The insurmountable mountain top in picture, few steep climbs and heavy breaths later. May be we should do this tomorrow, we did start late as the hotel owner said. There is a mid way cafe, we can chill there and go down and tomorrow get a fresh start.Is it this or we are already giving up or the Inner procrastinator banks on the fact we have tomorrow to do this.Listen to the frail sound, Keep going.

Be the hero, you seek

How far to the top? “You will reach by evening.”, it was only 10.30a.m. 🤨“Some said 5–6 , some said by 4–5” .Then some one says 2–3 and some one finally said “1.30, you guys are making quick time.”The small note of encouragement put a spring to our feet. Suddenly, the air felt colder, the good kind and the mood uplifted. The jolly tune started humming in the head.

Different people have different opinions, find yours

One step at a time, take immediate action not overwhelmed by large goals.The mountain on the whole looks daunting. But when you think I will take 10 steps and see. And then you take 10 steps. When the 10 steps will tough, you say let’s take one step and see. And we literally did this, as we reached top steep parts of trek we took 2 steps and stopped, then other two steps. But we kept going.

Big Goals, small actions 

Stop, take a deep breath and look back. Soak in where you are, plan again where you want to go. Look at the last once unsurmountable point on the mountain, now seems like a distant victory. Then look around, soak in where you have reached and then look at the next unsurmountable peak and remind yourself, you will conquer it.

Don’t be blinded by your goals 

Mind wants to protect you, it will try to run in opposite direction. To save you from the physical and the mental pain of giving up. It will prefer, I could have but never tried . But, if you block it and keep going. New paths will open up. New belief system will develop.When you reach the peak, you will be surprised. I did it. You will reflect, I had my moments of doubt but I did it. This is far beyond my physical capacity, this was my initial thought. I was wrong. The good kind of wrong, the kind which puts a wry smile on your face.

You can do more than the limit you set for yourself 

The insurmountable mountain top in picture, few steep climbs and heavy breath later. May be we should do this tomorrow, we did start late as the hotel owner said. There is a mid way cafe, we can…

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

communication

Communication

Life Lessons from a Mountain Trek

The torrent of accelerated time without narrative is disorienting our society and fragmenting community, says philosopher Byung-Chul Han. Art can help put the pieces back together.Byung-Chul Han is a South Korea-born German philosopher and cultural theorist whose recent books include “The Burnout Society” and “The Disappearance of Rituals.” He recently spoke to Nathan Gardels, Noema’s editor-in-chief.

The Torrent of Time

Nathan Gardels: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once commented that: “When eras are on the decline, all tendencies are subjective; but, on the other hand, when matters are ripening for a new epoch, all tendencies are objective. Each worthy effort turns its force from the inward to the outward world.” By that definition, ours is an era of decline that has turned from the outward to the inward obsession with identity and “authenticity,” both personal and tribal, fueled by digital connectivity.

Digital Connectivity

Paradoxically, social media in this sense is anti-social, leading to the disintegration of community through a kind of connected isolation. What is the dynamic and what are the mechanisms behind what you call “the crisis of community?” What are the consequences in how we feel and live in our daily lives?

The Crisi of Community

Byung-Chul Han: The inwardly turned, narcissistic ego with purely subjective access to the world is not the cause of social disintegration but the result of a fateful process at the objective level. Everything that binds and connects is disappearing. There are hardly any shared values or symbols, no common narratives that unite people. Truth, the provider of meaning and orientation, is also a narrative. We are very well informed, yet somehow we cannot orient ourselves. The informatization of reality leads to its atomization — separated spheres of what is thought to be true.

Atomization

But truth, unlike information, has a centripetal force that holds society together. Information, on the other hand, is centrifugal, with very destructive effects on social cohesion. If we want to comprehend what kind of society we are living in, we need to understand the nature of information. Bits of information provide neither meaning nor orientation. They do not congeal into a narrative. They are purely additive. From a certain point onwards, they no longer inform — they deform. They can even darken the world. This puts them in opposition to truth.

A Centripetal Force

Truth illuminates the world, while information lives off the attraction of surprise, pulling us into a permanent frenzy of fleeting moments. We greet information with a fundamental suspicion: Things might be otherwise. Contingency is a trait of information, and for this reason fake news is a necessary element of the informational order. So fake news is just another piece of information, and before any process of verification can begin, it has already done its work. It rushes past truth, and truth cannot catch up. Fake news is truth-proof.

Fake News

“Bits of information provide neither meaning nor orientation. They do not congeal into a narrative.”Information goes along with fundamental suspicion. The more we are confronted with information, the more our suspicion grows. Information is Janus-faced, produces certainty and uncertainty. A fundamental structural ambivalence is inherent in an information society. Truth, by contrast, reduces contingency. We cannot build a stable community or stable democracy on a mass of contingencies. Democracy requires binding values and ideals, and shared convictions. Today, democracy gives way to infocracy.

Information is Janus-faced

As you suggest in your question, another reason for the crisis of community, which is a crisis of democracy, is digitalization. Digital communication redirects the flows of communication. Information is spread without forming a public sphere. It is produced in private spaces and distributed to private spaces. The web does not create a public. This has highly deleterious consequences for the democratic process. Social media intensify this kind of communication without community. You cannot forge a public sphere out of influencers and followers.

Communication Without Community

Digital communities have the form of commodities; ultimately, they are commodities.“Today, we no longer have any narratives that provide meaning and orientation for our lives. Narratives crumble and decay into information.”Of course, there was information in the past, too. But it did not determine society to such a degree as today. In antiquity, mythical narratives determined people’s lives and behavior. The Middle Ages were, for many, determined by the Christian narrative. But information was embedded in narration: An outbreak of the plague was not pure, simple information.

Communities like Commodities

It was integrated into the Christian narrative of sin.  Today, by contrast, we no longer have any narratives that provide meaning and orientation for our lives. Narratives crumble and decay into information. With some exaggeration, we might say that there is nothing butinformation without any hermeneutic horizon for interpretation, without any method of explanation.Pieces of information do not coalesce into knowledge or truth, which are forms of narration. The narrative vacuum in an information society makes people feel discontent, especially in times of crisis, such as the pandemic.

The Narrative of Sin

People invent narratives to explain a tsunami of disorienting figures and data. Often these narratives are called conspiracy theories, but they cannot simply be reduced to collective narcissism. They readily explain the world. On the web, spaces open to make experiences of identity and collectivity possible again. The web, thus, is tribalized — predominantly among right-wing political groups where there is a very strong need for identity. In these circles, conspiracy theories are taken up as offers for assuming an identity.

Conspiracy Theories

Friedrich Nietzsche once said that our happiness consists of the possession of a non-negotiable truth. Today, we no longer have such non-negotiable truths. Instead, we have an over-abundance of information. I am not sure that the information society is a continuation of the Enlightenment. Maybe we need a new kind of enlightenment. On a new enlightenment, Nietzsche noted: “It does not suffice that you realize the ignorance in which humans and animals live, you also have to have the will to be ignorant and learn more.

Over-Abundance of Information

You need to comprehend that without this kind of ignorance life would become impossible, that only on condition of this ignorance can what lives preserve itself and flourish.”Gardels: As you wrote in your most recent book, societal rituals once created that objective narrative bond that held societies together. They “stabilized life” as you put it.

Societal Rituals

Now such rituals are under assault by the wrecking ball of deconstruction as nothing more than the designs of the privileged of the past who had the power to impose them. In today’s horizontal world with no legitimate value hierarchy, subjective projection steps in to fill the vacuum. Out of these ruins of an objective order, how can stabilizing anchors of ritual ever be reestablished? On what basis? On whose authority? What will life look like if that is not possible?

A Horizontal World

Han: I would not promote a reactivation of past rituals. This is simply not possible because the rituals of Western culture are very closely associated with the Christian narrative. And everywhere the Christian narrative is losing its power. There is little left of it beyond Christmastime.Rituals found a community. Contrary to the suggestion in your question, it is not inevitable that rituals solidify existing power relations. Quite the opposite. During Carnival, power relations are reversed, so that the slaves can criticize and even mock their masters.

Western Culture

Often roles are exchanged: The masters serve their slaves. And the fool ascends the throne as king. This ritualized temporary suspension of the power structure stabilizes the community.“After the pandemic, what is most in need of recovery is culture.”In a world that is completely without rituals and wholly profane, all that is left are consumption and the satisfaction of needs. It is Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” in which every want is immediately gratified. The people are kept in good spirits with the help of fun, consumption and entertainment.

Recovery of Culture

The state distributes a drug called soma in order to increase feelings of happiness in the population. Maybe in our brave new world, people will receive a universal basic income and have unlimited access to video games. That would be the new version of panem et circensem (“bread and circuses”).I am, however, not completely pessimistic. Perhaps we shall develop new narratives, ones that do not presuppose a hierarchy. We can easily imagine a flat narrative. Every narrative develops rituals for the purposes of making it habitual, embedding it in the physical body. Culture founds community.

Panem et Circensem

After the pandemic, what is most in need of recovery is culture. Cultural events such as theater, dance and even football have a ritual character. The only way in which we can revitalize community is through ritual forms. Today, culture is held together solely by instrumental and economic relations. But that does not found communities — it isolates people. Art, in particular, should play a central role in the revitalization of rituals.“Rituals stabilize life by structuring time.”

Revitalization of Rituals

What we need most are temporal structures that stabilize life. When everything is short-term, life loses all stability. Stability comes over long stretches of time: faithfulness, bonds, integrity, commitment, promises, trust. These are the social practices that hold a community together. They all have a ritual character. They all require a lot of time. Today’s terror of short-termism — which, with fatal consequences, we mistake for freedom — destroys the practices that require time. To combat this terror, we need a very different temporal politics.

A Very Different Temporal Politics

In “The Little Prince,” the fox wants to be visited by the little prince always at the same hour, so that his visit becomes a ritual. The little prince asks the fox what a ritual is, and the fox replies: “Those also are actions too often neglected. … They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours.” Rituals can be defined as temporal technologies for housing oneself. They turn being in the world into being at home. Rituals are in time as things are in space. They stabilize life by structuring time.

Rituals

They give us festive spaces, so to speak, spaces we can enter in celebration. As temporal structures, rituals arrest time. Temporal spaces we can enter in celebration do not pass away. Without such temporal structures, time becomes a torrent that tears us apart from each other and away from ourselves. Gardels: You have said that you look to art as “the savior” from the conditions you’ve been describing since philosophy today lacks the transformational quality it once had. What did you mean by that?

Temporal Structures

Han: Philosophy has the power to change the world: European science began only with Plato and Aristotle; without Rousseau, Voltaire and Kant, the European Enlightenment would be unthinkable. Nietzsche made the world appear in an entirely new light. Marx’s “Capital” founded a new epoch. Today, however, philosophy has completely lost this world-changing power. It is no longer capable of producing a novel narrative. Philosophy degenerates into an academic, specialist discipline. It is not turned toward the world and the present. “Art is nearer to the heart of creation than philosophy.”

Change the World

How can we reverse this development and make sure that philosophy regains its world-changing power, its magic? My feeling is that art, as opposed to philosophy, is still in a position where it can evoke the glimmer of a new form of life. Art has always brought forth a new reality, a new form of perception. All his life, Paul Klee said: “Immanently, I cannot be grasped at all. Because I live with the dead, just as I live with the unborn. A bit nearer to the heart of creation than is usual. And not near enough at all yet.”

A New Form of Perception

It is possible that art is nearer to the heart of creation than philosophy. It is therefore capable of letting something entirely new begin. The revolution can begin with as little as an unheard-of color, an unheard-of sound.

The Heart of Creation

Philosopher Byung-Chul Han: Art can “evoke the glimmer of a new form of life.”

philosophy

Philosophy

problemsolving

Problem Solving

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

All That Is Solid Melts Into Information | NOEMA

Usability is “the extent to which a product helps users achieve goals in a specific use case with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction.”

What is Usability? 

A good user experience = More satisfied users + less errors/mistakes + more revenue for the businessAs designers, we want the products we build to be satisfying and easy to use, but how can we know that’s the case? We start by measuring the user experience with evidence rather than opinions and evaluate the outcome with UX metrics.What do we do with the data obtained? We refine products iteratively and impact users for good.

Why measure usability of a product? 

UX metrics are a set of quantitative data points used to measure, compare and track the user experience of a website/app over time. UX metrics measure success towards higher business goals called KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) such as revenue growth, retention, increased user numbers.

What are UX metrics? 

Before collecting data, it’s a good idea to outline a basic measurement strategy.<ul><li>Decide which metrics to measure.</li><li>Establish clear timeframes in order to understand the trends that emerge. The metrics gathered in a single day may tell a much different story than those gathered over the course of a week.</li><li>Use both qualitative and quantitative metrics</li></ul>

But First..... 

There are 2 types of UX metrics:<ol><li>Behavioral metrics - that study how people interact with the product </li><li>Attitudinal metrics - explore how people feel and say about the product before, during or after using it</li></ol>

Types of UX Metrics

<ol><li class="ql-align-justify">Task Success Rate - what percentage of users complete each step in a user flow.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Time on Task - how long a user spends completing a specific task (on first attempt and on repeat attempts)</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Conversion Rate - % of users who took a certain action ( e.g. subscribed or bought something)</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Retention Rate - what percentage of users continue using your product long-term.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Search vs Navigation Pattern - This ratio can provide information about the pages/features most frequently used.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">User Error Rate - how often users make a mistake during a specific task. </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Abandonment Rate - % of users abandoning a task</li></ol>

Behavioral Metrics

<ol><li>Net Promoter Score (NPS) - On a scale of 0-10how willing they are to promote you to their network</li><li>System Usability Scale (SUS)- one of the most popular questionnaires used to assess the usability of a product. It consists of 10 statements that users need to rate on a five-point scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree.</li><li>Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) - measures users’ satisfaction with your website or webapp. After they attempt a task, regardless of whether they manage to achieve its goal or not, have them answer one or a few questions about how difficult the task was.</li></ol>

Attitudinal Metrics

https://sematext.com/blog/ux-metrics/

More on How to Calculate these Metrics... 

As designers, we want the products we build to be satisfying and easy to use, but how can we be sure that we’re actually solving the problems users face? It all starts by measuring the user experience with evidence rather than opinions.

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

Important UX Metrics to Measure User Experience 

An act of deception can be detrimental, leading to hurt feelings, damaged relationships, and even imprisonment. Lying can lead to cheating or stealing, among other sinister motives. There is, however, a way to detect lies before they do any damage.

20 Ways To Spot Deception Before You Fall for It

Detecting deception is a valuable skill for anyone to learn. It helps people make<a href="https://motivatedprogress.com/how-to-make-better-decisions/"> intelligent choices </a>with business, friendships, and more. It can save you years of wasted effort and help you dodge scams. You’ll also save the confidence you’d lose from someone taking advantage of you.

Detect deception

<ul><li>Self-deception is also known as lying to yourself and believing it. </li><li><a href="https://motivatedprogress.com/the-dangers-of-confirmation-bias-and-10-ways-to-stop-it/">Confirmation bias </a>is a delusional thought someone believes despite proof that it’s false. </li><li>Exaggeration makes something seem much better or worse than it was.</li><li>An omission is a primarily true story, except the deceiver doesn’t include the vital aspects that make it a lie.</li><li>Denial or refusal to admit the truth.</li><li>Gaslighting or misleading someone into thinking they’re going crazy.</li><li>Self-serving lies and manipulation are falsehoods to get what the deceiver wants.</li></ul>

Types of deception

People who habitually lie all the time are considered pathological liars. It’s not a big deal to them, and they’ll lie to anyone. They will lie easily and not feel remorse for it.

Beware of pathological liars

Deception can be harmful, leading to hurt feelings, damaged relationships, and even prison time. Lies can have nefarious purposes, such as cheating or stealing. But there are ways to spot it before it causes damage.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

Motivated Progress

Too needy – or afraid to commit? Your attachment style is shaped by your upbringing, but you can alter it.

How to be more secure in your relationships..

The child psychologist John Bowlby, who argued for our deep-seated desire for affection early in life, founded attachment science in the 1950s.

1.Your attachment style has its roots in your childhood.

Early life experiences with your caregivers affect your expectations of what to expect from relationships throughout your life, both consciously and unconsciously.

2.Your attachment style plays out in your adult relationships.

This will assist you in comprehending why you behave in certain ways in relationships.

3.Identify your current attachment style.

A secure attachment style exists, as well as three insecure attachment styles: anxious, avoidant, and disorganised. The common thread between them all is that you often expect to get treated based on how you got treated.

4.Understand the four attachment styles.

You're more prone to repeat the same behaviours and conflicts if you and your relationship partner don't understand each other's attachment patterns.

5.Examine the attachment styles of those you love.

There are ways to start changing your attachment style intentionally, not just in romantic relationships, but also with friends, family, and coworkers, if you want to. Part of this entails recognising patterns in your behaviour and practising alternate responses.

6.Work towards changing your attachment style.

You can now take a breath, and try to prevent an angry, defensive response that you might have reached for in the past...

Too clingy – or too scared to commit? Your attachment style is rooted in your childhood, but you can change it

health

Health

How to be more secure in your relationships | Psyche Guides

I was extra pleased to have swerved the modern curse that is Wordle when I read that ‘sensitive’ words have been removed from it. A spokesman proclaimed: ‘In an effort to make the puzzle more accessible, we are reviewing the solutions and removing obscure or potentially insensitive words over time. HARRY is an example of an obscure word.’ Other more obviously ‘insensitive’ words had already been removed, such as ‘sluts,’ ‘bitch’ and ‘whore’, and though I’m the most rad of femmes, I do wish they’d stayed. Removing ribaldry makes the language increasingly bland.

Wordle: Sensitive Words

‘Sensitivity’ is one of those words that’s changed its meaning. It was once used mostly to refer to sore teeth and gums. But just as ‘community’ now means people complaining and ‘activist’ now means sitting at home swearing on the internet, to be sensitive simply signifies you’re politically progressive.In 2015, in this magazine, I invented the term cry-bully to describe a new type: ‘A hideous hybrid of victim and victor, weeper and walloper.’ Cry-bullies are everywhere, the duplicitous Pushmi-Pullyus of the personal and the political. And for a cry-bully, almost everything’s too insensitive.

Sensitivity

They’re ‘empaths’, they say, deeply disturbed by anything unpleasant.If it was just Gen Z being soppy, you could slightly excuse it. But when middle-aged men and women who you respected for their apparent insouciance claim to be ‘empaths’, it’s hard not to despair. Witness John Lydon saying that punk was about ‘empathy’. Really? From where I was standing – right at the front of the crowd at the Screen on the Green – it was about anger and spite. But no doubt I got the wrong end of the stick.

Empaths

The Sex Pistols took issue with everyone, from girls who had abortions (‘Bodies’) to the Queen (not a human being, apparently). If this is empathy, then surely it’s only a matter of time before the surviving members of the Clash pop up and tell us that the line from their song ‘Hate and War’ – ‘I hate Englishmen, they’re just as bad as wops!’ – was a profoundly empathetic cry for international brotherhood.

International Brotherhood

I know that narcissists are public enemy number one these days, but if I had to live in a world solely composed of narcissists or empaths, I’d choose the former for the simple reason that it would be more fun. Under the influence of the sensitivity police, Coronation Street, once a haven of wisecracking broads and brawling sex-bombs, has become one long therapy session wherein the formerly feisty female characters inhabit ceaseless hamster wheels of being ‘in bits’, ‘destroyed’ and ‘broken’.

Coronation Street

I know that we’ve come out of a two-year pandemic with untold economic woes just around the corner, but it surely can’t be only me who wakes up each morning excited about facing yet another day in this beautiful world? And even if a lot of us are mis, shouldn’t entertainment elevate rather than lower our mood?If television is getting you down, why not escape into a good book? Better make it an old one though. Ever since publishers started to employ sensitivity readers, modern books have been free from old-fashioned escapist fun.

Escapist fun

As Zoe Dubno has written in The Spectator: ‘For critics, these individuals [sensitivity readers] are the latest stage of the culture wars: woke-ifying new books before readers even have the chance to read them. For publishers they offer a seductively cheap way of reducing the risk of a book or its author being cancelled and the ensuing reputational and profit damage to the firm… Often it seems less like a check on upsetting and harmful language than a safeguard against white, middle-class authors and publishers needing to change their social circles, ideologies or publishing staff in any way.’

Zoe Dubno

Young Adult novels are especially sensitive to sensitivity; my 2004 teenage novel Sugar Rush probably wouldn’t be allowed today, as one of the young lesbians would need to be trans and I wouldn’t, as a white woman, be allowed to write a mixed-race heroine. (Oddly, the demographic which is most ‘sensitive’ about fictional violence is the same one which favours as a leisure pursuit what I call ‘Netflix and kill’: the true-crime genre – deaths of real people rendered down into entertainment.)

Sensitive to Sensitivity

Where once we could laugh at the overly sensitive for being wimps, now the wimps have got together and agreed they they’re simply special, some higher order of being, able to look down on the plebs who can take the hard knocks life routinely hands out and prance merrily on, without recourse to the law or the shrink. ‘Highly Sensitive People’ (HSPs) are the latest belles of the Mental Elf Ball, with Nicole Kidman, Alanis Morissette and Kanye West claiming membership. That last one should be a dead giveaway. I wouldn’t want to be part of any club Kanye West belonged to.

Highly Sensitive People

The elevation of sensitivity over all other human emotions makes for a bland culture; spite is the Tabasco in the Bloody Mary of life, and it often does the recipient good. Once we were allowed to be cruel to be kind if the situation called for it: yes, your bum does look big in that; no, you shouldn’t waste your time trying to be a writer.

A Bland Culture

Now, if we are not kind to an extreme degree, we will be demonised. I understand that some people are tender, but that doesn’t mean the tough should have to mute themselves. The next time a joke offends, maybe try replying in kind rather than violently? Quipping well is the best revenge. <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-cult-of-sensitivity">The Spectator - written by Julie Burchill</a>

Quipping Well

I was extra pleased to have swerved the modern curse that is Wordle when I read that ‘sensitive’ words have been removed from it. A spokesman proclaimed: ‘In an effort to make the puzzle more accessible, we are reviewing the solutions and removing obscure or potentially insensitive words over time. ...

parenting

Parenting

The cult of sensitivity | The Spectator

Leaders are effective because of who they are on the inside—in the qualities that make them up as people. And to go to the highest level of leadership, people have to develop these traits from the inside out.Everything rises and falls on leadership. And leadership truly develops from the inside out. If you can become the leader you ought to be on the inside, you will be able to become the leader you want to be on the outside. People will want to follow you. And when that happens, you’ll be able to tackle anything in this world.

Leadership Is An Internal Quality

Leadership is the capacity and will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence.

How a leader deals with the circumstances of life tells you many things about his character. Crisis doesn’t necessarily make character, but it certainly does reveal it. Adversity is a crossroads that makes a person choose one of two paths: character or compromise. Every time he chooses character, he becomes stronger, even if that choice brings negative consequences.

CHARACTER: Be a Piece of the Rock

• Search for the cracks. Spend some time looking at the major areas of your life (work, marriage, family, service, etc.), and identify anywhere you might have cut corners, compromised, or let people down.• Look for patterns. Examine the responses that you just wrote down.• Face the music. The beginning of character repair comes when you face your flaws, apologize, and deal with the consequences of your actions.•Rebuild. It’s one thing to face up to your past actions. It’s another to build a new future.

Improving Your Character

How can you have charisma? Be more concerned about making others feel good about themselves than you are making them feel good about you.

Roadblocks to charisma:Pride. Nobody wants to follow a leader who thinks he is better than everyone else.Insecurity. If you are uncomfortable with who you are, others will be too.Moodiness. If people never know what to expect from you, they stop expecting anything.Perfectionism. People respect the desire for excellence, but dread totally unrealistic expectations.Cynicism. People don’t want to be rained on by someone who sees a cloud around every silver lining.

CHARISMA: The First Impression Can Seal the Deal

If you want to be an effective leader, you have to be committed. True commitment inspires and attracts people. It shows them that you have conviction. They will believe in you only if you believe in your cause. When it comes to commitment, there are really only four types of people:1. Cop-outs. People who have no goals and do not commit.2. Holdouts. People who don’t know if they can reach their goals, so they’re afraid to commit.3. Dropouts. People who start toward a goal but quit when the going gets tough.4. All-outs. People who set goals, commit to them and pay the price to reach them.

COMMITMENT: It Separates Doers from Dreamers

Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.

To improve your communication, do the following:Be clear as a bell. Examine a letter, memo, or other items you’ve recently written.To be a communicator, your best friends are simplicity and clarity. Write your next piece of communication keeping both in mind.Refocus your attention. During the coming week, pay attention to your focus when you communicate. Is it on you, your material, or your audience? Live your message. Are there any discrepancies between what you communicate and what you do? Talk to a few trustworthy people and ask them whether you are living your message.

COMMUNICATION: Without It You Travel Alone

When you think about people who are competent, you’re really considering only three types of people:1. Those who can see what needs to happen.2. Those who can make it happen.3. Those who can make things happen when it really counts.You’re only as good as your private standards. When was the last time you gave a task your absolute best even though nobody but you would know about it?

COMPETENCE: If You Build It, They Will Come

Face the music.Go out and do something stretching simply for the sake of growing in courage. Skydive. Speak in front of an audience (most people’s greatest fear).  It doesn’t matter what you do as long as it causes you to face a genuine fear.Talk to that person.Most people are avoiding confrontation with someone in their lives. If that’s true for you, talk to that person this week. Don’t dump on him or abuse him. Speak the truth in love. Take a giant step.Maybe you’ve been afraid to make a career move. If you’ve known in your heart that you should have changed jobs, now is the time.

COURAGE: One Person with Courage Is a Majority

Discernment can be described as the ability to find the root of the matter, and it relies on intuition as well as rational thought. Effective leaders need discernment, although even good leaders don’t display it all the time.Never ignore a gut feeling, but never believe that it’s enough.

DISCERNMENT: Put an End to Unsolved Mysteries

A leader who knows his priorities but lacks concentration knows what to do but never gets it done. If he has concentration but no priorities, he has excellence without progress. But when he harnesses both, he has the potential to achieve great things.To get back on track with your focus, do these things:<ul><li>Work on yourself. You are your greatest asset or detriment.</li><li>Work at your priorities. You will have to fight for them.</li><li>Work on your strengths. You can reach your potential</li><li>Work with your contemporaries. You can’t be effective alone.</li></ul>

FOCUS: The Sharper It Is, the Sharper You Are

•Give something away. Find out what kind of hold your possessions have on you. Take something you truly value, think of someone you care about who could benefit from it, and give it to him.  •Put your money to work. If you know someone with the vision to do something really great—something that will positively impact the lives of others—provide resources for him to accomplish it.  •Find someone to mentor. Once you reach a certain level in your leadership, the most valuable thing you have to give is yourself. Find someone to pour your life into.

GENEROSITY: Your Candle Loses Nothing When It Lights Another

Don’t wait for opportunity to knock. Opportunity doesn’t come to the door knocking. You’ve got to go out and look for it. Take stock of your assets, talents, and resources. Doing that will give you an idea of your potential. Now, spend every day for a week looking for opportunities. Where do you see needs? Who is looking for the expertise you have? What unreached group of people is practically dying for what you have to offer? Opportunity is everywhere.

INITIATIVE: You Won’t Leave Home Without It

Keep your ear open to these people:1. Your FollowersGood leaders, the kind that people want to follow, do more than conduct business when they interact with followers.  2. Your CustomersGood leaders always make it a priority to keep in contact with the people they’re serving.3. Your CompetitorsAs a leader, you don’t want to base your actions on what the other guy is doing, but you should still listen and learn what you can to improve yourself.4. Your MentorsNo leader is so advanced or experienced that he can afford to be without a mentor.

LISTENING: To Connect with Their Hearts, Use Your Ears

Listen to the whispers and you won’t have to hear the screams.

If you look at the lives of effective leaders, you will find that they often don’t fit into a stereotypical mold. For example, more than 50 percent of all CEOs of Fortune 500 companies had C or C– averages in college. Nearly 75 percent of all U.S. presidents were in the bottom half of their school classes. And more than 50 percent of all millionaire entrepreneurs never finished college. What makes it possible for people who might seem ordinary to achieve great things? The answer is passion. Nothing can take the place of passion in a leader’s life.

PASSION: Take This Life and Love It

If you desire to be an effective leader, having a positive attitude is essential. It not only determines your level of contentment as a person, but it also has an impact on how others interact with you.The greatest discovery of this generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitude.

POSITIVE ATTITUDE: If You Believe You Can, You Can

No leader can simultaneously have his head in the sand and navigate his people through troubled waters. Effective leaders face up to the reality of a situation.The ability to solve problems effectively comes from experience facing and overcoming obstacles. Each time you solve another problem, you get a little better at the process. But if you never try, fail, and try again, you’ll never be good at it.

PROBLEM SOLVING: You Can’t Let Your Problems Be a Problem

<ul><li>TIME—spend time to discover the real issue.</li><li>EXPOSURE—find out what others have done.</li><li>ASSISTANCE—have your team study all angles.</li><li>CREATIVITY —brainstorm multiple solutions.</li><li>HIT IT —implement the best solution</li></ul>

The TEACH Process for Problem Solving

The first quality of a relational leader is the ability to understand how people feel and think. As you work with others, recognize that all people, whether leaders or followers, have some things in common:<ul><li>They like to feel special, so sincerely compliment them.</li><li>They want a better tomorrow, so show them hope.</li><li>They desire direction, so navigate for them.</li><li>They are selfish, so speak to their needs first.</li><li>They get low emotionally, so encourage them.</li><li>They want success, so help them win.</li></ul>

RELATIONSHIPS: If You Get Along, They’ll Go Along

Good leaders never embrace a victim mentality. They recognize that who and where they are, remain their responsibility— not that of their parents, their spouses, their children, the government, their bosses, or their coworkers. They face whatever life throws at them and give it their best, knowing that they will get an opportunity to lead the team only if they’ve proved that they can carry the ball.

RESPONSIBILITY: If You Won’t Carry the Ball, You Can’t Lead the Team

No one can live on a level inconsistent with the way he sees himself. You may have observed that in people. If someone sees himself as a loser, he finds a way to lose. Anytime his success surpasses his security, the result is self-destruction. That’s not only true for followers, but it’s also true for leaders.Insecure leaders are dangerous—to themselves, their followers, and the organizations they lead—because a leadership position amplifies personal flaws. Whatever negative baggage you have in life only gets more difficult to bear when you’re trying to lead others.

SECURITY: Competence Never Compensates for Insecurity

As a leader, you already have too little time. Now all you need is a plan. If you can determine what’s really a priority and release yourself from everything else, it’s a lot easier to follow through on what’s important. And that’s the essence of self-discipline.The first and best victory is to conquer self.

SELF-DISCIPLINE: The First Person You Lead Is You

Servanthood is not about position or skill. It’s about attitude. You have undoubtedly met people in service positions who have poor attitudes toward servanthood: the rude worker at the government agency, the waiter who can’t be bothered with taking your order, the store clerk who talks on the phone with a friend instead of helping you.Just as you can sense when a worker doesn’t want to help people, you can just as easily detect whether a leader has a servant’s heart. And the truth is that the best leaders desire to serve others, not themselves.

SERVANTHOOD: To Get Ahead, Put Others First

“The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader gets straight to the heart of leadership issues. Maxwell once again touches on the process of developing the art of leadership by giving the reader practical tools and insights into developing the qualities found in great leaders.” - Kenneth Blanchard, Coauthor of The One Minute Manager® “Dr. John Maxwell is the authority on leadership today. His innovative yet timeless principles on how to effectively lead others have personally impacted my life and my business. This is a must-read for any organization that wants to succeed in the new millennium.” -Peter Lowe, President of Peter Lowe International and Peter Lowe’s SUCCESS Seminars “My dear friend John Maxwell has proven his ability to lead leaders. I anticipate learning even more from his new book.” -Max Lucado, Author of Just Like Jesus

The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader

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Life Lessons from a Mountain Trek

All That Is Solid Melts Into Information | NOEMA

Important UX Metrics to Measure User Experience

Motivated Progress

How to be more secure in your relationships | Psyche Guides

The cult of sensitivity | The Spectator

The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader

How to handle a lopsided friendship

How to forgive someone who isn’t sorry

Don’t Underestimate the Power of Your Voice

It's time to Read like a Pro.

It's time to
Read like a Pro.