Bring Your Best Self to Every Moment

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Bring Your Best Self to Every Moment

The clock was ticking…And I was up against it.

I had just begun calling experts to sell them on the Educo platform, and I hadn’t had much success yet.

I was nervous.

I was awkward.

I was failing.

And I needed some way to separate my ego from the results.

In life, certain things will always be out of your control. How others respond to you is one of them.

Of course, you can improve your communication skills, but if someone has a bad day, they are not going to respond as well to a proposal.

In moments like that, you need to let go of focusing on results, and focus on what you can control.

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20 TED Talk Recommendations from TED Talk Experts

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20 TED Talk Recommendations from TED Talk Experts

Our mission in starting Educo Community was simple – create a platform where expert ideas could be heard.

But in a noisy world how do you define who is an “expert”?

Knowing full well that we weren’t the experts on this topic (see what I did there?) we turned to an organization who is known around the world for selecting great experts – TED.

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Rule #6: Principles Before Practicality

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Rule #6: Principles Before Practicality

There is no worse state of mind than desperation.

You forget your values.
You compromise your principles
You make big sacrifices with equally big consequences.

You become so focused on getting out of whatever jam you're in, that you lose sight of what the consequences of your actions will lead to down the road. 

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Read the Frickin' Manual

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Read the Frickin' Manual

At 24 years of age, Mark Cuban was far from what many would call a success.

“I was living in a 3-bedroom apartment in Dallas. I didn’t have my own bedroom. I slept on the couch or floor depending on what time I got home. I had no closet. Instead, I had a pile that everyone knew was mine. My car had the usual hole in the floorboard, a ’77 FIAT X19 that burned a quart of oil that I couldn’t afford every week.”

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Drastically Improve Your Success by Starting Each Goal With Why

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Drastically Improve Your Success by Starting Each Goal With Why

In 1813, Humphrey Davy–a prominent British scientist, and a member of the Royal Society–damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride. 

It was perhaps the luckiest accident in modern human history...

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The Incredible Power of the Intuitive Brain—And How to Master It

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The Incredible Power of the Intuitive Brain—And How to Master It

In 1846, the head doctor of Vienna General Hospital had a crisis on his hands—1 in 6 women were dying of childbed fever. [1]

The risk of death was so bad, in fact, that women were choosing to take the risk of giving birth at home rather than going to his hospital. Not since the middle-ages had women willfully chosen to give birth at home–especially in a large city like Vienna.

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How Fear Kills Your Willpower—And How to Fight Back

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How Fear Kills Your Willpower—And How to Fight Back

I couldn’t believe my eyes. The towers that stood as a symbol of the iconic New York City skyline were up in flames. 

People were jumping out of windows…

The streets were filled with emergency responders…

And almost 3,000 people died from the incident…

Even as a Canadian at the time, the images will forever be burned in my memory. And they justifiably instilled a sense of fear into millions of Americans. Americans who would soon lose their lives because of that fear.

Over the next few years alone, almost just as many Americans died due to the terror attacks of 9/11.

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How Your Optimism Can Hurt You–And What to Do About It

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How Your Optimism Can Hurt You–And What to Do About It

The test was simple. 

The participants, all non-exercisers with the goal of adding workouts to their weekly routine, were asked to write down how many hours they planned to spend in the gym over the next 2 weeks. 

So each participant entered in the amount of time they planned to spend in the gym, then they would record how much time they actually spent in the gym. After careful calculation, the participants planned to spend about twenty hours working out over the next two weeks.

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How Joe DeSena's Perspective Made His Will Unbreakable

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How Joe DeSena's Perspective Made His Will Unbreakable

In 2001, Joe DeSena, the founder of The Spartan Race, was in a car accident that ripped his hip out of his socket.  

After his injury, the first 4 doctors he met with said that he would never be able to run again. This news devastated Joe. He was an athlete all of his life and could not imagine never running again.

So Joe refused to accept that fate. He decided that he was going to do everything he could to be able to run again. This made him hyperfocused. He was going to prove doctors wrong, and to prove that his will was unbreakable.

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How to Achieve Deep Focus by Using the Nothing Alternative

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How to Achieve Deep Focus by Using the Nothing Alternative

Procrastination is a writer’s greatest enemy.

We have the almost cruel fate of having a blank canvas on which to paint every day. We do not have a 9-5 working schedule. We don’t have a boss. Many of us don’t even have clients to meet on a regular basis to add some sort of structure to the day. 

We have nothing but time, a keyboard and a deadline.

With all of this unstructured time, it is becomes extremely hard to focus. One writer who struggled greatly with this was Raymond Chandler, the author of The Big Sleep.  

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Want Power – How to Tap Into Your True Potential

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Want Power – How to Tap Into Your True Potential

It was 10 hours into the Ironman Triathlon. Kara, a first-time Ironman Triathlete, felt so close to the finish yet she still had so far to go.

She had completed the 2.4 miles of swimming, the 112 miles of biking and half of the 26.2 miles of running. So much done, but she still had another 13.1 miles of pavement in front of her.

It was then that the physical toll of the event hit her. Her shoulders were aching, the blisters on her feet were excruciating, and her legs felt completely hollow. She felt like there was no way she could make it through the last 13.1 miles.

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How To Make Wild Progress by Entering the Learning Zone

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How To Make Wild Progress by Entering the Learning Zone

“There is NO WAY I can do this.”

Those were my thoughts as I looked at the course load at the beginning of my 4th Spanish class in University. I knew the value of learning multiple languages, and I was determined to continue working on it until things finally stuck.

I had received exemplary marks up until that point – especially in my 3rd level Spanish class. My 3rd level class was a breeze. The professor was lenient, the assignments were easy, and I aced the course. So I had a lot of confidence going into that 4th level Spanish course.

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How 5 Minutes of Gratitude Increases Willpower

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How 5 Minutes of Gratitude Increases Willpower

It was Tuesday and Jim was talking to me about his cat again.

 

This time... he was pretty worked up. Apparently “Smokey” had been behaving badly and had clawed his favorite couch. Jim’s eyes locked into mine and his wild hand gestures swung in front of me like an over-caffeinated mom doing Zumba as he re-lived the incident. I was a prisoner to another one of his cat stories.

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