By Melissa
How would you help someone who is struggling in school?
Imagine you meet a high school student. The person doesn’t seem particularly enthused about school or learning in general. They struggle with understanding concepts in their classes, and their friends also don’t care much for school.
The sad truth is that a student’s fate is set in stone as early as first grade.
By Melissa
Entrepreneurship. The word itself sounds magical. It conjures up all sorts of wonderful images. You imagine yourself coming up with a brilliant idea, building a great product, and resting on your laurels for eternity. You can earn more income without putting in extra effort.
Employee. What does that word feel like to you? Words such as “bland”, “unimaginative”, and “restrictive” come to mind. You picture someone breathing down your neck, telling you what to do.
Not only does being an employee sound unappealing, but there’s a ceiling to your earning potential. As an employee, your salary is fixed. Yes, you get raises, but they’re fixed and ultimately decided by someone else.
And what about professions that charge hourly rates? A consultant may earn hundreds, even thousands by the hour, but the consultant is still limited by something finite: time. At some point, the person’s earnings are capped by the number of hours worked. The moment the person stops working is the moment money stops coming in.
The relationship between time and earnings is the difference between scalable and non-scalable professions.
By Melissa
What does it mean to reach your potential?
We all have different definitions. For some, reaching their potential involves getting recognition for their work. For others, it means creating a balanced life where both work and personal life are equally satisfying.
And then there are others who wish to create something so great, so useful, that it gets used widely. They feel satisfied knowing they’re making the world a better place.
The equation seems simple. Work smart, work hard, and you’ll get what you want. When we see someone fall short of expectations, we assume they either didn’t try hard enough or made poor decisions.
By Melissa
It was the early 70s, and things were looking bad for Sylvester Stallone.
Stallone was broke, out of work, and struggling. To make ends meet, he stole his wife’s jewelry and sold it. He soon found himself sleeping at the bus terminal in New York City for three weeks.
The worst was yet to happen.
Stallone realized he didn’t have enough money to feed his dog. Out of desperation, he took his beloved dog to the local liquor store and sold it to a stranger for 25 dollars. He walked away, crying.
How did things get so low?
By Melissa
Do humans have a sell-by date? Is there an age at we should give up?
At a certain point, we begin to shed expectations. We receive a few harsh life lessons, see our peers settling in, and receive critical feedback from friends and family. After feeling the squeeze of everyday pressures, we wonder if it’s time to start being realistic.
No more fun and games. No more daydreaming. We need to accept things as they are, like it or not.
If you’re thinking this way, there is an incredible essay that Oscar-winning director Ang Lee wrote in 2006 on his “never-ending dream”. Here is a translation of that essay:
By Melissa
Fairness is subjective.
When things are going smoothly, everything seems fair. You’re riding high on the clouds, soaking in all the wonderful things life has to offer. But once you hit turbulence and rough storms, you start to feel everything turn against you. It all just feels so…unfair.
The thing is that life operates on its own terms, not yours. And while you might not like those terms, that’s the way things are. Rather than refusing to accept their existence, it’s better to acknowledge them and keep moving forward.
By Melissa
Do you crave the challenge?
When you see a problem waiting to be solved, you can feel your energy levels rise. Blood surges through your veins. Your mouth salivates. Like a hound tugging at a leash, you want nothing more than to lunge forward and tackle the issue into the ground.
Except the problem isn’t so easy to solve. After awhile, it stops being fun and starts turning into work. You wonder what you’ve gotten yourself into.
Sometimes, we don’t want to find the easy answer to a problem. We want to toil and struggle to feel like we’ve earned something. Otherwise, we don’t treasure the result.
While this helps us push through difficulties, the problem arises when you use this attitude towards everything. Some challenges are not worth the effort. Others can be achieved more quickly.
By Melissa
On January 1966, Indira Gandhi made her mark as the first female Prime Minister of India. She served as Prime Minister from 1966 to 1977 and again from 1980 until her assassination in 1984. In 1999 BBC poll, Gandhi was voted “Woman of the Millennium”.
Gandhi (no relation to “the” Mahatma Gandhi) grew up under her father Jawaharlal Nehru, who was the first Prime Minister of India and a key figure in the Indian independence movement. After studying at Oxford, she returned to India and served unofficially as her father’s personal assistant, giving her significant influence. When her father passed away in 1964, Gandhi was appointed Minister of Information and Broadcasting.
Two years later, she rose to become Prime Minister with the help of the Congress Party President, K. Kamaraj. Yet, his rationale for doing so was less about her competency and more about the perceived weakness of her gender. Kamaraj, along with his political colleagues, saw her as a prime candidate because they believed she could be used as a puppet.
By Melissa
It’s believed that any dispute, big or small, can be settled through a game of rock-paper-scissors.
It’s simple, really. Like flipping a coin or drawing straws, rock-paper-scissors (otherwise known as RPS) is a fair decision-making method between various parties. There’s equal footing since everyone has the same, equally random chance of winning.
Or is it?
In 2005, Takashi Hashiyama was in a bind. As CEO of the Japanese television manufacturer Maspro Denkoh, he decided to auction off the corporation’s collection of Impressionist paintings, including works by Cézanne, Picasso, and van Gogh.
Hashiyama contacted the two premier auction houses, Christie’s and Sotheby’s, for proposals. Although both auction houses provided extensive plans on how they would market the collection and maximize profits, Hashiyama still couldn’t pick. Finally, he asked the two houses to make a decision using rock-paper-scissors.
By Melissa
The older we get, the more our dreams fade away.
It’s a sad fact of life, if not a very real one. Early on, you have an entire slew of things you want to accomplish. Enthusiasm, energy and excitement pump through your veins as you picture yourself reaching those achievements.
Yet those feelings gradually die down with time. For some aspirations, you might have set the benchmark incredibly high and then failed to get where you thought you’d be. Maybe you talked yourself out of even trying.
And when you did accomplish something, it didn’t live up to your expectations. Reaching a goal wasn’t the be-all-end-all you anticipated. Afterward, there was a void as you thought, “What next?”
Eventually, it becomes exhausting to keep trying (and often failing). You stop resisting to the pressures of everyday life and succumb to the routine. It’s comfortable. It’s safe.
But it’s also dangerous.