The ability to delay gratification can be a big predictor of success Mentally strong people have the ability to prioritize the long term over short term pleasure.

1. Delay Gratification

Often it's the days when you don't feel like showing up that end being the most important ones. Providing to yourself that you can show up on tough days builds your resilience and mental strength.

2. Show up on the Toughest Days

One of the fastest ways to tear down your mental toughness is by speaking negatively to yourself. Mentally strong people understand the importance of being your own biggest supporter.

3. Positive Self-Talk

Allowing a problem or situation to dominate your mind, is another quick way to lose resilience. Mentally strong people focus on what is within control and take action on it as soon as possible.

4. Don't dwell on things

Mentally strong people don't take things personally. They seek to understand the viewpoint of others and use it to from stronger relationships.

5. Practice Empathy

Top 5 things to become Mentally strong as my perspective.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

habits

Habits

Mentally strong habits

Productive procrastination is when you’re busy, yet you’re still procrastinating on your most important tasks. For example:You work 8 -10h workdays, you’re always busy, and you feel that you’re productive. But you’re not as productive as you think. Is your big project done? Is it even moving in any direction? If the answer is “not exactly”, you’re presumably a victim of productive procrastination. By keeping yourself busy with a lot of to-do’s, you distract yourself from doing the work. The work that’s important and impactful still remains untouched.

Productive Procrastination

Productive procrastination is when you’re efficient and accomplish everything (except for the most important things).For example: When having a hard project to crack, you may find yourself doing:<ul><li>laundry</li><li>the dishes</li><li>cleaning the house</li><li>washing your car</li><li>organizing files on the computer</li><li>cleaning the bathroom</li><li>cooking.</li></ul>You actually worked and achieved something.  Procrastinating doesn’t have to mean “doing nothing”. You can still do low-level, unimportant stuff. Productive procrastinators are great workers. They are able to do a lot of work, provided it is not the one they should be doing at the moment.

Productive Procrastination: The Positive Side

Time blocking is a great way to procrastinate in a productive way.  You can take a few moments to plan your day if you don’t feel like starting that big project.  It will keep you on track for the rest of the day.The productive procrastination technique focuses on a specific worldview: If you can’t make it great, at least make it.  This approach doesn't perceive procrastination as the opposite of productivity. Even if you’re not working on the task you set out to do, you’re still making progress on eliminating slices of your productivity pie.

If You Can’t Make It Great, At Least Make It 

Before you know it, you are working on tasks that distract you from what you should be doing. You’re busy and you’re getting a lot of tasks done. You feel good about yourself.  In reality, you’re actually killing your productivity levels. If you are close to falling into this trap:<ul><li>Don’t use busyness to protect yourself from doing the things that you should. This way you fail to reach your dreams.</li><li>Hard work doesn’t equal success. It can be its component if you work hard on the right tasks and activities. Think about it. If hard work equaled success, all construction workers would be millionaires</li></ul>

Productive Procrastination: The Negative Side

When you procrastinate in the usual way, you almost always realize it. You hardly ever realize when you fall into the trap of productive procrastination.   Think about those days when you: answer a lot of emails, spend time on social media, or do other random to-do’s. You feel very productive. Your brain rewards you for this behavior. It produces dopamine when you’re working on a lot of different tasks. This, in turn, stimulates the repetition of this behavior. But productive procrastination is unproductive in the long run.

What’s the Trap About?

<ul><li>Learn to identify your most important activities: write them down.  If you have more than 5 tasks that you think are important, take a few minutes to identify your top 5. If you work on any other task before spending time on your identified top, you’re falling into the trap.</li><li>Tackle your most important activities first thing in the day. Don’t work on anything else before you finish your work on your most important activity.  Most people work on low to mid-value tasks first because it’s easier. As we go by during the day, our mental resources, like willpower and our ability to focus diminish. </li></ul>

Tips to Avoid Falling for Productive Procrastination

“All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important”

Productive procrastination is when you're efficient but not effective. You accomplish everything, except for the most important things.

productivity

Productivity

timemanagement

Time Management

Productive Procrastination: How to Avoid Falling Into the Trap

Imagine growing up without words. You live in a typical industrialized household, but you are somehow unable to learn the language of your parents. That means that you do not have access to education; you cannot properly communicate with your family other than through a set of idiosyncratic gestures; you never get properly exposed to abstract ideas such as “justice” or “global warming.” All you know comes from direct experience with the world.

What Lack Of Language Practically Means

It might seem that this scenario is purely hypothetical. There aren’t any cases of language deprivation in modern industrialized societies, right? It turns out there are. Many deaf children born into hearing families face exactly this issue. They cannot hear and, as a result, do not have access to their linguistic environment. Unless the parents learn sign language, the child’s language access will be delayed and, in some cases, missing completely.

Lack Of Language Is Not A Scenario. It’s Some People’s Reality. 

Does our mind develop normally under such circumstances? Of course not. Language enables us to receive vast amounts of information we would have never acquired otherwise. The details of your parents’ wedding. The Declaration of Independence. The entrée section of the dinner menu. The entire richness of human experience condensed into a linear sequence of words. Take language away, and the amount of information you can acquire decreases dramatically.

Language And The Mind

The lack of language affects even functions that do not seem to be intrinsically “linguistic,” such as math. Developmental research shows that keeping track of exact numbers above four requires knowing the words for these numbers. Imagine trying to tell the difference between seven apples and eight apples. The task becomes almost impossible if you can’t count them—and you can’t count them if you never learn that “seven” is followed by “eight.” As a result of this language-number interdependency, many deaf children fall behind in math, precisely because they did not learn to count early on.

Language And Number Interdepedency

Another part of your mind that needs language to develop properly is social cognition. Think about your interactions with your family and friends. Why is your mom upset? Why did your friend go inside the house just now? Understanding social situations requires inferring what the people around you are thinking.

Language And Social Cognition

Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”; So far, the evidence does suggest that the limits of our language mean the limits of our world. However, what happens if language disappears once the mind is fully developed? Will we then lose the ability to use math and understand others?

What If Language Is There And Then It Disappears? 

Imagine you are a typical adult; let’s say you’re 40. You wake up one day, and suddenly, you realize that your language is gone. You look around the room, but no words come to mind to describe the objects you see. You’re starting to plan out your day, but no half-formed phrases rush through your mind. You unlock your smartphone, but, instead of text, you see a sea of squiggles. Desperate, you cry out for help, and someone rushes up to you—but, instead of speech, all you hear is meaningless murmur.

Nightmare Scenario: You Wake Up And Your Language Is Gone

The condition described above is known as global aphasia. It arises from severe damage to the brain, often as a result of a massive stroke. While some aphasias are temporary, in some cases the damage is irreparable, and the person may lose language for life. In your case, let’s say that a dozen doctors examined you and said (or, you think they said) that nothing can be done. If the limits of your language mean the limits of your world, should you conclude that the way you experience the world is now fundamentally limited? Do you even have a mind?

Again, Not A Scenario. It’s A Reality, Called Global Aphasia. 

Research on adult individuals with aphasia has demonstrated that math, theory of mind, and many other cognitive abilities are independent from language. Patients with severe language impairments perform comparably to the rest of us when asked to complete arithmetic tasks, reason about people’s intentions, determine physical causes of actions, or decide whether a drawing depicts a real-life event. Some of them play chess in their spare time. Some even engage in creative tasks. Soviet composer Vissarion Shebalin continued to write music even after a stroke that left him severely aphasic.

Loss Of Language Doesn’t Equal Loss Of Mind

In recent years, neuroscientists have isolated a network of brain regions (typically in the left hemisphere) that react almost exclusively to linguistic input. They respond to written sentences, spoken narratives, words, monologues, conversations, but will not activate in response to memory tasks, spatial reasoning, music, math, or social situations that do not involve dialogue. No wonder many patients with aphasia do not have impairments in other cognitive domains—language and other functions are housed in separate chunks of brain matter.

Language Is Separate From The Rest Of Cognition

Many great thinkers have drawn a strong connection between language and the mind. Oscar Wilde called language “the parent, and not the child, of thought”; Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”; and Bertrand Russell stated that the role of language is “to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.”

Language And The Mind - The Writers’ Perspective

Not all writers support Wittgenstein’s and Russell’s idea that language and thought are inseparable. Tom Lubbock, a British writer and illustrator whose language system gradually deteriorated because of a brain tumor, wrote in his memoir shortly before his death in 2011:““My language to describe things in the world is very small, limited. My thoughts when I look at the world are vast, limitless and normal, same as they ever were. My experience of the world is not made less by lack of language but is essentially unchanged.”

Language And The Mind - A Language-less Writer’s Perspective

So, what can we say about the role language plays in shaping our minds? Well, pick a mind that is still developing, and you will find that removing language will alter it for life. However, pick a mind that is fully formed and take all words away, and you will discover that the rest of cognition remains mostly intact. Our language is but a scaffold for our minds: indispensable during construction but not necessary for the building to remain in place.

Once We Acquire Language, We Can Live Without It

Language is the dress of thought.

Language is what makes us human, what lies at the root of our awareness, our intellect, our sense of self. Without it, we cannot plan, cannot communicate, cannot think. Or can we?

Once we acquire language, we can live without it.

mindfulness

Mindfulness

communication

Communication

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

Language Is the Scaffold of the Mind

If you write down the problem clearly, it is half solved.

Kidlin's Law

The more you fear something, the more it will happen

Murphy's Law

The biggest problem at work is that Noone tells you what to do.

Gilbert's Law

If you keep putting information and intelligence first at all time, money keeps coming in.

Wilson's Law

If you don't have to make decision, don't make a decision

Falkland's Law

5 Natural Laws you should know

It is easy to acknowledge the direct impacts of trauma but some of its more life altering impacts are what it has on the mind.In addition to the impact from the direct interaction, the imagination is not only stunted but also becomes a place where you relive the origin of the trauma, over and over, snowballing new trauma from the imagination with the initial trauma, maimed by things like regret and guilt.Eventually, the imagination only becomes familiar with the past, being rooted only in what has happened and not being able to fathom a future any different.

Trauma & The Impact On The Imagination 

The imagination is the mind's eye: how we perceive & even interact with intangibles in the cosmos.When we experience trauma, the imagination relives the moment over & over, searching for ways to avoid the experience in the future or overcome it. With every replay of that moment, we experience a second hand trauma compounded on our original experience.Eventually, we blame ourselves for what happened, taking on guilt, shame & regret. Through repetition in the mind, the imagination conforms to a reality where only shame, guilt & regret are the only thinkable outcomes. This stunts our perception.

Trauma Hijacks The Imagination

In other instances, instead of guilt, shame & regret, we seek to escape from a reality that we feel is too much to bear. We begin to fantasize on the what ifs, & explore those mythical timelines in our imagination. Slowly, we begin to yearn more for the fantasy as it temporarily eases our stress, but it also removes us from the present & in turn impede our ability to impact it for the better.Fantasizing may seem harmless at first but it is teaching the mind to interact with the unreal parts of your experience. The escape isn't just from the pain, but also a vacancy from your driver's seat.

Trauma Influences Imagination Escapism

Inspiration & fantasies may seem like the same but are vastly different. The imagination intakes both similarly. But one is birthed from the body's fight or flight system & the other catalyzed by an appreciation of something, even in the bad.Fantasizing is an effort of escapism from reality while inspiration is an attempt at impacting reality. We often fantasize when we are bored or uncomfortable etc, in hopes of passing time with more ease.Inspiration comes when you're able to see the possibilities of what's infront of you in the present. The attention to detail & awareness of yourself.

Inspiration Vs Fantasizing

When the trauma overwhelms the mind, when the replays become suffocating, when the inspiration no longer comes, the imagination chooses numbness. This coping mechanism shuts down the ability to perceive to spare ourselves the trauma. This numbness while copes in one way, icreates a hopelessness and despondency. Without the active imagination, the mind is unable to perceive future possibilities, & it is disconnected from the past that you could learn from. The dead imagination disrupts our interactions with one another and the ability to deeply commune with each other in the intangible ways.

Snuffed Imagination

The imagination is meant to be inspired, to see possibilities by appreciating what is available to it. While it is no simple task to see the good in everything, the imagination powers the image of the reality you will perceive. Therefore it is not the image of the past nor the image of the present that should influence us, but rather the image of the future. Not allowing what has happened, nor your present circumstance, to completely change the image of your future. Perhaps it may refine as we learn and grow, but appreciating the image of the future will enable us to remain inspired by it.

Revived Imagination 

The imagination powers the way you see the past, present and future. The image of the future is hope. Hope is built by what you feed it today. The best food for hope is knowledge, understanding and faith. Learning new things helps us broaden our horizon. Understanding things helps broaden our capabilities and belief helps us broaden our performance. The imagination thrives under the inspiration of hope. The power to channel the strength & joy of your future through hope, is the power of the imagination. With a goal in mind, it provides a way forward.

Hope Is The Mind Tiller

By understanding how trauma fully impacts us, we can become more self aware and find the capacity to overcome.

#1 New York Times bestseller “Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding and treating traumatic stress and the scope of its impact on society.” —Alexander McFarlane, Director of the Centre for Traumatic Stress Studies A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing in this New York Times bestseller Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

mentalhealth

Mental Health

creativity

Creativity

books

Books

#1 New York Times bestseller “Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding and treating traumatic stress and the scope of its impact on society.” —Alexander McFarlane, Director of the Centre for Traumatic Stress Studies A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing in this New York Times bestseller   Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.

Bessel A. Van der Kolk is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Bessel A. Van der Kolk has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Bessel A. Van der Kolk's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Bessel A. Van der Kolk

The Body Keeps the Score

In classical mechanics, a harmonic oscillator is a system that tries to maintain equilibrium (homeostasis).The 80/20 of what you need to know is that when equilibrium is displaced, it bounces back in the same amount in the opposite direction and eventually brings itself back to equilibrium.Our mind:The high highs that we grow to look forward to in life are always followed by a low low. Always. If you don’t recognize it as a low low – congratulations, you have developed a certain level of mindfulness when interacting with the battles that come while you are deep in the trenches.

High Highs And Low Lows

Our mind is a network of complex systems that have been conditioned over time through positive and negative feedback. That’s how systems work, right?<ul><li>If you receive negative feedback, you won’t do that again.</li><li>If you receive positive feedback, you will do that again.</li></ul>If you consistently receive positive feedback for doing one specific thing, it becomes engrained in your psyche. The action, belief, or thought pattern becomes habitual. They happen on autopilot.

The Mind

The malleable nature of our mind can be very dangerous (when unconscious) or very beneficial (when conscious).This shows that we have the power to recondition, reprogram, or rewire our brain — but our harmonic oscillator of a mind won’t let us off that easy.

Reconstruct The Mind

If you want to change your life, you must change your identity.A healthy person does not see eating healthy as a chore. They ARE a person that eats healthy. There is no other option. It is enjoyable to them.A businessman does not see focused work as a burden every morning. They ARE a person who gets work done every morning.Changing your beliefs, identity, and life is not as simple as it sounds.

The Layers Of Identity

The human psyche is wired for survival. When your beliefs, identity, or life is threatened — the brain signals the body, your focus starts to narrow, and you give a bit too much attention to the thoughts flooding your mind. Equilibrium is displaced and your mind starts reacting accordingly to bring you back to homeostasis.The problem is that we live in a completely different world than our ancestors. We are rarely threatened on a physical level. Most of us have shelter, access to food, and the ability to make a living.

We Don't Have The Old Problems

By feeling into the lowest of lows in your life, you start to become fed up with your life situation.You become hyper aware of what is holding you back. You dig deep into the layers of your identity and find just the right piece to remove in order to launch in the opposite direction.This comes with a lot of pain and suffering — and is often uncontrollable. Burning down your metaphorical city may cause some deeper issues leading to another rock bottom years later in life.

How To Reinvent Yourself: Hit rock bottom

Everybody has heard of James Clear’s “One Percent Better Everyday” mantra.It holds a lot of power.When you reconstruct your city piece by piece, you build what would be New Seattle (without having to burn down half the city).Where do you begin?By getting crystal clear on your vision and anti-vision.

How to Reinvent Yourself: Stack Small Wins

If you don’t know what you want, understand what you don’t want and work in the opposite direction.Thanks to our brain's negativity bias, it is easy to observe what you don’t want and start working in the opposite direction.When you outline a vision for your future, it will shine the light of awareness on your blindspots.<ul><li>If you are lost, the answer is education.</li><li>If you are educated, the answer is action.</li><li>If you are acting, the answer is consistency.</li></ul>

Negativity Bias Can Be Used for Good

As you reverse engineer your vision into 10-year, 1-year, and monthly goals — you start to gain clarity on what you need to do in order to actualize that vision.Now, we can break things down into priority tasks.From there — and by far the most important step — is reducing the friction of taking action.What is the smallest mental, physical, emotional, or financial step you can take?Is it putting on your gym shoes and walking out the door?Is it moving one leg and getting off of the couch?Is it investing $25 into a course to show you are serious about improving your skill set?

Working Backwards

Life is chaotic. Ordering consciousness through vision and goal setting is how we gain a sense of certainty and control over our life.Since we are in an age similar to 5th century BC — there is information and an abundance of ideas circulating our world. People are losing trust in externally assigned hierarchies of goals whether it be from corporate culture, organized religions, or formal education.Because of this, you must play an active role in constructing your life. This requires personal responsibility, massive self-belief, and the realization that nobody is coming to save you.

Actively Construct Your Life

It is in your hands to collect and organize the abundant information in the world and organize it in a way that will result in a fulfilling income source, radiating health, an ordered mind, and a connected spirit.Most of your limitations are self-imposed. If you want something, there’s always a way – your mind just won’t let you see it.

If You Want Something, Go Get It

<ul><li>If you believe you are in the middle of a storm, you will be.</li><li>If you believe you are having fun on a roller coaster of waves, you will have fun.</li></ul>How do you actively construct your life?Through consciousness, creativity, and intention.The easiest way to do this is by treating every facet of your life as a project.

Your Life Is A Project

Here is all you need to start changing your life:<ul><li>Purchase a blank notebook</li><li>In big letters write “My Scientific Journal”</li><li>Treat your mind, body, spirit, and business as a lifelong project</li><li>Note observations, test small changes, analyze the results, and double down on what works</li><li>Stay conscious and aware through silent observation.</li><li>Self-educate to expand awareness and uncover new paths.</li><li>Hypothesize and experiment with solutions that will solve your problems.</li><li>Analyze the result and get feedback.</li><li>Document a replicable process that can help other people and bring you more feedback.</li><li>Rinse and repeat.</li></ul>

The Notebook

Life is a project and all you need is a notepad to reconstruct it.

How To Reinvent Yourself

Whenever you have something that you want, you have to be patient. In weight loss, you must be patient until the results show up. In a job search, you must be patient until something happens. Looking for love, house hunting, or promotion all generate the necessity of patience.

Patient experiences

A goal creates desire. The waiting period to get to that goal creates restlessness. Patience is all about managing your restlessness. Your patience will be tested like an elastic. The more stretched the elastic, the more likely you are to act unnaturally. For example, your performance level at work will drop if you don't get a promotion after an expected period. A lack of patience can force you to lower your demands. But, the reality is often different.

The goal often forces you to cut corners

<ul><li>Realign the purpose of a goal. A goal shows you where you need to go. It's your actions that get you there. Once you know the direction, only use the goal to check if you are still on the right path.</li><li>Find a suitable distraction. For example, finding a job is a most stressful process. It requires a lot of patience. For example, when you apply and go for interviews, you have to wait for a result. During this period, distract yourself with another activity. Read a book, build your side hustle, watch a movie.</li></ul> The key is not to obsess over a goal but find distractions to keep your mind off it.

How to control the elasticity of patience

The lack of patience forces us to choose paths we ideally wouldn't.

Throughout my life, there have been phases when I wanted something but had to wait for eons before I got that. But that started to change when I entered a semi-military boarding school. Back there…

How to Master The Painful Elasticity of Patience

We often mistakenly believe that achieving our goals will make us happy.  Whether you're aiming to run a marathon, get a work promotion or buy your first house, when meeting the goal, you will initially feel delighted, but soon after, you find yourself back at your usual level of happiness or even have a feeling of emptiness.  The disappointment of experiencing the expected happiness only briefly can impact your well-being. Instead, it's important to reframe our goals so you can avoid the anti-climax.

“When I achieve this goal, then I will be happy” 

Our ability to imagine how something will make us feel is often flawed because of the impact bias.  The impact bias leads us to overestimate the positive impact the accomplishment of a goal will have and underestimate how other events or feelings may influence the way we feel. After reaching a goal, you'll be happy for a short while, but despite reaching your goal, another goal will appear, and you'll assume that achieving the next goal will lead to more happiness. Yet, the list of goals is never completed.

The short-lived nature of goal-based happiness

The arrival fallacy affects us in multiple ways by influencing future decision-making and emotional well-being. For instance, if the initial thrill of finishing a marathon fades after two days and leaves you feeling empty, you may conclude that aiming to excel is not worth the hardship. Or, you may immediately start exploring new challenges to reach that short-lived peak of happiness again.

The impact of the arrival fallacy

You can't reach happiness after achieving a goal. Achieving a goal may give you a short-term boost, but your levels of happiness will continue to rise and fall according to the internal and external events you experience. Everyone falls prey to this fallacy, from ordinary individuals to highly-educated people.

Happiness is not a static destination

The key is to repackage your motivation to change your perspective, making the process of achieving your goals as important as a result. <ul><li>Avoid when/then happiness projections. Instead of thinking, “I will be happy when I...", practice mindfulness and take note of what currently makes you happy.</li><li>Focus on the journey, not the outcome. Enjoy the process so that you are not only hoping for joy at the finishing point. This way, regardless of the product, the journey will have been worth the work.</li><li>Celebrate minor milestones.</li></ul>

How to avoid the arrival fallacy

When we tie our happiness to the achievement of a goal, we fall prey to the arrival fallacy.

“When I achieve this goal, then I will be happy.” We often mistakenly believe that achieving our goals will make us happy. That tendency is called the arrival fallacy.

problemsolving

Problem Solving

The arrival fallacy: why we should decouple our happiness from our goals

Some people are apparently more afraid of starting their own business than jumping out of a plane. That’s how powerful the fear of failure can be.We’d rather do something that could get us killed than do something new. Researchers found that about a third of Americans are more afraid of starting their own company than sky diving.Even if many of them hate their jobs and want to quit. Why are we so afraid of doing something new?<ul><li>Moving to a different city, state, or country</li><li>Going to activities by ourselves</li><li>Starting a business</li><li>Switching careers</li></ul>

Jumping Out Of A Plane Is Easier Than A Startup

When you’re afraid to take the first step towards doing something new, like going for a different career path, starting a business, writing your first book, etc., the best thing to do is to do a bit of research.A study found that one of the best ways an entrepreneur can overcome feelings of fear is through information seeking. That’s probably why Bill Gates reads about 50 books a year and even takes two-week “reading vacations” now and then.

Learning Is the First Step

People create goals in 2 ways: By being proactive, meaning they are motivated by achieving a positive outcome. And by being avoidant, meaning they develop goals to avoid something undesirable.It’s the difference between people who play the game to win. And others who play to avoid losing. The thing is, we don’t control most of our results in life.That doesn’t mean we should aim very low. When you’re in a situation where you have no control over the outcomes, remember that you have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength

Be Proactive, Not Avoidant

<ul><li>Learn – Consume as much information as you can in a limited time period.</li><li>Act – There comes a time when you have to put down your book and start practicing what you learned. Many people never start.</li><li>Adjust – Most things we pursue in life are not final. You can always switch jobs, careers, start a different business, pick up new hobbies, move to another city, and so forth. Simply adjust your path if it doesn’t work out.</li></ul>The most important thing about the LAA framework and overcoming the fear of failure is that life is a fluid process.

The LAA framework

Preparation helps you try out new things and go the distance. It’s there to reassure you that you have something to fall back on if things go wrong. Starting a business, switching careers, investing in the stock market as a beginner, and so forth – these aren’t a matter of life and death. Not like walking an actual tightrope between two skyscrapers.When you realize that your psychological fear can be allayed by preparation, you’ll be just fine.

Preparation Is Your Safety Net

A study has shown we’d rather do something that could get us killed than do something new. Here how to overcome your fear of failure.

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

business

Business

Preparation: The Antidote to Fear of Failure - Darius Foroux

As we quarantine with macaroni and cheese, meat and potatoes, and other high-calorie comfort foods to ride out the pandemic, let’s pause to give a moment’s thanks to Liza Minnelli.In 1970, the young actress was perhaps the first—and certainly the most glamorous—to coin the modern usage of the now-well-worn phrase, comfort food. “Comfort food is anything you just yum, yum, yum,” she told syndicated newspaper food columnist Johna Blinn, smacking her lips together. She was daydreaming of a hamburger with all the fixins.

Comfort Food

Before Minnelli, comfort food had been the bland fare of the young, the elderly, and the ill. In the decade after, the two words grew slowly into an inescapable food fad, and now, a half-century later, comfort food has become a trend that will never end.Potatoes were the 1970s original “comfort food,” when the phrase still appeared in quotation marks in newspaper lifestyles sections. Minnelli preferred hers baked with sour cream, pepper, and butter. Philadelphia Inquirer food writer Elaine Tait opted for boiled with bacon, slices of hard-boiled egg, and ripe tomato

Early Comfort Food Was Bland

Chicken soup also quickly earned the title, a soothing meal with an appeal that cut across demographic divides. But from there, tastes diverged.The key word in Minnelli’s definition, it turned out, hadn’t been “yum” but “you.” The comfort foods of the 1970s were intensely personal, something enjoyed at home and alone. People confessed to craving butter and sweet onions on rye, sardines straight from the can, brown sugar sandwiches, salted peanuts and milk, and soggy cornflakes.

What Your Like

In the pages of Bon Appétit, M.F.K Fisher rhapsodized about milk toast, a dish that “seems to soothe nerves and muscles and mind altogether.” She published the only recipe for comfort food anyone will ever need. You can debate the merits of buttered toast drowned in warm milk seasoned with salt, pepper, and paprika, but not the final step in its preparation.Before eating, she writes, “walk gently to wherever you have decided to feel right in your skin.”

Preparing Your Own Comfort Food

Giving these sometimes-unusual dishes the label comfort food was a bit of permission to admit to one’s indulgences—at least until the diet industry tried to claim the term. Their idea of comfort had always been a little bit different.In a 1966 book titled “The Thin Book by a Formerly Fat Psychiatrist,” Theodore Rubin listed tea as his top comforting food. Now the diet-conscious warned of the dangers of eating for emotional gratification, ensuring that our favourite dishes would henceforth be served with a side of guilt.

Whatever We Want To Indulge In

By the turn of the decade, “mood food” swung from savoury to sweet. The country sought sinful solace in ice cream, pudding, pie, and, of course, chocolate.The 1970s and early 1980s gave us plenty of foods we’ve all but forgotten—fondue, bread bowls, raspberry vinaigrette—and at first, comfort food followed the same trajectory: from popularity to commodification to backlash.

The Forgotten Comfort Food

Among the earliest cookbooks to spot the public’s yearning was The Best of Electric Crockery Cooking. When it was published in 1976, the book sold itself as a gourmet’s guide to the new-fangled Crock Pot. But, by 1978, it was advertising its step-by-step instructions for meatloaf and minestrone. Thousands of similar titles have been published in the decades since, offering “quick,” “modern,” “familiar,” “shareable,” “gluten-free,” “keto” and “vegan” comfort food recipes.

The Cookbooks

For years, countless diners and cafeterias had been serving the type of 1950s middle-class, Midwestern cuisine that was, by the mid-1980s, what people meant when they said “comfort food.” By the early 1980s, the country’s top chefs wanted a taste. The Los Angeles Times marvelled at the attention lavished on rice pudding by kitchens better known for their caviar.

The Diners

Meanwhile, the food writer Jane Stern despaired at the phone calls from high-end restaurants she and her husband, Michael, fielded after publishing their cookbook on the topic. These dishes didn’t belong in fancy dining rooms, especially not at twice the price. “The point is that food is more than food—it’s heart strings—it’s memory,” she said. In 1988, the decidedly upscale Food & Wine magazine declared comfort food to be “hot.”

The Mags

The dueling diet trends of the 1990s should have spelled the end for comfort food. The decade began with low-fat and then no-fat products crowding the supermarket shelves and ended with its mirror image: the low-carb dictates of Atkins. The 1993 debut of the Food Network, too, should have doomed the trend. Bobby Flay and Emeril Lagasse turned every home cook into a professional chef, experimenting with new ingredients and creating picture-perfect plates.

The New Diet Trends

Science has tried to explain this persistent draw. One <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25756731?mag=a-brief-history-of-comfort-food">straightforward answer</a> offered by a team of food scientists writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences credits comfort food’s appeal to its nutritional make up. Many dishes are high in fat or sugar, substances that the body can process into temporary stress relief. Psychologists have explored a more complicated connection between food and individual memory, theorizing that well-loved dishes can evoke the same feelings of security or contentment they did when the diner was younger.

The Food We Loved When We Were Young

Our newest culinary trend is also our oldest.

A Brief History of Comfort Food

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