'Need'

Just jumping from one task to another in your to-do list or calendar does not help the mind absorb anything or learn.

The mind needs reflection time to digest information, filter out the mind-noise and convert meaning into learning. It pays to sit back and reflect, even if you feel irritated, vulnerable or bored.

From online learning for school kids to contactless delivery of Amazon products, the ongoing pandemic has already shown us many social, economical and cultural changes.

Embracing change and the new ways of doing things that were not feasible or acceptable earlier is the way forward, and makes us ready even in times of uncertainty.

A very important step when starting to work as a freelancer is to actually call your business as what is: a ‘freelance business’.

These kind of words encourage your clients to perceive you as being trustworthy while giving you a better feeling of ownership.

Whenever we hear the ‘I need…’ words, we all tend to get a bit irritated by this way of being requested to provide something that always seems of the most utter importance.

On the other hand, there are expressions which could easily replace the ‘ I need…’ while giving the other person the impression that everything is under control.

Michelle admitted that it wasn't always easy to keep calm in the face of racism and all the other obstinate behavior they faced. She succeeded because she knew who she was and felt that becoming bitter would not make her victorious.

The lesson is that having grace for people takes practice.

Michelle Obama says people's stories are more important than statistics.

She feels humanity would be more tolerant if we learned more about people's stories and cared less about status indicators.

Unless it is completely uncalled for, negative feedback generally has the intention of informing us about our areas of improvement. If feedback isn’t provided, you may not grow and improve. If no one tells you that you are doing something wrong, you will keep doing it wrongly forever.

Providing timely feedback may be a sign that the manager cares and wants you to improve.

One should not be defensive when provided with negative feedback, and understand that it is for our own good.

One needs to act on the feedback by approaching it from a neutral and objective standpoint, not taking it as a personal attack. Instead of reacting, just pause and listen. Reflect on the feedback, giving yourself some time and space to respond with a level head.

Most people tend to visualize themselves as being the same after a decade, mistakenly assuming that the current version of us is our best and last one. We are a work-in-progress with our skills, likes, dislikes change over time, making us completely different from what we think we would be.

There are three main steps that can help us blossom into someone desirable: Distinguishing our various selves, imagining our desired future self, and changing our identity narrative.

• Labelling ourselves into definitive personality types (like an introvert or not being a people’s person) limits our minds and robs us of our space to evolve and change over time.
• We get stuck in the self-labelling and the various ‘accepted truths’ about ourselves that we assume cannot change.

The truth is we are never the same person as we were in the past.

If we look at our dreams and the brain’s capacity to hallucinate, we can see that nothing outside our existence may be real.

Everything could be an illusion, a long dream, and we could be the only person that existed in a world of ‘Maya’. This is what solipsism is all about.

The philosophy of idealism states that reality is something that exists on a mental level, and many or most of our outer experiences could just be imagination.

You have conscious control of about 10% of your brain. Most of your judgments, prioritizations, decisions, and actions are happening in your subconscious. Many of these processes are running on default programs to maintain the current position.

One reason change is hard is that you're often working against these defaults. You can change the defaults by giving your brain a concrete goal.

A well worked out goal sets the compass in your subconscious. It's not going to change your bad habits instantly but will serve as a guide when you make a choice.

When your brain is set on a course, it helps those default programs work for you instead of against you.

There are five categories of inner experiences:

• Inner speaking, which comes in many forms
• Inner seeing, which comes from things you've seen in real life or imaginary visuals
• Feeling, such as happiness or anger
• Sensory awareness, like being aware of the feeling of a carpet
• Unsymbolized thinking, which is a thought that doesn't manifest as words or images.

Most of us are aware of the internal dialogue – rather than a monologue - where we talk to someone inside our head. Often, that other voice is another aspect of ourselves.

There are four kinds of inner voices: the faithful friend, the ambivalent parent, the proud rival, and the helpless child. We might adopt these different roles to help ourselves get through situations.

Speed reading uses methods such as chunking, scanning, reducing subvocalization, and using meta guiding. For example, reading the first sentence of each paragraph can indicate if it's worth reading more or to move on. Or guiding your eye by using your finger.

Some researchers looked into speed reading and found there is a trade-off between speed and accuracy.

Speed reading can help you skim to content, which is useful at times. However, speed reading cannot help you read faster and retain more information.

• Our eyes are designed only to see a tiny portion of our visual field with the precision needed to recognise a letter in a 10 to 12 point font. Everything outside that small area is blurry. The idea promoted by speed reading that we can use our peripheral vision to see whole sentences is biologically impossible.
• While we spend most of our time reading forward, our eyes often go back to reread some text. This is the way our brain links content together. Speed reading attempts to help you read faster by showing one word at a time. This has a bad impact on overall comprehension.