This May Be The Coolest Way Ever To Quit Your Job

Now this is exactly what it looks like to go out with a bang. On Saturday, writer Marina Shifrin uploaded an epic video onto YouTube with one simple message for her boss: she quits. Shifrin, 25, previously worked at Next Media Animation, a Taiwanese animator. In the video, she dances around her office at odd hours of the night while describing exactly why she needs to leave her job. "For almost two years I've sacrificed my relationships, time and energy for this job," she explains. "And my boss only cares about quantity and how many views each video gets. So I figured I'd make ONE video of my own." In a Skype chat with The Huffington Post, Shifrin wrote that the Taiwanese work environment is very different from the American work environment. She got no lunch break and her boss was constantly changing her schedule and responsibilities. After her managers failed to help her, she decided to make the video. "I understood that it was a risk, but I never named the company or my boss and I mean, have you seen my dancing? How can anyone take that seriously," she said. Shifrin said her first move is to come back to The United States. After that, she plans on looking for jobs at companies that value creativity and their employees. source : www.huffingtonpost.com

Top 5 Movies on the Life of an Entrepreneur

Victor Kiam once said “An entrepreneur assumes the risk and is dedicated and committed to the success of whatever he or she undertakes”. Everyone today wants to stand out from the rest. Nobody likes to work under someone or work for someone. As a result, many young people have started with their own business today. Wait a minute! Do you think it’s that easy for an entrepreneur to just start-up with a thing of his own? Well, every entrepreneur faces some challenges on his path to success. Here is a list of 5 movies on the life of entrepreneurs which I guess shall give you an idea what an entrepreneur might need to go through.

1) The Social Network

A still from the movie The Social Network.

Starring Jesse Eisenberg, this movie is based on the life of Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and Co-founder of Facebook. The time being 2003, this movie shows how the Harvard Under-grad builds the largest social media site known to the world, how Mark had to face legal disputes from the Winklevoss twins and Mark’s former college friend Eduardo Saverin. In all, it’s a great movie to watch and to learn from.

2) Startup.com

A still form the documentary: Startup.com.

This is actually a documentary movie produced back in 2001. The casting is done by the actual people whom the story is about. The movie is about how two friends, Herman and Kaleil Isaza Tuzman meet in their college days and later plan to come out with a business of their own. And Voila! Govworks.com was started. This was a site for the people to connect to their local government easily. (Let me spill the beans) This movies ends in a tragedy. The internet firm they start shut down. They let go of all their employees and much more. It’s a must watch for all those young enterprising people out there as it’s said “It’s not always about success”.

3) Pirates of Silicon Valley

The Cover of the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley.

Wait a minute! The people on the cover resemble Bill and Steve. Yeah folks you are right. Starring Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs and Anthony Hall as Bill Gates, this movie takes you through the story of the techno-titans during their college days and how both of them changed the world in their own way. There’s a lot to learn from this movie mainly because it covers the time when Bill and Steve founded the two biggest companies the world has ever known.

4) The Pursuit of Happyness

A still from the movie Pursuit of Happyness.

Revolving around the story of Chris Gardner (a sales-man turned stockbroker), this movie takes you through the difficult times when Chris was homeless. Starring Will Smith as Chris Gardner, the story starts of with Chris investing his lifetime savings in a portable bone density scanner and then how later he goes broke and homeless. Then comes the interesting part of how he became an intern stockbroker and how he earned his full time position at the same company. This movies certainly portraits the difficult times in one’s life but what matters is how is fight it back.

5) Coco Before Chanel

The Cover of the movie Coco Before Chanel.

This movie is based on the life of the famous French fashion designer Coco Chanel. The girl leaves the orphanage where her father abandoned her and starts to work in provincial bar. She turns out to be great performer and a singer. Later she realizes her gift for design and eventually starts out as a fashion designer. Love, tragedy and passion, this is what the movie is about.

 source : http://www.durofy.com

15 Wildly Successful People Who Overcame Huge Obstacles To Get There by Renee Jacques

You've heard it before: "If at first you don't succeed, try again." Sometimes you may feel like that's just a saying, but it is absolutely not. The 15 incredible stories below show how even horrible tragedies and setbacks can help fuel a drive for success.

From Oprah Winfrey's scarred childhood to Bill Gates' failed business ventures, these people have been through the grinder, and came out even better than before. Their stories stress one of the most important lessons of all: Never ever give up. Scroll through the list for some serious inspiration.

Bill Gates' first business failed.

Yes, the richest person in the whole world couldn't make any money at first. Gates' first company, Traf-O-Data (a device which could read traffic tapes and process the data), failed miserably. When Gates and his partner, Paul Allen, tried to sell it, the product wouldn't even work. Gates and Allen didn't let that stop them from trying again though. Here's how Allen explained how the failure helped them: "Even though Traf-O-Data wasn’t a roaring success, it was seminal in preparing us to make Microsoft’s first product a couple of years later."

Albert Einstein didn't speak until he was four years old.

Einstein didn't have the best childhood. In fact, many people thought he was just a dud. He never spoke for the first three years of his life, and throughout elementary school, many of his teachers thought he was lazy and wouldn't make anything of himself. He always received good marks, but his head was in the clouds, conjuring up abstract questions people couldn't understand. But he kept thinking and, well, he eventually developed the theory of relativity, which many of us still can't wrap our heads around.

Jim Carrey used to be homeless.

Carrey revealed to James Lipton on "Inside the Actor's Studio" that when he was 15, he had to drop out of school to support his family. His father was an unemployed musician and as the family went from "lower middle class to poor," they eventually had to start living in a van. Carrey didn't let this stop him from achieving his dream of becoming a comedian: He went from having his dad drive him to comedy clubs in Toronto to starring in mega-blockbusters and being known as one of the best comedic actors of an era.

Bethany Hamilton had her arm bitten off by a shark.

Hamilton started surfing when she was just a child. At age 13, an almost-deadly shark attack resulted in her losing her left arm. She was back on her surfboard one month later, and two years after that, she won first place in the Explorer Women’s Division of the NSSA National Championships. Talk about determination.

Benjamin Franklin dropped out of school at age ten.

Franklin's parents could only afford to keep him in school until his tenth birthday. That didn't stop the great man from pursuing his education. He taught himself through voracious reading, and eventually went on to invent the lightning rod and bifocals. Oh, and he became one of America's Founding Fathers.

Richard Branson has dyslexia.

Branson was a pretty bad student -- he didn't get good marks and he did poorly on standardized tests. Instead of giving up, he used the power of his personality to drive him to success. Today, Branson, known for developing Virgin Records and many of its more technologically advanced spinoffs, is the fourth richest person in the UK.

Stephen King's first novel was rejected 30 times.

If it weren't for King's wife, "Carrie" may not have ever existed. After beingconsistently rejected by publishing houses, King gave up and threw his first book in the trash. His wife, Tabitha, retrieved the manuscript and urged King to finish it. Now, King's books have sold over 350 million copies and have been made into countless major motion pictures.

Oprah Winfrey gave birth at age 14 and lost her child.

She is one of the most successful and richest people in the world today, but Winfrey didn't always have it so easy. She grew up in Milwaukee, Wis. and was repeatedly molested by her cousin, uncle and a family friend. She eventually ran away from home, and at age 14 gave birth to a baby boy who shortly died after.

But Winfrey's tragic past didn't stop her from becoming the force she is today. She excelled as an honors student in high school, and won an oratory contest which secured her a full scholarship to college. Now the entrepreneur and personality has the admiration of millions and a net worth of $2.9 billion.

Thomas Edison failed 1,000 times before creating the lightbulb. 

Although the exact number of tries has been debated, ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 attempts, it's safe to say Edison tried and failed a whole lot before he successfully created his beacon of light. His response to his repeated failures? “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

Kris Carr turned her cancer into a business of hope and healing.

In 2003, Karr was a 32-year-old New Yorker just enjoying life. But then, a regular checkup at her doctor's office resulted in a diagnosis of a rare and incurable Stage IV cancer called epithelioid hemangioendothelioma, existing in her liver and lungs.

Instead of succumbing to the disease, Carr decided to challenge her diagnosis head on. She attacked her cancer with a brand new nutritional lifestyle, and turned her experience into a series of successful self-help books and documentaries. Eventually, she launched her own wellness website, which is followed by over 40,000 people. Today, Karr is celebrating a decade of "thriving with cancer," and is now revered as one of the most prominent experts on healthy living.

Jay-Z couldn't get signed to any record labels.

No one can stop Jay-Z. He came from a rough Brooklyn neighborhood and had big dreams to make it big as a rapper. Unfortunately, the rest of the world didn't agree with him at first. Not one record label would sign him. Yet that didn't stop him from creating his own music powerhouse. His label would eventually turn into the insanely lucrative Roc-A-Fella Records. Here's proof Jay-Z is on top: Forbes has estimated his net worth at $500 million, and TIME ranked him at one of their 2013 Most Influential People In The World. And he's married to Beyoncé.

Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime.

Van Gogh is considered one of the greatest artists of all time, yet the poor guy only sold one painting the entire time he was alive: "The Red Vineyard at Arles (The Vigne Rouge)," which is now in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. Even though he made no money, he still painted over 900 works of art. Though his persistence went unnoticed when he was alive, Van Gogh proves you don't need external validation to be proud of the work you create.

Franklin Roosevelt became partially paralyzed at 39.

After vacationing in Canada, Roosevelt developed polio, which eventually left him paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. Even though he couldn't walk, he went on to lead the country as one of the most respected and memorable presidents in history.

Simon Cowell had a failed record company.

By his late twenties, Cowell had made a million dollars and lost a million dollars. Cowell told The Daily Mail in 2012, "‘I’ve had many failures. The biggest were at times when I believed my own hype. I’d had smaller failures, signing bands that didn’t work, but my record company going bust, that was the first big one." Even after such a momentous loss, Cowell picked himself up and became one of the biggest forces in reality television, serving as a judge for "Pop Idol," "The X Factor," "Britain's Got Talent" and "American Idol." Forbes has estimated his net worth at $95 million.

Charlize Theron witnessed her mother kill her father.

When Theron was 15, she witnessed her mother shoot her alcoholic father in an act of self-defense. Instead of letting the trauma immobilize her ambition, Theron channelled her energy into making a name for herself. She would eventually become one of the most respected and talented actresses, becoming the first South African actress to win an Academy Award.

Steven Spielberg was rejected from USC, twice.

You read that right. One of the most prolific filmmakers of all time, the man who brought us "Shindler's List," "Jaws," "E.T." and "Jurassic Park" couldn't get into the film school of his choice. Maybe, just sometimes, education can be a little overrated. In the end, Spielberg would get the last laugh, when USC awarded him an honorary degree in 1994. Two years later, he became a trustee of the university.

source : www.huffingtonpost.com

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Top 4 Mistakes Business Travelers Often Make

Business travel is all a big dance – and once in a while, road warriors are caught tapping with two left feet. Between booking flights, shuffling to the airport, finding the hotel – not to mention the actual work required once you reach your destination – there’s a lot of room for innocent oversight.

So what are the most common mistakes business travelers make? And, how can you avoid them?

#1: Racking up roaming charges

For anyone who’s ever been out of a local “service area” for most major mobile carriers, the extra charges can be a rude awakening. But if you’ve ever flown internationally, forgetting to adjust your data plan, you know the charges grow exponentially – sometimes in excess of $5 per minute, depending on the country – making your Roman business trip a roaming nightmare.

“I try and purchase a prepaid SIM card for each country I visit – it makes a huge difference in my bill,” says Chris Juneau, Concur’s senior director of marketing for the Asia-Pacific region. “For countries where it’s tough to get a SIM card on arrival, I ask my fellow employees to purchase one and expense it for me.”

Our advice: Enhance your plan before you fly to include international coverage, buy a SIM card and an unlocked GSM device, or the easiest idea: turn on “Airplane Mode” and enjoy your gelato in silence.

#2: Losing your gadget

If you’ve ever left your mobile phone in a taxi or your tablet in a hotel room, you know that sinking feeling that you’ll probably never see your gadget again. Unless luck is on your side, what is lost is usually never found.

Our advice: Prevention is the best medicine; back your data up to the cloud. Often. Syncing up with the cloud offers a level of security for you and your IT department. Also, if the device has gone missing and the battery hasn’t died, your company should have protocols on remotely wiping your data. Keep in mind, this means everything! Say so long to your photos, videos and all of your personal stuff (you can back those up, too).

#3: Taking transport for granted

Ground transportation has evolved, from hailing unpredictable cabs off the street to tapping your cell phone for a scheduled, fixed-price Uber car. These days, there are so many options to get around on the ground – by rail, shuttle, town car, limousine – that it’s worth taking a look at the most sensible option for each circumstance.

“Personally, I think finding my way from the airport to the hotel to be about the most stressful part of my travels,” says Kristel Wills, Concur’s social media manager. “I’m pretty sure that the hotel airport van is best for my company’s dollar — but not for my peace of mind. Or my schedule.”

Our advice: Mobile technology makes it easy no matter where you are, or what you need. Apps like Taxi Magic and Uber provide best in class experience in booking transportation from your mobile phone.

#4: Leaving expenses to the last minute

Okay, so maybe we’re a bit biased. But letting your expense report slide is an egregious error for road warriors of every stripe. Forgetting or ignoring your expense report makes it harder on your accounting team, your travel manager and you. After all, reimbursement rocks.

Our advice: Expense as you go. After every meal, check-out or check-in, snap a pic of your receipt and upload it in the cloud. 

How IIT-alumnus Sachin Bansal built Flipkart into a big online brand - ET Awards 2012-13

The award seeks to recognise the ability of a business leader to enter the big league and take on the best in the world

It has taken Sachin Bansal, 32, a mere six years to build Flipkart, the country's best-known online retail brand. In awarding him the Entrepreneur of The Year award, the jury recognised Bansal's acumen by saying he has "out-innovated everyone else" in the sector.

The IIT-Delhi alumnus started off with college friend Binny Bansal in a small flat in southeast Bangalore in 2007 with Rs 4 lakh.

Nominees

The two, who are not related to each other, had worked in Amazon India for a few months before they launched Flipkart.

Sachin, who leads the Bangalore-based ecommerce venture as its chief executive officer, has battled scepticism and regulatory constraints to build a company that expects to post sales of $1 billion, or over Rs 6,200 crore, by 2015.

"This award is an honour and an important milestone that validates our beliefs," he said. "Many people have been sceptical of our strategy. But now, not just our investors and customers, even the business community and the press are recognising us," he added.

In July, the company received Rs1,200 crore in funding from South African Internet company Naspers, venture fund Accel Partners, investment firm Tiger Global and San Francisco-based multi-family office ICONIQ Capital. The deal cemented Flipkart's position as the best-capitalised company in the Indian ecommerce industry. It has raised around Rs 3,000 crore of risk capital, the most by an Indian ecommerce firm.

The year 2010 was when Flipkart pulled ahead of the pack. The company, which had become the leader in online retail of books by then, diversi fied into digital movies, music and games as well as electronics.

It raised money from international fund Tiger Global, which joined existing investor Accel Partners to become the primary backers of Flipkart. The company registered sales of Rs5 crore in 2008-09, Rs20 crore in 2009-10 and reached the milestone of Rs100 crore the following year.

Flipkart's cash-on-delivery model has been copied by almost every other ecommerce company in the country and now accounts for a majority of transactions across all online retail sites.

Flipkart's success has come not just from online retail, but also from its focus on building technology services at the back end. It has set up a logistics arm that has ensured quick deliveries to customers.

Flipkart Payment Gateway Services, which launched an online payments solutions gateway PayZippy earlier this year, will soon be available for use by other merchants and end-customers.

The biggest change in the business model has been in response to regulatory requirements. Multi-brand online ventures are not allowed to receive foreign direct investment.

The company has tweaked its business model and is becoming an online marketplace, where numerous merchants can reach out to customers through Flipkart, which does not own the inventory. The company has around 500 sellers on its marketplace.

Flipkart claims to have over 95 lakh users, and employs around 6,000 people.

A ardent gamer, Sachin believes that mainstream recognition for startups will encourage top talent to work with young companies or start out on their own. "This will make a lot more people hungry for success.

source : economictimes.indiatimes.com

Are You Living Your Eulogy or Your Résumé? by Arianna Huffington

Today I want every American to see how these men and women lived," President Obama said Sunday, eulogizing the 12 men and women killed in the Washington Navy Yard shooting. He spoke of volunteers who made time to give back to their communities, like "Frank Kohler, giving dictionaries to every third-grader in his county," and "Marty Bodrog, leading the children's Bible study at church." There were fathers like Mike Ridgell, "coaching his daughters' softball teams and joining Facebook just to keep up with his girls, one of whom said he was always the cool dad." There were mothers like Mary Francis Knight, "devoted to her daughters ... who had just recently watched with joy as her older daughter got married," and grandparents like John Johnson, "always smiling, giving bear hugs to his 10 grandchildren ... who would have welcomed his 11th grandchild this fall." Have you noticed that when people die, their eulogies celebrate life very differently from the way we define success in our everyday existence? Eulogies are, in fact, very Third Metric. redefining success beyond money and power to include well-being, wisdom and our ability to wonder and to give . But while it's not hard to live a Third Metric life, it's very easy not to. It's easy to let ourselves get consumed by our work. It's easy to use work to let ourselves forget the things and the people that truly sustain us. It's easy to let technology wrap us in a perpetually harried, stressed-out existence. It's easy, in effect, to miss our lives even while we're living them. Until we're no longer living them. For most of us, our eulogy will be not just the first formal marking down of what our lives were about but the only one. The eulogy is the foundational document of our legacy, of how people remember us, of how we live on in the minds and hearts of others. And it is very telling what you don't hear in eulogies. You almost never hear things like: "Of course his crowning achievement was when he made senior vice president." Or: "What everybody loved most about her was how she ate lunch at her desk. Every day." Or: "He was proud that he never made it to one of his kid's Little League games because he always wanted to go over those figures one more time." Or: "She didn't have any real friends, but she had 600 Facebook friends, and she dealt with every email in her inbox every night." Or: "But he will live on, not in our hearts or memories, because we barely knew him, but in his PowerPoint slides, which were always meticulously prepared." No matter how much a person spends his or her life burning the candle at both ends, chasing a toxic definition of success and generally missing out on life, the eulogy is always about the other stuff: what they gave, how they connected, how much they meant to the lives of the real people around them, small kindnesses, lifelong passions and what made them laugh. So the question is: Why do we spend so much time on what our eulogy is not going to be? "Eulogies aren't résumés," David Brooks wrote in June. "They describe the person's care, wisdom, truthfulness and courage. They describe the million little moral judgments that emanate from that inner region." And yet we spend so much time and effort and energy on those résumé entries, which are gone as soon our heart stops beating. Even for those who die with amazing résumés, whose lives were synonymous with accomplishment and achievement, their eulogies are mostly about what they did when they weren't achieving and succeeding -- at least by our current, broken definition of success. For example, look at Steve Jobs, a man whose life, at least as the public saw it, was about creating things, things that were, yes, amazing and game-changing, but when his sister, Mona Simpson, rose to memorialize him at his memorial service at Stanford University, that's not what she focused on. Yes, she talked about his work and his work ethic, but mostly as manifestations of his passions. "Steve worked at what he loved," she said. But what really moved him, what he really loved, was love. "Love was his supreme virtue," she said, "his god of gods." And though yes, he loved his work, he loved his family too: When [his son] Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa's boyfriends and Erin's travel and skirt lengths and Eve's safety around the horses she adored. And then she added this touching image: "None of us who attended Reed's graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing." And about his wife: "His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic." And then there were lines like these, sprinkled throughout: "Steve was humble." "Steve liked to keep learning." "Steve cultivated whimsy." "With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun." "He treasured happiness." "He was an intensely emotional man." His sister made sure in her eulogy that we knew that Steve Jobs was a lot more than just the guy who invented the iPhone. He was a brother and a husband and a father who knew the true value of what technology can so easily distract us from. Even if you build an iconic product, even one that lives on, what will be foremost in the minds of the people you care about most will be the memories you built in their lives. In her 1951 novel Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar has the Roman emperor meditating on his death: "[I]t seems to me as I write this hardly important to have been emperor." And Thomas Jefferson's epitaph describes him as "author of the Declaration of American Independence ... and father of the University of Virginia." No mention of the presidency. What the old adage that we should live every day as our last usually means is that we shouldn't wait until it's our last day on Earth to begin prioritizing the things that really matter. Anyone with a few smartphones and a full email inbox knows that it's easy to live while not being aware we're living. So a Third Metric life would be one lived in a way that's mindful of what our eulogy will one day be. "I'm always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I'm listening to it," joked George Carlin. We may not be listening to our own eulogy, but we're actually writing it all the time, every day. The question is how much we're giving the eulogizer to work with. This past summer an obituary of a Seattle woman named Jane Lotter, who died of cancer at 60, went viral. The author of the obit was Lotter herself. "One of the few advantages of dying from Grade 3, Stage IIIC endometrial cancer, recurrent and metastasized to the liver and abdomen," she wrote, "is that you have time to write your own obituary." After giving a lovely and lively account of her life, she shows that she lived a life with the true definition of success in mind. "My beloved Bob, Tessa, and Riley," she writes. "My beloved friends and family. How precious you all have been to me. Knowing and loving each one of you was the success story of my life." Just months before the historian Tony Judt died of ALS in 2010, he gave an amazing interview to Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. She asked him about his spiritual beliefs. He replied: I don't believe in an afterlife. I don't believe in a single or multiple godhead. I respect people who do, but I don't believe it myself. But there's a big "but" which enters in here: I am much more conscious than I ever was, for obvious reasons, of what it will mean to people left behind once I'm dead. It won't mean anything for me, but it will mean a lot to them, and it's important for them, by which I mean my children or my wife or my close friends, that some spirit of me is, in a positive way, present in their lives, in their heads, in their imaginings and so on. So in one curious way I've come to believe in the afterlife as a place where I still have moral responsibilities, just as I do in this life except that I can only exercise them before I get there. Once I get there, it'll be too late. So no god, no organized religion, but a developing sense that there's something bigger than the world we live in, including after we die, and that we have responsibilities in that world. So whether you believe in an afterlife, as I do, or not, by being fully present in your life and in the lives of those you love, you are creating your own afterlife and writing your own eulogy. It's a valuable lesson, even more so while we have the good fortune of being healthy and having the energy and freedom and lack of impediments to create a life of purpose and meaning. It shouldn't take a near-death experience to remind us of what we're all going to lose one day. According to Colors magazine, something called "living funeral therapy" is becoming increasingly popular in South Korea, which has the highest suicide rate of developed countries. It can involve actually getting in a coffin and having it nailed shut, to experience a glimpse of the finality and closure of death. One operator sometimes has the participants make a list of the people in their lives who matter to them. One woman said the process made her realize she'd been neglecting her husband. "I feel like I've been reborn," she said. "I want to call my husband, to tell him 'thank you,' and 'sorry.'" It's an extreme method, and hopefully most of us won't need to be nailed shut inside a coffin to get a sense of what we really value. But the good news is that if you're reading this, there's still time to live up to the best version of your eulogy. Here are some of my favorite eulogies, courtesy of Alison Nastasi of The Atlantic. Do you have a favorite eulogy, or something in particular you remember from a eulogy you heard?

AIB365: It's Your Fault

Are women responsible for protecting themselves from rape? Bollywood actresses are using sarcasm to decimate common arguments that critics say "blame the victim" for sexual assault. 

Comedy group All India Bakchod's "It's Your Fault" video shows women sarcastically blaming themselves for what they wear, working late into the night, and not fighting back. The video shows women increasingly bruised and bloodied as they repeat the phrase, "Women, it's your fault".

The video added fuel to India's ongoing debate on tackling rape, as well as raised questions about whether sarcasm was the best vehicle for the discussion.

How to Deal With Crappy People by James Altucher

I see people walking down the street and there’s like this killer inside me providing running nasty commentary about each person. Do you do this also?

I have to stop myself often: “you don’t know this person who is randomly crossing the street. You can’t possibly know that he’s a cheating lying rich Hamptons-worshipping whoremongering obnoxious trust fund baby with a 17 year old mistress on the side who doesn’t wipe, who doesn’t wash, who would wish nothing better than to see you die”. You can’t know that! So why do I think it? Most people crossing the street probably think that about me also. Who is that freak? Is he homeless? Why can’t he comb his hair? Why is his fly open? Is he a child molesting pervert?

Most people are pretty crappy. But not all. And even the ones who are no good and not worthy of your time need a system for you to use so YOU can be happier and leave this lecherous gossipy crack addict thats in your head on the road and kick him or her to the curb.

I was talking about this with Penelope Trunk and Melissa Sconyers who works with Penelope. Penelope has an excellent blog I recommend. She also has Asperger’s Syndrome which, from what I can gather, means she can’t read social cues on people so has trouble knowing how to respond to people. So she told me her technique what she does.

(Penelope Trunk)

I came up with a better technique for her. But first, her trick:

She uses something called Myers-Briggs to determines someone’s personality type. Then, in advance of meeting that person, she looks up the personality type and figures out how she needs to respond and interact with that person.

Forget that. There’s a billion personality types on that thing. I’m about to make it easy for Penelope.

There are only four types of people. If you understand in advance how to deal with each of these four types you will be infinitely happier. Ultimately, interacting with the four types in the way I describe below will make one fit firmly into the first type, however difficult it is. That’s the goal. You don’t want to go through life unhappy.

In the Daily Practice that has helped me out of every tough situation in my life for the past 15 years (when I’ve been disciplined enough to apply it) there are 4 legs. Many of us focus in our daily lives on only one of the legs (Physical, Emotional, Mental, or Spiritual) but we need all the legs in balance to really sit down at the dinner table without falling.

The Practice works and brings one from the brink to success and then more success. I believe in it more than I’ve ever believed in any hocus-pocus anything ever.

But to develop the emotional leg of that practice takes a lot of work and I’ve written nothing on this. Probably because it’s the hardest. In my talks people ask about the Mental side, the idea muscle. But the Emotional side, equally as important, is much harder.

The key is to identify the FOUR types of people and discipline yourself on how you should approach these people.

The Four Types of People

#1 Happy. There are people who are genuinely happy in the world. Sure they have their suffering. Everyone does. But a lot of people really are pretty satisfied with their lives at this very moment.

A natural reflex (not for everyone, but certainly for some people) is to resent people for being happy. Who doesn’t do that some of the time? Raise your hand!

Let’s say someone lives in 20,000 square foot house in Connecticut, has a sexy wife (or sexy husband), and is genuinely happy. It’s hard not to resent such a person. This resentment will block the Daily Practice from having beneficial outcomes in your life.  In 2002 when I was pitching hedge fund managers to invest money with me I often ran into the exact person described above. And their families. The sexy wives in short shorts. The hedge fund managers served gourmet meals for lunchtime by loving cooks.

You can’t fake resentment. You can’t put on a mask. If someone is at a costume ball, you can easily see they are wearing a mask. You have to genuinely be happy for these people.

It’s so hard to grab a single ounce of happiness in this world, please be happy for the ones who are happy today. Train your mind to be sincerely happy for their happiness. Catch your resentments and jealousies before they turn into monsters.

Carrie Fisher once said, “nobody wants to read about a good looking happy person”. She was making a commentary on comedy screenwriting and she’s probably right about that. But for you to go from success to success you must first be sincerely happy for the people who are happy around you. Like attracts. Picture all the people you might resent. Spend five minutes a day training your brain to be happy for them. You’ll die lonely in the jungle if you don’t do this and everyone will forget you ever existed.

#2 People in pain. I’ve been unhappy often. Particularly in the past decade. Sometimes things just don’t work out. Sometimes people die. I think the level of unhappiness and pain I’ve had in the past decade (versus prior decades) has taught me compassion towards others in a similar boat. Try to cultivate that compassion. It doesn’t mean you have to drain yourself to help those less fortunate.

But even showing compassion and doing what you can goes a long way. If you can share what you have, all the better. If you can give a word of advice, do it.

Unhappy person can easily turn into category #4 below. You always have to protect yourself first. Be compassionate but keep your boundaries. Your goal is your own peace of mind throughout the day, so you can focus on your own success. The fastest way to do that is show compassion to those less fortunate. What you give, comes back tenfold. Try this exercise: picture everyone in your life who is unhappy or in pain, spend five minutes picturing them in a happier state. This trains your mind.

#3 Good people. This is different from “Happy”. Good people don’t always have ulterior motives. Some people legitimately want to help others. There’s an initial impulse (at least with me) to suspect them. To resent them. Maybe even to envy them. I envy Bill Gates being able to donate $100 billion to charity. But the best thing for me is to catch myself doing that (almost a meditation in itself) and say, “this guy is good. I wish I could be as good as him. I hope I can help him in any way I can.” Be grateful for all the people good to you. Five minutes a day. Doesn’t have to be with incense burning and in the lotus position. On a bus, smile and think of the people you are grateful for.

 And finally, the most important category of all. The category that wastes a quadrillion brain cycles a day around the world. What man can say he is Jesus and not fall prey to the ongoing anger and pain of dealing with this next category:

#4  Crappy people: People who will do you harm, no matter what you do, for no reason at all. They never will get it. They will say and do things to you and they will never ever understand how evil they are.

And you will hate them. HATE THEM. And they knock on the door of your brain at three in the morning and they want to yell at you. And you yell back. And they yell back. And on and on. All day. All afternoon. The ongoing conversation with the shittiest people in the world. They will torture you, kill you, rape your wife and slit the thoughts out of your mind and not even care because they think they are doing the right thing. You know who I’m talking about. Because you have a good 20 or 30 of these in your life just like I do. They might even be former friends, relatives, neighbors, bureaucrats, whatever, whoever, whenever. They swoop down on your life and are just plain crappy and they won’t even know it.

Sometimes, in a weak moment, I think to myself: What if I run into them again? How badly I will hurt and destroy them. Maybe just casually walk up to them and smash a glass over their head so their nose is broken, glasses broken on the floor, blood all over their face. Arm broken after I hold the elbow and stomp on it.

STOP!

Similarly, I was talking to someone the other day who couldn’t stop talking about someone who had wronged her fourteen years ago. Stop! You are an idiot. And it’s boring already. It was your fault anyway!

 This is the worst category. I’ll tell you one more anecdote. Two seconds ago someone posted a horrible comment on my blog. I won’t repeat it. Racist, mean, rude to me, whatever. I deleted the post, blocked the user, blocked his IP address. And then I was going to send him an email telling him what I thought of him. I was angry. Then I stopped myself. You have to stop yourself.

Remember this:

When you get in the mud with a pig, you get dirty and the pig gets happy.

There is only ONE only way to deal with these people in a way that will make you happier instead of sadder. ONE WAY. And it always works. This is the most important part of the Emotional leg of theDaily Practice. COMPLETELY IGNORE THE EVIL PEOPLE:

• Completely ignore them.
• Don’t think about them.
• Don’t talk to them.
• Don’t write them.
• Most important: Don’t give them advice. They will NEVER listen to your advice. It’s arrogant and stupid to think they will. It will only lead to  more cycles of pain for you. The goal for me is to stop all cycles that cause me any pain at all. Giving advice to crappy people will only result in more pain for you. That’s the only possible result. Much better to be happy than to flush knotted up brown advice down a toilet that caused you agony to push out. This is hard.
• Most important: Never gossip about them behind their backs. Just completely disregard. We don’t care about their happiness or how evil they are. We only care about you. Its hard to do. Never ever talk about them behind their backs. Repeat this 500 times. This is hard also. Because it’s an addiction.

This isn’t easy. It’s a daily discipline. Much easier to do a 1000 pushups. I had an article recently on the Wall St Journal site that had 971 comments. No exaggeration when I say 950 of the smartest anonymous trolls on the internet called me an idiot moron and worse. I ignored all the comments. Great. I could care less. I was the winner there.

Then I put another article up on a supposedly peaceful site about Buddhism and yoga, the Elephant Journal. Great site. I post there regularly. The topic of my post was that 18 year olds should basically not be sent into war. I like peace. Better to send 40 year olds. They are closer to death anyway. The most hateful responses popped up. People comparing me to Hitler. I was so shocked I wasted one whole night until 2 in the morning responding to these people but ignoring the many emails I get that genuinely support me and that I want to be friends with. Why did I do that? I wanted my haters to like me. I wanted them to agree with me and love me. Its like putting a gun to your head and saying, “unless you do what I say, I will kill myself”. You’re going to end up firing that gun.

I lost my discipline for a whole night and then I slept late and it took at least 36 hours to get back on track. What a waste. For nothing! Its hard to keep up this practice. But you fail and die unhappy if you don’t.

And did I win a trophy for doing this? Was it a huge trophy made of gold? For responding to all of those comments? Did everyone/anyone write back and say, “you’re right. I’m sorry. Now I LOVE you! Let’s all be lovers!” Of course not! They just want to fight. I got in the mud with pigs. I got dirty.

If someone says, “what do you think of so-and-so”, your worst enemy, you say back, “So-and-so who?” And that’s it. No explanation. Nothing more. “So and so who?” Change subject right then. This is the emotional leg of the Daily Practice and must be balanced with the other three legs. Any deviation will set you back. Any addiction to the opposite of the above behaviors will eat you alive like cockroaches feasting on your heart. Have a good night.

source : www.jamesaltucher.com

7 Things Happen to You When You Are Completely Honest by James Altucher

There's a trillion websites competing against each other. The most honest website of all? Google. Google can't help you with your problems. If you suspect you might have herpes after a particularly courageous night out on the town, going to Google will not help you (although you may feel a vague feeling of remorse when you see the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button).

Google has no content on it at all. But Google is honest about that. You just walked into their store and said, "Please, help me -- do you have anything to prevent a potential outbreak of herpes" and Google will say, quite honestly, "I'm sorry, I can't help you, but here are ten of my competitors who can potentially help you. And, by the way, here are three more of my competitors who might be able to help you but, in full disclosure, they are paying me to tell you this." And then Google shrugs its shoulders. That's all they can do for you.

But that's honesty. That's not branding. So you'll come back to them. Because they are a straight shooter and the target was on your head. And when you need to know about that growth behind your ear, or what the best software is for keystroke logging, they will say the same thing: "Sorry, we can't help you, but we can direct you to at least ten of our competitors who seem pretty decent at it."

With honesty they've set themselves free. Here's the thing about a brand. It puts you in jail. You know who had the original patent that Larry Page tweaked into the PageRank that made Google (and separately, that Robin Li also tweaked into the patent that became Baidu?) I'll tell you: Dow Jones. The Wall Street Journal. 

They knew how to make Google years before Larry Page even thought of the idea. But they didn't do it. Why? Because their brand says they don't give out stuff for free. Their brand says that everything you need to know is trapped inside something with the Wall Street Journal or Dow Jones trademarks printed on it and if it's not there then it's not anywhere. Branding jails corporate America but honesty sets entrepreneurs free.

1) People Will Stop Speaking to You

Forget personal branding. Start to dip your toes into personal honesty. Let me tell you what will happen. Your family might stop speaking to you.

I have experienced this not just from myself but all of the bloggers I consider "honest bloggers." Some of your friends will also stop speaking to you. Some of your colleagues will avoid you. Some investors will shun you. Your personal "network" will transform and shift.

My own personal motto is: honesty to a point. I will never harm anyone. I believe in what Buddha said to his son Rahula the day after he showed up after abandoning his son for seven years:

"Before, during, and even AFTER you say something, make sure it doesn't hurt anyone."

But even despite that rule, people will stop speaking to you because not every hurt you can control. Historical is hysterical for many people.

2) People Will Think You Are Going to Hurt Yourself

The next thing that will happen is people will ask "are you killing yourself?" Because every blog post almost seems like a suicide note.

3) People Will Think You're Crazy

Then people will send emails to your friends, "is he as crazy as he sounds?" And that's how I make friends now because introductions will be made and people will have to find out for themselves.

4) People Will Get Frightened

So they will call you names. Oh, that guy is just trying to be a "contrarian," for instance. Or an "idiot." Or worse. I've been called everything. I had to call the Brown University Public Safety office the other day because I got emailed a death threat and the guy didn't think I could track him. The guy was a senior and had also apparently threatened the life of a librarian there.

They need to understand why you are telling the truth. Why you are being honest about what you really think. In meetings at the office everyone is quiet. You're not supposed to speak up. So people will dislike you, try to put you down, post comments, whatever. In many cases (but not all) these are what I call "crappy people." 

5) People Will Find You Entertaining

Then finally, people will come back to you. Because you're entertaining -- if 20,000 people are lying and only one person is telling the truth then that 1 person is going to stand taller than anyone. At first people will come back to you for voyeuristic reasons. Why? Because they know if they watch Real Housewives they aren't watching anything "Real" and they aren't watching Housewives. But you're real. So they want to know what you'll do next.

6) People Will Trust Your Advice

People will also come back for advice. Not always because they agree with you. But because they know the advice is coming from the heart and not because there is anything for sale. It's like Google can't cure anything. But they can direct you to all the people who can. So you go back to Google because you might not always find what you want but at least you know they are trying hard to direct you to the right place.

We've all hidden our failures in dark comets orbiting the peripheral edges of the solar system, where the sun is dark and faded. But when someone brings their orbit close to the sun we want to land there for a brief moment and see if actual living conditions exist. And if so, then maybe a small settlement can be formed, advice can be asked, a failure can be related to, a friendship can be formed.

7) You Will Become Free

At first we hug our boundaries in chains. We think "if we tell the girl we like her, she might not like me back." We think, "If I say I like this candidate, my friends might hate me." If I say X, everyone else might say Y. And so on. But more and more we start to feel where those boundaries are and we push them out. We push them further and further away from ourselves. Until finally they are so far away it's as if they don't exist at all. You don't need money for that. Or a big house. Or a fancy degree or car. Every day, just push out those boundaries a little further.

We reach for that freedom. We never truly get there. We're always striving to see how far they can go, just like a little child with her parents. But eventually, the boundaries are so far away we begin to feel the pleasures of true freedom.

And it feels good.

source : www.huffingtonpost.com