreds of sailors as the ship rocked to and fro, and at the giant guns the men used to blast the enemy and knock planes from the sky. In Brokaw’s book, The Greatest Generation, he remembers his mother telling him the story of the day Gordon Larsen came into the post office where she worked. There’s a saying that each generation is most like their grandparent’s. Lesson # 1: Take Personal Responsibility for Your Life Lesson #2: Be Frugal Lesson #3: Be Humble
» 8 Great Anti-Hacks to Fundamentally Change Your Life Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Clay Collins of Project Liberation and The Growing Life. Albert Einstein stated that “problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” Einstein, of course, was right. Sometimes our problems require more than life hacks, tips, tweaks, etc. Sometimes our lives don’t need optimization, they need to be fundamentally reconfigured. So What are Anti-Hacks? “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil for every one striking at the root.” – Henry David Thoreau Anti-hacks attempt to solve problems by approaching them at a higher level of thinking (the prefix “anti,” by the way, can mean “instead of” as in “anti-drug,” or “anti-folk”). A hack might help you optimize your car’s engine so you get better gas mileage, whereas an anti-hack might involve moving near your place of employment to so you can walk or bike to work. (By the way, creating a new word for an old idea can be a pretty pretentious thing. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Seven Weird Habits That Will Change Your Life Some habits will help you live a better life. They’ll help you improve what’s already working or help you fix what’s not working very well. But what about habits that completely change the game entirely? What are the questions that uproot your beliefs, shake them from its roots and move you into a bigger pot? These are seven habits that won’t just improve your game, or help you “level up.” Regularly engage in time travel. These are just a few habits I’ve found that have made a huge difference for me. So now my question for you is this: What habit has made the biggest difference for you? photo courtesy of platinum Share: Get everything you need to finally leave your job for good. The first few weeks of the Job Escape Kit has already produced some outcomes I’d never thought I’d see in my whole career.” ~ Nick Burk
7 Great Web Services to Transfer Large Files There is no blinking the fact that web 2.0 technologies have radically revolutionized the way users interact with internet and if we narrow down our scope to the file sharing area it becomes clear how easier it becomes for anyone to upload and share files with a single click. The thing, however, is that free file sharing is limited to only a few MBs per file which is, most of the times, insufficient especially when we have many files to share with our students and colleagues. Check out : The Easiest and Quickest Way Teachers Share Files for Free Well Educational Technology and Mobile Learning has done some digging and came up with a list of some great web tools where you can upload ,share and transfer large files ( sometimes up to 5 GB ) for free . 1- Transfer Big Files This is a three step process to share your large files : choose your files, add recepients, add message. 2- Fileai.com This is a web service to securely share files that are too big to e-mail for free. 3- File Dropper
8 Things Everybody Ought to Know About Concentrating “Music helps me concentrate,” Mike said to me glancing briefly over his shoulder. Mike was in his room writing a paper for his U.S. History class. On his desk next to his computer sat crunched Red Bulls, empty Gatorade bottles, some extra pocket change and scattered pieces of paper. In the pocket of his sweat pants rested a blaring iPod with a chord that dangled near the floor, almost touching against his Adidas sandals. On his computer sat even more stray objects than his surrounding environment. Mike made a shift about every thirty seconds between all of the above. Do you know a person like this? The Science Behind Concentration In the above account, Mike’s obviously stuck in a routine that many of us may have found ourselves in, yet in the moment we feel it’s almost an impossible routine to get out of. When we constantly multitask to get things done, we’re not multitasking, we’re rapidly shifting our attention. Phase 1: Blood Rush Alert Phase 2: Find and Execute Phase 3: Disengagement
10 Ways To Be Happy, On Purpose “He who depends on himself will attain the greatest happiness” ~Chinese Proverb I was at a Women’s Leadership Conference about a year ago and had an “ah-ha moment”. We were all introducing ourselves and asked to share a few things to help with the process. One question left me baffled and ultimately changed my life; “What do you do to make yourself happy?”. At the time I honestly didn’t know. It’s not been an easy road, but it’s been the most fulfilling adventure I’ve ever been on and I feel that I should now share what I’ve learned with others. 1. “Today you are you, that is truer than true. How many times have we heard “no one will love you until you learn to love yourself” or “nobody knows you the way you do”? So get to know the right-now-real you, both the good and the bad, and own it. The good news is that if you don’t like certain aspects of yourself right now, you have it in your control to change that. 2. “Open your eyes and look within. “You have brains in your head. 3. 4. 5. 6.