I’m fascinated with passionate people. Some of them have such fire and drive in them that they completely captivate me even if what they do isn’t something I find all that interesting.
I realize that not everyone is as lucky in discovering their passions. I’ve heard some people say that you either have it or you don’t. However, I don’t think that is true. Finding your passion can be tricky sometimes, but there are ways to open yourself up to discovering them.
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“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
–Socrates
One of my missions in life is to learn as much as I possibly can about everything. I’m not doing it to get rich or powerful, but simply because I believe that in order to live an amazing life, you need to push your understanding of it.
And I think that’s why I like this quote and Socrates in general. He was so devoted to learning and teaching that he was convicted in 399 B.C. on several charges including corruption of youth. Instead of escaping he decided to kill himself by drinking hemlock. I have to admire his passion.
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The week after New Year’s Eve is the worst for going to the gym. Each year, thousands of people sign up to fulfill their resolution to lose weight so the gym becomes a mad house of overweight, ill-disciplined newbies staring at a lat pull-down machine trying to figure out how it works.
Normally I would encourage such behavior. People want to improve themselves, that’s great. However, two weeks later the vast majority of those people never return. This saddens me because it highlights to me how many people have something about themselves they want to change and don’t.
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Fear is an emotion that tells you to avoid or escape from an unwanted situation. That would be helpful if you’re being stalked by a lion in the jungle, but more often fear stops you from doing things you want to do. In fact, you probably are in constant battle with fear every day.
It’s important to note that fear only works for future events. You get scared before you do your parachute jump out of the plane, not afterwards. And this is why fear is so dangerous. The greatest things you can do in life are scary. Nothing good will happen to you if you sit on your couch all day long.
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Bill Clinton has it. Frank Sinatra had it. And you can have it too. The amazing level of charm both Bill and Frank emit can naturally make people think it was a divine gift from birth. But you can learn it too. I know this because I learned it. I went from charm illiteracy to mastery in just over a couple of years. Now I put this skill to use just about every day.
I’m not saying this to brag. In fact, the first rule of charm is: don’t brag about yourself. I broke my own first rule just so I can illustrate how far you can raise your skill level. You should be able to do it faster than me too since I learned this mostly by trial and error.
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Luck is often thought of as a chance occurrence beyond your control. Something you can’t predict or affect. But is it really? While you can’t change your chances in the lottery, you can affect luck in many ways that impact your life. New studies show how you can change your luck so that good fortune is no accident.
Traveling is a great way to see a country and learn about the people who live there. But if you really want to learn what makes them tick than you need to learn their language. Immersing yourself in a new language can seem like a daunting task. Fortunately, there are great free resources available to turn your first few words into fluency.
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