Jumpstart Your Dream Life

5 Great Reads for October

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October evokes images of colorful leaves, dropping temperatures, and pumpkin spice lattes. But it’s also the perfect time to catch up on books that might have been too heavy for the summer.

Since Halloween is the biggest event of October, the question that comes to mind is: What does the word “scary” mean to you?

While we quickly think of ghouls, zombies, and vampires, scary can reach far beyond characters found in horror films. Maybe scary means being taken away from everything you know, or continuing on a path you don’t want to go down. Maybe scary is getting a visit from your landlady.

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20 Things You Need to Stop Doing Now

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“You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

Once in a while, we sit down and try to figure out what we need to start doing. We ponder our past actions and their results, where we are right now, and what we should do next.

While these are logical steps to take, we neglect the fact that putting more things into our lives means we have to take out other components. After all, we only have so much time and energy in the day. And in order to make space for what we want to do, we need to discard our bad habits first.

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Play to Your Strengths, Hide Your Weaknesses

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At only four years old, Yeou-Cheng Ma exhibited a clear talent for the violin.

Under the tutelage of her father, a Ph.D. student at the Paris Conservatory of Music, Yeou-Cheng began to play the instrument at two-and-a-half years old. Only a year later, she entered in her first competition against students ranging from fourteen to nineteen years old. She won.

Her violin teacher praised Yeou-Cheng’s ability to her mother, a vocal student who later sang opera. She said, “Your daughter is a brilliant musician. There’s no doubt in my mind that she inherits this talent from you and your husband…It’s in her genes.”

Finally, the teacher added: “Mrs. Ma, what I’m trying to tell you is that I think it is a great pity that you don’t plan on having another child.”

At the time, the three of them lived in a tiny apartment in Paris. They struggled to earn a living and had barely enough for themselves. Yet, four years after the birth of their daughter, a son was born in 1955. He was named Yo-Yo Ma.

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When Is It Time to Quit?

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Quitting has a negative association. We describe it as giving up, being non-committal, or lacking perseverance. When someone quits, it’s easy to assume that the person simply didn’t give it their all.

To be sure, quitting prematurely happens too often. Whenever you try something, you’re going to have difficulties. You’re going to face obstacles. You’re going to battle doubts swimming in your head. Quitting may not be the best choice.

But other times, it doesn’t make sense to keep going. What if you attempt something, but never see any progress? What if you continue down a route, but just don’t feel passionate about where you’re headed?

How do you know when it’s time to buckle down, and when to let go?

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The Rustout Issue: Why We Tend to Stagnate

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We start off the same way.

In the beginning, we’re excited, eager, and energetic. We have dreams we want to pursue. A desire to make something of ourselves, coupled with an earnest intention to overcome any obstacles that come our way.

Somewhere along the way though, we hit a wall. We stop learning. We look around and see other people are content with where they are. So we sit and rest for a while in a safe haven, until we feel motivated enough to start working on our goals again. We wait.

That is, until awhile turns into months, then years. One day, you look back and realize that you’ve been stuck in the same spot for the past decade. What would your younger self think?

I recently read an interesting account of the rise and fall of ancient Egypt, which reminded me of the human tendency to fall into the same patterns.

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How to Succeed When You’re Behind

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At only 19 years old, S.E. Hinton’s first novel The Outsiders was an instant success.

She began writing the story in high school. Her story was based off two rival gangs at school: the Greasers and the Socs. Hinton’s book sought to understand “the other side” by portraying life from the Greasers’ working-class perspective.

Her novel was published in 1967. At the time, she was a freshman attending university in her hometown, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Before she left her teenage years, Hinton became a household name.

Since then, the book has sold tens of millions of copies. It has become required reading in many high schools. Of all the novels that Hinton has written, The Outsiders remains the most popular.

But today is not about S.E. Hinton.

Today is about the slow growth.

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4 Ways You Can Use Failure To Your Advantage

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It seems like we have two options in life: succeed or fail. Get what you worked for and you’re a success. Fall short of that, and you’re a failure. We think about these two outcomes as if they were binary.

But maybe it’s time we rethink failure. That is, how we can use failure to provide advantages that we might not gain otherwise.

Here are four of the most important ways.

1. Use the emotions from failure to become stronger

Failure seems to imply that nothing is gained. Hours of work and energy have been put into an endeavor, but the output is zero. At least, that’s what it looks like from the outside.

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Want to Be Creative? Stop Being So Serious

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I own a shark. A Lego shark.

So when I went to visit a Lego store recently, I was surprised to see the exact same shark on display after so many years.

Had they kept the same shark mold all this time? Didn’t they feel the need to change things up?

You know, sharpen the fins a little, try a different color, or anything like that.

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Deadly Race to the South Pole: A Lesson on Being 110% Prepared

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The race was on.

It was the early twentieth century, and the world was running out of places to explore. Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer, was determined to be the first to reach the South Pole.

He wasn’t the only one. Robert Scott, a British naval officer, was also preparing his team to reach the southernmost point of the Earth.

Previously, Amundsen’s initial goal was to become the first person to reach the North Pole. But when he heard that American explorer Robert Peary was leading an expedition to the Arctic, Amundsen swiftly changed plans and set his sights on Antarctica.

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J.R.R. Tolkien’s Writing Process On Creating Good Work

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One dreary day, a professor was sitting at his desk when a fateful event occurred. As he marked examination papers, he noticed that a student had left a page blank. For some inexplicable reason, he jotted down a sentence: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

This line sparked J.R.R. Tolkien’s idea of The Hobbit, which was published in 1937. It was an immediate success. Stanley Unwin, the Chairman of the publishing firm, asked him if he had any other similar stories to meet public demand.

In response, Tolkien wrote a full account of tales and named it The Silmarillion. Some of the tales were sent off to Unwin, who decided that they weren’t commercially publishable. Instead, he asked Tolkien if he could write a sequel to The Hobbit.

Disappointed, Tolkien agreed to Unwin’s request and went back to work. The publishing firm did not expect a profit and decided to incur a probable loss of 1,000 pounds. But when they published the story during 1954 and 1955, what came next surprised them.

The trilogy immediately captured the public eye. It was adapted to radio the following year, and has since then gone on to sell over 150 million copies[1]. Later, The Lord of the Rings was turned into one of the highest-grossing and critically acclaimed film series of all time. The trilogy is considered one of the greatest book series of the twentieth century.

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