Your brain is always active. But different brain regions are activated when you work and when you rest. Resting activates a brain system known as “default mode network,” which is critical to your health, productivity, and development. After resting, your creative energy is at its peak. You can then work optimally for shorter periods, rather than […]
How to Turn Fear into a Tool
Waiting is often a sign that you lack creativity and discipline. Instead of waiting around for other people to make moves, you need to take matters into your own hands and achieve your own goals. Taking action doesn’t mean that you have to fake fearlessness; in fact, knowing your fears will help keep you honest. […]
Avoid Dating Mistakes
In dating, you need to set boundaries. If a relationship isn’t a win-win for both people, it’s never worth pursuing. The first rule is to never sell yourself short. Giving up things that are important to you—the things that make you who you are—just looks unattractive and undignified. So don’t do it. Another rule of […]
Why You Need Trust in Business
Building strong, trusting relationships quickly is important to every organization. Why? Because mistakes won’t matter as much when both parties know what the other really means. Keep in mind that there are no shortcuts; creating trust in a relationship can never be rushed or faked. Trusting relationships require continuous, conscious work on both sides. Good […]
Do You Know Your Next Five Moves?
In chess, there are two kinds of players: those who see the next move, and those who see many moves ahead. Business operates according to the same principle. People who only plan for tomorrow are short-sighted. You must always have your next five moves in mind. Why five moves (and not six, or ten)? Because […]
Blueprint for a Better Life
While Siri (and Google, and Alexa) can instantly answer almost any question, they don’t know anything about our emotional lives. We all ask each other “How are you?” seemingly countless times a day. It’s become such a reflex that we rarely notice when we say it, and almost never give an accurate answer. We don’t expect, […]
What Kind of Leader Will You Be?
Some people just seem born to lead. A leader might be someone who’s able to build a company that creates breakthrough technology, or someone who provides an example of how others can overcome marginalization and hardship. For example, Jeff Bezos’s passion for entrepreneurship and his ability to foresee the boom in online shopping helped him […]
Were Your Parents Emotionally Immature?
When you were a kid, were your parents impulsive, insecure, or narcissistic? These personality problems can have an outsized impact on kids, who are programmed to look to their parents for security and care. There are four types of emotionally immature parents: emotional, driven, passive, and rejecting. Emotional parents are easily upset and expect others […]
How to Raise a Happy Kid
Did your parents ever force you to participate in an activity you dreaded as a kid? Whether it was music lessons, a team sport, or something else, most of us were required to spend time doing something we didn’t want to do. Many people have false assumptions about success, especially when it comes to their children. They […]
Better Decisions, Starting Now
There’s a common misunderstanding regarding the relationship between reason and emotion. People think that, in forming a worldview or making a decision, you can be motivated either by deep feeling or cold, emotionless rationality. In fact, reason and emotion are intertwined on a neurobiological level. For example, if you think about something terrifying that happened to […]
