Captivate someone for a moment, and you stay captured in their memory forever.
When someone enthralls you, the rest of the world melts away. Nothing else matters. It’s only you and the other person.
On the opposite end, being in the presence of someone boring is like a death sentence.
A strong social network is important to our well-being.
But what if components of that network fail us? What if instead of uplifting us, supporting us, and making us better, they make us feel worse and drag us down?
The obvious answer would be to cut those people out. Stop talking to them altogether. But sometimes the answer isn’t so obvious. There are gray areas.
Maybe a friend pushes you into doing things you’re uncomfortable with, but has a great sense of humor and is fun to be around. Or a partner is thoughtful and means well, but simply isn’t relatable. It’s hard to cut the cord for a number of reasons.
So when is it time to say goodbye?
Imagine two scenarios:
In the first one, you make a $10 bet with a friend. You lose. The next day, fortune smiles on you as you walk down the street. You see a $10 bill lying on the sidewalk.
In the second scenario, nothing happens. You neither enter into any bet with anyone, nor do you find any money lying on the street.
In both scenarios, your net gain is $0.
Would both of these scenarios affect you the same psychologically? Or would one have a greater emotional impact than the other? Which scenario would you choose?
If you picked the second scenario, you made the right choice.
It’s around this time New Year’s Resolutions start to slip.
Remember counting down to when the clock struck midnight? The second it happened, a burst of fireworks shot into the sky. They exploded into an array of colors, signaling the promises, hopes, and dreams of a new year to come.
But as January slowly crawls towards February, our enthusiasm from that moment wanes. The New Year, with its new hopes, turns into “maybe later”. We begin to back out of our aspirations.
Making YouTube videos for a living is nice, isn’t it?
You hear about it all the time. Ads showing YouTube stars’ multi-million dollar mansions. Viral videos exploding with millions of views. People making full-time incomes from the comforts of their home.
Top YouTubers can make upwards of $10 million in a year. When you add up the advertising revenue, sponsorships, and endorsement deals, those figures go up even higher. Being a professional YouTuber sounds lucrative, doesn’t it?
[Read more…]“My life is over.”
Have those words ever crossed your mind? That moment when something so catastrophic, disastrous, and damage-inducing occurred that you never thought you would recover? That moment when there were no other roads, when you had run out of options?
And yet, here you are.
[Read more…]“If only…”
Any sentence that starts with these words never ends well. It’s filled with pain, loss, and the feeling of unfulfilled potential. We believe that if only things happened differently, then the rest would fall into place.
Like heavy snow on a rooftop, fixating on the negatives will weigh you down. When the burden is too great, the foundations weaken. Then, they collapse.
In the face of disappointment, it’s easy to lie down and not want to get back up.
But things are not always what they seem. What seems bad may not be so bad after all. It may even turn out to be good.
In 2003, Barbra Streisand made a grave miscalculation.
She attempted to sue photographer Kenneth Adelman for invasion of privacy. In the process of documenting the California coastline, he photographed her Malibu mansion. Adelman then included the photo as part of the California Coastal Records Project.
Adelman created the publicly available 12,000 photo collection in order to document coastal erosion. His aim was to influence government policymakers. No matter the intent, Streisand didn’t take kindly to the inclusion of an image of her home. She launched a $50 million lawsuit.
Before the lawsuit, “Image 3850” had only been downloaded from Adelman’s site six times, two of which were by Streisand’s attorneys. Afterward? Over 420,000 people visited the site in a month due to the resulting publicity.
As for the lawsuit, things didn’t go well for Barbra Streisand. The case was dismissed and Streisand subsequently had to pay Adelman’s legal fees totaling $155,567.
What does it mean to “give thanks?”
Well, it depends. It depends on who, where, when, and how.
If you were around in October 1621 at the Plimouth Plantation, you might have been part of the “First Thanksgiving”. Here, the Native Americans and Pilgrims came together to celebrate the first harvest in the New World.
The settlers had struggled the previous winter due to a lack of supplies and food. Many had starved or became ill and died as a result. Yet, a number survived. Massasoit, leader of the Wampanoag tribe, had given the colonists food to get through their first winter.
Bigfoot. Aliens. The Loch Ness Monster. There are all sorts of creatures out there that people buy into. While many of us see them as myth, there are many still who are rabid followers, chasing after any clues and signs.
Once in a while, something new pops up. A photo reveals a hazy shape off in the distance. Someone claims they saw a strange creature while hiking in the forest. A group of people hear unusual noises. When questionable evidence comes up, many people jump to the same conclusion every time: they were right all along.
However, there are few stories that have shared the same mystique as the legend behind the Hope Diamond.