Jumpstart Your Dream Life

How To Tell When a Conversation is About to End

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Ending conversations is a tricky business, no matter which side you’re on.

As the listener, you find yourself daydreaming while the other person drones on. You want nothing more than to run far, far away. Unfortunately, you’re trapped within the jaws of social propriety, afraid to cut the discussion and come off as rude.

As the speaker, you’re not sure if the other person is fully engaged in what you’re saying, or whether you should cut your losses and go elsewhere. After all, you don’t want to socially embarrass yourself by talking long after the person has lost interest.

There’s a tricky balance between time and courtesy. You want to give enough time so that both of you feel good about the social interaction, but not so much that you feel like you wasted it.

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Why Likability Matters More Than Competence

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Malpractice lawsuits are every doctor’s nightmare.

Once a doctor gets sued for malpractice, the implications reach far and wide. Patients distrust their doctor. Self-doubt creeps in. Some doctors even take it as a sign to leave the medical profession altogether. Even though many cases are dismissed or settled outside court, the effects of receiving that dreaded notice letter can last a lifetime.

A study using a malpractice database in Florida found that 6 percent of obstetricians accounted for over 70 percent of all malpractice-related expenses over a 5-year period. Further research showed that claims at all levels, from unpaid claims to large paid claims, played a predictor in whether a doctor was sued in the past.

Basically, some doctors get sued repeatedly, while others hardly ever get sued. There’s clearly a difference between the two. But what is it? Why do malpractice lawsuits happen in the first place?

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Why We Suffer From Losses More Than We Gain From Wins

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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.

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Why Are YouTubers So Rich?

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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?

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Why Bronze Medalists Smile More Than Silver Medalists

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When it comes to the Olympics, the rankings are clear: the gold medalist is the top athlete, followed by silver, and finally, bronze.

The top athletes go for gold. If not gold, then silver is better than the bronze medal. But if that’s the case, why do medalists holding the bronze have a wider grin on their faces than the silver medalists?

How Olympic Athletes React Based On Which Medal They Receive

In a study comparing the reactions of medal winners, researchers took video recordings of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. The first recording showed the athletes as they learned their placement and the second recording showed the medal winners standing on the podium.

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Drinks, Drugs, and Dinners: How Diet Affects Your Sleep

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It’s that dreaded time again.

Not when you have to get out of bed. Not when you have to step into a meeting. It’s when the clock strikes, signaling time for you to sleep.

As you crawl into bed, you wonder if things will be different. Will you shut your eyes and finally fall into slumber? Or will you once again stare at the ceiling, waiting until you drift asleep? If it’s the latter, you’re likely to end up exhausted the next morning, even though you went to bed early.

There are numerous reasons why we have difficulty falling asleep. Sometimes, it’s psychological. Other times, it’s due to the stresses that life cruelly throws at us. But what about our dietary habits?

We carefully plan out our diets to energize ourselves, trim our figures, and improve our overall health. Yet, the substances we ingest take a secondary role when it comes to sleep.

Here are four dietary factors that might be affecting your sleep:

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Vicious Cycles and Virtuous Cycles: Why the Poor get Poorer (and the Rich Get Richer)

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Sometimes, it feels like situations compound upon themselves.

Those who experience good fortune continue to have more of it. Others just can’t stay away from bad circumstances. It’s as if we’re stuck in an endless cycle, where our actions and their consequences further perpetuate the situation that we’re in.

One of the most alarming examples of this concerns social mobility, or the lack of it.

The Legacy of Surnames

What’s in a name?

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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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3 Quick Things You Can Do To Boost Your Confidence

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When it comes to boosting people’s confidence, we hear the same pieces of advice all the time:

  • “Be strong.”
  • “Believe in yourself!”
  • “Just think positive.”

The problem with these phrases is that they assume people can simply build up courage on their own to achieve their goals. It makes us think that if we just put in the effort and try hard enough, we can become confident.

A lot of the times, we can’t.

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Serial Killers and CEOs: The Role Our Gut Instinct Plays in Everyday Assessments

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“I knew there was something wrong about him.”

How many times we heard someone say this, or thought this in our heads? Whenever we feel conflicted about someone we meet, we hear the same thing over and over: “trust your gut.”

We might spend days, months, or even years trying to figure something out. Is there a good chance of succeeding in this new job? Should I trust her? The wheels in our head spin as we think of all the variables and how they’ll play out.

And still, we keep hearing that we should just listen to our instincts. Complicated questions, simple answer. What should we do, and where did this whole idea of the gut instinct come from, anyway?

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