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Life changing lessons from Walt Disney.

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was a film producer, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, international icon, and philanthropist. Walt is well-known for his influence in the entertainment industry during the twentieth century. Walt co-founded Walt Disney Productions with his brother Roy O. Disney and became one of the most famous motion picture producers of all time. The company that he co-founded is now known as “The Walt Disney Company” and has annual revenues of approximately $35 Billion (US).Walt and members of his staff created a number of the world's most famous fictional characters. This includes Mickey Mouse, whose original voice was Walt himself. Walt has won 26 Academy Awards and he has earned 59 nominations; he has more awards and nominations than any other individual. Additionally, Walt has won seven Emmy Awards, and he is the namesake for Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the United States, China, Japan, and France.Clearly there is a ton to learn from Walt Disney. Let's take a look at 5 Life-Changing Lessons from Walt Disney:

1.Keep Things in Perspective. “A man should never neglect his family for business.”Your family is your first business, and they should never be neglected in pursuit of "a dream." Your family must be part of your dream, and should remain within your focus. Never become so consumed in business affairs that you neglect the individuals whom you need most.

2.Competition is Good. “I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn't know how to get along without it. ”Competition makes you stronger, it makes you better, it keeps you on your toes. Never shrink away from competition; never fail to see the value of competition. Your competitors can provide you with more value than your friends. Learn from the competition, and you will grow. It’s critical that you embrace competition as well as adversity, Walt Disney said, “All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.”

3. Do What You Love. “Disneyland is a work of love. We didn't go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.” You must follow your passion, if you’re doing it just for the money, it probably won’t last. Passion is what gives you the strength to overcome the obstacles associated with every dream. Passion is what keeps you going when everyone else is tired…money can't do that for you, only passion; passion is power.

4. Do the Impossible. “It's kind of fun to do the impossible.” Walt Disney said, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” Life is too short to spend it doing the possible. Learn to pursue the impossible, pursue what others say can’t be done, pursue what has never been done before, pursue your dreams, and turn them into a reality. You must believe in the beauty of your dreams. Walt said, “When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.” If you’re going to believe, you might as well believe all the way.

5. Action Always Trumps Inaction. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” I always say that “well done” is better than “well said,” so quit talking and start doing!

 

He or she. James Barry story

In 1812 a young man called James Barry finished his studies in medicine at Edinburg University. After graduating he moved to London where he studied surgery at Guy’s Hospital. After that the popular young doctor joined the army and over the next forty years had a brilliant career as an army medical officer, working in many far-off countries and fighting successfully for improved conditions in hospitals. It was a remarkable career – made even more remarkable by the discovery upon his death that HE was in fact SHE.

James Barry was a woman. No one was more surprised at this discovery than her many friends and colleagues. It was true that throughout her life people had remarked upon her small size, slight build and smooth pale face. One officer had even objected to her appointment as a medical assistant because he could not believe that Barry was old enough to have graduated in medicine. But no one had ever seriously suggested that Barry was anything other than a man.
By all accounts Barry was a pleasant and good-humoured person with high cheek bones, reddish hair, a long nose and large eyes. She was well-liked by her patients and had a reputation for great speed in surgery – an important quality at a time when operations were performed without anaesthetic. She was also quick-tempered. When she was working in army hospitals and prisons overseas, the terrible conditions often made her very angry. She fought hard against injustice and cruelty and her temper sometimes got her into trouble with the authorities. After a long career overseas, she returned to London where she died in 1865.

While the undertaker’s assistant was preparing her body for burial, she discovered that James Barry was a woman. So why did James Barry deceive people for so long? At that time a woman could not study medicine, work as a doctor or join the army. Perhaps Barry had always wanted to do these and pretending to be a man was the only way to make it possible. Perhaps she was going to tell the truth one day, but didn’t because she was enjoying her life as a man too much. Whatever the reason, Barry’s deception was successful. By the time it was discovered that she had been the first woman in Britain to qualify as a doctor, it was too late for the authorities to do anything about it.

 

Yes or no.

Living in a foreign culture can be exciting, but it can also be confusing. A group of Americans who taught English in other countries recently discussed their experiences. They decided that miscommunications were always possible, even over something as simple as "yes" or "no".

On the first day in Micronesia, Lisa thought people were ignoring her requests. The day was hot, and she needed a cold drink. She went into a store and asked, "Do you have cold drinks?" The woman there didn't say anything. Lisa rephrased the question. Still the woman said nothing. Lisa gave up and left the store. She later learned that the woman had answered her: She had raised her eyebrows, which in Micronesia means "yes".

This reminded Jan of an experience she had in Bulgaria. She had gone to a restaurant that was known for its stuffed cabbage. She asked the waiter, "Do you have stuffed cabbage today?" He nodded his head. Jan eagerly waited, but the cabbage never came. In that country, a nod means "no".

Tom had the similar problem when he arrived in India. After explaining something in class, he asked his students if they understood. They responded with many different nods and shakes of the head. He assumed some people had not understood, so he explained again. When he asked again if they understood, they did the same thing. He soon found out that his students did understand. In India, people nod and shake their heads in different ways depending on where they come from. You have to know where a person is from to understand if they are indicating "yes" or "no".

 

Thank You. Habits of highly excellent people.

Are you driven in life? Do you love to excel? I believe all of us do. We are born to be the best we can be and to make the best out of our lives.

When I was in high school, I wasn't exactly the kind of student teachers would like. I was truant, didn't do my homework and did badly on my examinations. I was lazy and unmotivated in school. However, after a while I realized that this wasn't who I wanted to be. This wasn't the life I saw myself leading. People around me were judging and negative, and I had enough of all of that crap. I had enough of being discriminated against and I decided to turn everything around from then on.

So when I entered University, I began to get my act together. For the 3 years I was in Business School, I was on the Dean's List (an honor roll for the top students in the faculty). I eventually graduated as the top student in my specialization of marketing and was awarded with accolades for being the most outstanding student. When I started working, I entered one of the top companies for marketers, a Fortune 100 company, and led my business portfolios to record breaking results in the few years I worked there.

Then 2 years ago, I left my regular job to pursue my true passion in personal development. I started The Personal Excellence Blog where I share my best advice and help others achieve personal excellence and live their best lives. It has quickly established itself as a trusted and coming-to-age personal development blog, having 3-4k readers a day and being featured by prominent media, including CNN.com.

After years of striving for personal excellence, working with top people in their fields and observing top people in their fields, I realized that there are universal habits that enable people to achieve excellence. As Aristotle would put it, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”.

These habits aren't "ingrained", or "genetic"; they are habits that anyone like you and me can cultivate. Just like Stephen Covey's habits will help anyone become highly effective, these habits of highly excellent people will help anyone become excellent. I find that as long as anyone practices these habits, excellence is always a given. And I'm more happy to share with you these habits in this article today. Here they are:

1.Have the end in mind.

This is the same habit as Stephen Covey's 1st habit, and with good reason. Everything starts with the end — the goal or the vision you want to fulfill. If you don't know what the end is, then there's no way of getting there, is there? Imagine getting into a cab. What do you first do when you get into the cab? Maybe you say hi to the taxi driver, then what? You tell the driver where you want to go, so that he can take you there. Similarly, you need to know what is the end you want to reach in order to get there.

Hence, it's critical that you form clear goals of what exactly you want. What do you want? What is the end you envision? What are your personal goals and dreams for yourself? Personally, I have a vision board beside my bed where I have my dreams plastered over it. These dreams include developing The Personal Excellence Blog into one of the top personal development blogs, running my international personal excellence school, speaking to tens and thousands of people in seminars, achieving world peace, finding my soul mate, hitting the best seller's list with my books, and so on. These dreams remind me of what exactly I want and drive me forward every day.

2.Do what you love.

 

How to lose time and money.

When we sold our startup in 1998 I suddenly got a lot of money. I now had to think about something I hadn't had to think about before: how not to lose it. I knew it was possible to go from rich to poor, just as it was possible to go from poor to rich. But while I'd spent a lot of the past several years studying the paths from poor to rich, I knew practically nothing about the paths from rich to poor. Now, in order to avoid them, I had to learn where they were.

So I started to pay attention to how fortunes are lost. If you'd asked me as a kid how rich people became poor, I'd have said by spending all their money. That's how it happens in books and movies, because that's the colorful way to do it. But in fact the way most fortunes are lost is not through excessive expenditure, but through bad investments.

It's hard to spend a fortune without noticing. Someone with ordinary tastes would find it hard to blow through more than a few tens of thousands of dollars without thinking "wow, I'm spending a lot of money." Whereas if you start trading derivatives, you can lose a million dollars (as much as you want, really) in the blink of an eye.

In most people's minds, spending money on luxuries sets off alarms that making investments doesn't. Luxuries seem self-indulgent. And unless you got the money by inheriting it or winning a lottery, you've already been thoroughly trained that self-indulgence leads to trouble. Investing bypasses those alarms. You're not spending the money; you're just moving it from one asset to another. Which is why people trying to sell you expensive things say "it's an investment."

The solution is to develop new alarms. This can be a tricky business, because while the alarms that prevent you from overspending are so basic that they may even be in our DNA, the ones that prevent you from making bad investments have to be learned, and are sometimes fairly counterintuitive.

A few days ago I realized something surprising: the situation with time is much the same as with money. The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work. When you spend time having fun, you know you're being self-indulgent. Alarms start to go off fairly quickly. If I woke up one morning and sat down on the sofa and watched TV all day, I'd feel like something was terribly wrong. Just thinking about it makes me wince. I'd start to feel uncomfortable after sitting on a sofa watching TV for 2 hours, let alone a whole day.

And yet I've definitely had days when I might as well have sat in front of a TV all day — days at the end of which, if I asked myself what I got done that day, the answer would have been: basically, nothing. I feel bad after these days too, but nothing like as bad as I'd feel if I spent the whole day on the sofa watching TV. If I spent a whole day watching TV I'd feel like I was descending into perdition. But the same alarms don't go off on the days when I get nothing done, because I'm doing stuff that seems, superficially, like real work. Dealing with email, for example. You do it sitting at a desk. It's not fun. So it must be work.

With time, as with money, avoiding pleasure is no longer enough to protect you. It probably was enough to protect hunter-gatherers, and perhaps all pre-industrial societies. So nature and nurture combine to make us avoid self-indulgence. But the world has gotten more complicated: the most dangerous traps now are new behaviors that bypass our alarms about self-indulgence by mimicking more virtuous types.

38 interesting facts

1. If you are right handed, you will tend to chew your food on your right side. If you are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on your left side.

2. If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. For when a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.

3. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

4. Your tongue is germ free only if it is pink. If it is white there is a thin film of bacteria on it.

5. The Mercedes-Benz motto is “Das Beste oder Nichts” meaning “the best or nothing”.

6. The Titanic was the first ship to use the SOS signal.

7. The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45 percent when a person looks at something pleasing.

8. The average person who stops smoking requires one hour less sleep a night.

9. Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.

10. The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.

11. Dalmatians are born without spots.

12. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

13. The ‘v’ in the name of a court case does not stand for ‘versus’, but for ‘and’ (in civil proceedings) or ‘against’ (in criminal proceedings).

14. Men’s shirts have the buttons on the right, but women’s shirts have the buttons on the left.

15. The owl is the only bird to drop its upper eyelid to wink. All other birds raise their lower eyelids.

16. The reason honey is so easy to digest is that it’s already been digested by a bee.

17. Roosters cannot crow if they cannot extend their necks.

18. The color blue has a calming effect. It causes the brain to release calming hormones.

19. Every time you sneeze some of your brain cells die.

20. Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart.

21. The verb “cleave” is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.

22. When you blush, the lining of your stomach also turns red.

23. When hippos are upset, their sweat turns red.

24. The first Harley Davidson motorcycle was built in 1903, and used a tomato can for a carburetor.

25. The lion that roars in the MGM logo is named Volney.

26. Google is actually the common name for a number with a million zeros.

27. Switching letters is called spoonerism. For example, saying jag of Flapan, instead of flag of Japan.

28. It cost 7 million dollars to build the Titanic and 200 million to make a film about it.

29. The attachment of the human skin to muscles is what causes dimples.

30. There are 1,792 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

31. The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of nitrogen gas bubbles bursting.

32. Human hair and fingernails continue to grow after death.

33. It takes about 20 seconds for a red blood cell to circle the whole body.

34. The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

35. Most soccer players run 7 miles in a game.

36. The only part of the body that has no blood supply is the cornea in the eye. It takes in oxygen directly from the air.

37. Every day 200 million couples make love, 400,000 babies are born, and 140,000 people die.

38. In most watch advertisements the time displayed on the watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the watch (and make it look like it
is smiling).

 

Animals and rest.

All animals must rest, but do they really sleep as we know it? The answer to this question seems obvious. If an animal regularly stops its activities and stays quiet and unmoving — if it looks as though it is sleeping — then why not simply assume that it is in fact sleeping? But how can observers be sure that an animal is sleeping? They can watch the animal and notice whether its eyes are open or closed, whether it is active or lying quietly, and whether it responds to light or sound. These factors are important clues, but they often are not enough. Horses and cows, for example, rarely close their eyes, and fish and snakes cannot close them. Yet this does not necessarily mean that they do not sleep. Have you ever seen a cat dozing with one eye partly open? Even humans have occasionally been observed to sleep with one or both eyes partially open. Animals do not necessarily lie down to sleep either. Elephants, for example, often sleep standing up, with their tusks resting in the fork of a tree. Finally, while "sleeping" animals often seem unaware of changes in the sounds and light and other stimuli around them, that does not really prove they are sleeping either. Observations of animal behavior alone cannot fully answer the question of whether or not animals sleep. The answers come from doing experiments in "sleep laboratories" using a machine called the electroencephalograph (EEG). The machine is connected to animals and measures their brain signals, breathing, heartbeat, and muscle activity. The measurements are different when the animals appear to be sleeping than when they appear to be awake. Using the EEG, scientists have confirmed that all birds and mammals studied in laboratories do sleep. There is some evidence that reptiles, such as snakes and turtles, do not truly sleep, although they do have periods of rest each day, in which they are quiet and unmoving. They also have discovered that some animals, like chimpanzees, cats, and moles (who live underground), are good sleepers while others, like sheep, goats, and donkeys, are poor sleepers. Interestingly, the good sleepers are nearly all hunters with resting places that are safe from their enemies. Nearly all the poor sleepers are animals hunted by other animals; they must always be watching for enemies, even when they are resting.

 

5 Things Your Language School Doesn't Want You to Know.

1. You don’t need a teacher or school to learn a foreign language
There is an important distinction to be made between learning and schooling. Those who believe they need formal training in a language are making the false assumption that the two are one and the same. To reach fluency in a language, you need to acquire a great deal of tacit knowledge, that special kind of internalized, experience-based information that you may not be conscious of. The sad truth is that most teachers focus on explicit knowledge (e.g. facts about the language such as grammar rules), which has very little to do with one’s ability to speak a language. Explicit knowledge is easier to teach and test, however, which probably explains why it makes up the bulk of school curricula.

2. You don’t need to learn grammar rules. At some point in history, the education establishment convinced society that they needed to be “taught” languages. This was quite an amazing feat considering that all human beings are endowed by evolution (or God if you prefer) with the ability to automatically acquire any language they hear in adequate quantities. The problem for most learners (and the reason they buy into the “I need more schooling!” mentality) is that they never get an “adequate quantity” of language input. The irony is that this input deficiency is often caused by the very classes that are supposed to provide it. With a focus on memorizing grammar rules, most learners end up spending the vast majority of their time learning about a language instead of the language itself.

3. Tests and grades do more harm than good. Ideally, formalized testing and grading systems motivate students by providing competition and objective feedback. In reality, however, most grading is far from objective (teachers tend to reward students they like and penalize those they don’t), and tests do little more than demonstrate one’s ability to memorize facts. Feedback is important, but it needn’t be in the form of traditional testing or grades. Ask your teachers to evaluate your performance by giving specific examples of things you said right or wrong, not with multiple choice tests.

4. Classes go as fast as the slowest person. The bigger the class, the wider the range of abilities, and the slower the class will have to go. Schools know that students are more likely to stick with something too easy but will quickly throw in the towel if something is too difficult. And despite placement tests and numerous class levels, it can be very difficult to appropriately group students by their actual skill in the language. With finite time slots mutually convenient for all students in a given group, some students will inevitably be placed in classes that are above or below their actual ability level. Also, placement tests come with the same problems mentioned in # 3: they test one’s memory and knowledge (especially of the written word).

5. Reading out loud does not improve your pronunciation or speaking ability
Teachers often have students read out loud to allegedly “practice pronunciation.” The truth is that your pronunciation improves only from massive amounts of listening input and then massive amounts of speaking when you’re ready. Reading aloud does little more than show what words you are unfamiliar with and often reinforces mispronunciations instead of fixing them. While some teachers genuinely believe in the read aloud method, others just use it as a zero prep activity to count down the clock.

 

Lies we tell kids.

Adults lie constantly to kids. I'm not saying we should stop, but I think we should at least examine which lies we tell and why.

There may also be a benefit to us. We were all lied to as kids, and some of the lies we were told still affect us. So by studying the ways adults lie to kids, we may be able to clear our heads of lies we were told.

I'm using the word "lie" in a very general sense: not just overt falsehoods, but also all the more subtle ways we mislead kids. Though "lie" has negative connotations, I don't mean to suggest we should never do this — just that we should pay attention when we do.

One of the most remarkable things about the way we lie to kids is how broad the conspiracy is. All adults know what their culture lies to kids about: they're the questions you answer "Ask your parents." If a kid asked who won the World Series in 1982 or what the atomic weight of carbon was, you could just tell him. But if a kid asks you "Is there a God?" or "What's a prostitute?" you'll probably say "Ask your parents."

Since we all agree, kids see few cracks in the view of the world presented to them. The biggest disagreements are between parents and schools, but even those are small. Schools are careful what they say about controversial topics, and if they do contradict what parents want their kids to believe, parents either pressure the school into keeping quiet or move their kids to a new school.

The conspiracy is so thorough that most kids who discover it do so only by discovering internal contradictions in what they're told. It can be traumatic for the ones who wake up during the operation. Here's what happened to Einstein:Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies: it was a crushing impression. I remember that feeling. By 15 I was convinced the world was corrupt from end to end. That's why movies like The Matrix have such resonance. Every kid grows up in a fake world. In a way it would be easier if the forces behind it were as clearly differentiated as a bunch of evil machines, and one could make a clean break just by taking a pill.

Protection

If you ask adults why they lie to kids, the most common reason they give is to protect them. And kids do need protecting. The environment you want to create for a newborn child will be quite unlike the streets of a big city.

That seems so obvious it seems wrong to call it a lie. It's certainly not a bad lie to tell, to give a baby the impression the world is quiet and warm and safe. But this harmless type of lie can turn sour if left unexamined.

Imagine if you tried to keep someone in as protected an environment as a newborn till age 18. To mislead someone so grossly about the world would seem not protection but abuse. That's an extreme example, of course; when parents do that sort of thing it becomes national news. But you see the same problem on a smaller scale in the malaise teenagers feel in suburbia.

The main purpose of suburbia is to provide a protected environment for children to grow up in. And it seems great for 10 year olds. I liked living in suburbia when I was 10. I didn't notice how sterile it was. My whole world was no bigger than a few friends' houses I bicycled to and some woods I ran around in. On a log scale I was midway between crib and globe.

 

10 ways to improve your memory.

A good memory is often seen as something that comes naturally, and a bad memory as something that cannot be changed, but actually there is a lot that you can do to improve your memory. However, it does mean taking responsibility and making an effort. Here are the experts' top tips.

1. Take an interest — make an effort. We all remember the things we are interested in and forget the ones that bore us. This no doubt explains the reason why schoolboys remember footbal results effortlessly but struggle with dates from their history lessons! Take an active interest in what you want to remember, and focus on it consciously. One way to 'make' yourself more interested is to ask questions — the more the better.

2. Repeat things. Repeating things is the best way to remember things for a short time, e.g. remembering a phone number for a few seconds. 'Chunking' or grouping numbers helps you to remember them, e.g. the following numbers would be impossible for most of us to remember: 1492178919318483. But look at them in 'chunks', and it becomes much easier: 1492 1789 1931 8483.

3. Form a mental picture. Another way to make something more memorable is to think about something visual associated with it. Form a mental picture, and the stranger the picture the better you will remember it. If an English person studying Spanish wanted to remember the Spanish word for duck, 'pato', he/she could associate it with the English verb 'to pat' and imagine a picture of someone patting a duck on the head.

4. Invent a story. To remember long lists, try inventing story which includes all the items you want to remember. In experiments, people were asked to remember up to 120 words using this technique and when they were tested afterwards, on average they could remember ninety percent of them!

5. Organise your ideals. If we organise what we know in a logical way then when we learn more about that subject we understand that better, and so add to our knowledge more easily. Make well-organised notes. Be sure things are clear in your mind. If not, ask question until you understand.

6. Listen to Mozart. Many experts believe that listening to classical music, expecially Mozart, helps people to organise ther ideas more clearly and so improves their memory. Sadly, rock music does not have the same effect.

7. Take mental exercise. If you do not want to lose your memory as you get older you need to keep your brain fit, just like your body: 'use it or lose it' is the experts advice. Logic puzzles, crosswords and mental arithmetic are all good 'mental aerobics'.

8. Take phisical exercise. Physical exercise is also important for your memory, because it increases your heart rate and sends more oxygen to your brain, and that makes your memory work better. Exercise also reduces stress, which is very bad for the memory.

9. Eat the right things. The old saying that eating fish makes you brainy may be true after all. Scientists have discovered that the fats found in fish like tuna, sardines and salmon — as well as in olive oil — help to improve the memory. Vitamins C and E (found in fruits like oranges, strawberries and red grapes) and vitamin B (found in lean meat and green vegetables) are all good 'brain food', too.

10. Drink coffee. Caffeine may not be too good for you, but like exercise, it increases your heart rate and sends more oxygen to your brain. A cup of coffee really does help you concentrate when you sit down to study. And if you don't like coffee, don't worry — experts believe that chewing gum has the same effect.