If you think your luck is bad, and is getting worse as the years pass, you might feel depressed and pessimistic about life in general.
Instead of feeling that the universe is against you, try to feel this:
THE UNIVERSE OWES YOU!
Like a flipped coin that is showing tails a thousand times in a row, the law of averages catches up and it eventually gives heads.
If things have been in the dumps for a while, cheer up! The universe is now going to give you good news.

The Universe Owes You

Early in the morning, start to deliberately chant that this day is great and everything is going to go your way only. Say it out loud to yourself:
TODAY, EVERYTHING IS GOING MY WAY!
Do it over a hundred times and tell people this fact, repeating it in the morning air.
By lunchtime you will start to understand the power of positive thinking, auto-suggestion and having an optimistic mindset.
When the day ends, you will have such a wonderful day that you will hate yourself for not trying this earlier.

Today, Everything Is Going Great

We normally believe that money creates more money. This is true.
But those who don't have money are at a loss here. They can't use this frame of mind to be able to create money. They feel cheated.
The reframe that we can use to beat this is:
ENERGY CREATES MONEY!
This will force us to use our energy and generate wealth for yourself. We can also harness our energy by:
<ol>
<li>Sleeping right.</li>
<li>Eating nutritious food.</li>
<li>Exercising at least an hour a day.</li>
<li>Taking smart breaks.</li>
<li>Meditating or doing Yoga.</li>
</ol>

Energy Creates Money

If you feel like a fraud in your new job role, don't quit! You are in good company.
Almost everyone is a fraud out there who had to:
<ol>
<li>Start a new job without any experience or mentorship.</li>
<li>Encounter a novel, never-before-seen situation.</li>
</ol>
You need to bluff your way through and become better. Fake it till you make it.

Imposter Syndrome Is Good For You

Staying in the imposter zone while building your skills that are necessary for success is probably the only way you should adopt!

Systems are better than goals. This much we know already!How does this help you? You can hack your dopamine reward system by labelling today's work as a top priority for the king of future you want.This gives us a reason to happily complete our daily tasks, and completing those tasks becomes a reward in itself! The other important benefit that we see afterwards is: If we have followed any system, it has to reap long term rewards!

Hack Your Dopamine Reward Systems

You can improve your mood at anytime, simply by completing meaningful tasks. Action becomes your motivation.

Reframe Your Brain is a brand new book by Scott Adams. I just bought a digital copy and have just started reading it. I will update this stack as I read more and find gems worth writing about!

In Reframe Your Brain, Scott Adams, the contrarian genius behind Dilbert and author of the most influential personal success book of all time-How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big-gives you the complete operating system for lasting happiness.Are you familiar with this old saying?"All publicity is good publicity."That's a classic reframe. The quote shifts your thinking from the shame of whatever you did wrong to your probable benefit. You can't change the past, but you can change how you feel about it.Trained hypnotist and persuasion expert Scott Adams has packed more than 160 new, counterintuitive, and effective reframes into Reframe Your Brain. For example: Usual Frame: Manage your time.Reframe: Manage your energy.Usual Frame: Success depends on who you know.Reframe: Success depends on how many people you know.Usual Frame: Your critics are evil monsters.Reframe: Your critics are your mascots.Usual Frame: The universe is acting against you.Reframe: The universe owes you.Usual Frame: Luck is random and can't be managed.Reframe: You can go where there is more luck (more energy).These instant perspective-shifters will help you feel better on demand and succeed at any endeavor without the usual pain or pitfalls. The reframe collection covers personal fulfillment, business and career success, mental health, social activities, and physical well-being. If only 10 percent of the reframes work for you, your life will never be the same.Prepare to embark on a journey of transformation as Scott Adams shares his most invaluable insights and practical techniques to date, empowering you to reprogram your own reality using words alone.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

books

Books

Adams was born in Windham, New York in 1957 and received his Bachelor's degree in Economics from Hartwick College in 1979.He also studied economics and management for his 1986 MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.In recent years, Adams has been hurt with a series of debilitating health problems. Since late 2004, he has suffered from a reemergence of his focal dystonia which has affected his drawing. He can fool his brain by drawing using a graphics tablet. On December 12, 2005, Adams announced on his blog that he also suffers from spasmodic dysphonia.

Scott Adams

Reframe Your Brain

Whether you're just starting or building your career, you've undoubtedly faced new challenges that no textbook or classroom could have prepared you for. Using a simple set of core principles can help you start and build your career.

Career Success Guide

Treat your career lifecycle as a company.<ul><li>You start as a high-growth startup.</li><li>You grow into a bigger business.</li><li>You IPO and are a public company.</li></ul> At each phase, you will encounter a variety of difficult and new decisions. Traditionally, people have turned to mentorship to guide them through the uncharted waters. A better approach is building a personal board of 5 -10 advisors comprising of individuals (not family) from varying backgrounds willing to give you raw feedback.

Build a Personal Board of Advisors

The “frog” is a complex or annoying task your boss doesn’t want to do. However, that frog is your opportunity to get ahead early in your career. <ol><li>Observe your boss.</li><li>Figure out what they hate doing.</li><li>Teach yourself to do it.</li><li>Take it off their plate.</li></ol>

Swallow the Frog for Your Boss

Establish a decentralised friend group to learn from and grow with. Interacting with this group will expose you to new ideas, industries, and opportunities. Features of a decentralised friend group: <ul><li>Unconnected to other groups</li><li>Different backgrounds</li><li>Range of experience sets</li><li>Novel perspectives</li></ul>

Create a Decentralized Growth Tribe

If you can sell, you'll always make it. Selling means learning to tell a compelling, convincing story. The more you progress in any field, the more of your job becomes sales: <ul><li>You sell yourself when you want a company to hire you.</li><li>You sell your idea when you want investors to back you.</li><li>You sell your vision when you want customers to pay you.</li><li>You sell your culture when you want employees to join you.</li></ul>

Learn to Sell

The biggest mistake young people make early in their careers is to prioritise salary. Instead, think long-term.  A foundation-building experience will be more effective than extra money. What are the opportunities, experiences, and relationships that will build the strongest foundation for your future?

Prioritize Experience, Not Salary

<ul><li>The comparison trap is the desire to compare ourselves and our progress to others. But comparing ourselves to others is also dangerous.</li></ul> <ul><li>The zone of excellence trap is the area where you are highly competent but don't have a passion or energy for. You'll be told you are great, but it's not where you want to be. Instead, find your zone of genius. It is where your interests, passions and skills align.</li></ul>

Avoid the Comparison Trap and the Zone of Excellence Trap

When you start, you won't be good at most things. Most jobs are apprenticeship-oriented. You have to learn by following and doing, meaning you will make mistakes. That's ok. What's not ok is not owning your mistakes or making the same mistake twice. So when you make a mistake, own it and build a system to avoid it in the future.

Own Your Mistakes

In every company, there are certain rooms where the big stuff happens: The important negotiations, the critical decisions, or the conflicts and debates. Find these rooms and ensure to get in there. It could be as simple as offering to take notes and send around action items. Then, when you're in the room, listen and observe. You will get a huge learning experience.

Get In "The Room"

T-Shaped knowledge has breadth & depth. <ul><li>Breadth allows you to be thoughtful and constructive across various business areas.</li><li>Depth allows you to be world-class in a specific area of expertise. You get there through hard, task-specific effort over time.</li></ul> Ensure you are building breadth and depth. Breadth makes you an asset to an organisation, while depth makes you critical to your organisation.

Build "T-Shaped" Knowledge

10 principles to help you navigate the challenges of your early career

career

Career

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

The Career Success Guide

When Steve Jobs was young, he dropped out of college, which enabled him to take a calligraphy course that interested him, but had no immediate practical benefit. Looking back, the Mac would not have had multiple typefaces or well-spaced fonts if Jobs had not dropped in on that course in college. You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect it in hindsight. Believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart.

How your experiences join up

Getting fired from Apple was at first devastating for Jobs, but it was also the best thing that could have happened. Being a beginner again freed him to enter the most creative period of his life. In the next five years, Jobs started the company NeXT and Pixar. What kept him going was that he loved what he was doing.  You have to find what you love. Work will fill the largest part of your life, and you will only be satisfied if you do great work. If you haven't found what you love, keep looking. Don't settle.

Love and loss

If today is the last day of your life, would you do what you plan to do that day? If the answer is "no", you need to change something. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Instead, dare to follow your heart.

Live each day as if it was your last

Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in his life, Steve Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life's setbacks -- including death itself -- at the university's 114th Commencement on June 12, 2005. Transcript of Steve Jobs' address: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html Stanford University channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/stanford

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

videos

Videos

Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in his life, Steve Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life's setbacks -- including death itself -- at the university's 114th Commencement on June 12, 2005.

Transcript of Steve Jobs' address:
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

Stanford University channel on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/stanford

Stanford is a place of discovery, creativity and innovation located in the San Francisco Bay Area on the ancestral land of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. Dedicated to our founding mission—benefitting society through research and education—we are working toward a sustainable future, accelerating the impact of research with external partners, catalyzing discoveries about ourselves and our world, and educating students as global citizens. Our main campus, which welcomed its first class in 1891, is now home to 650+ student organizations, 36 varsity athletic teams, 20 libraries, 21 living Nobel laureates, 18 interdisciplinary research institutes, seven schools, and a vibrant arts scene. More than 9,000 graduate students and 7,000 undergraduates pursue studies at Stanford each year. Our financial aid program, one of the most generous in the nation, makes it possible for any admitted undergraduate to attend without taking on student debt. Learn more at stanford.edu.

Stanford

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

As meeting participants, we worry that our colleagues will judge us — or worse yet, forget about us — if we don’t accept every invitation. Deeply ingrained norms around what it means to be an “ideal worker” lead us to equate presence with productivity and these assumptions are bolstered when bosses use facetime as a proxy for commitment, or when they fail to represent absent employees’ opinions in meetings.While it’s on managers to avoid these harmful behaviors, employees can work to overcome these fears by finding ways to demonstrate their value and engagement outside of meetings.

Meeting FOMO

Leaders will schedule meetings whenever convenient for them, without necessarily considering their teams’ needs or schedules. Sometimes leaders even knowingly schedule meetings when their team has conflicts, forcing everyone to shift their calendars around to accommodate.While this can be extremely frustrating, selfish urgency often isn’t malicious. People are notoriously bad at recognizing opportunity costs, meaning it may not even occur to many leaders that scheduling a meeting means their team will be unable to spend the time doing something more valuable.

Selfish Urgency

Sometimes we use meetings as commitment devices: that is, mechanisms to help make sure people follow through on their promises. An external deadline (like a meeting with your boss) can be an effective motivator — but the meeting itself is often unnecessary, with people simply reporting on how they did or didn’t achieve the agreed-upon target.
To address this issue without losing the motivating effect of meetings as commitment devices, tell your team in advance that the meeting will be canceled if the deadline is met — essentially framing cancellation as the reward for reaching the goal

Meetings as Commitment Devices

When we are stressed, completing seemingly urgent (yet actually unimportant) tasks can provide some relief. This is known as the Mere Urgency Effect. Scheduling and attending meetings can make us feel like we’ve accomplished something, and so we’re often loath to decline or cancel them, even if they are objectively not as important as our other work.This is often compounded by a strong sense of inertia: If we’ve always held a certain meeting at a certain time, it’s a lot easier to just keep doing that than to reevaluate whether it’s actually a good idea.

The Mere Urgency Effect

Too often, we end up in the same bad meeting over and over again, just because no one remembers what was discussed in the last meeting. To avoid meeting amnesia, schedule a short five-minute team debrief after key internal and external calls. These debriefs are especially important in a fully virtual environment since, with fewer opportunities to connect informally, it’s easy for meeting leaders not to notice when employees (especially junior ones) leave a call confused.
In addition, leaders should make it routine to keep track of what was said and to share those summaries with attendees.

Meeting Amnesia

It refers to a phenomenon whereby even though we’re all experiencing the same thing, we assume that other people don’t feel the same way about it as we do. This bias leads us to continue to schedule and attend meetings even when everyone secretly agrees that they’re useless because we assume we’re the only one who thinks so.To overcome pluralistic ignorance, leaders should encourage their teams to openly share their frustrations and feedback, and they should work together to regularly identify and eliminate unproductive meetings.

Pluralistic Ignorance

A how-to guide those that lead or participate in meetings

productivity

Productivity

communication

Communication

How to Run an Effective Meeting

Six biases that lead us to have too many meetings — and how to overcome them.

remotework

Remote Work

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

humanresources

Human Resources

The Psychology Behind Meeting Overload

Imposter Syndrome is a psychological phenomenon where a person doubts his or her own skills and competencies. 
They believe that their coworkers will get to know that they may be just faking their way in the company without knowing much and that they are a fraud.
Self-doubt and feelings of being an imposter mostly arise among brilliant, qualified people who try to measure themselves with other, similarly qualified coworkers.

Imposter Syndrome

Actual imposters do not doubt themselves of being phoney, fake or con artists, because that is what they are. They do not wonder if they are up to the mark, or if they are qualified for their current role, as they are busy projecting confidence and cooking up convincing but fake stories!

Imposters Don’t Have Imposter Syndrome

The quickest way to get out of the imposter syndrome is to admit it to someone you trust completely. This is something a con artist would never do.
The truth shall set you free.

Getting Out Of Imposter Syndrome

problemsolving

Problem Solving

business

Business

Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

An ethical dilemma (ethical paradox or moral dilemma) is a problem in the decision-making process between two possible options, neither of which is absolutely acceptable from an ethical perspective.

What is an Ethical Dilemma?

The biggest challenge of an ethical dilemma is that it does not offer an obvious solution that would comply with ethics al norms. The following approaches to solve an ethical dilemma were deduced:<ul><li>Refute the paradox (dilemma): The situation must be carefully analyzed. In some cases, the existence of the dilemma can be logically refuted.</li><li>Value theory approach: Choose the alternative that offers the greater good or the lesser evil.</li><li>Find alternative solutions: In some cases, the problem can be reconsidered, and new alternative solutions may arise.</li></ul>

How to Solve an Ethical Dilemma?

<ul><li>Ethical dilemmas frequently occur in the workplace. Some companies and professional organizations adhere to their own codes of conduct and ethical standards. Violation of the standards may lead to disciplinary sanctions.</li><li>Almost every aspect of business can become a possible ground for ethical dilemmas. It may include relationships with co-workers, management, clients, and business partners.</li><li>In order to solve ethical problems, companies and organizations should develop strict ethical standards for their employees. Every company must demonstrate its concerns regarding the ethical norms within the organization. In addition, companies may provide ethical training for their employees.</li></ul>

Ethical Dilemmas in Business

An ethical dilemma (ethical paradox or moral dilemma) is a problem in the decision-making process between two possible options, neither of

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

artificialintelligence

Artificial Intelligence

Ethical Dilemma - Definition, How to Solve, and Examples

How everything proceeds depend on you. Tackling the issue is important but you don&#39;t have to do what you don&#39;t want to do. However, being placed with the responsibility of handling a team or a handful number of employees is a much better practice to seek first and understand.
When a project misses the mark, try focusing on the possibilities that might have happened; was there a miscommunication? Have you said something different? Is there a way to approach this with fresh eyes?

Seek first to understand

With every output, teams usually hold meetings to discuss every part of the project. It is important to clarify any questions that everyone on the team has so that time won&#39;t be wasted. 
Make it a practice to recap the project, the expectations, and the next possible steps to be taken with everyone. Not only does this reduce the risk of unclear directions but it helps everyone keep on track of the project.

Good team communication

In his weekly advice column, Maynard Webb tackles the opposite of “scope creep” and urges both sides to listen. 


teamwork

Teamwork

Can this project be saved? How to respond when a proposal totally misses the mark

<ul>
<li>Strong emotions on both sides;</li>
<li>A focus on character rather than on behavior;</li>
<li>A lack of clarity about what needs to change and why;</li>
<li>Negative or critical feedback threatens not only our self-esteem but also our basic need for safety and security;</li>
</ul>

Constructive Criticism: Why Feedback Goes Wrong

Wrong reasons:<ul><li>defend/excuse your own behavior;</li><li>to demoralize/condemn;</li><li>you're in a bad mood;</li><li>to appease a third party;</li></ul>to make yourself seem superior/powerfulRight reasons:<ul><li>commitment/concern for another;</li><li>sense of responsibility;</li><li>to guide/mentor;</li><li>to support/enhance.</li></ul>

Right vs. Wrong reasons to give feedback

<ul><li>Specific, Timely, Meaningful, and Candid;</li><li>Goal-oriented;</li><li>Focused on the future;</li><li>Focused on the process, not the person;</li><li>Isn't afraid to be negative;</li><li>Can be positive;</li><li>Doesn't assume it's right.</li></ul>

Effective Feedback is...

"Effective feedback requires that a person has a goal, takes action to achieve the goal, and receives goal-related information about his or her actions."

"Information becomes feedback if, and only if, I am trying to cause something and the information tells me whether I am on track or need to change course."

A simple template for giving effective feedback that ensures you’re hitting all the right points, that goes like this:<ol><li>Ask to give feedback.</li><li>Tell them "You did X. It caused Y."</li><li>If you’re giving positive feedback, say "Good job."</li><li>If you’re giving negative feedback, tell them how they should adjust their actions in the future.</li></ol>

Manager Tool’s Feedback Model

"Never criticize the person. Always criticize the actions. And when you’re making suggestions, make suggestions about actions, not about the person."

Getting comfortable with offering and receiving constructive criticism is fundamental to our professional development.

How To Give And Receive Constructive Criticism

Despite being the number one driver of our personal and professional development, constructive criticism can be incredibly hard to give.

"Giving feedback turns out to be the unnatural atomic building block atop which the unnatural skill set of management gets built," wrote Andreessen Horowitz co-founder and venture capitalist Ben Horowitz. Despite being the number one driver of our personal and professional development, effective and actionable feedback can be incredibly hard...

The 7 Essential Qualities of Effective Feedback

The 7 Essential Qualities of Constructive Criticism

Many of us believe that having emotional intelligence means being “nice.” But this belief conceals some fundamental benefits to developing one’s EI. 
For example, simply saying someone is nice can belie the fact that they’re only nice to some people and not others. Niceness is also interpreted as someone who tries to avoid confrontations and is thus easily manipulable.

Emotional Intelligence ≠ "Being Nice"

They are: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.
None of these is aligned with “niceness.” In fact, being skilled in each of the four components of emotional intelligence would allow you to have confrontations when you need to, and to do it more strategically and productively.

The Components Of Emotional Intelligence

<ul>
<li>Strong self-awareness and self-management would let you control your initial impulses or any anxiety you might have around a hard conversation.</li>
<li>A highly developed sense of empathy (part of social awareness) would allow you see the situation from the other person’s point of view.</li>
<li>Handling conflict is an important part of relationship management. You’d say what you have to say, clearly and strongly, and in a way the other person can hear.</li>
</ul>

Emotional Intelligence In Confrontations

<ul>
<li>Cognitive: "I know how you think."</li>
<li>Emotional: "I know how you feel."</li>
<li>Empathetic concern: "I care about you."</li>
</ul>
They reside in different parts of the brain:

Three Kinds Of Empathy

What People (Still) Get Wrong About Emotional Intelligence

<ol><li> 
Truly understand what you need and and tailor everything in your selection process finding the perfect person.</li><li>Determine how you will find the perfect person to fill need that need. You don't want the best of what you saw. You want the best person for the job. </li><li>Explain the process to the interviewee.</li><li>Have a background check on the candidate before the interview.</li><li>Make the interview a conversation, not an interrogation.</li><li>Always ask follow up questions.</li><li>Spend as much time answering questions as you do asking.</li><li>Describe the next steps, don't let him be the one who ask.</li><li>Provide closure every time. Failing to follow up is incredibly rude.</li><li>Observe on how they act with other people before the interview.</li><li>Check out the references of the candidate.</li><li>Conduct one more interview to be positive that you're choosing the right one.</li><li>Make an enthusiastic offer.</li></ol>

Conduct the Perfect Job Interview

Your goal is to hire the best people you possibly can. That means your interview should be the best it possibly can.

Reframe Your Brain

The Career Success Guide

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

The Psychology Behind Meeting Overload

Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

Ryleigh