Spoken Growth

Every time, in the heat of arguing, it’s in our human nature to do our best to win. However, arguing can get quite irrational when we lose focus on what we’re trying to resolve. If we’re not focused on solving the problem, we’re wasting time and energy that can be diverted into something more positive.

If you want to lose weight, you need to eat fewer calories than you burn. That’s simple physics, and there’s no way around it.

Exercise usually burns somewhere between one hundred and five hundred calories per hour, depending on how intense it is and how much of your body it uses. On the other hand, you can easily cut back your intake by a thousand calories a day with a few small changes to your diet. That’s why weight loss is commonly said to be 70% diet and 30% exercise.

Everyone, without exception, struggles with the negative voice in their head.

And before I built the billion-dollar brand Quest Nutrition, I did too.

The first half of my life was controlled by a negative mindset. I was often paralyzed by fear. Wrecked by insecurity. I didn’t think too highly of myself.

This episode was initially published as an article on vanschneider.com by Tobias van Schneider.

It begins:

At least once a day I get an email from someone reaching out to me asking for advice on how to become a designer. Or more specifically, how to become a freelance designer with your own clients. Now, my advice might shock you a bit. When I started out as a designer, I lied about my career.

Life is complex. One day you’re happy, working on your daily tasks, and the next day you wake up, thinking: “What the fuck should I do with my life?”

Am I right? We’ve all been there. When one of my readers responded to an article last week, I asked her: “How’s it going?”

She said: “Am doing well. Been interesting times figuring out which direction to go to next in my life journey.”

Last week I talked to a friend who was in the same position. And everyone will face the same challenge one way or the other over the course of a long career.

I’ve been there many times as well. No one is immune to being confused. Let’s face it — there are literally a million things you can do with your life.

Sometimes, to become successful and get closer to the person you can become, you don’t need to add more things — you need to give some of them up.

There are certain things that are universal, which will make you successful if you give up on them, even though each one of us could have a different definition of success.

You can give up on some of them as soon as today, while it might take a bit longer to give up on others.

Getting here wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. That’s for sure.

Most startups fail within the first five years of launching. So many startups are going bankrupt or in a death spiral and shedding jobs in the hope of staying afloat to buy a few more months of life. It’s sad.

So what has made WordStream different? What makes WordStream a unicorn in a sea of startup donkeys?

In this day and age, it can be hard to keep your child from being exposed to Elon Musk. Although you may do your best on the home front, they may inevitably stumble across a profile piece or news item on TV at a friend’s house or the computer at the school library. For that reason, it’s better to be prepared for your child’s eventual exposure to Elon Musk and to know how to respond to the questions you may be asked.

The most important skill for a young person today is learning quickly and effectively. Since the Great Recession, nobody buys the false impression that you can get a credential after studying for four years, land a job, and then have a career with the same core set of skills over your entire life. Even professional career tracks like medicine and law are under outside economic and technological pressure to change and adapt at a faster pace than ever before.

I’m a pretty high-strung guy by nature. I have trouble sitting still, I can rarely focus on anything for more than five minutes, I’m always worrying about the future, and oh shit did that girl just look at me?

So naturally, I’ve been advised to try meditation many times over the years. And naturally, I’ve found it very difficult. I’d give it a try for twenty minutes or so, have trouble, try it again a few more times over the next two weeks, and give up. Rinse and repeat two or three times a year. For years.

Do you know what Steve Jobs, John D. Rockefeller, Amelia Earhart, and Ulysses S. Grant have in common?

They each possessed the talent of turning obstacles into opportunities drawn from the Stoic ideologies of Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius.

This episode was initially published as an article on Medium.com by Larry Kim.

It begins:

These productivity techniques will keep you on track and happy.

1. Turn Off Alerts It’s terribly tough to get into your Zen zone when your phone is buzzing every few minutes. Depending on how chatty your phone is, you may get notifications for everything from emails to retweets

Hello! Today's podcast is just an update and some outreach regarding future episodes, how often they will be put out, and the quality of those episodes.

“These days, everyone needs a side hustle,” starts the Uber commercial recruiting new drivers. And it’s got bouncy music and the dude is hip and it makes it sound like this is super fun and I’m sitting there thinking: Are they seriously trying to make a “second job” sound like a sexy thing!?

This episode was initially published as an article on Medium.com by Zdravko Cvijetic

It begins:

It took me four years of researching, experimenting, and a lot of excuses, to finally reach a point where waking up early as a habit is under my command, but it was worth it.

I presume the reason why you are reading this article is that you’ve tried to develop the same habit (probably more than once) and for some reason failed.

Luckily, you don’t need to go through this again by yourself; you have me and my learning lessons...

Money. Freedom. Respect. Fame.

These are some of the many promises of the all holy entrepreneurship.

In recent years there’s been a flood of blog posts, eBooks and video courses on why and how to become an entrepreneur. “How to Make Money Online.” “How to Make $5k Per Month in Passive Income.” “How to Tell Your Boss to Go Screw Himself and Live Your Dreams.” “…in 3 Easy Steps!”

“How could she do something like this to me?” said a voice in my head. All the time. Every day.

Back in 2011, when everything had gradients, iOS icons made sense, and people used deodorants, I was stuck in middle of a pretty bad depression due to my divorce.

Thankfully, I think I was smart enough (and had great people around me) so I found ways to stay afloat...

Focus on what’s important, and NOT the method/tool used to get the result you want. 

Think of ONE thing that’s killing your time right now. Then, and only then, should you scan this list and look for a solution to that one thing.

I used to think it was a silly waste of time to think about a vision for my life. Who does that? It seems to touchy-feely, too Tony Robbins-ish.

But then, as I started learning how to change my life and my habits, I realized something: people avoid creating a vision for their lives because they believe the exercise is futile. Why make a vision when it’s impossible to accomplish those things anyway?

I’ve also noticed something over the past several years...

You can gather all the information in the world, but it won’t create any tangible results in your life unless you consistently take action on what you learn.

That is why understanding how to create a new habit is so important.

Let’s have a look at the most powerful strategies I’ve found for doing that…

When I was 17 years old, I used to work and study for about 20 hours a day. I went to school, did my homework during breaks and managed a not-for-profit organization at night.

At that time, working hard landed me countless national campaigns, opportunities to work with A-list organizations and a successful career. As I got older, I started thinking differently.

I realized that working harder is not always the right path to success. Sometimes, working less can actually produce better results…

On April 2, I put myself to a new challenge. It was one of the biggest life hacks I’ve ever done.

If it works for me, maybe it works for you!

The challenge was simple: waking up 21 consecutive workdays at 4:30 a.m., a challenge I gave the name of #21earlydays.

I was already used to waking up early (6 a.m. almost every day), but this time I wanted to go further.

I wanted to test myself and be more aware of my own limits. And at the same time, my idea was to share my progress with the world and try to change some preconceived ideas that society obliges us to follow…

You think the title’s too much huh? Don’t blame me- blame Thomas J. Stanley.

Who’s that you ask? Thomas was a writer who spent 20 years studying American millionaires and patterns in their habits. The result of all his research was the bestselling book, “The Millionaire Next Door”.

This book was recommended by several great finance bloggers, so in turn, I recommend it to you.

If you don’t have time to read the whole thing, you’re in luck! This letter is for you. I tried to condense the book’s ideas into 5 rules…

People hardly do what they say. That was also the story of my life.

So for the next year or so I spent thinking, reading, and researching to find the principles my mentor was talking about.

I asked myself: What are things that people talk about, but they never do?

Here’s what I came up with until now…

Most of us have, at some point, considered what we would do if we could travel back in time. Maybe we would give ourselves some hot investment advice and become millionaires, or change history for the better, or witness our favorite historical event.

If I could travel back in time and do one thing, I wouldn’t cheat on the stock market, or kill Hitler. I would simply give myself a few words of advice.

What follows are some of the most important lessons I’ve learned in life- from books, from hard-fought experience, from friends, teachers and mentors much wiser than myself…