#po bronson

[pettirosso1959]

Quando CHI DEVE non fa il proprio dovere (non faccio nomi, altrimenti i suoi "piccoli fans" si offendono e mi danno del kompagno) , allora può capitare che il GIUSTIZIERE DELLA NOTTE che si può annidare nel nostro subconscio , quello di ognuno di noi, salta fuori all'improvviso, cappello e giubbotto nero, baffetto e pistola in tasca, e reagisce, si riprende il suo con gli interessi e si vendica.

Oggi Viareggio è migliore.

I residenti respireranno senz'altro un'aria più pulita, più salubre, perché un sacchetto della spazzatura è finito finalmente in un inceneritore , liberando la città dal suo disgustoso olezzo.

E questo è quanto, senza emotività, senza pietà, perché la spazzatura non ne merita.

Cinzia dal Pino è apparentemente passata e ripassata su quel sacchetto per schiacciarlo ben bene, prima che finisse nell'inceneritore.

Poi è semplicemente scesa dall'auto , si è ripresa la sua borsa che il rifiuto solido urbano le aveva scippato, e se ne è andata.

E poi, solo poi, forse, mentre guidava per tornare a casa, il Charles Bronson/Dottor Paul Kersey che era in lei se ne è tornato a cuccia, è rientrato, finalmente appagato, nei labirintici meandri della mente umana, e la Signora si è resa conto di cosa avesse fatto.

Ma era sconvolta.

Era fuori di sé, arrabbiata, umiliata , spaventata.

Magari, dopo aver investito il sacchetto, invece di ingranare la retromarcia ha ingranato più volte la prima, che non ci capiva più nulla, presa da quel RAPTUS di cui i giornali tanto hanno parlato, per tentare di giustificare l'assassino pigmentato di Sharon Verzeni.

"Momentaneamente incapace di intendere e volere", insomma, a causa del TRAUMA che il Tale e Quale le aveva cagionato.

Mi sembra di poter affermare che la Signora quindi è assolutamente innocente , immacolata direi, per le nostre coscienze di vittime sacrificali dell'altrui tradimento ed infamità, perché solo degli infami e dei traditori, possono consentire, governando una Nazione, che essa venga continuamente riempita di spazzatura senza muovere un dito, né mai svuotare il cestino.

Ma a Viareggio , oggi, grazie a lei, si cammina un po' più tranquilli per strada.

Buona Fortuna , Signora Cinzia, siamo tutti con Lei!

[cleverwordsandotherstuffilike]

There is nothing more genuine than breaking away from the chorus to learn the sound of your own voice. Po Bronson

[darrynnsfrancelitblog]

In their 2009 book NurtureShock, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman writes that the old conventional wisdom that “praise, self-esteem, and performance rise and fall together” has been toppled by new research shows that “excessive praise . . . distorts children’s motivations; they begin doing things merely to hear the praise, losing sight of the intrinsic enjoyment.

Pamela Druckerman~ Bringing up Bebe ( page. 219)

[ditafhero]

"Why Do I Love These People?" by Po Bronson.

I bought this book when –for the first time in my life as a freshman, finally– a lecturer asked my class to buy a novel. Well, "I've read novels in English before even without being asked," then I picked this book out, and luckily, my lecturer was OK with my gut.

Honestly, the book was pretty difficult to me reading it for the first time. The book is about something serious—not only serious, this thing is, COMPLICATED. It's about FAMILY. The most confusing thing in most of people's lives. But for the sake of my curiosity, I finished it. Plus, somehow I felt so connected with those families in this book, and somehow I could relate with their stories.

[keepcalmandwritefiction]

A piece of writing has to seduce the reader, it has to suspend disbelief and earn the reader's trust.

Po Bronson

[diehardstudy]

Some Random APUSH Things

Since I am finding all these random papers from A.P. U.S. History, I thought I would make a few posts on them for anyone who might be taking the class in the future. This post is the random little worksheet-related things we did, as well as a list of interesting readings we did. I tried to link everything anyone might want to know more about in this post so this is really link heavy lol.

...

So the first one is from when we were studying the Civil Rights Era. It's the State of Louisiana's Literacy Test, and our teacher had us try and take it to show us how crazy literacy tests were. One of the questions is literally “Divide a vertical line into two equal parts by bisecting it with a curved horizontal line that is only straight at its spot bisection of the vertical” ....umm??

And here's a link to some Literacy Test Info in case you want to know more about them.

...

Okay, the next paper is a Moral Foundations Questionnaire. We looked at this in class to evaluate and compare our morals, and what they meant for each of us politically. Even if you don’t plan on taking A.P. U.S. History I think this is still a really interesting questionnaire to take on your own.

...

We also compared the Columbus Day Proclamations of Obama (2016) and Trump (2017). These gave us an idea of how events surrounding Columbus’ “discovery” of America were addressed. For example, In Obama’s proclamation it is written “As we mark this rich history, we must also acknowledge the pain and suffering reflected in the stories of Native Americans who had long resided on this land prior to the arrival of European newcomers” whereas Trump’s does not acknowledge the struggles of Native Americans. We could see two different current ways in which the past is viewed and addressed. 

...

Now I have some readings we did throughout the year and also after we took the AP exam. 

This is Water by David Foster Wallace - This is a speech where (according to The Guardian lol) Wallace reflects on the difficulties of daily life and 'making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head'. It’s basically about natural tendencies to view things through a lens focused on yourself (being self-centered) and choices we can make in our daily life on how we view things (among other ideas). It might sound dry (and that’s ok) but I found it to be very interesting food for thought that is well-written.

Failures of Kindness by George Saunders - A commencement speech on the importance of even the smallest choices we can make to be kind in some way. The speech is pretty short but has a good message on generally being happy and living kindly and without regrets.

The Inverse Power of Praise (excerpt from NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman) - This chapter from the book addresses the myth that praising your kid by telling them they are smart benefits them a lot in life. In truth, science has proved that it is actually damaging to tell your kid they are smart and that instead, one should praise hard work. Ashley Merryman also did a TED Talk on parenting if anyone is interested.

Chapter 6: Harlan, Kentucky (excerpt from Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell) - This chapter is on the culture of honor and the power such deep-rooted cultural legacies have even today. This reading was super interesting, and the studies it discusses are intriguing 10/10 would recommend. You should buy the book and support the author if you are interested in it, but note that I am linking here a pdf of the whole book so that you can see chapter 6 (starts on page 175 of the pdf) of it if you would like to. Malcolm Gladwell also has a blog (of sorts) and a podcast called Revisionist History (which my AP teacher said can sometimes be disappointing in comparison to his books).

...

I hope some of this was interesting to someone in some way seeing as how I just spent an hour or two compiling all these links and papers lol. Anyway, I highly recommend checking out this stuff (especially the readings) and looking into taking AP courses as well as seeking out knowledge of all types in your spare time. I’ll be back with another APUSH post sometime soon maybe.

[baktay]

„Csak repült, repült, folyton csak elrepült az idő, és sosem volt elég belőle, még akkor sem, ha az elkövetkező évek dugig voltak vele. Ami azt illeti, a jövőben olyan hatalmas időmennyiség állt rendelkezésre, hogy a kereslet és kínálat törvényei szerint a jövő idő egy fabatkát sem ért. A brókerek, férfiak és nők egyaránt, mindig mindent – szerelmet, testedzést, olvasást, utazást – a jövőben eljövő időre halasztottak, anélkül, hogy órára-percre be kellett volna táblázniuk a jövőt. Mert a jövő határidőnaplója sosem telt be. A jövő mindig lehetővé tette, hogy bepótolják, ami elmaradt, és mindig megengedte, hogy áttárcsázzák a jövőre tervezett programot, ha netán valami közbejött. A jövővel mindig lehetett alkudozni, sosem zárkózott el a kiegyezés elől. A jelen idő azonban betyárul kitolt velük. Átkozottul kevés volt belőle – és még ez a kevéske idő is folyton elrepült, mielőtt bármit is kezdhettek volna vele.”

Po Bronson: Bankvilág vitriol

[a-woman-apart]

I’m Going to Write for a Living

A while ago I wrote a post called “If I had to write for a living”. I wrote it after reading Po Bronson’s book “What Should I Do with My Life?”, which was a collection of personal anecdotes regarding people who often started out in one field or with one goal in mind but were forced to adapt to changing circumstances and adopt another. The book follows the lives of a monk, of business people of varying professions, of lawyers, people in medicine, and even a woman who devoted her life to social work in a nonprofit. There are even more professions represented than the ones I just listed. Through personal stories the book demonstrates that there is often not just one “right” career path or one way to move through the world.

Now, I am convinced that I want to move through the world as a writer. Truthfully, I have always known this- it’s always been that one thing that I could do and do well. I wanted to expand beyond that, so I decided to pursue the Associate in music. I learned that I do not want to be a musician. Now, I am tempted to expand on one of my other interests: psychology. As a person with a mental illness, understanding the mind is very important to me. It is an area of study that I could see myself doing well in, and jobs in the mental health field are abundant. However, if I am being honest with myself, I can see that it would be yet another divergence from my main passion. Maybe I’ll change my mind one day, but for now, I think I’ll keep my study of psychology informal.

Honestly, I think I have always had this secret fear about officially going after writing as a career. I was afraid that I would burn out, try very hard and fail, or both. I know that when money was tight I tried to secure some writing gigs on Upwork, but I wasn’t successful. I knew that I needed to have some work experience to present so that I could stand out from everyone else, so I didn’t too much take the failure to heart. I would be lying, however, if I didn’t say that it made me a little bit uneasy. The encouraging thing is that I don’t just love one specific type of writing, I love it all. It doesn’t matter if it’s editing, writing synopses, publishing, writing poetry, writing reviews or frankly even writing on a soup can, sign me up. That was something that I couldn’t say when I was pursuing music. I didn’t see myself being immersed in all aspects of it. I wasn’t networking. I wasn’t putting myself out there. I was just doing what I could to graduate because I was too deep in to quit.

I am not sure if burning out is a real possibility for me or not, but I can’t be afraid to pursue this. This is something that I must face. Now that I am taking steps towards finding colleges to study English at, everything has become more tangible. The reality of the decision I am making has become so apparent to me. Even if I think being unable to succeed in this would crush me, I can’t not try. Even if it all fails, I must remind myself that I still have this. I can still write, even if it doesn’t work out as a career. Just like the people in Po Bronson’s book, I can reinvent myself and try something else. This wouldn’t be the end for me.

It’s tempting to see decisions as only black and white, right and wrong. There is more nuance than that. We all make mistakes, but often things we thought of as mistakes were merely lessons. I am learning how to trust my judgment and pursue the things that I think are best for me. I am not beholden to one path and one path alone. There are always options. There is always another choice. For now, I choose writing.  

[cobotis]

There is nothing more genuine than breaking away from the chorus to learn the sound of your own voice.

Po Bronson

[free--therapy]

10 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Incredibly Happy

Try one. Try them all. They work. Science says so.

BY JEFF HADEN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, INC.

It's easy to think of happiness as a result, but happiness is also a driver.

One example: While I'm definitely into finding ways to improve personal productivity (whether a one-day burst, or a lifetime, or things you should not do every day), probably the best way to be more productive is to just be happier. Happy people accomplish more.

Easier said than done though, right?

Actually, many changes are easy. Here are 10 science-based ways to be happier from Belle Beth Cooper, Content Crafter at Buffer, the social media management tool that lets you schedule, automate, and analyze social media updates.

Here's Beth:

1. Exercise: 7 Minutes Could Be Enough

Think exercise is something you don't have time for? Think again. Check out the  7 minute workout mentioned in The New York Times. That's a workout any of us can fit into our schedules.

Exercise has such a profound effect on our happiness and well-being that it is an effective strategy for overcoming depression. In a study cited in Shawn Achor's book The Happiness Advantage, three groups of patients treated their depression with medication, exercise, or a combination of the two. The results of this study are surprising: Although all three groups experienced similar improvements in their happiness levels early on, the follow-up assessments proved to be radically different:

The groups were then tested six months later to assess their relapse rate. Of those who had taken the medication alone, 38 percent had slipped back into depression. Those in the combination group were doing only slightly better, with a 31 percent relapse rate. The biggest shock, though, came from the exercise group: Their relapse rate was only 9 percent.

You don't have to be depressed to benefit from exercise, though. Exercise can help you relax, increase your brain power, and even improve your body image, even if you don't lose any weight.

We've explored exercise in depth before, and looked at what it does to our brains, such as releasing proteins and endorphins that make us feel happier.

A study in the Journal of Health Psychology found that people who exercised felt better about their bodies even when they saw no physical changes:

Body weight, shape and body image were assessed in 16 males and 18 females before and after both 6 × 40 minutes exercising and 6 × 40 minutes reading. Over both conditions, body weight and shape did not change. Various aspects of body image, however, improved after exercise compared to before.

Yep: Even if your actual appearance doesn't change, how you feel about your body does change.

2. Sleep More: You'll Be Less Sensitive to Negative Emotions

We know that sleep helps our body recover from the day and repair itself and that it helps us focus and be more productive. It turns out sleep is also important for happiness.

In NutureShock, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman explain how sleep affects positivity:

Negative stimuli get processed by the amygdala; positive or neutral memories gets processed by the hippocampus. Sleep deprivation hits the hippocampus harder than the amygdala. The result is that sleep-deprived people fail to recall pleasant memories yet recall gloomy memories just fine.

In one experiment by Walker, sleep-deprived college students tried to memorize a list of words. They could remember 81% of the words with a negative connotation, like "cancer." But they could remember only 31% of the words with a positive or neutral connotation, like "sunshine" or "basket."

The BPS Research Digest explores another study that proves sleep affects our sensitivity to negative emotions. Using a facial recognition task throughout the course of a day, researchers studied how sensitive participants were to positive and negative emotions. Those who worked through the afternoon without taking a nap became more sensitive to negative emotions like fear and anger.

Using a face recognition task, here we demonstrate an amplified reactivity to anger and fear emotions across the day, without sleep. However, an intervening nap blocked and even reversed this negative emotional reactivity to anger and fear while conversely enhancing ratings of positive (happy) expressions.

Of course, how well (and how long) you sleep will probably affect how you feel when you wake up, which can make a difference to your whole day.

Another study tested how employees' moods when they started work in the morning affected their entire work day.

Researchers found that employees' moods when they clocked in tended to affect how they felt the rest of the day. Early mood was linked to their perceptions of customers and to how they reacted to customers' moods.

And most importantly to managers, employee mood had a clear impact on performance, including both how much work employees did and how well they did it.

3. Spend More Time With Friends/Family: Money Can't Buy You Happiness

Staying in touch with friends and family is one of the top five regrets of the dying.

If you want more evidence that time with friends is beneficial for you, research proves it can make you happier right now, too.

Social time is highly valuable when it comes to improving our happiness, even for introverts. Several studies have found that time spent with friends and family makes a big difference to how happy we feel.

I love the way Harvard happiness expert Daniel Gilbert explains it:

We are happy when we have family, we are happy when we have friends and almost all the other things we think make us happy are actually just ways of getting more family and friends.

George Vaillant is the director of a 72-year study of the lives of 268 men.

In an interview in the March 2008 newsletter to the Grant Study subjects, Vaillant was asked, "What have you learned from the Grant Study men?" Vaillant's response: "That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people."

He shared insights of the study with Joshua Wolf Shenk at The Atlantic on how men's social connections made a difference to their overall happiness:

Men's relationships at age 47, he found, predicted late-life adjustment better than any other variable. Good sibling relationships seem especially powerful: 93 percent of the men who were thriving at age 65 had been close to a brother or sister when younger.

In fact, a study published in the Journal of Socio-Economics states than your relationships are worth more than $100,000:

Using the British Household Panel Survey, I find that an increase in the level of social involvements is worth up to an extra £85,000 a year in terms of life satisfaction. Actual changes in income, on the other hand, buy very little happiness.

I think that last line is especially fascinating: Actual changes in income, on the other hand, buy very little happiness. So we could increase our annual income by hundreds of thousands of dollars and still not be as happy as we would if we increased the strength of our social relationships.

The Terman study, covered in The Longevity Project, found that relationships and how we help others were important factors in living long, happy lives:

We figured that if a Terman participant sincerely felt that he or she had friends and relatives to count on when having a hard time then that person would be healthier. Those who felt very loved and cared for, we predicted, would live the longest.

Surprise: our prediction was wrong... Beyond social network size, the clearest benefit of social relationships came from helping others. Those who helped their friends and neighbors, advising and caring for others, tended to live to old age.

4. Get Outside More: Happiness is Maximized at 57°

In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor recommends spending time in the fresh air to improve your happiness:

Making time to go outside on a nice day also delivers a huge advantage; one study found that spending 20 minutes outside in good weather not only boosted positive mood, but broadened thinking and improved working memory...

This is pretty good news for those of us who are worried about fitting new habits into our already-busy schedules. Twenty minutes is a short enough time to spend outside that you could fit it into your commute or even your lunch break.

A UK study from the University of Sussex also found that being outdoors made people happier:

Being outdoors, near the sea, on a warm, sunny weekend afternoon is the perfect spot for most. In fact, participants were found to be substantially happier outdoors in all natural environments than they were in urban environments.

The American Meteorological Society published research in 2011 that found current temperature has a bigger effect on our happiness than variables like wind speed and humidity, or even the average temperature over the course of a day. It also found that happiness is maximized at 57 degrees (13.9°C), so keep an eye on the weather forecast before heading outside for your 20 minutes of fresh air.

The connection between productivity and temperature is another topic we've talked about more here. It's fascinating what a small change in temperature can do.

5. Help Others: 100 Hours a Year is the Magic Number

One of the most counterintuitive pieces of advice I found is that to make yourself feel happier, you should help others. In fact, 100 hours per year (or two hours per week) is the optimal time we should dedicate to helping others in order to enrich our lives.

If we go back to Shawn Achor's book again, he says this about helping others:

...when researchers interviewed more than 150 people about their recent purchases, they found that money spent on activities--such as concerts and group dinners out--brought far more pleasure than material purchases like shoes, televisions, or expensive watches. Spending money on other people, called "prosocial spending," also boosts happiness.

The Journal of Happiness Studies published a study that explored this very topic:

Participants recalled a previous purchase made for either themselves or someone else and then reported their happiness. Afterward, participants chose whether to spend a monetary windfall on themselves or someone else. Participants assigned to recall a purchase made for someone else reported feeling significantly happier immediately after this recollection; most importantly, the happier participants felt, the more likely they were to choose to spend a windfall on someone else in the near future.

So spending money on other people makes us happier than buying stuff for ourselves. But what about spending our time on other people?

A study of volunteering in Germany explored how volunteers were affected when their opportunities to help others were taken away:

Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall but before the German reunion, the first wave of data of the GSOEP was collected in East Germany. Volunteering was still widespread. Due to the shock of the reunion, a large portion of the infrastructure of volunteering (e.g. sports clubs associated with firms) collapsed and people randomly lost their opportunities for volunteering. Based on a comparison of the change in subjective well-being of these people and of people from the control group who had no change in their volunteer status, the hypothesis is supported that volunteering is rewarding in terms of higher life satisfaction.

In his book Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being, University of Pennsylvania professor Martin Seligman explains that helping others can improve our own lives:

...we scientists have found that doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise we have tested.

6. Practice Smiling: Reduce Pain, Improve Mood, Think Better

Smiling can make us feel better, but it's more effective when we back it up with positive thoughts, according to this study:

A new study led by a Michigan State University business scholar suggests customer-service workers who fake smile throughout the day worsen their mood and withdraw from work, affecting productivity. But workers who smile as a result of cultivating positive thoughts--such as a tropical vacation or a child's recital--improve their mood and withdraw less.

Of course it's important to practice "real smiles" where you use your eye sockets. (You've seen fake smiles that don't reach the person's eyes. Try it. Smile with just your mouth. Then smile naturally; your eyes narrow. There's a huge difference in a fake smile and a genuine smile.)

According to PsyBlog, smiling can improve our attention and help us perform better on cognitive tasks:

Smiling makes us feel good which also increases our attentional flexibility and our ability to think holistically. When this idea was tested by Johnson et al. (2010), the results showed that participants who smiled performed better on attentional tasks which required seeing the whole forest rather than just the trees.

A smile is also a good way to reduce some of the pain we feel in troubling circumstances:

Smiling is one way to reduce the distress caused by an upsetting situation. Psychologists call this the facial feedback hypothesis. Even forcing a smile when we don't feel like it is enough to lift our mood slightly (this is one example of embodied cognition).

7. Plan a Trip: It Helps Even if You Don't Actually Take One

As opposed to actually taking a holiday, simply planning a vacation or break from work can improve our happiness. A study published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life showed that the highest spike in happiness came during the planning stage of a vacation as people enjoy the sense of anticipation:

In the study, the effect of vacation anticipation boosted happiness for eight weeks. After the vacation, happiness quickly dropped back to baseline levels for most people.

Shawn Achor has some info for us on this point, as well:

One study found that people who just thought about watching their favorite movie actually raised their endorphin levels by 27 percent.

If you can't take the time for a vacation right now, or even a night out with friends, put something on the calendar--even if it's a month or a year down the road. Then, whenever you need a boost of happiness, remind yourself about it.

8. Meditate: Rewire Your Brain for Happiness

Meditation is often touted as an important habit for improving focus, clarity, and attention span, as well as helping to keep you calm. It turns out it's also useful for improving your happiness:

In one study, a research team from Massachusetts General Hospital looked at the brain scans of 16 people before and after they participated in an eight-week course in mindfulness meditation. The study, published in the January issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, concluded that after completing the course, parts of the participants' brains associated with compassion and self-awareness grew, and parts associated with stress shrank.

Meditation literally clears your mind and calms you down, it's been often proven to be the single most effective way to live a happier life. According to Achor, meditation can actually make you happier long-term:

Studies show that in the minutes right after meditating, we experience feelings of calm and contentment, as well as heightened awareness and empathy. And, research even shows that regular meditation can permanently rewire the brain to raise levels of happiness.

The fact that we can actually alter our brain structure through mediation is most surprising to me and somewhat reassuring that however we feel and think today isn't permanent.

9. Move Closer to Work: A Short Commute is Worth More Than a Big House

Our commute to work can have a surprisingly powerful impact on our happiness. The fact that we tend to commute twice a day at least five days a week makes it unsurprising that the effect would build up over time and make us less and less happy.

According to The Art of Manliness, having a long commute is something we often fail to realize will affect us so dramatically:

... while many voluntary conditions don't affect our happiness in the long term because we acclimate to them, people never get accustomed to their daily slog to work because sometimes the traffic is awful and sometimes it's not.

Or as Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert put it, "Driving in traffic is a different kind of hell every day."

We tend to try to compensate for this by having a bigger house or a better job, but these compensations just don't work:

Two Swiss economists who studied the effect of commuting on happiness found that such factors could not make up for the misery created by a long commute.

10. Practice Gratitude: Increase Happiness and Satisfaction

This is a seemingly simple strategy but I've personally found it to make a huge difference to my outlook. There are lots of ways to practice gratitude, from keeping a journal of things you're grateful for, sharing three good things that happen each day with a friend or your partner, and going out of your way to show gratitude when others help you.

In an experiment where participants took note of things they were grateful for each day, their moods were improved just from this simple practice:

The gratitude-outlook groups exhibited heightened well-being across several, though not all, of the outcome measures across the three studies, relative to the comparison groups. The effect on positive affect appeared to be the most robust finding. Results suggest that a conscious focus on blessings may have emotional and interpersonal benefits.

The Journal of Happiness studies published a study that used letters of gratitude to test how being grateful can affect our levels of happiness:

Participants included 219 men and women who wrote three letters of gratitude over a 3 week period. Results indicated that writing letters of gratitude increased participants' happiness and life satisfaction while decreasing depressive symptoms.

Quick Final Fact: Getting Older Will Actually Make You Happier

As we get older, particularly past middle age, we tend to naturally grow happier. There's still some debate over why this happens, but scientists have a few ideas:

Researchers, including the authors, have found that older people shown pictures of faces or situations tend to focus on and remember the happier ones more and the negative ones less.

Other studies have discovered that as people age, they seek out situations that will lift their moods--for instance, pruning social circles of friends or acquaintances who might bring them down. Still other work finds that older adults learn to let go of loss and disappointment over unachieved goals, and focus their goals on greater well being.

So if you thought getting old will make you miserable, it's likely you'll develop a more positive outlook than you probably have now.

How cool is that?

READ ARTICLE HERE

[star-anise]

Oh dear, I’m sorry to bother you, but I would like to ask for your advice on something related to several of your top posts- Are there any cues that one would be able to observe within themselves that could help with a diagnosis of, well, being gifted? I’ve been told as such my entire life, but due to the number of students that are superior to me, I’ve come to doubt what was previously thought of me; I fear I might become obsolete.

I feel the need to answer a different question than the one you’ve asked. I think it will still help. I’m going to use IQ here, for all that it’s an intensely flawed measure, because it’s well-researched and we can do math with it.

“Giftedness”, as most school systems define it, is more than two standard deviations (SDs) above the norm. Because of how bell curves work, that’s approximately the top 2% of intelligence. The higher intelligence goes, the rarer. Which is to say if people are randomly distributed, the odds are that every 50 people will produce 1 person 2 SDs above the norm. However, the higher you go up, the rarer it gets. Above 3 SDs is 0.01%, which is 1 in every ten thousand. Above 4 SDs is 1 in every thirty thousand. You would need to comb a randomly-populated city of a million people before you could come up with enough people to fill a classroom of 30 people–and they would be every age, from infancy to centennarian.

Which is to say: The smarter you are, the less likely you are to ever meet anyone else as smart as you when you’re young. This means that you’re very likely to define “being smart” as “always being the smartest person in the room”. And if your peers treat you as weird and your teachers fixate on your intelligence, you may come to associate “being smart” as “my entire reason for having worth in this world.”

So as long as you keep seeking higher education and greater challenge–as long as you keep going towards those magnets that draw other people of high intelligence–the odds slowly increase that someday, you’ll meet people as smart as you, if not smarter.

And for a lot of us there’s a really rude shock where suddenly we’re not the smartest person in the room, and the internal dominos start to fall: If I’m not the smartest, am I even smart? If I’m not smart, do I even have a use anymore? What do I even have to offer the world now that I’m stupid???

I hit that level in high school, when I sought out an IB school and met Matt, who would be my best friend for the next three years. Matt hit that level when he went to university to study physics, and realized he was the least-intelligent person in a professor’s lab. Occasionally I’ll meet people who appear not to have had that experience yet–who are either awkwardly humble about it, or deeply arrogant. For some of them, I am the first person they have ever met who’s smarter than them, and they generally either crumble into self-hatred and self-doubt, or they light up and go, “Oh my god! You’re like me!”

It is very definitely possible to remind yourself that you are still smart, still capable, and still worthwhile. But I would encourage you to use this as an opportunity to also branch out.

Most other kids, when they were very young, hit challenges they couldn’t master–and they learned how to feel good about themselves anyway. They might not have been the smartest, they reasoned, but at least… they made their friends laugh. They coloured pictures in a way that satisfied them. They tried very hard. They loved dancing to music. They liked to feed the family pet. They could define themselves by many different experiences and relationships, and find sources of self-confidence and pleasure that had nothing to do with school or intelligence.

If you’re using words like “obsolete”, it sounds like you didn’t get that. You missed out on the opportunity to get to define yourself as having worth and function in a variety of ways; to be complete and self-justified just for being alive. 

This is a really important thing. It’s essential to a world of human rights. We’ve tried worlds where people had to justify their existence–you have to be this hardworking to deserve medical care; you have to be this virtuous to deserve peace and happiness; you have to be this intelligent to be allowed to propagate your genes. And overwhelmingly? They result in human misery. To allow a world where you can be deemed “obsolete” and lose all right to community, happiness, self-worth, or meaningful work, is to allow a world where suffering is the default state. And, well–some people are, but I am not okay with that.

So I am accordingly not okay with the amount of pain, isolation, and self-hatred you’ve lived with. I think that no matter how smart you were or weren’t, you should have been treated as worthwhile and lovable regardless of you performance. I think you should always have had friends who understood you and didn’t think you were weird. I think you should have been given chances to try something you didn’t completely have the abilities to master, and been able to fail at it and learn to be okay with failure, in a way that reinforced that you were fundamentally good, lovable, and capable of doing good and worthwhile things.

It is a lot harder to go back and do that work now that you’re an adult. The same way it’s harder to learn a second language for a first time as an adult than as a six-year-old, it’s a lot harder to learn these emotional skills. Your brain’s emotional systems are hugely dominated by the formative experiences you had as a child. It might take pain, doubt, questioning, outside help, finding a counsellor who works with Gifted adults, or trying medical treatment for depression or anxiety to get there.

Anyway, to answer your original question: It can be really grounding to get out of the rarified air of academia and get in touch with adults who didn’t have to score incredibly well on tests to be there. If you go to something not selected for academic prowess–a general adult exercise class, or knitting group, or community group, or bowling league–you’ll see the incredible diversity of intellects, personalities, and life experiences. You might meet people as smart as you, who have great careers and blow off steam through this recreation; smart people whose life has led them down a non-academic path; people of normal intelligence, who nonetheless have robust lives and interests and concerns and are a lot less excruciating to talk to than carefully age-matched peers of your childhood; and people with cognitive impairments or developmental delays that mean they need special accommodation to be able to happily live, but do nonetheless manage it.

In short: Get out of your own head, because there are very few reference points, and find yourself in a wider social matrix that isn’t rigidly sorted by test score.

I was also immeasurably helped as a teenager by joining a nerdy hobby (medieval re-enactment) full of Gifted adults who would sit around the fire and tell me the unexpected stories of their lives (”I was a smart kid, but then in uni I discovered that being a graduate student in chemistry is awful, so I became a teacher. Then I met my wife and fell in love, so I moved to Canada to be with her, and Canada won’t accept my teaching license and I don’t want to go back to school and be poor. So now I’m the assistant manager of a bookstore”). These served as a powerful antidote to the message that if I wasn’t on a “30 Under 30″ list of blazing comets taking the world by storm, I was a complete failure.

I can’t give you my own experiences, but I can suggest some places to look for those antidotes: Late Bloomers by Rich Karlgaard, What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson, and The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown.

[cleverwordsandotherstuffilike]

There is nothing more genuine than breaking away from the chorus to learn the sound of your own voice.

Po Bronson

[just-a-caffeine-addict]

Book Prompt 1

“Nice Outfit.” – Prompt from “642 Things to Write About” by Jason Roberts and Po Bronson

[ponapisach]

Misja jest prosta. Przedrzeć się na teren okupowany przez Niemców, wtargnąć do zamku gdzie wysocy rangą oficerowie zażywają relaksu i wszystkich zabić, albo przynajmniej tylu ilu się da. Specjalnie na tę akcję zostaje utworzony oddział żołnierzy z wyrokami, czekającymi na egzekucję, albo mającymi w perspektywie po 20-30 lat ciężkich robót. Oddział straceńców może dużo wygrać, bo stawką jest szansa na uchylenie kar. Na dowódcę oddziału zostaje wyznaczony major John Reisman (Lee Marvin), który "krnąbrny" i "skory do niesubordynacji" ma od zawsze wpisane w CV. Jest jednak Reisman na tyle bezkompromisowym oficerem, że udaje mu się dość szybko uzyskać posłuch wśród tytułowej dwunastki. Doskonale zresztą zdaje sobie sprawę, z kim ma do czynienia. Akty nieposłuszeństwa ucina brutalną ripostą. "Parszywa dwunastka" Roberta Aldricha to historia przestępców, którzy przy swoich różnych charakterach i przewinieniach (są wśród nich mordercy, gwałciciele, złodzieje) potrafią jednak swoją agresję i upodobanie do szerzenia chaosu wykorzystać we wspólnym celu. 

Robert Aldrich po niezwykle udanym "Starcie Feniksa", gdzie w końcu uwolnił się od towarzystwa kobiet i wykorzystał tam w pełni swój reżyserski potencjał, przystąpił do realizacji kolejnego "męskiego kina". "Parszywa dwunastka" to klasyk i czołowy reprezentant kina wojennego, w którym motyw przewodni stanowi temat 'men on mission'. Twórca poszedł tym samym za ciosem po swojej poprzedniej produkcji, bo trzeba przyznać, że oba filmy ("Start Feniksa" i "Parszywa dwunastka") są do siebie pod wieloma względami podobne. Oba bowiem na pierwszym planie stawiają szereg męskich, nierzadko trudnych usposobień, gdzie bohaterowie muszą znaleźć wspólny język i wypracować metodę, by razem przeciwstawić się trudnemu zadaniu. W "Starcie Feniksa" chodziło o zbudowanie samolotu i ucieczkę z pustyni, w "Parszywej dwunastce" o dopracowanie w najdrobniejszych szczegółach planu ataku na zamek i walkę z nazistami. 

Trzeba przyznać, że Robert Aldrich dostał do realizacji pierwszorzędny materiał. Powieść Erwina Nathansona wydana w 1965 roku była oparta na historii prawdziwej jednostki desantowej która pod nazwa Filthy thirteen siała spustoszenie na tyłach wroga w czasie II Wojny Światowej (między innymi w operacji Market Garden). Bestseller Nathasona opowiadał wprawdzie o prawdziwej jednostce, ale już same informacje o tym, że byli recydywistami były tylko literacką fikcją. Koncept na opowieść pisarz wziął z frontowych doniesień, między innymi od Russa Meyera (weteran amerykańskiej eksploatacji, ale również fotograf w czasie wojny). Prawdą jest natomiast, ze dowódca Filthy thirteen, Jake McNiece, był pełnej krwi Indianinem niejednokrotnie mającym problem z posłuszeństwem wyższym rangom oficerom i to właśnie on dołączył w pewnym momencie do przetrzebionej drużyny jako "trzynasty". Nazwa Filthy pochodziła od słowa brudny i miała odnosić się w bezpośredni sposób do stanu higieny oddziału, który ani myślał o poprawieniu tej sytuacji. 

Robert Aldrich odniósł komercyjny sukces, bo swój obraz wypełnił po brzegi akcją, ciętym humorem, a zaangażowani aktorzy skradli serca publiczności. Oczywiście nie można było zatrudnić dwunastu gwiazdorów, więc po filmie pamiętamy tylko tych najbardziej charyzmatycznych (przede wszystkim Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas), ale z drugiej strony, kolejne głośne nazwiska mogły tylko odciągnąć naszą uwagę od istoty filmu i zabrać czas przeznaczony na akcję. Tej natomiast, akcji, tu nie brakuje. Sam film był po premierze mocno krytykowany. Zwracano uwagę na sadystyczne ciągoty Aldricha, obraz określony został mianem brutalnego i propagującego przemoc. Odpowiedzialni za scenariusz doświadczeni Nunnally Johnson i Lukas Heller.rzeczywiście zawarli w "Parszywej dwunastce" dużo brutalnych scen, ale przecież to kino wojenne, a rzecz nie dotyczyła "typowego" oddziału, a ludzi, którzy byli przez własny naród spisani na straty. Tym atakiem musli odkupić swoje winy, udowodnić za wszelką cenę i przy użyciu drastycznych środków, że jeszcze się na coś przydadzą. 

"Parszywa dwunastka" została kręcona w studiach MGM, oraz na terenach południowej Anglii. Tam też został zbudowany zamek, a odpowiedzialnym za to był William Hutchinson (kilka lat później został nominowany do Oskara za scenografię do filmu "Młodość Winstona" Richarda Attenborough). Wybuchy, ciągła wymiana ognia, bezceremonialne sekwencje wyżynania nazistów, wszystkie te sceny musiały odbić się na frekwencji i sukcesie kasowym. Film był tak popularny, że powstało sporo jego kontynuacji, wiele filmów luźno odnoszących się do schematu jak włoski "The Inglorious Bastards" Enzo G. Castellariego (delikatnie tylko skłaniający się do pomysłu Aldricha), w końcu film Tarantino, który oddawał hołd temu włoskiemu, ale głównie przecież tematowi ''men on mission', którego spopularyzowanie trzeba upatrywać właśnie w filmie Roberta Aldricha. Dzisiaj być może razi kilka skrótów, akcja, która idzie amerykanom "zbyt łatwo", ale przecież nie sposób odmówić walorów, dzięki którym film Alricha po dziś dzień jest chętnie oglądany. Doskonałe aktorstwo, tempo, motyw przewodni skomponowany przez Franka De Vola. Aldrich był twórcą hitu, a film zdobył cztery nominację do Oskarów w tym jedną statuetkę dla Johna Poynera za najlepszy montaż dźwięku. Robert Aldrich pozostał w MGM i zrealizował dla studia "The Legend of Lylah Clare" z Kim Novak

[apriliaaa18]

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Think and Grow Rich - By Napoleon Hill ✅

How to Cultivate an Unshakable Character - By Jim Rohn ❎

Learned Optimism - By Martin E. P. Seligman ❎

The Power of Ambition - By Jim Rohn ❎

Become What You Are - By Alan Watts ✅

The New Psycho-cybernetics - By Maxwell Maltz and Dan Kennedy ✅

Awaken The Giant Within - By Tony Robbins ✅

The Closer's Survival Guide - By Grant Cardone ❎

100 Ways to Stay Motivated - By Grant Cardone ❎

Raving Fans - By Ken Blanchard an Sheldon Bowels ✅

Eat that Frog - By Brian Tracy ✅

The War of Art - By Steven Pressfield ❎

How to Stay Motivated - By Zig Ziglar ❎

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - By Stephen Covey ✅

If You're Not First You're Last - By Grant Cardone ❎

The 4-Hour Workweek - By Tim Ferriss ✅

The Chimp Paradox - By Steve Peters ✅

Mastery - By Robert Greene ❎

Sell or Be Sold - By Grant Cardone ✅

Drive - By Daniel H. Pink ❎

Unshakeable - By Tony Robbins ❎

Grit - By Angela Duckworth ✅

Leaders Eat Last - By Simon Sinek ❎

Life’s Golden Ticket - By Brendon Burchard ✅

The Worry Cure - By Robert L. Leahy ❎

Meditations - By Marcus Aurelius ❎

Daring Greatly - By Brene Brown ❎

Mindset - By Carol Dweck ✅

Relentless - By Tim Grover ❎

The Passion Test - By Janet Bray Attwood and Chris Attwood ✅

The Power of Intention - By Dr. Wayne Dyer ✅

Switch - By Chip Heath and Dan Heath ✅

The Year of Magical Thinking - By Joan Didion ✅

Anyway - By Kent M. Keith ✅

Unlimited Power - By Tony Robbins ✅

How to Practice - By The Dalai Lama ❎

Disrupt You - By Jay Samit ❎

Bold - By P. Diamandis and S. Kotler ❎

The Power of Positive Thinking - By Norman Vincent Peale ✅

As a Man Thinketh - By James Allen ✅

The Brain That Changes Itself - By Norman Doidge ❎

Authentic Happiness - By Martin E. P. Seligman ✅

Flow - By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi ❎

How Good People Make Tough Choices - By Rushworth M. Kidder ❎

Phantoms in the Brain - By V.S. Ramachandran ❎

Emerson: Essays and Lectures - By Ralph Waldo Emerson ❎

Man’s Search for Meaning - By Viktor E. Frankl ✅

Outliers - By Malcolm Gladwell ✅

Happy for No Reason - By Marci Shimoff ❎

The Talent Code - By Daniel Coyle ❎

Stumbling on Happiness - By Daniel Gilbert ✅

Emotional Intelligence - By Daniel Goleman ✅

Eleven Rings - By Phil Jackson ❎

The Moral Animal - By Robert Wright ❎

The Art of Happiness - By The Dalai Lama ✅

Mastery - By George Leonard ❎

Secrets for Happiness & Success - By Og Mandino ✅

The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem - By Nathaniel Branden ❎

Willpower - By Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney ❎

The Art of Possibility - By Rossamund Stone Zander ❎

Living a Life that Matters - By Harold S. Kushner ❎

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff - By Richard Carlson ✅

Sometimes You Win Sometimes You Learn - By John Maxwell ✅

The Obstacle is the Way - By Ryan Holiday ❎

What does it Mean to be Human? - By Frederick Franck, Janis Roze, and Richard Connolly ❎

The Charge - By Brendon Burchard ✅

Predictably Irrational - By Dan Ariely ✅

The Power of Myth - By Joseph Campbell ❎

Extreme Ownership - By Jocko Willink and Leif Babin ❎

Incognito - By David Eagleman ❎

Antifragile - By Nassim Nicholas Taleb ❎

Group - By Paul Solotaroff ❎

Linchpin - By Seth Godin ✅

Onward - By Howard Schultz ❎

Start With Why - By Simon Sinek ✅

The 8th Habit - By Stephen R. Covey ✅

The E Myth Revisited - By Michael E. Gerber ✅

The Four Agreements - By Don Biohel Ruiz ❎

The Success Principles - By Jack Canfield ✅

Therapy for the Sane - By Lou Marinoff ❎

What should I do with my Life? - By Po Bronson ❎

Zero to One - By Peter Thiel ✅