Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Why Mars and Venus Collide?

"Why Mars and Venus Collide?" by John Gray

  • Our greatest challenge today is that men and women cope with stress differently.
  • Men tend to work best on projects rather than in routines.
  • A man loses interest when he senses that he can't continue to meet a woman's expectations.
  • Men’s need for space to be alone, and woman’s need for more time to be together are rooted in our biological makeup. l Men need to feel needed, and women need to feel they are not alone.
  • Real love does not demand perfection but actually embraces imperfection.
  • A woman’s greatest challenge is to begin caring for herself as much as she is caring for others.
  • A man’s brain is single-focused, while a woman’s brain tends to multitask.
  • Leaving a man alone and ignoring him is sometimes the best way to support him.
  • While women tend to reach out to take in more information, under stress men tend to focus on determining the most important thing to do.
  • Success or the anticipation of success in a relationship fuels the rise of a man’s testosterone and sustains his interest in her.
  • Appreciating and accepting what he does, or forgiving him for what he neglects to do, is the most supportive way a woman can treat a man.
  • Depressed men have low testosterone levels.
  • Shifting from one problem to an easier problem to solve can help rebuild a man’s testosterone levels.
  • When a man’s workday is over, a switch turns off in his brain, and he shifts to a passive, relaxed mode.
  • Oxytocin, the feel-good hormone from Venus, is the love and bonding hormone.
  • Oxytocin decreases when a woman feels alone, ignored, unsupported, or that she does not matter.
  • Trust and the anticipation of getting needs met is a potent oxytocin producer.
  • A woman thinks her to-do list is causing her stress, but her low oxytocin levels are to blame.
  • Easy victories motivate a man to do more.
  • When a man can do little things and get a big response, he gets the energy and the drive to do more.
  • When a woman is not getting wha she needs, she feels an urge to give more.
  • Whatever makes a man feel successful will grab his attention and give him energy.
  • Men love to solve problems but when their efforts are misdirected and go unappreciated, they lose interest over time.
  • A man looks for someone he can be successful in loving.
  • Men can fulfill only a small portion of the support woman need for oxytocin production.
  • When a woman is already almost full, a man is highly motivated to bring her to the top.
  • When doing little things for her makes a difference, a man does more little things.
  • On Venus, every gift of love scores equal to every other gift of love, no matter how big or small.
  • Talking without solving any problems can create a profound change.
  • Just as women recovering from stress have difficulty taking time for themselves, men under stress have difficulty being there for others.
  • When he has one clear thing to do, without a lot of decisions to make that involve his partner, a man is energized.
  • Men need to avoid correcting a woman’s feelings, and women need to avoid making disapproving comments about a man’s thoughts and actions.
  • It makes it much easier to talk without blaming when we remember that we speak different languages.
  • Knowing when to hold your tongue is more powerful than saying the right things.
  • Learning to say we are sorry is one of the most important relationship skills.
  • 90/10 solution à by taking 90 percent responsibility for their own happiness and only expecting 10% from men, woman can set up themselves and their partners for much greater success in the relationship
  • A better way to nurture a man is to give him lots of space to do things the way he wants to do them. Rather than look for ways to change and improve him, look for things that he does right and appreciate him.
  • To experience the excitement of coming together, you must spend time apart.

Monday, April 25, 2011

If Love Is a Game, These Are the Rules

"If Love Is a Game, These Are the Rules" by Dr. Cherrie Carter-Scott

The Ten Simple Rules:
  1. You must love yourself first. It is a prerequisite to creating a successful and authentic union with another.
  2. Partnering is a choice - the choice to be in a relationship is up to you. You have the ability to attract your beloved and cause the relationship you desire to happen.
  3. Creating love is a process. Moving from I to we requires a shift in perspective and energy. Being an authentic couple is an evolution.
  4. Relationships provide an opportunity to grow. They serve as an unofficial life stop in which you will learn about yourself and how you can grow on your personal path.
  5. Communication is essential - it is the lifeblood of the relationship.
  6. Negotiation will be required - there are times when you and your partner must work through impasses. If you do this consciously and with respect you will learn to create win-win outcomes.
  7. Your relationship will be challenged by change. Life presents turns in the road. How you maneuver those twists and turns determines the success of your relationships.
  8. You must nurture the relationship for it to thrive. If you give it your time, attention and effort, it will continue to grow with each passing day.
  9. Renewal is the key to longevity. Happily every after means the ability to keep the relationship fresh and vital.
  10. You will forget all this when you fall in love. We know these rules inherently. The challenge is to remember them when you fall in love.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Dale Carnegie Quotes

Quotes from Dale Carnegie

1. "Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping-stones to success."

2. "The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way."

3. "Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy."

4. "Do you remember the things you were worrying about a year ago? How did they work out? Didn't you waste a lot of fruitless energy on account of most of them? Didn't most of them turn out all right after all?"

5. "Did you ever see an unhappy horse? Did you ever see a bird that had the blues? One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress our birds and horses."

6. "You never achieve real success unless you like what you are doing."

7. "An old man was asked what had robbed him of joy in his life. His reply was, "Things that never happened."

8. "Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves."

Napolean Hill Quotes

Quotes from Napolean Hill

1. "A goal is a dream with a deadline."

2. "Whatever the mind of a man can conceive and believe, it can achieve."

3. "Every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit."

4. "Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements."

5. "Strong, deeply rooted desire is the starting point of all achievement."

6. "Do not wait; the time will never be "just right". Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along."

7. "All achievement, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea."

8. "Any idea, plan or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought."

Randy Pausch Quotes

Quotes from Randy Pausch

1. "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted."

2. "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."

3. "The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something."

4. "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity."

5. "Be good at something. It makes you valuable. Have something to bring to the table, because that will make you more welcome."

6. "Do not tell people how to live their lives. Just tell them stories. And they will figure out how those stories apply to them."

7. "You can always change your plan, but only if you have one."

8. "It's important to have specific dreams. Dream Big. Dream without fear."

9. "A lot of people want a shortcut. I find the best shortcut is the long way, which is basically two words: work hard."

10. "It's not how hard you hit. It's how hard you get hit... and keep moving forward."

11. "Too many people go through life complaining about their problems. I've always believed that if you took one tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you'd be surprised by how well things can work out."

Monday, April 11, 2011

The Tipping Point - How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference

"The Tipping Point - How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference"
by Malcom Gladwell

Three Major Components of Tipping Point

a) Law of the Few
b) Stickiness Factor
c) Power of Context
Law of the Few

There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is to find them. There people can be categorized into:
1. Connectors (People Specialists) - persons who know lots of people
2. Maven (Information Specialists) - persons who accumulate knowledge
3. Salesmen

Stickiness Factor

E.g. 1) Creators of Sesame Street just add Blue Bird and he made all the difference in the world.
E.g. 2) Didn't redouble his efforts to terrify his students into getting a tetanus shot, he just threw a map and a set of appointment times.

Lesson of Stickiness -> There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstance, can make it irrestible -> all you have to do is find it. ->
Ideas must be memorable and move us into action.


Power of Context
1. Broken Window Theory -> Crime is the inevitable result of disorder. If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes. In a city, relative minor problems like graffiti, public disorder, aggressive panhandling, are equivalent of broken windows, invitations to more serious crime.

2. Win the battle against graffiti Graffiti was the symbolic of the collapse of the subway system.

3. Crack down fare-beating, which is a signal that invited much more serious crime.

4. Rule of 150
e.g. Gore Associates
-> An organized mechanism that makes it far easier for new ideas and information moving around the organization to tip -> to go from one person / one part of the group to the entire group all at once -> You can exploit the bonds of memory and peer pressure

5. Paradox of the Epidemic In order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.

6. We are actually powerfully influenced by our surroundings, our immediate context and the personalities of those around us.