7 Lessons From 7 Great Minds. Have you ever wished you could go back in time and have a conversation with one of the greatest minds in history? Well, you can’t sorry, they’re dead. Unless of course you’re clairaudient, be my guest. But for the rest of us, we can still refer to the words they left behind. Even though these great teachers have passed on, their words still live, and in them their wisdom. I’ve made a list of seven what I believe are some of the greatest teachings by the world’s greatest minds. 1. Realizing Your Dreams “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” - Lawrence J. In order for us to achieve our dreams, we must have a vision of our goals. Action: Visualize a life of your wildest dreams. 2. “It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, “Always do what you are afraid to do.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson The best way to learn something is to dive right in to it.
Action: You must define your fears in order to conquer them. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. How Exercise Can Help You Master New Skills. Marilyn Nieves Can you improve your body’s ability to remember by making it move? That rather odd-seeming question stimulated researchers at the University of Copenhagen to undertake a reverberant new examination of just how the body creates specific muscle memories and what role, if any, exercise plays in the process. To do so, they first asked a group of young, healthy right-handed men to master a complicated tracking skill on a computer. Sitting before the screen with their right arm on an armrest and a controller similar to a joystick in their right hand, the men watched a red line squiggle across the screen and had to use the controller to trace the same line with a white cursor. The men repeated the task multiple times, until the motion necessary to track the red line became ingrained, almost automatic.
The term “muscle memory” is, of course, something of a misnomer. After a week, though, things looked different. Want to remember how to ride that bike, in other words? 12 Mind Tricks That Win People Over and Help You Get Ahead. Harvard Economist's Surprisingly Simple Productivity Secret. Guide to Stop Procrasinating. Self help: try positive action, not positive thinking | Science | The Observer. For years self-help gurus have preached the same simple mantra: if you want to improve your life then you need to change how you think. Force yourself to have positive thoughts and you will become happier.
Visualise your dream self and you will enjoy increased success. Think like a millionaire and you will magically grow rich. In principle, this idea sounds perfectly reasonable. However, in practice it often proves ineffective. Take visualisation. In one study led by Lien Pham at the University of California, students were asked to spend a few moments each day visualising themselves getting a high grade in an upcoming exam. Why should this be so? However, when it comes to change, the message is not all gloom and doom. Towards the end of the 1880s, James turned his attention to the relationship between emotion and behaviour. James hypothesised that the relationship between emotion and behaviour was a two-way street, and that behaviour can cause emotion.
Take, for example, willpower. Can 10,000 hours of practice make you an expert? Image copyright Other A much-touted theory suggests that practising any skill for 10,000 hours is sufficient to make you an expert. No innate talent? Not a problem. You just practice. But is it true? One man who decided to test it is Dan McLaughlin, 34, a former commercial photographer from Portland, Oregon. "The idea came in 2009. Far from being discouraged by his apparent lack of any natural talent for golf, Dan and his brother started talking about what it would take to become a professional golfer.
"When I announced I was going to quit my job, my co-workers started bringing books in and I read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, Geoff Colvin's Talent is Overrated and The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle," he says. The 10,000-hours concept can be traced back to a 1993 paper written by Anders Ericsson, a Professor at the University of Colorado, called The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Image copyright AP But Ericsson was not pleased. Image copyright AFP. The 4 Scientific Ways to Become Luckier. Diagnose What's Making You Chronically Late.
Heal thyself: Trust people. Read more: "Heal thyself: The power of mind over matter" Your attitude towards other people can have a big effect on your health. Being lonely increases the risk of everything from heart attacks to dementia, depression and death, whereas people who are satisfied with their social lives sleep better, age more slowly and respond better to vaccines. The effect is so strong that curing loneliness is as good for your health as giving up smoking, according to John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago, Illinois, who has spent his career studying the effects of social isolation. "It's probably the single most powerful behavioural finding in the world," agrees Charles Raison of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who studies mind-body interactions.
"People who have rich social lives and warm, open relationships don't get sick and they live longer. " If you feel satisfied with your social life, whether you have one or two close friends or quite a few, there is nothing to worry about. "The golden rules of habit change. - Change one thing at a time - Examine your triggers - Set up environment to discourage old habit - Replace with a new activity - Allow for 30-60 days - Check that the impulse has faded" Fatherly wisdom: "Open your hand as wide as you can. Measure it, from tip of thumb to tip of pinky. You can now measure things anywhere you are. I use it all the time."