When you judge another you don’t define them you define yourself

No matter how you live your life, whether you’re a stay at home parent, someone who travels as much as possible or a corporate shark with little time for anything else, there are people out there judging you and they’re judging your work.

It truly doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, there will always be someone watching and judging. It likely isn’t personal, it rarely is, when others judge it’s usually a projection of their own insecurities. They project their negativity, their fears, and ultimately, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. …

And he plans to build a new one

In 1988, Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented hypertext mark-up language (html) — the language that powers the World Wide Web. He knew his invention could facilitate the rapid exchange of information globally and felt it would be a powerful force for good. That’s how it was for a while, but it didn’t take long for his invention to be hijacked, as he sees it, by a few dozen corporations.

In the intervening years, the number of these corporations dwindled due to amalgamations and takeovers, and those that survived became huge. Berners-Lee points out that between them, these giant corporations dominate today’s internet by providing email, web, social communication, navigational, and other services ostensibly free of charge. Users, however, “pay” by giving these huge companies enormous amounts of personal information. …

Finland retains crown as world’s happiest country

The United Nations World Happiness Report ranks the world’s nations in terms of the happiness of their citizens. In 2020, Finland placed first for the third year in a row. Which leads to the question: why are the Finnish people so happy?

The world happiness ranking is determined by polling citizens of each country, asking them to rank their personal happiness levels on a scale of 0 through 10. The report also analyzes individuals’ self-reported happiness in terms of each country’s levels of GDP, life expectancy, social support, generosity, freedom, and corruption.

Experts in psychology and sociology, as well as Finnish people themselves, have suggested several reasons why Finland (as well as other Scandinavian nations with similar cultures) seem to have such happy citizens. …

Live for the moments you can’t put into words

Do you live life? Or do you sit as it passes you by?

Are you making the most of things? Or are you merely existing?

Do you daydream, wondering what you’re doing, why you’re here or questioning whether there’s more to this life? More than just work, sleep, eating, and chores? Do you ever feel like the annoying things consume most of your time and you don’t get to enjoy life?

It’s easy to get caught up in the drama life brings. It’s easy to lose sight of what matters and what you care about. It’s even easier to miss out because you’re too stressed out, exhausted, or fed up. Where did this come from? …

“Stand-up comedy is a science. Every comedian is a psychology major, naturally.” — Eddie Griffin

Delivering effective business presentations may seem very different from stand-up comedy, but significant similarities do exist. Successful comedians tend to be talented presenters and public speakers. Often writing their own material, managing their gig bookings on their own, keeping books, and getting club owners to pay them for work done, comedians are small businesses, as well.

In addition, comedians, like entrepreneurs, need to think on their feet and learn to engage difficult audiences. Studying how stand-up comics are effective in their art can be a good way to learn to be an engaging speaker. …

Capture their interest and you won’t need to worry about their attention span

Readers are impatient.

Online users want instant gratification.

Readers have short attention spans.

Online users seek out short videos.

Online users prefer short clips.

Readers rarely read until the end of a page.

It’s likely one of the biggest challenges that content creators face, especially when your living or brand depends on engagement.

It makes it an incredibly difficult prospect to overcome. How do you overcome impatience, the need for instant gratification, and short attention spans to ensure your readers stick with you until you’re finished? …

It’s time we talked about benzos

If you’ve ever had to experience withdrawal from benzodiazepines, you’ll be able to empathize with the controversial author Jordan Peterson on what he called a year of “absolute hell.” In October 2020, Peterson talked briefly on his YouTube channel for the first time in a long time, describing how he almost died during a very long and life-changing withdrawal.

What’s so worrying is that dependence on these drugs is something of a silent epidemic. They don’t get the press they deserve. Their power to inflict the most painful of withdrawal symptoms is seldom talked about.

What’s more worrying is the fact that they are one of the most prescribed drugs in the world. According to a paper written by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 2017, there were 45.0 million prescriptions for alprazolam, 26.4 million prescriptions for lorazepam, 29.2 million for clonazepam, and 12.6 million for diazepam. That was just in the U.S. …

It’s your personal definition of success that matters

We have a truly unfortunate habit of measuring success based on the amount of income one generates. Just because you’re focused on how much money you make doesn’t mean that anyone else cares about it. You might think they do, but aside from an overly jealous in-law, the reality is that the majority of people are too busy working on their own success to concern themselves with yours.

Yet, we all know someone who lives beyond their means. In fact, you probably know a lot of people who live beyond their means, you just don’t realize it. Why do people live beyond their means? It isn’t because they’re worried about how much money other people make. …