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Personal Development | SUCCESS | What Achievers Read

Ari Meisel gets things done—and so efficiently that if you hadn’t seen photos of him (friendly smile, lean physique) you might suspect he had 10 hands. He coaches individuals and groups on how to “make everything in life easier” through a system he calls “Less Doing, More Living.” He consults on green building projects, develops real estate and writes books. Plus, he tweets, blogs, speaks and podcasts. And he manages all this in just six hours on an average day, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-balance-work-and-family-without-feeling-like-a-failure/">leaving him plenty of time</a> to hang out with his wife and three young children, do CrossFit workouts and whip up “power meals” such as huevos rancheros and sardine salad.



“It’s like <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/3-science-based-mind-hacks-to-get-into-flow/">being in that flow state</a> all the time, that optimal state of performance,” said Meisel, who, on top of everything else, has managed to quash all symptoms of his Crohn’s disease. “I just feel like I have control of my life, my body and sort of my outcome. And that’s a really good feeling.” It’s a feeling that many people wouldn’t mind acquiring—me included. But how to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/3-strategies-to-manage-your-time-and-maximize-your-results/">turn my resolve into action</a>? The answer was more slippery than I had hoped, especially when it came to the online poetry magazine I edit. So here I was, getting a free consult with Mr. Less Doing.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How to be more efficient</h2>



Could he help me—and, by extension, you—make this the most efficient year ever?



I was pretty optimistic about the answer. Here are the key tips he shared with me:&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-1-streamline-the-process">1. Streamline the process</h3>



“Everything we do is a process—paying a bill, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-hire-well/">hiring an employee</a> or making lunch for your kids,” Meisel said. To handle a process quickly and smoothly, you first need to trim it to the essentials. Bill paying, for instance, used to take him 27 steps (visit payment site, log in, go to payment page, etc.). He studied the sequence, spotted tasks that were redundant or otherwise pointless, and soon was down to 22. “I optimized my process by about 20% and gave myself a checklist that was very easy to follow,” he continued. 



The same could help me with my magazine, he said. Were there steps I could combine or cut to become more efficient? (Later I would realize that handling each poet’s submission took me as many as 45 steps, including reading it, sharing it with other editors, checking repeatedly for feedback from those editors, rereading the submission three or four times, waffling…. Yes, I allowed, perhaps a couple of those steps could be eliminated.)



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-2-focus-to-finish-a-task-efficiently">2. Focus to finish a task efficiently</h3>



Meisel swears by <a href="https://www.pomodorotechnique.com/">the Pomodoro Technique</a>, which combines focused bursts of work with short breaks. “It’s like interval training for your brain,” he said. The best length for each component is a matter of debate (variations include <a href="https://www.smart-break.com/blog/effective-breaks/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the “52-17 Method”</a>). The important thing, Meisel said, is to set an alarm for your breaks and obey it. Having time limits makes you more focused and more efficient, he and other Pomodoro advocates believe; taking breaks puts the info you’ve been working on “into a part of our brains that makes it more easy to recall” and helps you recharge.



“What starts to happen is you’re going to want to finish your task in that time period” allotted for a focused burst, he said. “You’re not going to want to come back to it.” I thought about how, on Saturdays, I get 80 minutes to work in a coffee shop while my daughter is at music class. It’s often the most productive period I have all week. Maybe I should try time limits on other days, too.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-3-automate-and-delegate-tasks">3. Automate and delegate tasks</h3>



To speak with Meisel is to hear names of productivity assisting web tools at every turn. And—surprise!—Meisel does have extra hands. <a href="https://www.fancyhands.com/#what-we-do-tab" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Fancy Hands</a>, to be precise—a paid service that lets him outsource small jobs to “virtual assistants” he will probably never meet. Thanks to such time-savers, he has scraped countless tasks off his own plate.



The trick, he said, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-delegate/">is to delegate</a> all but the stuff that “only you can do, or do better than everybody else.” My head swam with jobs I’d love to turn over to Fancy Hands. And even if their prices—low though they were—proved a stretch for a poetry magazine, Meisel had me thinking harder about work I could farm out to volunteers.



We said goodbye. He was on to his next efficiently planned moment (a family trip to the beach). And I—armed with techniques, apps and schemes to rope in volunteer proofreaders—was ready to Meisel my way through the year. Though I would probably skip the sardine salad.



This article was published in January 2015 and has been updated. Photo by Dean Drobot/Shutterstock

Does it feel like you’re spending a lot of time tackling your to-do list? Learn how to be more efficient and free up some of your time!

Does it feel like you’re spending a lot of time tackling your to-do list? Learn how to be more efficient and free up some of your time! | SUCCESS

3 Things to Do to Make This Your Most Efficient Year Ever

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How to Be More Efficient: 3 Expert Tips to Free Up Your Time | SUCCESS

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Melissa Balmain

two people using trustworthy body language when shaking hands

Relationships

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Relationships | SUCCESS | What Achievers Read

People tend to overestimate their ability <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513822000198#:~:text=Overall%2C%20these%20findings%20suggest%20that,only%20information%20available%20to%20them." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">to read others’ faces</a> or body language when determining if someone is trustworthy, psychologists say. Practiced liars can be experts at genuine-seeming eye contact and gestures.



But as unreliable <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-021-04963-4#Sec27" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">as body language is</a>, it might still be <a href="https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/negotiation-skills-daily/build-rapport-without-saying-a-word-nb/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a powerful factor in trust</a>. We’re more prone to like or help people who mimic our nonverbal behavior, <a href="https://online.ucpress.edu/collabra/article/7/1/23441/117025/The-Influence-of-Similarity-and-Mimicry-on" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">psychological studies suggest</a>.&nbsp;



Such imitation is just one way to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/building-trust-as-a-leader/">build trust</a> with body language, say Bill Acheson, a nonverbal-<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/rohn-8-ways-to-master-the-art-of-communication/">communication</a> consultant, and Bob Whipple, a leadership coach and CEO of Leadergrow Incorporated in Hilton, New York. Though the following methods aren’t scientifically proven to spark trust, Acheson and Whipple say they’ve seen them work time and again.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-trustworthy-body-language-when-shaking-hands">Trustworthy body language when shaking hands</h2>



Use just one hand and keep it vertical. A two-handed shake can come across as presumptuous; a palm-down grip as an attempt to dominate, Whipple and Acheson say. Make good “web-to-web contact” and hold the other person’s hand firmly but not bone crushingly. Don’t stuff your other hand in a pocket. Smile “from the heart.” And, yes, make eye contact, especially as the handshake begins.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-do-this-when-speaking-or-listening">Do this when speaking or listening</h2>



Maintain eye contact most of the time, but not all of the time, which can appear creepily deliberate. Don’t fidget.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-trustworthy-body-language-when-standing-or-sitting">Trustworthy body language when standing or sitting</h2>



If you’re talking with a man, stand next to him with your body angled slightly toward his, or choose a chair that’s not right across from him. This will strike him as less confrontational than speaking face to face. But stand or sit directly opposite a woman. To her, an approach from the side might feel like an invasion of space.



This article originally appeared in the July 2017 <a href="https://store.success.com/by-media/success-magazine-july-2017-bishop-t-d-jakes.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">issue of SUCCESS magazine</a> and has been updated. Photo by BigPixel Photo/Shutterstock

If you want to build trust with others without verbal communication, try these three simple ways to use trustworthy body language.

If you want to build trust with others without verbal communication, try these three simple ways to use trustworthy body language. | SUCCESS

3 Ways to Build Trust With Your Body Language

3 Easy Ways to Show You're Trustworthy with Body Language | SUCCESS

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Remember the White Rabbit from <a href="https://amzn.to/3TQ8n3Y" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Alice's Adventures in Wonderlan</a><a href="https://amzn.to/3TQ8n3Y" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">d</a> (“Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!”)? Take away the long ears, swap in something a bit spicier than “Oh dear,” and you’ve got me. Well, I’m sick of my <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-be-yourself/202109/how-stop-being-late" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">always-late rabbit habit</a>. Not just because it stresses me out. Not just because it makes other people mad (you should see the hairy eyeballs when my daughter and I straggle into her Saturday-morning music class). But because it’s turned me into a hypocrite. How can I yell at my kids to hurry when I’m always running behind? So I consulted the best possible advisers I could imagine to learn how to stop being late: people who consistently, miraculously, arrive not just on time but ahead of it.



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter"><a href="https://www.successacademy.com/successinsider/?utm_campaign=inside_cta&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_source=success.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/SUCCESS-Insider-Signup-1-1.gif" alt="" class="wp-image-52406"/></a></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How to stop being late.</h2>



My early-bird council includes friends and relatives, spouses of friends and acquaintances of relatives. Teachers. Journalists. Public speakers. A variety of managers. A “computational linguist.” Editors. A shocking number of poets. And all are so full of good advice, they should be writing their own SUCCESS columns instead of kindly letting me share their wisdom right here. These are their seven tips for how to stop being late and how to be on time, for a change.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-1-make-being-on-time-a-priority">1. Make being on time a priority.</h3>



“It’s just a matter of <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/5-reminders-for-making-the-right-choices-in-life/">making the decision</a> to do it,” said Californian Marla Jo Fisher. I was inclined to believe her, since Fisher is a reformed fellow latecomer who would have missed the flight to her brother’s wedding if it hadn’t been delayed.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-2-lie-to-yourself">2. Lie to yourself.</h3>



“I get places early by putting the time of the appointment or meeting in my calendar as 15 minutes earlier than it really is,” said upstate New Yorker Ruth E. Thaler-Carter.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-3-but-be-honest-about-how-long-stuff-takes-both-travel-and-preparation">3. But be honest about how long stuff takes—both travel and preparation.</h3>



“Most people have no idea how long it actually takes to get showered, dressed, etc.,” said Toni Greenberg of Maryland. “One morning, time yourself. You will be surprised.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-4-organize-your-space">4. Organize your space.</h3>



Always keep things like cellphones and keys in the same place so you won’t have to hunt for them when you go out. Duh, right? But how many of us do it?



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-5-prepare-so-you-can-stop-being-late">5. Prepare, so you can stop being late.</h3>



The day before an appointment, gather everything you will need (directions, medical records, etc.) and put it by the door or in your car.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-6-expect-the-worst-and-bump-up-your-departure-time-accordingly">6. Expect the worst and bump up your departure time accordingly.</h3>



That traffic jam? It’ll happen. Getting lost? <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-anticipate-problems-with-if-then-planning/">Count on it</a>. “When kids are involved, leave enough time for three things <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/16-ways-to-hone-your-problem-solving-skills/">to go wrong</a>!” said Terri Griest of Maryland.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-7-make-it-too-embarrassing-to-be-late">7. Make it too embarrassing to be late.</h3>



“I make a somewhat peevish, but I hope loving, issue of it when someone else is late, so then I don’t dare be late myself,” said Elden Carnahan, yet another Marylander. (What is it about Maryland?)



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-8-ask-yourself-why-you-re-perpetually-late">8. Ask yourself why you’re perpetually late.</h3>



It can signal “issues” from ADHD to thrill-seeking to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/do-you-have-to-be-passionate-about-your-job/">unhappiness in your job</a>, said early birds schooled in psychology—and pinpointing your reasons may lead to life changes that curb the urge to dawdle. I realized, for me, the main issue is anxiety over my to-do list. I’m constantly tempted to cross something off it before leaving the house. Which leads me to my favorite tip:



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-9-prioritize-your-tasks">9. Prioritize your tasks.</h3>



Instead of doing a last-minute task that could make you late for, say, a party, leave home early and plan to do one when you arrive—making a call, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-3-sentence-email-guaranteed-to-get-a-response/">writing an email</a>, etc. (Several early birds cautioned that you should do said work in your car so you won’t pop in on people while they’re still vacuuming the living room in their underwear.)



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Why it's important to stop being late.</h2>



As it turned out, advice wasn’t all I got from my council. What really hit home was the guilt.



Being on time “is necessary for a society to work efficiently,” said Henry Miller of Virginia.



“I guess I want to be known as someone who can be relied upon,” said Californian Dennis Foley, one of several people who likened being late to breaking a promise.



David Sanders of Ohio said his Midwestern upbringing “imparts the lesson that we shouldn’t make anyone wait on our arrival, and that our time is no more valuable than anyone else’s, and so it’s a matter of courtesy not to waste the time of others while we dilly-dally.”



Oh [bleep]! Oh [bleep]! It now seemed obvious that all these years when I’d kept people waiting and they had said, “It’s OK,” they were secretly looking forward to my funeral, where they could crack wise about my being the late Melissa Balmain.



The next Saturday, I rose <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-i-became-a-morning-person-and-how-you-can-too/">45 minutes earlier than usual</a>, drove my daughter to her music class—on schedule!—and faced, for once, zero hairy eyeballs. In fact, no eyeballs of any kind. Class had been canceled.



As we left the building, a chorus of chirps followed us from a nearby tree—the sound, I’m pretty sure, that early birds make when they laugh.



This article was published in February 2017 and has been updated. Photo by Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Are you always running late? Read these simple tips from constant early birds and learn how to stop being late and always be on time.

Are you always running late? Read these simple tips from constant early birds and learn how to stop being late and always be on time. | SUCCESS

9 Early-Bird Tips for the Habitually Late

How to Stop Being Late: 9 Easy Tips from Early Birds | SUCCESS

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Want to Reach Your Potential? Be a Learner

We’re living in the Age of Expertise, after all. Never have more people believed—with more reason—that success hinges on reading, workshopping, boot-camping, seminar-ing, and otherwise launching yourself into new realms of skill or knowledge.

We’re living in the Age of Expertise, after all. Never have more people believed—with more reason—that success hinges on reading, workshopping, boot-camping, seminar-ing, and otherwise launching yourself into new realms of skill or knowledge. | SUCCESS

Want to Reach Your Potential? Be a Learner | SUCCESS

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Want More Charisma? It All Starts with Your Mind

Quick: Think of a charismatic person. Are you picturing a famous actor? A religious leader? An all-black wearing, TED-Talking innovator? Chances are your answer is somewhere along those lines, and your eighth-grade English teacher didn’t come to mind. You know the one: soft-spoken and a bit frumpy, yet constantly mobbed by adoring students, even after she made them spend the weekend reading King Lear. OK, I’m describing my wonderful eighth-grade English teacher, Judy Jordan. But look back: Didn’t you have a teacher like that, too, or maybe a scoutmaster or a sports coach? And hasn’t your life been dotted with people who have that special “it” that makes others like them, trust them and want to be led by them?



Despite popular notions, charisma doesn’t just come in one bold flavor. Nor is it some rare magic that only a few brilliant or beautiful people are born with. Instead, research suggests that charisma is as varied as ice cream. <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28737418/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A 2018 study</a> published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology even created a General Charisma Inventory with points that varied from leadership skills to general approachability. Charisma is found among all sorts of folks, in every walk of life.&nbsp;



And it can be learned.



If you’re like me, this news might spark alarming visions at first: visions of slimy politicians/car salesmen/name-a-stereotype who use practiced smiles and hand gestures to win you over while telling whoppers about the economy or highway mileage. But that’s not true charisma, and the fact that you see through it is proof.



“Because human beings are such fantastic lie detectors—and we do detect micro-expressions as fast as 17 milliseconds—you can’t fake charisma,” says Olivia Fox Cabane, author of <a href="https://amzn.to/3AaIpOO" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism</a>. “You have to feel genuine emotion.”



In other words:<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/6-ways-to-unlock-your-charisma"> </a>True charisma comes from within. Yes, external stuff can help, from clothes to voice to smiles and hand gestures. But it’s no good by itself.



“People see charisma as charm or an ability to manipulate, and I see it as the opposite—I see it as completely being in your truth,” says author, sociologist and life coach Martha Beck. “The word charisma literally means someone who has a connection to the gods, somebody who can reach into the numinous or unseen world and bring back messages. I kind of still see it that way. When you go to a seminar with a really charismatic person, you have the feeling [of], Oh, I can trust this person. They are giving me something from a source that is true.”



So if you really want to be liked, trusted and listened to, work on your own mind first.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-gift-of-presence">A gift of presence.</h2>



What I remember best about Ms. Jordan (along with her devotion to Shakespeare and her lovely lopsided smile) is how present she was. When she spoke with you, she spoke with you. Period. No glazing of the eyes. No glancing past your shoulder to see if someone more important was coming along.



Small wonder, then, that of all the mental aspects of charisma, Cabane thinks the most important is being truly engaged with others. “Because so few of us are ever fully present, if you can manage even a few moments of full presence from time to time, you’ll make quite an impact,” she writes.



In The Charisma Myth, Cabane says that during a conversation you should, “Try to regularly check whether your mind is fully engaged or whether it is wandering elsewhere (including preparing your next sentence).” When you’re alone, she recommends a technique—adapted from mindfulness disciplines—that can train you to be more in the moment: Sit or stand in a quiet place and set a timer for one minute. “Close your eyes and try to focus on one of the following three things: the sounds around you, your breathing or the sensations in your toes,” she says.&nbsp;



Remember, presence doesn’t necessarily involve opening your mouth. Many of the world’s most charismatic people, from daytime talk-show hosts to the Dalai Lama, are known as much for their silence as for their words.



Think of Oprah Winfrey, Beck says: “Oprah is so smart. She has so much knowledge. And yet when she talks with someone, she asks questions with such intensity, and she listens with such intensity. She actually puts all her attention on other people, and that is genius to me. It’s the power of her genuine focus on other people that makes her so mesmerizing.”



Could your <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-speak-well-and-listen-better/">listening skills use a polish</a>? Try arriving at a cocktail party with just this one goal, Beck says: All I’m going to do is ask questions. If someone asks you a question in turn, politeness dictates that you answer, but keep it brief. “If you can ask a few questions and just listen, they will think you’re the most charismatic person they’ve ever met,” Beck adds.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-getting-warmer">Getting warmer.</h2>



Another magnetic person I’ve been lucky to know is the journalist Susan Kelleher. From CEOs to average joes, she has a knack for getting people to talk with her and for making friends. There’s no one reason, of course: She has plenty of attractive traits, including brains, humor and astounding cheekbones.



But perhaps her greatest charismatic gift is her almost palpable concern for others. As Beck says, “Anyone without compassion ultimately doesn’t have real charisma. Nobody stays interested in you if you really don’t care about them.”



And while Kelleher humbly denies that she is charismatic (humility and charisma often go together, from what I’ve seen), she does cop to cultivating empathy. It’s about imagining herself in another person’s place, she says.



Once, years ago, she was assigned to write about a woman who had lost three children in a mudslide. For weeks, Kelleher failed to compose a persuasive note requesting an interview. At last, “I stopped trying to see my own needs, which were to get an interview with her, and just went with extreme empathy,” she says. Vividly picturing the woman’s grief, she told her something like, I kept waiting for a good time to contact you and realized there’s never going to be a good time for you. I have no story I want to tell—I just want to see if you have a story to tell. The woman immediately agreed to speak with her. “Once I embrace that kind of extreme empathy where you truly do stand in someone else’s shoes—where they are a person who exists outside of your own needs—then I can make a connection with them.”



Beck would undoubtedly approve. “True charisma is basically when you disappear and allow something loving to come through you for the other person,” she says. “It energizes you.”



<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-make-giving-back-routine/">Building generosity of spirit</a> takes time. As an exercise, Beck suggests this: Leave a sum of money that’s “not inconsiderable” to you—$20, perhaps—in a place where lots of people pass by. Then watch inconspicuously until someone finds the cash. “See what their emotions are in the moment they find it, and in that moment of releasing that $20 bill, it’s like you tell yourself, I will put value out just to watch somebody else receive,” she says.



Over the long haul, experts recommend practices such as metta, or loving-kindness meditation, in which you think kindly of others as well as yourself. Sharon Salzberg, who has helped popularize Buddhist meditation in the West, sums up loving-kindness as follows: Sitting comfortably, with your eyes shut, repeat simple wishes in your head such as: May I be safe, may I be happy, may I be healthy and may I live with ease. Imagine yourself doing all the above. Then change the pronoun to he, she or they and repeat the same phrases with someone else in mind, picturing them being safe, healthy and so on. Keep going with other people or groups of people in your life.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-confidence-to-spare">Confidence to spare.</h2>



As you might expect, it’s hard to<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/7-qualities-of-the-most-charming-people"> </a>be charming if you feel anxious, doubtful or self-critical. “When our <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/changing-the-narrative-how-to-silence-your-inner-critic-in-the-new-year/">internal voice starts criticizing us</a>, lashing out, it can feel like we’re under attack,” Cabane writes. And just as in a physical assault, you can experience a fight-or-flight response fueled by stress hormones. As your heart pumps faster, your breathing accelerates and so on, “intelligent thinking gets shut down,” says Cabane. Bye-bye, charisma.



Here, too, meditation may help. In working with clients, Cabane tells me, loving-kindness techniques have been key to squelching insecurities that dim personal appeal. “We have a culture that breeds self-criticism, and so interestingly… there’s a couple of my clients for whom the way to more authority and power was actually through self-forgiveness,” she says.



In The Charisma Myth, Cabane also suggests that when negative thoughts arise, you <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/8-daily-tips-for-building-self-confidence/">try confidence-boosters</a> such as these:



<ul>
<li>“Assign a label to your negative experience: self-criticism, anger, anxiety, etc. Just naming what you are thinking and feeling can help you neutralize it.”</li>



<li>“Don’t assume your thoughts are accurate. Just because your mind comes up with something doesn’t necessarily mean it has any validity.”</li>



<li>“See your thoughts as graffiti on a wall or as little electrical impulses flickering around your brain.”</li>



<li>“Think of all the previous times when you felt just like this—that you wouldn’t make it through—and yet clearly you did.”</li>
</ul>



Cabane is a fan of pumping yourself up before any social or professional situation when you want your charisma to be at full throttle. In the hours before, she says, stick to interactions that make you feel good about yourself, such as coffee with a friend. Enjoy an activity you do well, whether it’s playing tennis or tooting a tuba. And by all means, listen to music that revs you up—perhaps Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” or Cabane’s personal favorite, “Flying” from the 2003 movie Peter Pan.



Beck, meanwhile, has a visualization exercise meant to jump-start confidence and compassion all at once: Before an important gathering, imagine entering the room and being fearless. How would you feel physically? What would you say?



“What you practice in your mind, you tend to do in your body,” Beck says. And when you’re primed to be fearless, you’re also primed to care about others. “You’ll find out compassion is your natural state of being, and only fear pushes it away,” she continues.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-flavor-are-you">What flavor are you?</h2>



Speaking of natural states, you’re bound to be more charismatic if you embrace the traits that come most readily to you.



Though charisma is always a mix of presence, warmth and power, Cabane says, that mix is different for everyone. The Dalai Lama’s charisma, for instance, is mostly about warmth. Colin Powell’s has much more to do with power. “Acquire the kinds of charisma that are at the Venn diagram center of what is most natural to you, what is most necessary for your goals, and what you enjoy most,” Cabane advises.



Sally Hogshead, author of <a href="https://amzn.to/3np4nWE" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">How the World Sees You: Discover Your Highest Value Through the Science of Fascination</a>, says to think about times when you enthralled others. Remember how they hung on your words and, more importantly, acted on your ideas. What were you saying that grabbed those people’s interest? How did you behave? What sorts of problems were you trying to solve? At those moments you were probably using natural assets—your attention to detail, perhaps; your ingenuity; your knack for breaking the ice with a spot-on impression of Johnny Depp.



And, quite likely, you were<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/john-c-maxwell-how-to-carve-out-your-lifes-passion"> </a>guided by passion. “When somebody starts talking about something they’re passionate about, they become dynamic,” Kelleher says. “They become magnetic because they’re communicating something that’s so pure, which is their absolute enthusiasm.”



So pay attention to the topics you’re most excited about; they’ll bring out your best. “When suddenly your voice picks up and you become more animated, that’s a clue that you’re on to something,” Kelleher says.



The more you let your natural advantages and interests lead you, the more confident and relaxed you’ll feel, Hogshead says. “And when your listener perceives you as being confident, relaxed and authentic, they’re more likely to listen to what you say, connect with you and take action on your words,” she continues. To remind yourself to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/using-your-enneagram-type-to-embrace-your-strengths-and-understand-your-struggles/">use your strengths</a>, she recommends silently reciting an “anthem” during conversations—a short phrase that sums up your “distinct value.” If you’re unorthodox and creative, for instance, your anthem might be “out-of-the-box ideas.” This can help you make an indelible impression, she says.



Eventually, whether your style is more like Ms. Jordan’s or Michael Jordan’s, all this will seem second nature. Take it from yet another charismatic person I’ve met: The Charisma Myth author herself.



Although Cabane was the “shyest teenager you can possibly imagine” back in the ’90s, she’s now the epitome of warmth and presence during phone calls. On video, telling a story about Marilyn Monroe, she has more than a whiff of the Blonde Bombshell’s star power. “The fact that I can function in society is proof” that developing your charisma can pay off, Cabane says. “For me it’s created a very, very rich life in all senses of the word—friendships, relationships, work. It really did transform me.”



This article appears in the December 2015 issue of SUCCESS magazine. and has been updated. Photo by&nbsp;GaudiLab/Shutterstock

True charisma comes from within. Yes, external stuff can help, from clothes to voice to smiles and hand gestures. But it’s no good by itself.

True charisma comes from within. Yes, external stuff can help, from clothes to voice to smiles and hand gestures. But it’s no good by itself. | SUCCESS

Want More Charisma? It All Starts with Your Mind | SUCCESS

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Why You Should Devote Time Every Day to Aimless Joy

If you&nbsp;pass&nbsp;my front yard on a snowy morning, you might spot a scene straight out of Winnie the Pooh: two bundled figures trudging around and around. I’m Winnie, the big one in earth tones. My daughter, Lily—smaller, in pink—is Piglet. Our feet are busy stamping the ground with “snow circles,” the cold belt’s answer to crop circles. I sometimes spend as much as an hour at this. Trudging long after Lily’s school bus has come and gone, I’ll make nine or 10 concentric circles—a frozen target that lasts at most a few days.



This may seem silly, but I’m convinced that, now and then, nothing beats <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-art-of-strategic-nothingness/">doing something ephemeral</a> and seemingly pointless. Clearly I’m not alone. Almost anywhere you can find snow, ice, sand, sticks or stones, you’ll also find people using them in short-lived creations: sand castles, ice sculptures, teetering stacks of beach debris.



Why bother with a pursuit that has no lasting tangible result and barely qualifies as exercise?



Ask a child this question, as I asked Lily, and you’re likely to get the simplest of answers: because it’s fun! Kids never doubt the value of doing something for its own sake, with little thought to the outcome. As Zen types might say, they know that <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/what-is-happiness-and-why-is-it-important/">life’s greatest joy</a> comes from shooting the arrow, not hitting the target.



Ask an adult why she picks such an evanescent hobby, and there’s no telling what answer you’ll get. Sand sculptors, stone balancers and the like have spoken to interviewers about how their pursuit helps them shed stress, entertain onlookers, or even (in the case of a college student who likes making snow circles late at night, for others to puzzle over in the morning) “mess with people’s heads.”



I admit this last reason has crossed my mind, too; finished sets of snow circles give few clues to their origins, and I enjoy peeking out a window as passersby squint at my white lawn and wonder how it got that weird pattern in it. (It’s probably too much to hope that they suspect UFOs—but at least they might picture something more interesting than a woman walking stiff-legged in Lands’ End boots.)



Mainly, though, I think I make snow circles for the same reason Lily does: for the fleeting joy of the activity itself. Like almost every adult I know, I spend a lot of time <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-art-of-strategic-nothingness/">obsessing over long-term goals</a> and problems, and feeling the weight of the expectations and fears that go with them. What if the course I teach next semester isn’t the best it can be? What if it is, but my students secretly spend their class time playing Candy Crush Saga? Snow-circling tricks me into taking a rejuvenating break from all that. Unlike ordinary walking, it’s just enough of a challenge to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/why-your-free-time-is-so-draining/">keep my mind from wandering to Big Things</a> I Should Be Working Toward or Worrying About. (If I stop watching my feet or thinking about their path, my circle veers into an oval or I might topple in full view of the mailman.) It becomes a meditation of sorts, a chance to be present in the moment. And because it’s outdoors, it reminds me—more vividly than many other forms of meditation—that I’m part of a greater whole.



Circling and circling beneath the sky, surrounded by trees and houses, streets and dog walkers, how can I not feel that I belong to the world and even the universe, all of it as transient as my footprints? And how can my aims not seem a little smaller and more manageable afterward, when I’ve just been reminded of what a puny, Winnie-the-Pooh-like creature I am?



Recently I read a quote from Thoreau that puts into words, more or less, the knowledge that sometimes hits me while I’m making snow circles: “The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening.” When you come down to it, every goal I seek—publishing another book, helping my mother cope with an illness—will vanish in the larger scheme of space and time, along with any missteps I make. So why be afraid of them?



Today Piglet and I will circle as best we can. Tonight more snow will fall. Tomorrow we’ll circle again.



This article was published in March 2015 and has been updated. Photo by @batoshka/Twenty20

[node:summary] - Discover the bliss of positively pointless pursuits.

As Zen types might say, they know that life’s greatest joy comes from shooting the arrow, not hitting the target. | SUCCESS

Why You Should Devote Time Every Day to Aimless Joy | SUCCESS

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“Shirt!” “Fork!” “Zounds!” “Fahrvergnügen!” “Covfefe!”

Yes, my family and I shouted some strange things. The goal was to eliminate swearing, at least for a couple of weeks, with the hope that tightening our loose lips might also <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/john-addison-4-ways-to-say-no-to-negativity">rid us of negativity</a>. It was time to go “full Ned Flanders.” Only mild exclamations and gibes (“Gosh!” “Jerk!”) or fake/outdated ones (inspired, say, by The Good Place, Shakespeare or old car ads) would be allowed.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/9-ways-to-say-no-to-negativity">9 Ways to Say No to Negativity</a>

“F--- that!” said my husband, Bill, when I asked whether he’d be up for the experiment. “How am I supposed to talk about the news?”

But then, being the academic that he is, he warmed to it. Our tween daughter, Lily, and teenage son, Davey (away at college), were intrigued by it, too. Swearing is, after all, one of humanity’s more fascinating habits. It’s as old as the hills, but still able to shock. It can earn you laughs, or get you fined by the NBA.

And interestingly enough, the more scientists study it, the more they realize how badly we need it.

“Swearing plays numerous roles in helping us communicate, manage and <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/the-benefits-of-experiencing-a-wider-range-of-emotions">understand our emotions</a>,” says British research scientist Emma Byrne, who recently met me in London for tea, scones and a side of four-letter words. Want proof we find it crucial? Kids as young as 2 invent expressions related to the no-no’s of their world, Byrne says. (Consider the ever-popular poopyhead.) Even chimpanzees that use sign language can start working blue—turning the sign for dirty into an insult, for instance. As Byrne puts it in her book, <a href="https://amzn.to/2EYMu9I" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Swearing Is Good for You</a>, profanity “teaches us a lot about how our brains, our minds and even our societies work.”

<h2 class="SUBHEAD">[Heavens], this is hard!</h2>

My family’s slipups began almost immediately, I’m sorry to say. Not that we’re the world’s biggest potty mouths—but except for Lily (who rarely strays beyond “Oh, my God!”), let’s just say a sitcom about us would air on cable. Within days of swearing off swearing, Bill was back to dropping f-bombs in traffic jams. Lily and I clapped hands over our mouths in moments of surprise, fear and dismay, after banned words flew out as reflexively as sneezes.None of which would raise scientific eyebrows.

Research on people with brain damage and Tourette’s syndrome suggests that impulsive curses might involve different brain structures than deliberate language—ancient structures tied to emotion and automatic processes, writes Benjamin Bergen in his book, <a href="https://amzn.to/2lRJT8G" target="_blank" rel="noopener">What the F: What Swearing Reveals about Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves</a>.

Because taboo words evoke such strong reactions, they become ingrained early. Expressions we adopt later, no matter how packed with satisfying consonants, lack the power of words our parents told us are bad. “It’s very hard to not use that kind of swearing, in the same way it’s very hard not to rub a bruise,” Byrne says.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/rohn-the-powerful-combination-of-words-and-emotion">The Powerful Combination of Words and Emotion </a>

<h2 class="SUBHEAD">[Goodness], that’s painful!</h2>

It turns out swearing might, in fact, dull some physical pain, too. In a study led by British psychologist Richard Stephens, people were able to keep one hand in almost-freezing water far longer if they cursed while doing it. Neutral words didn’t cut it. In another Stephens study, a bout of swearing gave people more grip strength and helped them pedal harder on an exercise bike.

How do mere syllables accomplish all of this? Swearing seems bound up with the fight-or-flight response that prepares us for a challenge, Bergen tells me. It raises our heart rate and blood pressure, funnels blood toward our extremities, and makes us sweat.

Small wonder that when Bill missed a highway exit, or Davey felt swamped with homework, or Lily saw a centipede, or I dropped my iPhone on my face (true story), managing not to swear proved a hollow victory. “It felt sort of like when my ear’s clogged,” Davey said. “Just this annoying thing that’s not quite right.”

<img alt="speaknoevil1.jpg" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__39276 img__view_mode__full" src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/legacy/sites/default/files/speaknoevil1.jpg" style="width: 100%;" typeof="foaf:Image" /> 
PAUL GARLAND

<h2 class="SUBHEAD">I’m so [Overwhelmingly] sorry!</h2>

Equally challenging: swear-free social situations. More than once during my family’s experiment, friends shared upsetting news from their lives, and it didn’t feel nearly sympathetic enough to respond, “Gosh, that’s awful!” The goofiness involved in not swearing can actually make a situation awkward. A pal told me that hearing a new acquaintance blurt, “H-E-double hockey sticks!” changed her opinion of the woman: “I still think she’s a sweet person, but I’m not thinking potential friend.”

Indeed, contrary to what your mother might have taught you, swearing can be key for greasing the wheels of relationships. We want our friends and colleagues to speak the way we speak, Byrne says. Workplace studies seem to bear this out.

Salty words might even <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/5-ways-to-be-more-influential">make us more influential</a>. “We’ve known for a while that people are often perceived as more honest when they swear,” Bergen says. More persuasive, too. Witness a study at Northern Illinois University in which students were more likely to agree with speeches containing swear words. Or consider motivational speaker Tony Robbins. In the documentary <a href="https://www.tonyrobbins.com/documentary/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">I Am Not Your Guru</a>, he says taboo words help him “interrupt the noise in people’s heads.… That’s how they change.” After he calls one woman’s overindulgent father a “mother[lover]” and urges her to “make the [toll free] call” to an ill-suited boyfriend, the woman says she didn’t enjoy Robbins’s attitude, but adds: “If he would have been all nice and namsy-pamsy, I wouldn’t have done [anything].”

Then there’s the time-honored link between cusswords and humor. “I think swearing is funny because there’s an element of shock, surprise, disjunction,” Byrne says.

Despite all this, though—and despite the fact that swearing is seen less and less as the province of lowlifes, especially for men—it can still backfire. Research suggests that if we don’t expect off-color language from a given person (a teacher in a classroom, say), then the use of it could make us dislike them and their opinions. Plus, of course, profanity has the <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/5-ways-to-pick-yourself-up-after-someone-tears-you-down">power to wound</a>—and not just the racial slurs or graphic terms you might be thinking of. Depending on where you live, words ranging from God to tuberculosis can offend people to the core. Byrne, for one, hopes Western society will get better at sticking with swears related to “the copulatory and excretory—the things we pretty much have in common—as opposed to slurs, which set us apart.”

Related:&nbsp;<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/9-tips-to-say-it-better">9 Tips to Say It Better</a>

<h2 class="SUBHEAD">Forget that [Unnatural Ordeal].</h2>

One evening during our experiment, while taking a walk, Bill and I realized it was true: We couldn’t discuss the news anymore without using certain words. And so we switched from ranting about our least-favorite politician to admiring the sunset and planning a vacation. Afterward, we agreed it was one of our more relaxing walks in recent memory. Life at home had started to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/how-to-find-peace-of-mind-in-4-simple-steps">feel more peaceful</a> to me, too, now that I was less apt to hear Bill curse a blue streak when our cats yowled at 3 a.m. Bill felt a bit calmer as well. “Not swearing forces you to be mindful, to keep some distance from your anger and get control of yourself,” he theorized. Could it be that impeding our tongues was improving our marriage and willpower?

Maybe yes, maybe no. Not swearing can, logically, make those around you calmer. Hearing others curse in fear or anger “tends to elicit the same in others,” Byrne says. And <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/11-positive-words-to-add-to-your-vocabulary">minding your language</a> might help you “pay more attention to regulating emotions,” Bergen says.

On the other hand, suppressing cusswords involves “an opportunity cost,” Bergen points out. When you’re laser-focused on your vocabulary, “maybe you aren’t paying as much attention to the details of the conversation you’re having.” Which wouldn’t be great for marriage. Ditto, naturally, for fistfights. “People who swear at each other are less likely to use actual physical violence,” Byrne says. “So swearing has been quite useful to us as a social species.”

As for my hope that not swearing could goose willpower across the board, bilingual people imply otherwise. “Bilinguals spend their lives deciding not to say words that are on the tip of their tongue, because they’re in the wrong language,” Bergen says. But research shows that this self-control applies to language only. “They’re not better [than other people] at deciding not to have a cigarette or a second piece of pie.”

<h2 class="SUBHEAD">Sweet [Potatoes], we’re back!</h2>

When the trial balloon ended, our restored freedom tasted good indeed. “It felt more meaningful once I was able to swear again,” Davey said, speaking pretty much for the whole family. “Like having dessert when you haven’t had it for a week.”

Somehow, though, we haven’t been swearing as much as we used to. Maybe our time off reminded us that, as Byrne says, “If you have no taboos left because swearing is so normalized in your group, no words will have the potency you require (they will all be as unsatisfactory as saying poop would be to most of us).”

Back in the London tearoom, Byrne took a last bite of scone and leaned toward me. “My hypothesis is if you don’t swear as often, then when you do swear, you’re drawing more on those <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/what-you-need-to-know-about-emotional-intelligence">emotional brain structures</a>, because most of your swearing is done only out of strong emotions,” she said. Use naughty words only when you need them most, and they’ll be your friends for life.

Which sounded pretty forking good to me.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/what-happened-when-i-didnt-complain-for-30-days">What Happened When I Didn’t Complain for 30 Days​</a> 

&nbsp;

This article originally appeared in the <a href="https://store.successcom.wpenginepowered.com/by-media/success-magazine-february-2018-gabby-bernstein.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">February 2018 issue of SUCCESS magazine</a>.

Bleep this! Bleep that! Our writer and her family try to stop swearing for a boost of positivity. Is it worth it?

Bleep this! Bleep that! Our writer and her family try to stop swearing for a boost of positivity. Is it worth it? | SUCCESS

What Happened When I Tried to Stop Swearing

What Happened When I Tried to Stop Swearing | SUCCESS

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How you can bring this vital—and endangered—element to all of your relationships

How you can bring this vital—and endangered—element to all of your relationships | SUCCESS

8 Tried-and-True Steps to Building Trust

8 Tried-and-True Steps to Building Trust | SUCCESS

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Last summer on a family vacation in the Catskills, it occurred to me that I should take our kayak for a spin. Number of times I’d thought this before: at least a million. Number of years the kayak had been in the family: 16. Number of minutes I had spent in it: zero.

The reason for my lack of kayaking—and I’m not proud of this—is that I never felt like opening the garage, putting the kayak on its wheels, and dragging it for a few minutes (mostly downhill) along the road to the lake. Yes, a little elbow grease was all that stood between me and my favorite kind of boating. But I always took the easy route and went for a swim instead.

Not this time, though. Just the day before, something shocking happened. I had an idea that was immediately ratified by the whole family: Let’s keep the kayak by the water. It’s a lake surrounded by people we know, and the risk of theft is pretty much nil. How it took us a sixth of a century to realize that is a question for another day. But at least we didn’t waste time afterward. Within hours, my husband lugged the kayak downhill, tooled around in it himself, and left it on the shore. Which is right where I found it when I arrived—paddle in hand and raring to go.

Chalk up another one to the power of convenience.

Organization experts and nutritionists have extolled it for ages: Keep your recycling bin near where you open your mail so you don’t let junk mail pile up; stock your fridge with cut veggies so you’ll have healthy snacks handy. But why stop there? Why not harness the Convenience Principle to do stuff that’s a bit more involved than chucking catalogs or chomping carrots? I began asking such questions years ago, and on top of kayaking, the perks have included:

<h2>• More time talking with friends.</h2>

Again, all it took was a simple tweak—in this case, adding headsets to our wireless phones—and I was suddenly free to chat with pals while doing chores. (Yes, to avoid disaster, I still <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/single-minded" title="Single-Minded | SUCCESS.com">single-task</a> when doing anything complicated, but as long as I pair phone calls with autopilot jobs such as making salad and doing laundry, my friendships remain crisp and stain-free.)

<h2>• Fewer missed errands.</h2>

After years of “duh” moments in which I realized that if only I had such-and-such a coupon with me, I&nbsp;could stop at blah-blah store and get 20 percent off on yada-yada, I began keeping coupons in the car. Since then I’ve bought countless gadgets, groceries and other things in far fewer trips than it used to take. Plus, I’m the proud owner of several shoe racks that still need to be put together. (Hey, I never said convenience cured <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/7-simple-ways-to-stop-procrastinating" title="7 Simple Way to Stop Procrastinating | SUCCESS.com">procrastination</a>.)

<h2>• Bigger muscles.</h2>

By clearing a space on the floor of my walk-in closet, I’ve made it easy to drop down for some pushups while I&nbsp;wait for the shower (across from the closet) to warm from glacial to tepid. By keeping the side of the bathtub clear, I can fit in a few triceps dips, too. The upshot: I’m now noticeably more fit, thanks to about 10 minutes a week that I no longer spend standing around and muttering about our plumbing.

<h2>• More ideas brought to fruition.</h2>

A bunch of 50-cent notebooks, each tucked in a purse or pocket, means I’m much less likely to forget concepts for new poems, articles or columns—including this one.

Sure, none of these steps are Nobel-worthy. But they’ve shown me how even <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/if-you-want-to-change-your-results-you-have-to-change-your-thinking-first" title="If You Want to Change Your Results, You Have to Change Your Thinking First | SUCCESS.com">small changes can yield big rewards</a>. Like finding myself paddling through cool water just after dawn, surrounded by pine trees and birdsong, and confident that my next 16 years will include a lot more kayaking.

What else can the Convenience Principle do? Since my keep-it-on-the-shore brainstorm, I’ve hatched plans right and left, including some I hope will lead to a nicer front yard (I’ll stash weeding tools near the front door) and healthier kids (exercise mats in their bedrooms).

How about you? I’d love to hear about ways you’ve harnessed, or plan to harness, convenience to improve your life. Share them with SUCCESS on Facebook, Twitter or other social media ,&nbsp;and the rest of us can (conveniently) copy you.

<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/how-to-replace-your-bad-habits-with-good-ones" target="_blank" title="How to Replace Your Bad Habits with Good Ones | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">Making positive change is all about the rules you set for yourself. Learn how to replace your bad habits with good ones.&nbsp;</a>

&nbsp;

This article appears in the December 2015 issue of&nbsp;SUCCESS&nbsp;magazine.

Little conveniences that pack a wallop | SUCCESS

4 Ways to Make Your Life Easier (They're Shockingly Simple

4 Ways to Make Your Life Easier (They&#8217;re Shockingly Simple

4 Ways to Make Your Life Easier (They're Shockingly Simple | SUCCESS

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“Fuming, Harry descended the stairs to Snape’s dungeon... ”
Moments ago in my family’s car, the 10-year-old and 16-year-old were bickering about whether the 10-year-old sings with a fake Scottish accent. Now they sit silently as, in the front passenger seat, I read aloud from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I pause for a sip of water.
Ten-year-old: “You have part of a pita chip stuck in your braces.”
Sixteen-year-old: “No, I don’t… ”
Water bottle down. Book up. “‘You’re late, Potter,’ said Snape coldly, as Harry closed the door behind him… ”
And while all hell breaks loose at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, quiet reigns again in the backseat.
Sure, we all know it’s important to read aloud to small children. But how about big kids, and even adults? I’m one of many who love this old-school pastime—and not just because it’s the best car-ride peacekeeper since rocking out to the radio. Among the other top reasons to make reading a social event...
<h2>1. Intimacy</h2>
It’s no coincidence that any number of romantic scenes in movies (Bull Durham, Sense and Sensibility, Bright Star, Groundhog Day—I could go on) feature adults reading or reciting to each other. Plenty of real-life couples make it a ritual. “It feels nurturing to be read to as an adult,” says my friend Karen Page. She and her husband, Andrew Dornenburg, co-write culinary books by day; at night, they read aloud from novels. “It’s like giving a gift to the other person, an act of generosity at the end of the day. It gives us an opportunity to bring something to life with our voices and emotions. And it <a title="Rohn: 8 Traits of Healthy Relationships | SUCCESS.com" href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/8-traits-of-healthy-relationships" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">deepens our relationship</a>, giving each of us one more thing to love about the other.”
<h2>2. Vividness</h2>
Reading aloud involves more parts of the brain than reading silently, says William Graves, Ph.D., a psychologist at Rutgers University. “Meaning-related [semantic] areas of the brain are activated in both, but reading aloud or listening to reading also engages auditory areas and speech production areas.” Science has yet to discover whether this difference has <a title="How to Exponentially Improve Your Performance | SUCCESS.com" href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/how-to-exponentially-improve-your-performance" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cognitive perks</a>. But to Graves and others, it seems clear it can boost your appreciation of a book. “Reading aloud forces you to pay attention to the sound of words, how the sound of one word fits with another. You’re not just focusing on the meaning, which you would primarily do when reading silently.” Another reward: “I feel like sometimes the images that writers are trying to convey end up being more vivid after hearing it read aloud or reading it aloud yourself.” Small wonder that for so many of us, fantasy books are popular read-aloud choices, as are works from the days when almost all stories and poems, written or not, were shared orally. When you read Shakespeare aloud, Graves points out, you and your audience hear his words as he intended. “That’s an important part of the experience.”
<h2>3. Comfort</h2>
<a title="How I Turned Weeping into Purpose in Mom's Last Days | SUCCESS.com" href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/how-i-turned-weeping-into-purpose-in-moms-last-days" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">In my mother’s last months</a>, she couldn’t read much to herself without losing focus. But she enjoyed having family members read to her by the hour—and often seemed to forget her pain in the process. This let us simply relish each other’s company for a change. Plus, it helped give her the illusion of leaving her bed for the wider world. One day when I was reading her Agnes de Mille’s Where the Wings Grow, doing my best to render the accents of the various characters, Mom chuckled and turned to my husband. “I love hearing her read,” she told him. “She goes all over the world with her mouth.”
<h2>4. Learning</h2>
Silent reading is great, too, of course. It’s enriched my family’s lives in countless ways. Even so, reading aloud can have an educational edge. If my kids had read the Harry Potter books on their own, who knows how long it would have taken them to realize that words like “jumper” and “trainers” mean something different in England—or to correctly pronounce words like “malady” and “exchequer”? More important, they might not have had thoughtful conversations with their parents on topics such as, “Why didn’t Harry and his friends tell a grown-up, instead of fighting the Death Eaters by themselves again?”
<h2>5. Cuteness</h2>
My kids will blush, but I can’t resist mentioning that nothing’s more adorable than your offspring reading to you while channeling the likes of Hagrid the half-giant. How could TV possibly compete?
And speaking of TV… My family watches the tube with the best of them. We’ve even been known to do it during dinner, which is why, afterward, I often suggest a little read-aloud time. To paraphrase Page, watching TV makes us tune each other out—but reading aloud does the opposite. And if it occasionally sparks fights about whether, say, Hermione in Harry Potter is as smart as Alex on Modern Family, well, some arguments are worth having.
You’ve probably said it to yourself 100 times before: I really need to start reading more. Well, you can. Check out 5 tips that'll make it easy for you to read more books.

“Fuming, Harry descended the stairs to Snape’s dungeon... ” Moments ago in my family’s car, the 10-year-old and 16-year-old were bickering about whether | SUCCESS

5 Great Reasons to Read Books Aloud

5 Great Reasons to Read Books Aloud | SUCCESS

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<div>Like any self-respecting Netflix junkie, I wasn’t thrilled by a recent study linking TV binges to depression and other health woes. True, researchers hadn’t yet proved that watching back-to-back episodes of Orange Is the New Black would turn me into a miserable lump. But sure as Piper Chapman’s next cold prison shower, that pronouncement was coming. Was there nothing left that I could guiltlessly enjoy as much as I wanted, while barely lifting a finger? After months of family illness and loss, I &nbsp;needed a new indulgence—and fast. Scarfing down a pound of chocolate was out, alas. Ditto for every other vice I could think of, from drinking to smoking to spending the day in bed with a tall, handsome stack of <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/beat-boredom-get-your-game-on" target="_blank" title="Beat Boredom: Get Your Game On | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">crossword puzzles</a>.</div><div>Then, one morning, a bouquet of flowers arrived at my door. They were all white—not a riveting arrangement, you might think, and yet I &nbsp;kept staring at their endless, amazing variations of white. I took sniff after sniff of their honey-and-soap fragrance, and stroked their velvety petals. A few days later, I found myself at a museum in Corning, N.Y., transfixed by a glassmaking demo in which a glowing blob at the end of a stick became a sunset-colored bowl.Both times my spirits stayed airborne for hours. Both times I was reminded of something I had temporarily forgotten: the healing power of all-you-can-eat beauty. At last, a binge that could make me and my doctor smile. Not only can beauty boost your mood, but another recent study suggests that awe at the world’s loveliness (art, nature, spirituality) might have serious perks for your health. More precisely, researchers have found that such awe goes hand in hand with lower levels of proteins that—when present in large amounts—are connected with diabetes, arthritis and other diseases.Does this mean that beauty-inspired awe curbs those proteins, or (conversely) that people with fewer of those proteins feel more awe? Further research is needed to say for sure, said Jennifer Stellar, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto and lead author of the study, which she did at the University of California, Berkeley. But Stellar and her fellow authors aren’t waiting to prescribe more beauty. “If there are things that make you feel awe, devote even just a little bit of time in your daily schedule to them,” she told me. “We may tend to think of these things as luxuries, but if they’re going to be <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/5-habits-for-a-healthier-brain-and-life" target="_blank" title="5 Habits for a Healthier Brain (and Life) | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">promoting better health</a>, then we should be folding them into our daily lives.”Of course, people often associate awe with giant wonders. “But they don’t have to go to the Grand Canyon or see the Great Wall of China,” Stellar said. “It seems people appreciate beauty in even small everyday activities, and that can generate awe. It can be a regular walk in nature, museums, plays, watching documentaries, religious ceremonies that people routinely do. We find that people report feeling awe even when they look at something small like a leaf. And we’re like, What is it about this leaf? and they’re like, It’s all the tiny veins and the feeling that this little leaf is important. It’s somehow relating to something deeper and larger.”A poll of several dozen of my friends and relatives quickly proved Stellar right. From Southern California to Northern England, they named all sorts of places where beauty has mesmerized them—including some you might not expect.They waxed poetic about misty mountains, raspberry-hued sunrises and twilit baseball games. They praised dogwoods and jacarandas, bluebirds and cardinals, a teenage guitarist, and the perfect heft of a ceramic mug.Many people described <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/8-traits-of-healthy-relationships" target="_blank" title="Rohn: 8 Traits of Healthy Relationships | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">scenes of kindness and companionship</a>—siblings hugging, old friends sitting together, a grandmother and granddaughter baking cookies.A doctor I know celebrated “old, wrinkly faces. Shelves full of books. The patterns when you pour cream into coffee. The whorls in my dog’s fur. The leaves of nasturtium and rue.”A consultant hymned “the strength and grace of my 14-year-old female mutt Taylor as she deals with achy joints and complete blindness.”Children’s laughter got its due. So did smooth stones, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/videos/youtube/can-a-cup-of-coffee-change-your-mind" target="_blank" title="Can a Cup of Coffee Change Your Mind? | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">the smell of coffee</a>, storm clouds, sleeping preschoolers, train whistles, finished Sudoku puzzles, Boz Scaggs, the odor of damp earth, city skylines, wet sagebrush, moonlight, singing wrens, shapely cacti, tulips poking through soil, winter silence and well-hit tennis balls.In one of my favorite responses, a college professor mentioned “the scent of my late husband’s deodorant wafting from my tween son’s armpits, which assures me that he remembers his dad and that he remembered his hygiene this morning.”Clearly, as Stellar said, “It’s all about finding your individual experiences of awe.”And as my little poll suggests, there’s so much awe-inspiring beauty around us, even in the ordinary sights, sounds, smells and textures of home, I might run out of time for Piper Chapman altogether.At my house, beauty is the new Orange.<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/5-ways-to-amplify-the-good-life" target="_self" title="5 Ways to Amplify the Good Life | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">Want to amplify the good life? Find out how to revel in life's happy moments with 5 tips.</a></div>

Like any self-respecting Netflix junkie, I wasn’t thrilled by a recent study linking TV binges to depression and other health woes. True, researchers

Like any self-respecting Netflix junkie, I wasn’t thrilled by a recent study linking TV binges to depression and other health woes. True, researchers | SUCCESS

How Beauty-Inspired Awe Can Boost Your Mood

How Beauty-Inspired Awe Can Boost Your Mood | SUCCESS

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<div>Decades ago, my mother and I had kayaked together in choppy seas. We had zipped through dense woods on a dogsled. We had rafted over rapids, climbed swaying ladders up sandstone cliffs and hunkered in a tent 5,000 feet up a mountain during a thunderstorm. But we’d never felt half as daunted as we did last January. Mom was dying.</div><div>After five years of fighting her cancer, she had no good treatments left to try. Her doctor said she might live six more months. How in the world would we spend them? Travel seemed out of the question now, with Mom too fragile to venture more than a few yards from bed. Were we doomed to months of helplessness? Of moping whenever I had to leave her and my dad in Brooklyn to be with my husband and kids in Rochester? For a few days, it appeared so.Then, one night during a phone call—Mom in her bed, me at my desk 300 miles away—we had an idea. Together or apart, able-bodied or not, there was one more journey we could take together.For ages, Mom had been cobbling together notes and documents about ancestors, going many generations back. I had been too busy with my work, and with washing the socks and making the peanut-butter-and-jellies for the latest generation, to be interested. Now, though, it struck me how confusing Mom’s papers would be without her to guide me through them—and how much of our family lore wasn’t written down at all. Instead it was tucked away in Mom’s mind, especially when it came to tales of her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, and her life before I came along. Sure, she had told me much of it already. But without a written version, I was pretty fuzzy on the particulars. Was the relative who spoke nine languages my great-grandmother or my great-great-grandmother? Who was the one who took ocean swims until she was an old lady? I couldn’t say. Nor, worse yet, could I recall all the details of how my parents met.It was settled: Every day, as long as Mom wasn’t in too much pain or too groggy from her meds, we would navigate as much family history as we could. Instantly we both felt less weepy, more purposeful. We set out that very night, with her telling me the surprising fact (how had I not heard this before?) that her father had had an Italian stepsister, an excellent cook whom Mom had visited.“I’m so glad we have this project together,” I said.“Me, too,” she said. “I hope you <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/the-writing-habits-of-successful-but-creatively-stuck-people" target="_blank" title="The Writing Habits of Successful (But Creatively Stuck) People | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">write about it</a> at some point—you know, what it’s like to have a project with someone who’s dying. It could really help a lot of &nbsp;people.”It occurred to me she was right. Probably a lot of families could <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/feeling-frazzled-access-instant-calm-in-3-steps" target="_blank" title="Feeling Frazzled? Access Instant Calm in 3 Steps | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">find solace</a> in a plan like ours. And who knew how many other projects might help at a time like this? Going through recipes, say. Writing down favorite old song lyrics or dictating letters to be given to grandchildren. Organizing family pictures.Pictures played into our project, too, as it turned out. One day in mid-February when Mom felt unusually strong, we sat for hours with my brother, husband and kids, meandering through albums dating back to the 1700s. She identified dozens of men and women, beginning with paintings of stern couples in poufy dresses and powdered wigs, and ending with snapshots of Mom, impossibly sleek and beautiful at a college dance.Mostly, though, it was her talking and me typing, in person or over the phone. (Now and then Dad chimed in with names and dates.) Our chats took us through England, Sweden, Italy, New York, Minnesota, Massachusetts. We tramped over boarding-school rugby fields with my great-grandfather, and popped inside the Brooklyn seafood shop where my grandfather, a future artist, drove his boss nuts by drawing on paper meant for wrapping fish. We breast-stroked the Atlantic with my great-grandmother (yes, she was the swimmer) and threaded our way across Fifth Avenue as my great-great-grandmother imperiously raised her cane to passing cars (yes, she was the one who spoke nine languages).Sometimes, especially as February wound down, we lost our compass. More and more, Mom forgot where a thought was headed. More and more, she fell asleep in midsentence, or said things that didn’t quite make sense. On Feb. 26, though I didn’t know it then, we finished the last leg of our history tour. She and I talked about some of the (80-plus) books she had written and illustrated for children, and about the first thing she published, at age 11—a magazine piece about her cat Minnie. As I pictured the girl she was then, dark-haired and mischievous-eyed, Mom said, “I don’t know how much longer I’m gonna last.”The answer would be 19 days. (So much for the doc’s six-month prediction.) But during that time, as Mom’s words dwindled and her breathing grew harder, I took comfort in thoughts of our project and the 30&nbsp;pages of notes I had typed—including the ones I had hoped for most. “I said to the director, ‘I don’t know where you found this guy, but he really makes me laugh,’ ” Mom had told me one day, recalling how she and Dad met as the comic villains in a college play. “We were Miss Pencil and Mr. Inkwell…. He was so funny. He was supposed to fall in love with me at first glance. He walked in and would go, ‘Oh!’ ”A couple of days before she died, I sat by Mom’s bed, holding her hand. Her half-open eyes didn’t seem to see me; she was starting a final trip, one she had to take &nbsp;alone.“We did it,” I told her, just in case she could hear. “We got it down—all the history. I’m going to write about it, like you said.”Softly but unmistakably, she squeezed my hand.<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/will-you-ride-the-waves-of-life-or-let-them-pull-you-under" target="_self" title="Will You Ride the Waves of Life, or Let Them Pull You Under? | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">When life gets tough, you have a choice. Will you ride the waves of life, or let them pull you under?</a></div>

[node:summary] - A trip down memory lane and through family history can help you find solace in times of grief.

Decades ago, my mother and I had kayaked together in choppy seas. We had zipped through dense woods on a dogsled. We had rafted over rapids, climbed | SUCCESS

How I Turned Weeping into Purpose in Mom's Last Days

How I Turned Weeping into Purpose in Mom&#8217;s Last Days

How I Turned Weeping into Purpose in Mom's Last Days | SUCCESS

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<div>Midafternoon.&nbsp;A&nbsp;windowless basement. One hundred sixty solid minutes of classroom time. With all these strikes against us, is it any wonder my humor-writing students and I sometimes feel as sharp and creative as a drawerful of socks? Good thing I always smuggle in my favorite stimulant.</div><div>I’m speaking, of course, about goofiness. This isn’t quite the same as humor, though the two naturally go together, and both should be mainlined daily. By goofiness I mean off-the-cuff, rapid-fire, stream-of-consciousness kidding around. It can be a powerful <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/6-techniques-to-foster-creativity" target="_blank" title="6 Techniques to Foster Creativity | SUCCESS.com">key to creativity</a>. And creativity, as we all know, is no small boon to nearly every area of life, from family to work to love.What are the best ways to get a hit of goofiness? After plundering my course syllabus and polling some of my favorite goofballs, I’ve got a solid but by no means exhaustive list: playing charades. Playing free-association games (someone says a word, the next person immediately says the first word that word brings to mind, and so on). Making up “How many [name a group of people] does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” jokes. Playing Fictionary, Taboo and other games where you invent new words or quickly substitute one word for another. Coming up with entries for cartoon-caption contests, such as the weekly one in The New Yorker. Playing comedy-improvisation games like those on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001U3ZYX4/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B001U3ZYX4&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=AGZLXT3OL4EX4FZK">Whose Line Is It Anyway?</a>&nbsp;(You might, for instance, try “Props,” where you gather household objects, then act out short scenes in which you pretend, say, that a potato masher is a space alien’s antenna, or a bath towel is Aladdin’s magic carpet.) And last but hardly least, engaging in that time-honored classic, spitballing with friends and family who don’t take themselves too seriously.How can fast-paced, goofy pursuits spark creativity in the rest of your life? In part, many of us goofballs believe, it’s because such pursuits often are creative: They prime your pump for more of the same. And it’s hard to think of a better pump-primer than The Washington Post Style Invitational, my favorite weekly humor contest, which solicits everything from puns to limericks to fake Amazon reviews. Those kinds of challenges are bound to promote “mental agility, flexible thinking, and [a knack for finding] humor or irony in various situations,” says the Invitational’s “Empress,” Pat Myers. “The ability to come up with funny ways of seeing the world and to play with language, especially, has to be very beneficial for less-fun pursuits during the workday.”Another way goofiness may promote creativity is by muting your inner, creativity-squelching critic. When you get used to rapidly generating one-liners or scenes, it becomes easier to ignore (or maybe not even hear) the voice in your head that tells you your ideas stink. So says my friend Carol Roberts, a comic and comedy-improv teacher who has opened for the likes of Robin Williams; she finds speedy improv games “freeing.” A 2008 Johns Hopkins study on jazz improvisation seems to support her notion: When a piano improviser’s hands are flying over the keyboard, parts of his brain linked to self-monitoring and inhibition quiet down. For Carol (as for many masters of goofiness), lowered inhibition goes hand in hand with a drop in fear. “The key thing with improv is I’m not afraid to fail,” she says. “And if you’re not afraid, you’re more willing to try something new”—both during improv games and afterward.Speaking of afterward, I’ve heard from all kinds of people who swear their goofy hobbies have bred creative triumphs, personal and professional. A police officer, for instance, told me he has started making jokes that ease tension during traffic stops. A minister said he writes better Sunday sermons. Teachers have devised more interesting lesson plans; salespeople have cooked up <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/the-8-most-important-basics-of-an-elevator-pitch" target="_blank" title="The 8 Most Important Basics of an Elevator Pitch | SUCCESS.com">more persuasive pitches</a>; parents have found (eureka!) ways to get their kids to talk openly and eat their brussels sprouts.Offstage, Carol credits her improv experience with helping to spur all sorts of creativity. When she recently missed a plane connection, for instance, she successfully gabbed her way into a hotel voucher. With family, Carol has learned to criticize in a way that “softens the blow.” (She might remark to her husband, “I hope they repeal the law that says men can’t empty the dishwasher.”)This year, as usual, I invited Carol to campus to play Props, Pass the Story and other games with my writing students. She left them in one of their most inventive moods of the semester. Working together afterward on shape and size comparisons, they likened pens to pretzel rods, a bottle cap to jewelry, and my sunglasses to a sadly unprintable part of a kangaroo. Hardly anyone was yawning or checking her iPhone. Even my shyest student spoke up.And in my head, I began planning our next goofy fix.&nbsp;&nbsp;This article appears in the June 2015 issue of SUCCESS magazine.<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/top-of-mind-how-do-you-wake-up-your-creative-side" target="_self" title="Top of Mind: How Do You Wake Up Your Creative Side? | SUCCESS.com">Now that you know goofiness gives you a creative boost, learn </a><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/top-of-mind-how-do-you-wake-up-your-creative-side" target="_self" title="Top of Mind: How Do You Wake Up Your Creative Side? | SUCCESS.com">9 other ways people foster creativity.</a></div>

[node:summary] - Unserious pursuits can seriously boost your creativity.

Midafternoon.&nbsp;A&nbsp;windowless basement. One hundred sixty solid minutes of classroom time. With all these strikes against us, is it any wonder my | SUCCESS

The Creative Benefits of a Little Goofiness

The Creative Benefits of a Little Goofiness | SUCCESS

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<div>The upside&nbsp;of being a columnist&nbsp;faced with a milestone birthday&mdash;or so it seems from pieces I&rsquo;ve read by other columnists&mdash;is you get to spout some of your vast accumulated wisdom. But what if your accumulated wisdom is only, as the punsters would say, half-vast? I&rsquo;ve thought a lot about this question, now that my own dreaded milestone is coming up. (Which one? Let&rsquo;s just say that on that day, I assume my home will flood with AARP letters&mdash;through the mail slot, down the chimney&mdash;the way Harry Potter&rsquo;s house filled with acceptances from Hogwarts.) And I&rsquo;m pleased to reveal my foolproof method for acquiring all the valuable insights you&rsquo;d expect from someone of my advanced age:</div><div>I stole them.My source of wisdom: aphorisms, those time-honored sayings that we&rsquo;ve all memorized by the dozen. (Two is company, three is a crowd! The early bird gets the worm!) Of course, you wouldn&rsquo;t want me to just list a bunch of aphorisms you already know, which is why I&rsquo;ve tweaked them a little, based on my observations these past never-mind-how-many years:Two is company, three is an excuse to open more wine. The <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/9-early-bird-tips-for-the-habitually-late" target="_blank" title="9 Early-Bird Tips for the Habitually Late | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">early bird</a> gets later birds annoyed. Where there is smoke, there is a toaster oven. The grass is always greener for alumni reunions. Let sleeping spouses lie, and sleeping babies. Slow and steady wins few Nike endorsements. Great minds are willing to listen to other minds. What goes up gets stuck to the kitchen ceiling; what goes around rolls under the fridge. Haste makes your kids go slower. One man&rsquo;s trash is always blowing onto your lawn. When in Rome, eat hazelnut gelato. <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/14-ways-to-build-and-lose-trust" target="_blank" title="14 Ways to Build (and Lose) Trust | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">Honesty is best</a>, except with haircuts and flab. Don&rsquo;t judge a book by Amazon reviews. Better the Devil Dog you know than the off-brand snack food you don&rsquo;t. Toddlerhood makes for strange bedfellows. Measure twice, cut carbs from your diet; realize you are miserable without carbs; resume eating carbs; quit measuring. Still waters may run deep, but they smell rotten. If you snooze, make sure it&rsquo;s around people you wouldn&rsquo;t mind seeing you drool. A penny saved is germy: use Purell. Don&rsquo;t judge a man until after lunch, when you&rsquo;re in a better mood. A little bit of knowledge is catnip at a cocktail party. If you don&rsquo;t have anything nice to say, guess what people say when you leave the room. Half a loaf will make you really sleepy. If it ain&rsquo;t broke, your kids are gonna break it. Early to bed and early to rise is possible for all families but yours. The nail that sticks up will destroy your sock. People in glass houses can&rsquo;t watch TV in their underpants. A cat has nine ways of stealing your dinner when you&rsquo;re not looking. Fortune favors the one who buys the most raffle tickets. You can&rsquo;t have your cake in front of children who have already had their cake. A journey of a thousand miles begins with &ldquo;Are we there yet?&rdquo; and ends with an Excedrin headache. With age comes license to pretend you&rsquo;re wise.<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/what-these-24-people-learned-at-milestone-birthdays" target="_self" title="What These 24 People Learned at Milestone Birthdays | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">Check out what 24 VIPs&mdash;from Dave Ramsey to will.i.am, Dolly Parton to Suze Orman&mdash;learned at their own milestone birthdays.</a></div>

The upside&nbsp;of being a columnist&nbsp;faced with a milestone birthday&mdash;or so it seems from pieces I&rsquo;ve read by other columnists&mdash;is

The upside&nbsp;of being a columnist&nbsp;faced with a milestone birthday&mdash;or so it seems from pieces I&rsquo;ve read by other columnists&mdash;is | SUCCESS

32 Nuggets of Wisdom (with a Twist)

32 Nuggets of Wisdom (with a Twist) | SUCCESS

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It should have been working. For months, in defiance of our Do It All culture, I’d been cutting back. Among the things I had postponed or pulled the plug on: blogging, comedy improv, home-improvement projects, and a ton of holiday baking, making and bellyaching.
Some of those decisions had brought pangs, it’s true. I love improv, for instance, with its license to find my inner buffoon and let her horse around with other people’s inner buffoons. But in the words of Greg McKeown, author of the best-seller <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804137382/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0804137382&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=5CCYWKJ6R537TCXB">Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less</a>, “If you haven’t said no to something that’s hard to say no to, you are not an essentialist.” And boy, did I want to be one. As thinkers and researchers dating back at least to Thoreau have made clear, you can’t be your best self if your life is cluttered with the nonessential. McKeown again: “Only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.”
What really matters to me, after my family, is poetry.
So why didn’t I have more time for it? Why, after I’d scraped so much off my plate, hadn’t that plate filled with fresh-baked poems?
When I called McKeown in Northern California, hoping for answers, he started asking questions instead. The first, which he called “the best question you can ask every day of your life,” was this:
If I didn’t have to do everything on my to-do list, but I could do one thing today to break through to the next level of contribution in my life, what would it be?
He waited for my reply.
“I’d write a poem,” I said.
“How much poetry is on your schedule for today?”
“No poetry. Zero.”
An audible snort from California.
“That is the problem,” McKeown said. “That’s non-essentialism in practice.”
Holy iambic pentameter, Batman. I hadn’t felt so dumb in a long time.
Even though I had taken a bunch of nonessentials off my calendar, I hadn’t done the next, equally important thing: putting all the essentials on my calendar. And like many of us, if something challenging (like writing poetry) isn’t added to that little grid, I feel it doesn’t technically have to get done. Boom: A vacuum is born. In rush TV binges. And Twitter benders. And moments where—as if after a blackout—I find myself in front of Facebook watching a cat in a box or a goat in a tree, with no idea how I got there.
How to keep my schedule on the wagon from now on? It won’t surprise you that McKeown had some ideas.
As a sequel to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804137382/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0804137382&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=5CCYWKJ6R537TCXB">Essentialism</a>, he said he plans a workbook that will help people hold a “personal quarterly”—a version of the big-picture review that business executives do every 90 days or so. “If they weren’t doing that, we wouldn’t even think they were doing their jobs properly. But how many of us do it [privately]? As the CEO of our own lives, how many of us are taking time once a quarter to evaluate where we are and where we want to go?”
So McKeown favors taking a day four times a year—“in nature,” where you’ll have fewer distractions—to ponder what may be getting between you and your essentials. Among his suggested questions: Where am I compromising my focus in ways I shouldn’t be? Where am I letting social pressure trump my internal voice? And, of course, What would I do if I could do anything?
Once you’ve picked your top priority or two for the quarter, he said, plan your routine around it—in writing.
But don’t stop there.
Once a week, set aside an hour for more questions, such as Is this the right routine? and Does it need adjusting?
Each morning, ask yourself McKeown’s “best question” (about the most important thing you could do that day).
Before bed, try answering these: Where did I spend my time today? Am I proud of the choices I made at home and at work?
McKeown has been asking himself all of the above, he said, with great results. The day before we spoke, for example, the “best question” had led him and his wife to spontaneously take their four kids out of school and travel to Napa Valley. There they were enjoying a two-day vacation while checking out an “amazingly beautiful, pristine hotel out in nature” where McKeown is considering running a program. “We’re combining the highest-value work I could be doing professionally and the highest-value work I could be doing personally into a marvelous memory.”
Before I could gloat about our interview being part of that highest-value work, McKeown sobered me right up.
It’s his belief, he said, that each of us has an essential mission in life and just enough time to fulfill it if we stay focused. And with that in mind, he posed one last question: “On the day you die, what will you hope you did, and decided to do, on this one?”
Gulp.
As you may have guessed, my calendar hasn’t been quite the same since that conversation. In fact, I’ve got to go.
My 9 o’clock sonnet is waiting.
Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/how-living-with-less-can-give-you-more">How Living with Less Can Give You More</a>

On the day you die, what will you hope you did on this one? Figure out what matters most to you and then apply a laser focus.

On the day you die, what will you hope you did on this one? | SUCCESS

Why Doing Less Is More Fulfilling

Why Doing Less Is More Fulfilling | SUCCESS

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Have you&nbsp;ever&nbsp;had a book land in your lap at just the right moment? As if the universe is saying, “Here, kid, I saw this and thought of you”?
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/147675361X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=147675361X&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=6P2UEOBV3CGHTZTX">The Opposite of Loneliness</a> was exactly that sort of book for me. It may, I suspect, be that sort for a lot of us.
And to think I put off reading it. The book—new this year—is a collection of essays and stories by Marina Keegan, who died in a car crash in 2012, days after graduating from college. A smart friend gave it to me. But should I bother with a book by such an unseasoned writer? I had frittered away much of the past two weeks, after all. On a “working vacation” in the woods with family, I had promised myself to rise early each morning and crank out poems. Instead, I had mostly risen late and cranked my mouth open for French toast. Maybe—who knew?—my productive days were over. I felt tired and crabby and wondered if, in the 40 or so years I theoretically had left, I could accomplish anything of note beyond consuming record amounts of maple syrup. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/147675361X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=147675361X&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=6P2UEOBV3CGHTZTX">The Opposite of Loneliness</a> sat untouched all weekend.
Luckily my better instincts prevailed. Writers sometimes blossom crazy-early, of course—including some I’ve had the pleasure of teaching. And from Page 1, it became clear that Keegan wasn’t just an early bloomer; she was an early kick-in-the-pants giver.
<a href="https://yaledailynews.com/crosscampus/2012/05/27/keegan-the-opposite-of-loneliness/" target="_blank" title="KEEGAN: The Opposite of Loneliness | yaledailynews.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">Here she is in her title essay</a>, one originally published in the Yale Daily News that went viral after her death: “When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy—and it’s easy to feel like that’s slipped away.… What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over.”
And here she is in “<a href="https://yaledailynews.com/weekend/2011/09/30/even-artichokes-have-doubts/" target="_blank" title="Even artichokes have doubts | yaledailynews.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">Even Artichokes Have Doubts</a>,” which questions the knee-jerk decision by many new grads to take jobs in consulting or finance: “To me, there’s something sad about so many of us entering a line of work in which we’re not (for the most part) producing something, or helping someone, or engaging in something that we’re explicitly passionate about.… I feel like we can do something really cool to this world.”
Yes, Keegan was addressing college students—and it’s obviously easier to feel you can “do anything” when you’re 22. Even so, her words resonated right to my middle-aged core. How could I doubt my ability to get things done, how could I see 40 years as anything but plump with potential, when Keegan accomplished so much in half that time? Heck, her senior year is a résumé unto itself.
In the book’s intro, writer and professor Anne Fadiman recalls that when Keegan failed to be tapped by Yale’s senior social clubs (Skull and Bones, Book and Snake, and so on), she promptly vowed to write for 12 extra hours a week.
“If I was willing to devote that much time [to a club],” Keegan emailed Fadiman, “I should be willing to devote it to writing!”
Declares Fadiman: “If she’d been tapped by Book and Snake, this book would not exist.” And maybe Keegan wouldn’t have done so many other things that year: writing a play and acting in two, doing research for professor Harold Bloom, heading a political club, interning at the Paris Review.
As if all this weren’t inspiring enough, there’s the style and substance of Keegan’s work. Her short stories—often about young adults—are as honed as a chef’s knife, proof of what talent plus determination can do. Her essays show a <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/bored-6-ideas-to-embrace-your-curious-side" target="_blank" title="Bored? 6 Ideas to Embrace Your Curious Side | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">fierce curiosity</a> about the world and compassion for her fellow students, strangers in India, whales, an exterminator, her own parents. Speaking of whom: Tracy and Kevin Keegan are every bit as heartening as their daughter.
When Keegan was a baby, she relates in her essay “Against the Grain,” few doctors knew about celiac disease. It was her non-physician mother who combed libraries until she figured out what was wrong with her scrawny little girl. Who endlessly baked wheat-free cookies and breads for Keegan after her official diagnosis. Who founded Boston Children’s Hospital’s Celiac Support group and, later, helped “transform Yale’s food-allergy plan.”
After Keegan died, you might have expected her parents to take out their grief on the boyfriend who caused the fatal crash. (He fell asleep at the wheel.) Yet, as Fadiman writes, “Marina’s parents invited him to their house the next day and embraced him. They wrote the state police to ask that no charges of vehicular homicide be brought because ‘it would break [Marina’s] heart to know her boyfriend would have to suffer more than he already is.’ ”
As I turned the last page of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/147675361X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=147675361X&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=6P2UEOBV3CGHTZTX">The Opposite of Loneliness</a>, I&nbsp;felt, inevitably, shaken by Keegan’s death. But my tiredness and crabbiness were gone. In their place was a renewed zeal to get going—to write more, help my loved ones and community more, find more time for <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/random-acts-of-smiles" target="_blank" title="Random Acts of Smiles | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">simple kindness</a>. If Marina Keegan and her family could do something really cool to this world, why couldn’t I?
<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/les-brown-hard-times-go-to-your-heart-and-into-your-soul" target="_self" title="Les Brown: Hard Times Go to Your Heart and Into Your Soul | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">How do you keep going when life knocks you down? Find the inspiration you need to get back up.</a>

Have you&nbsp;ever&nbsp;had a book land in your lap at just the right moment? As if the universe is saying, “Here, kid, I saw this and thought of you”?

Have you&nbsp;ever&nbsp;had a book land in your lap at just the right moment? As if the universe is saying, “Here, kid, I saw this and thought of you”? | SUCCESS

Sometimes a Tragic Tale Can Offer Inspiration...

Sometimes a Tragic Tale Can Offer Inspiration&#8230;

Sometimes a Tragic Tale Can Offer Inspiration... | SUCCESS

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There’s a&nbsp;blackout&nbsp;while I’m in the basement of my house. At least it didn’t happen when I was cleaning the cats’ litter box, I tell myself. Next morning, I spill coffee all over the kitchen counter. At least it didn’t go in the silverware drawer. Then it’s on to bonking my hip on a table (at least I didn’t cut myself), burning the breakfast sausages (at least the kitchen didn’t catch fire), and buying $150 worth of groceries (at least it was cheaper than buying those same groceries in Tokyo). And so on, every day.
Friends of mine—accustomed to my “at least” habit—crack me up by saying, “You’re so positive!” I think they see me as a 21st-century Pollyanna, that sunny and fictitious orphan. In fact, as my husband knows, I’m a private expert at imagining the worst. Does my kid have a sniffle? I’ll see that sniffle and raise it to pneumonia. Is she late getting home from school? Bam: I picture a hideous bus crash. For me, the gratitude-for-what-hasn’t-happened mindset is a way of using my hyperactive imagination for good.
And, just in time for Thanksgiving, I’m pleased to report that a number of scientists are in my corner. No, they haven’t specifically endorsed—yet—my pattern of <a title="Stop Waiting to Be Happy | SUCCESS.com" href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/stop-waiting-to-be-happy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">being grateful</a> 30 times a day that small problems weren’t more drastic. But their research does suggest that picturing sadder versions of your past might make you happier in the present.
At the University of Virginia, the University of Western Ontario and other places, psychologists asked people to imagine that something in their lives (either bad or good) had turned out worse. In one study, for instance, students remembered a test they had done poorly on and imagined having done even more poorly. In another, people in romantic relationships imagined never having met their beloved. This way of seeing things—known in the psych biz as “downward counterfactual thinking”—had swift results: Those who imagined getting lower grades were in better moods immediately afterward than those who imagined getting higher grades; those who pictured a world where they hadn’t met Mr. or Ms. Right promptly reported more satisfaction with that person than they had two weeks before.
What explains such shifts? Maybe, scientists suggest, it’s that when you imagine a worse version of events, you rekindle the novelty of reality: But I did meet Bill! I didn’t get an F! I scooped the cat poop before the lights went out! And novelty seems key to enjoying your blessings. (Which is why even the best memories—from reaching a professional goal to watching your World Cup team score a winning one—feel less thrilling as time passes.)
Could “downward counterfactual thinking” goose <a title="The SUCCESS Guide to Happiness | SUCCESS.com" href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/special-section-happiness" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">long-term happiness</a>? Could it prepare us to cope with major challenges? Science has yet to offer a verdict. But—true to my Pollyanna reputation—I’m optimistic. As a 2008 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology points out, small daily boosts of positive emotion “improved life satisfaction and reduced depressive symptoms over time.”
And I can definitely vouch that my “at least” habit brings daily boosts of positive emotion—even, on occasion, rueful laughter. Now if I could just quit spilling coffee and walking into things, I’d be in business.
<a title="The Secret to Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again | SUCCESS.com" href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/the-secret-to-putting-humpty-dumpty-back-together-again" target="_self" rel="noopener noreferrer">How you deal with the insanity life throws at us every day is your choice. Find out how to stop negative thinking your sense of humor.</a>

There’s a&nbsp;blackout&nbsp;while I’m in the basement of my house. At least it didn’t happen when I was cleaning the cats’ litter box, I tell myself.

There’s a&nbsp;blackout&nbsp;while I’m in the basement of my house. At least it didn’t happen when I was cleaning the cats’ litter box, I tell myself. | SUCCESS

A Gratitude Habit to Boost Your Positivity

A Gratitude Habit to Boost Your Positivity | SUCCESS

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The other day at a restaurant, my 9-year-old daughter did a magic trick that never fails to amaze me: pulling friendship out of thin air. One moment, she and another girl were at separate outdoor tables with their separate families, eating dinner. The next (abracadabra!) they were racing up and down the grassy canal bank across from the restaurant, chatting between sprints as if they&rsquo;d known each other for years instead of minutes.I looked on with envy&mdash;and not just because of their ability to digest cheeseburgers while running at top speed. As a kid, I, too, used to form bonds faster than Krazy Glue. Now, like most grown-ups, I&rsquo;m much more guarded around strangers. And I wish I weren&rsquo;t.More and more, scientists are convinced we should <a href="https://success.com/article/rohn-4-things-you-can-learn-from-your-child" target="_blank" title="Rohn: 4 Things You Can Learn from Your Child | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">stay in touch with our unreserved inner children</a>.&ldquo;Based on our data so far, it appears that talking with strangers can be at least as important to our daily happiness as talking to our close friends and family,&rdquo; says Michael Norton, Ph.D., a social science researcher and professor at Harvard Business School. People who chatted with strangers in recent studies&mdash;on buses and in waiting rooms, in taxis and at Starbucks&mdash;not only tended to enjoy the experience, but also wound up in a better mood afterward than those who didn&rsquo;t chat.&ldquo;We predicted that only extroverted people would have this reaction, but that&rsquo;s not the case,&rdquo; says University of Chicago behavioral scientist Juliana Schroeder, who has been involved with several of the studies. &ldquo;It seems like people with any <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/the-skill-you%E2%80%99ve-always-wanted-how-to-instantly-read-people" target="_blank" title="The Skill You've Always Wanted: How to Instantly Read People | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">personality type</a> will be happier if they talk to somebody.&rdquo;You&rsquo;d think I wouldn&rsquo;t need science to tell me these things. Talking to strangers is, after all, a big part of my job. Journalist&rsquo;s notebook in hand, I&rsquo;ve approached people in five countries and 18 states. (Taking care, of course, to avoid dark alleys, windowless vans and certain congressional offices.) Nine times out of 10, the conversations have been fascinating. So have the glimpses of strangers&rsquo; homes and communities. I&rsquo;ve been treated to dances in Mexico, a wedding reception in Vietnam, a California tutorial in Dumpster-diving. Best of all, I&rsquo;ve learned to appreciate ways of living and thinking that were foreign to me. As my wise friend Faith Boninger, an Arizona life coach, puts it: &ldquo;What you&rsquo;ve got when you interact with strangers is the <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/why-the-empathetic-leader-is-the-best-leader" target="_blank" title="Why the Empathetic Leader Is the Best Leader | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">development of empathy</a>.&rdquo; You begin to understand people you&rsquo;d probably never meet otherwise.And yet, off duty, I&rsquo;ve seldom swapped more than a few words with a stranger in public. (Strangers at a party, a kid&rsquo;s school or a conference are a whole other story, as you might expect.) Is it that I prefer getting lost in my own thoughts? That I was trained, as a kid in Brooklyn, N.Y., not to make eye contact on the street? Maybe, like a lot of people, I suffer from &ldquo;pluralistic ignorance,&rdquo; wrongly assuming that those around me are less interested than I am in connecting, Schroeder says.Whatever is behind my aloofness, I&rsquo;m determined to ditch it&mdash;and <a href="https://success.com/article/the-science-of-being-happy" target="_blank" title="The Science of Being Happy | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">happiness</a> and empathy aren&rsquo;t the only reasons. By boosting our moods, talking to strangers may also help our bodies.&ldquo;There is absolutely research showing that happier people have better health outcomes,&rdquo; Schroeder points out. &ldquo;On a moment-to-moment basis, there&rsquo;s even some evidence that your mood can ward off illness&rdquo;&mdash;a cold, for instance. And the perks may not end there. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re feeling happier, the next person you talk to might get happier.&rdquo;In sum, talking to strangers may well be a prescription for spreading cheer and health far and wide&mdash;and unlike most prescriptions, it&rsquo;s free. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re surrounded by strangers every time we walk down the street, making them a readily available, but untapped, source of happiness,&rdquo; Norton says.A couple of weeks ago, I was out walking when I saw a man standing and gazing into our local reservoir. The water level, I noticed, was much lower than usual. &ldquo;Hi,&rdquo; I said, resisting the impulse to barrel right past him. &ldquo;Do you know why it&rsquo;s getting so low?&rdquo;Did he ever. The man&mdash;short, potbellied, with an Indian accent&mdash;turned out to be Upstate New York&rsquo;s No. 1 fan of reservoirs, versed in everything from their history to the icky residue that ends up inside them. He told me all about how ours was being drained for cleaning and refilling.&ldquo;I love being near water,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It just does something to me.&rdquo; I said it did something to me, too. For a moment, I had the feeling that this guy and I had known each other for years instead of minutes.We grinned. I held out my hand.&ldquo;I&rsquo;m Melissa.&rdquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m Paul.&rdquo;Abracadabra.<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/7-keys-to-a-flawless-conversation" target="_self" title="7 Keys to a Flawless Conversation | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">Don&rsquo;t think you&rsquo;re a smooth talker? Find out the best way to start, continue and end a talk with the 7 keys to a flawless conversation.</a>

The other day at a restaurant, my 9-year-old daughter did a magic trick that never fails to amaze me: pulling friendship out of thin air. One moment, she

The other day at a restaurant, my 9-year-old daughter did a magic trick that never fails to amaze me: pulling friendship out of thin air. One moment, she | SUCCESS

Talk to Strangers—It’s Good for Your Body and Soul

Talk to Strangers—It’s Good for Your Body and Soul | SUCCESS

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Just in case any children read this column&mdash;peeking, as kids inevitably will, at Mom&rsquo;s or Dad&rsquo;s seductive copy of SUCCESS&mdash;allow me to start with a disclaimer: I in no way endorse playing hooky. It&rsquo;s a terrible, awful, dangerous idea.Unless you&rsquo;re a grown-up.My own addiction to hooky began 17 years ago. On deadline with my first book, I was stuck at Chapter 5. How the heck should I structure the tale of hiking through Colorado ruins with my mother? Where should I describe the ancient pottery shards? The pathetic clay pots we made ourselves? Nothing worked. I vowed to sit at my computer all weekend, all week, however long it took. Naturally, this is when friends from California turned up on the East Coast, and I spent an unplanned day wandering through New York City, not thinking once about Chapter 5.That very evening, a miracle arrived: the perfect structure, as fully formed in my head as pottery shards glued into an actual vase. I scribbled and scribbled notes on a legal pad, my hand barely able to keep up with my brain.Since then I&rsquo;ve often found that a few minutes or hours of hooky&mdash;smack in the middle of a workday&mdash;are just what I need to solve the seemingly unsolvable. This is truer than ever now that I&rsquo;m largely self-employed, because self-employment, as any entrepreneur knows, can easily morph into mind-dulling self-flagellation. (I should be working every free minute, every day, all year!)Why do breaks lead to breakthroughs? &ldquo;We have no idea,&rdquo; says John Medina, Ph.D., author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0979777747/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0979777747&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=BRCLKI5OVZBCVDPR">Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School</a>. Well, make that no established, peer-reviewed idea. &ldquo;A lot of people think, when you take a break from a problem, your brain goes offline and starts processing it outside of conscious awareness; this is a hypothesis.&rdquo;One believer in that hypothesis is Joanne Cantor, Ph.D., author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0984256806/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0984256806&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=2U2ULJHCYJZPF7EY">Conquer CyberOverload</a>. &ldquo;In order to get to a creative solution we have to first, of course, focus very hard on what we&rsquo;re trying to do,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;But then we have to allow our brain to get out of that tunnel vision.&rdquo; We have to let it churn subconsciously through knowledge we may not realize is related to the problem at hand, she says, and make fresh connections.Whether or not such &ldquo;waking offline processing&rdquo; is real&mdash;and Medina admits that if you put a gun to his head, he&rsquo;d say it probably is real&mdash;it&rsquo;s clear that playing hooky can spark insight. To function at its peak, after all, your brain needs rest and refueling just as your body does. &ldquo;After a break you can actually come at a problem with considerably more energy,&rdquo; Medina says.Not all forms of hooky are created equal, though. One of the very best, Medina and Cantor agree, is <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/the-art-of-the-nap" target="_blank" title="The Art of the Nap | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">napping</a>. Science has shown persuasively that offline processing happens when we sleep&mdash;and that sleeping on a problem helps us solve it. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very important to take a nap sometime during the midafternoon,&rdquo; Medina says. &ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t, your brain will fight you.&rdquo; About 30 minutes of shut-eye should do the trick. If it were up to Medina, the &ldquo;office of the future&rdquo; would have a recliner in every cubicle: &ldquo;You can just lean back in your La-Z-Boy, put your feet up and take a nap.&rdquo;No La-Z-Boys in your office? Then consider a little brisk but not exhausting exercise. Among other things, Medina notes, it brings oxygen to the brain and improves focus. He swears by 15-minute walks outdoors, and uses a treadmill desk, to boot. Which brings him back to that office of the future: &ldquo;The most effective workplace in the world would be one that allowed you to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/4-creative-ways-to-walk-while-you-work" target="_blank" title="4 Creative Ways to Walk While You Work | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">do a series of walks all day long</a>, punctuated with events at your cubicle instead of the other way around.&rdquo;Other types of hooky work, too, of course (witness my Chapter 5 miracle)&mdash;but some are best avoided. For me, as for Cantor and Medina, hooky is largely media-free: no checking email, no reading complex books, all of which can be mentally taxing. And it&rsquo;s never sneaky. Years ago in California, I called in fake-sick one morning and felt so guilty and afraid of running into co-workers that even a stroll by the ocean&mdash;complete with leaping dolphins!&mdash;was a big, unrefreshing waste. These days, as needed, I warn editors or colleagues that I&rsquo;ll be out of pocket.Take the other afternoon.On a Tuesday, my husband and I left our offices to walk along the Erie Canal&mdash;with ice cream cones for an extra cognitive boost. (I&rsquo;m sure science will catch up with me on this.) Our brains already racing with ideas for the work we&rsquo;d be soon be resuming, we spotted graffiti on a stone wall: &ldquo;It is hard to be inspired.&rdquo;Clearly, that graffiti artist needs to play more hooky.<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/8-reasons-why-walks-are-good-for-relationships" target="_self" title="8 Reasons Why Walks Are Good for Relationships | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">So walks can be good for your brain and focus&mdash;and, get this, they are also beneficial to your relationships. Find out 8 reasons why.</a>

Just in case any children read this column&mdash;peeking, as kids inevitably will, at Mom&rsquo;s or Dad&rsquo;s seductive copy of SUCCESS&mdash;allow me

Just in case any children read this column&mdash;peeking, as kids inevitably will, at Mom&rsquo;s or Dad&rsquo;s seductive copy of SUCCESS&mdash;allow me | SUCCESS

How Breaks Can Turn into Breakthroughs

How Breaks Can Turn into Breakthroughs | SUCCESS

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So you were first in your MBA class and have the smarts of Jeff Bezos and Marissa Mayer combined. If you want the brightest possible future in business, you may still have a few things to learn.

“During our school years, there’s this fallacious sense that only how well you do academically is going to matter in your life,” says Daniel Goleman, one of the country’s best-known writers and researchers on the subject of leadership. “Once you get into a business, particularly if you’re an entrepreneur, you know that’s nonsense. Lots of people with straight A’s wind up working for people who were B students. I once spoke to a roomful of CEOs; I asked, ‘How many of you were magna cum laude, had the highest grades in your class when you graduated?’ Out of 200 or 300 people, it was about 1 percent. I said, ‘There goes the assumption that how well you do in school determines how well you do in business.’ ”

Then what does determine how well you do? Goleman has spent three decades finding out. He’s written or co-written more than 20 books, including the best-seller <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/055338371X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=055338371X&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=CJHUD6NSYCJIUSXP" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ</a>; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062114867/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0062114867&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=4LTKQOTSUHLZGX47" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence</a>; and 2014’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1934441740/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1934441740&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=3AQYA2HAKPHQ5K53" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">What Makes a Leader: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters</a>. Through a compelling blend of anecdote and scientific analysis, he has made the case that what sets top businesspeople apart is “EI” (emotional intelligence), which he describes as the sum of self-awareness, self-management, empathy and social skills.

Related:&nbsp;<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/leadership-leads-you-to-be-overwhelmed-thats-just-a-fact-of-life" target="_self" rel="noopener noreferrer">'Leadership Leads You to Be Overwhelmed. That's Just a Fact of Life'</a>

“A higher proportion of the competencies that distinguish the stars among leaders turn out to be based on emotional intelligence rather than IQ-type abilities, by far—like 80 or 90 percent of them,” says Goleman, speaking from his office in the Berkshires. He reached this conclusion after studying data from nearly 200&nbsp;organizations, large and small, that compared their best performers with run-of-the-mill ones.

“That doesn’t mean IQ is irrelevant,” Goleman adds. “IQ is important in sorting people into jobs they can do. But once you’re in the game, you’re competing with people as smart as you, and you’re competing with how well you can manage yourself and lead other people.”

Luckily, he says, emotional and social abilities aren’t fixed at birth. With diligence, you can “rewire your brain” to push your EI to genius levels.

<h2 class="SUBHEAD">Take Stock</h2>

To figure out which aspects of emotional intelligence need work, Goleman’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1934441740/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1934441740&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=3AQYA2HAKPHQ5K53" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">What Makes a Leader</a> suggests “imagining your ideal self” five to 10 years from now. What would your typical day be like? Who would be there? What sorts of relationships would you have with them? Consider your “deepest values and loftiest dreams.” How would these be part of your daily life?

Next: Learn how your ideal self compares with your current self. Goleman recommends answering such questions as:

<h4>• Are you usually aware of your feelings and why you feel that way? 
• Can you <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/11-strategies-for-managing-stress" target="_self" title="11 Strategies for Managing Stress | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">manage your distressing emotions</a> well—e.g., recover quickly when you get upset or stressed? 
• Can you usually sense the feelings of the people you interact with and understand their way of seeing things? 
• Do you have a knack for persuasion and using your influence effectively?</h4>

Don’t just introspect. You also need to find out how you make others feel and how they see your leadership style. This can be tough to glean, of course, especially from employees. One possibility is to solicit anonymous written critiques. You also might form or join a support group in which peers who know you well (perhaps outside your company) give you frank opinions about your behavior.

Then there’s “360-degree Feedback,” a process Goleman helped develop. In 360, a certified coach would have bosses, peers, direct reports, clients and sometimes family members critique your “social intelligence”—the empathy and social-skills part of EI. Among other things, they would consider your sensitivity to people’s needs, your mentoring style, your interest in others’ opinions and your tendency (or lack thereof) to bring out the best in people.

Once the feedback rolls in, resist the temptation to dwell only on your EI shortcomings. It’s “just as important, maybe even more so, to understand your strengths,” Goleman writes. He finds, for instance, that most entrepreneurs are resilient and innovative. “Knowing where your real self overlaps with your ideal self will give you the positive energy you need to move forward to the next step in the process—bridging the gaps.”

<h2 class="SUBHEAD">Praise, Pay Attention, Practice</h2>

If you’re like many entrepreneurs, one EI gap will involve your ears. “Poor listening is the common cold of leadership today,” Goleman says. “Very often we want people to keep it short, which often means we cut them off and take over the conversation to get them out the door quickly. But if you want to be a good listener, then you have to actually take time to hear what they have to say and be sure you understand them.”

Another common shortcoming: being a <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/handling-the-grumps-how-to-fight-off-others-negativity" title="Handling the Grumps: How to Fight Off Others' Negativity | SUCCESS.com">Debbie Downer</a>. “This is a big problem for entrepreneurs,” Goleman says. “Entrepreneurs are typically people who drive themselves harder than most others and who have a very high internal standard of excellence. They do things very well, and that can become a pattern of perfectionism, where you tend to look only at what was wrong rather than what was right. The problem in leadership is when people who have driven themselves to the top that way become managers or leaders and use the same lens with their direct reports. If they give only failing grades, not passing grades, that demotivates people.”

To overcome such weaknesses, Goleman proposes drawing up an action plan. (Ideally, he says, do this with help from a 360 coach or other business coach who can monitor your progress. “Anybody who is at the top in sports or entertainment typically has a coach throughout their career”—so why should it be different in business?) Pick a short list of changes you can make, both inside and outside the office, that target each of your goals.

Related:&nbsp;<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/rohn-7-personality-traits-of-a-great-leader" target="_self" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rohn: 7 Personality Traits of a Great Leader</a>

To boost your listening skills, you might plan to meet each of your colleagues or employees for lunch, away from office distractions. You might also volunteer at a crisis center, where understanding the needs of others is crucial. At home, for starters, try not to take over conversations and “relax into just listening, being sure you understand before responding,” Goleman says.

To become less critical, constantly remind yourself to notice what others in your life do well. “Praise them; don’t just attack them,” he says. “And make it genuine—our radar for phoniness is just too good.” Here, too, talking to employees away from the office is helpful. “One powerful conversation with the person away from work—about what they want from their life, their career and this job—will give you sound grounds for giving them feedback in terms of where they want to go: ‘When you did X, it didn’t help you toward Y. Perhaps you could work on Z, and here’s how I can help you,’” Goleman advises. “That personal angle <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/john-c-maxwell-how-to-retain-talented-employees" target="_self" title="John C. Maxwell: How to Retain Talented Employees | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">builds great loyalty</a>, and a sense that you care about people.”

Above all, no matter which aspect of EI that you’re attempting to build, you should work at it daily and consciously. “The neurology of habit tells us you need to become mindful of the old way, what you’re trying to change, intentionally replace it with the new habit and do it at every naturally occurring opportunity,” Goleman says. “It might be with your kids; it might be with your spouse; it might be with your direct reports.

“All of those are learning opportunities, and you’re trying to build new circuitry in the brain—a foundation of the better way. If you practice three to six months in that way, we find that one day you’ll do the new thing in the right way, at the right time, without having to think about it. It’ll become spontaneous, which means your brain has moved it from the prefrontal area, where it has to make an effort, to the basal ganglia, where all of our habits live.”

<h2 class="SUBHEAD">Open Your Eyes and Close Them</h2>

As you continue your daily practice, Goleman says, you can speed your progress by shadowing leaders known for their empathy and social skills: Observe how they stay cool under stress and adapt. See how they strike a balance between listening and effectively communicating; how—in a group—they help move everyone toward a joint goal, acknowledge others’ contributions and encourage everyone’s strengths.

Because of brain chemistry, you may start emulating these role models before you know it. Maybe you’ve heard of mirror neurons—these fire not just when we do something, but when we see others do the same thing. Many scientists think mirror neurons help us understand each other and learn skills. “Mirror neurons have particular importance in organizations, because leaders’ emotions and actions prompt followers to mirror those feelings and deeds,” Goleman writes in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1934441740/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1934441740&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=3AQYA2HAKPHQ5K53" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">What Makes a Leader</a>.

Related:&nbsp;<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/15-traits-of-a-terrible-leader" target="_self" rel="noopener noreferrer">15 Traits of a Terrible Leader</a>

Similarly, even imaginary feelings and deeds could raise your EI. When you picture a happy scenario in detail—listening well to an employee, say, and working with her to solve a problem—it can “fire the same brain cells actually involved in doing that activity,” Goleman writes. “The new brain circuitry appears to go through its paces, strengthening connections, even when we merely repeat the sequence in our minds.”

Speaking of repetition, Goleman believes another key to EI is <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/meditation-your-way" target="_self" title="Meditation--Your Way | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">daily meditation</a>: Focus on your breath and bring your mind back to it when it wanders, for example, and scan your body for points of tension, then relax them.

“Essentially it’s training attentional skill,” he says. “I would try to do at least 10 minutes a day of meditation.” One of Goleman’s favorite things about mindfulness is that you take it everywhere. Say one of your EI shortcomings is anxiety or a quick temper. “When you’re starting to get really mad or overly worried, mindfulness can help you notice that’s happening to you. You can short-circuit the episode.”

Meditation is vital over the long haul, too, Goleman finds: “It’s fundamental, the ability to stay focused on the task at hand or keep going to reach your long-term goal.... Every successful entrepreneur needs this ability.” Small wonder, then, that increasingly, companies such as Google and The Huffington Post are offering meditation sessions for employees. “Not only do you, the leader, need mindfulness, but so does everyone you depend on to get to your goal.”

<h2 class="SUBHEAD">Savor Face Time</h2>

Now more than ever, our EI is under attack. Technology fragments the attention we pay each other with every text-message beep and social-media alert. A company may have employees spread across several offices or even time zones, making it harder to feel empathy or use your social skills to advantage.

Don’t give up, Goleman urges.

If your business involves telecommuters or far-flung offices, aim for informal get-togethers once or twice a year—or at least, frequent Skyping and the like. “The brain was built for face-to-face interaction; that’s always best,” Goleman says. “The social brain is designed to engage the brain of the person you’re with and read visual signals very, very quickly and tell us what to do next.”

Simply being in the same room as someone else may not be enough, as proved by couples in restaurants who seem to be dating their iPhones instead of each other. “Notice when you’re being pulled away from a person by a thing,” Goleman says, meaning a phone, or some other tool. “And then ask yourself, Can I afford this? Is this the best thing to do now? You may say, Yeah, this is a really important text; I can look at it. Or you may say, I care more about the person in front of me.” With luck, caring about those in front of you will generally prevail.

“Chemistry happens when we pay full attention to each other—never when we’re distracted. This is true in romantic relationships and in business relationships.”

So whenever possible, let that call go to voicemail. Close that chat window. And start spreading your emotional intelligence, one rich, face-to-face moment at a time.

Related:&nbsp;<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/how-to-figure-out-what-kind-of-leader-youll-be" target="_self" rel="noopener noreferrer">How to Figure Out What Kind of Leader You'll Be</a>

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