In a culture where being social and outgoing are prized above all else, it can be difficult, even shameful, to be an introvert. But, as Susan Cain argues in this passionate talk, introverts bring extraordinary talents and abilities to the world, and should be encouraged and celebrated.
Our world prizes extroverts — but Susan Cain makes a case for the quiet and contemplative. Full bio »
1. This picture of Chicago Christians who showed up at a gay pride parade to apologize for homophobia in the Church.
(Michelle Gantner / Maladjusted Media)
2. This story about Japanese senior citizens who volunteered to tackle the nuclear crisis at Fukushima power station so that young people wouldn’t have to subject themselves to radiation.
Source: bbc.co.uk6. The moment in which this Ohio athlete stopped to help an injured competitor across the finish line during a track meet.
17-year-old Meghan Vogel was in last place in the 3,200-meter run when she caught up to competitor Arden McMath, whose body was giving out. Instead of running past her to avoid the last-place finish, Vogel put McMath’s arm around her shoulders, carried her 30 meters, and then pushed her over the finish line before crossing it.
Image by The Daily Call, Mike Ullery / AP8. This note that was handed to a waiter along with a $20 bill by an elderly lady in his restaurant.
10. This picture of a villager carrying stranded kittens to dry land during floods in Cuttack City, India.
Image by Biswaranjan Rout / AP11. This sign at an awesome drycleaner’s.
Plaza Cleaners in Portland, OR, helped over 2,000 unemployed workers who couldn’t afford dry cleaning. The store’s owner estimated that it cost his company $32,000 dollars.
12. This photograph of a man giving his shoes to a homeless girl in Rio de Janeiro.
13. This picture of a firefighter administering oxygen to a cat rescued from a house fire.
(TOM BAUER/Missoulian)
17. These photos of two children collaborating to rescue a dog who had fallen into a ravine.
19. This exchange between a protester and a soldier during a protest in Brazil.
(Imagens/ TVBA)
20. These pictures of a man jumping into rough waters to rescue a stranger’s Shih Tzu in Melbourne.
Sue Drummond was walking her beloved Shih Tzu, Bibi, on a pier in Melbourne, when a fierce gust of wind picked him up and hurled him into the rough waters of the bay. A passerby, Raden Soemawinata, who happened to be on the pier that day to scatter his grandmother’s ashes, wasted no time in stripping down and diving into the bay to rescue the animal.
(Photos: Chris Scott)
Via: news.com.au
Is your resume boring or superhero style? Find out how to create a resume and cover letter that will get you called in for that coveted interview.
When was the last time you thought about your resume in a context other than needing to get it updated or submitted? The honest answer is probably “never,” which is why it’s such a good idea to ponder this question:
What IS my resume?
If you’re like most people who answer this question, you’ve probably come up with a phrase or sentence to the effect of “an overview and summary of personal skills, interests, employment history, attributes and professional experience.” Sound about right?
Now think about this: did your response relate in any way to the PURPOSE or function of a resume? Did it speak to what your resume is designed to do?
For that matter, what is the purpose of a resume? What is it supposed to prompt? Take a few seconds and complete the following sentence:
The purpose of a resume is to ___________________________.
If you answered honestly and thoroughly, you’ve probably recognized a few fundamental responses, like “help me land interviews” or “catch the attention of prospective employers” or “help me find a new job.” In other words, what your resume IS happens to be far less important than what your resume is designed to DO.
Your resume, like everything else, is designed to serve a purpose. To be direct, specific and blunt…
Your resume is a sales letter.
Yes, you read correctly. Your resume is a sales letter. The idea of marketing or promoting yourself may be a bit uncomfortable, but opinions and judgments aside, you are absolutely using your resume to sell yourself to prospective employers. It’s not a question. It’s fact.
Marketing yourself effectively ensures that the value you can add is obvious and clearly defined for your audience. This encourages prospective employers to interview and hire you, and ultimately requires that they provide adequate compensation for your time and talent.
Knowing what a resume truly is can be a huge advantage, which is why it’s important to bring up a point on ethics. You can think of it as the Guiding Principle of Resume Writing (because that sounds fancy), but it’s really just common sense and old-fashioned honesty.
Guiding Principle: ALL information you present on your resume and throughout the hiring process must be truthful, factual and accurate. Always.
Does that mean you’re stuck with whatever resume you’ve already got? Absolutely not! There are plenty of clever ways to polish and refine your content that fall well within the bounds of professional ethics and personal integrity.
As it turns out, the rapidly accelerating pace of decision-making means effective positioning of facts and details is an absolute necessity. The key is learning how to creatively present your skills and experiences in a way that works with the resume-scanning tricks used by the people making decisions about you as a potential candidate. This is one of the driving forces behind the New Rules of Resume Writing.
Rule #1: Know Your Audience
Resume readers have limited time and an almost unlimited number of candidates to review, and it’s a good idea to use this knowledge to your advantage.If you want to write a great resume, start by paying attention to the way employers describe their hiring goals in the job descriptions they write. Read as many of these as you can, paying particular attention to the words, phrases, and titles used by the people who are searching for individuals with your skills and experience. Understanding what they’re looking for and using the right language on your resume will help you attract more viewers, more interest, and more interview activity.
Rule #2: Get to the Point
You’ve heard the saying “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.” It’s as true in resume writing as it is in dating.One glance often sets the tone for an entire first date, and that same infinitesimally small opening is what you can reasonably expect from a resume reader. That means you have to get right to the point and show them something relevant, and do so without a lot of preamble and wasted space.
As one of my mentors used to say, “treat the beginning of your resume like the front page of a newspaper and make sure it JUMPS out at readers.” The advice is even more relevant today than ever before.
The rest of the rules require a bit more depth of explanation than can be offered here, but all point to a common theme – making sure others can readily find and identify you as a viable match for their opportunities.
The internet empowers you to promote yourself to a far broader audience than has ever been possible before; understanding the rules of the game will help set you up for a far more productive and rewarding job search, and that’s a beautiful thing.
The Smartest Way to Think About Your Resume | Brazen Careerist
Michael B. Junge is the author of Purple Squirrel: Stand Out, Land Interviews, and Master the Modern Job Market and a member of the leadership recruiting team at Google, Inc. He can be visited online at www.michaelbjunge.com, Facebook, and Twitter.
Photo by Vartanov Anatoly (Shutterstock).
CHOW.com’s Blake Smith shows how the simple technique of cutting a spiral pattern into your hot dog before grilling it will not only improve the wiener-eating experience, but will also transform the dog into a conversation starter.
CHOW Tips are the shared wisdom of our community. If you’ve figured out some piece of food, drink, or cooking wisdom that you’d like to share on video (and you can be in San Francisco), email Jenny Stewart and tell us what you’ve got in mind.
It seems that the brain, in specific situations, literally gets bored and starts scaring you. The easiest way to prove this is to perform the simple experiment of looking steadily into a mirror, for a few minutes at a time. Soon, you’re very likely to see a monster. That monster is a combination of your face and your brain. Does that make it better or worse?
There are a lot of creepy situations that start happening when you look in the mirror. Low light and a fearful mood certainly help, but the primary reason why people have so many mirror related freak-outs, and why it’s become such a big game at slumber parties, is straight biology. The brain doesn’t have the energy or the processing power to notice everything all the time. Sitting at your computer now, you’re probably unaware of the feel of the seat under you, your clothes against your skin, and any lingering smells you might have noticed (no judgement) when you walked into the room. Your mind mostly tunes them out. But the sense that most of us rely on almost all the time, sight, has also been narrowed down. You are probably unaware of anything outside of the range of the computer screen, and you probably haven’t noticed minor changes to that. That is why most updates on computers come with a sound or a blinking light.
The brain, when faced with a lot of stimulation, only some of which is considered relevant, will tune out the non-relevant parts, filling in what it can from the general area. It’s a little like how the blind spot works, except this is a dynamic process. The brain will zoom in on a desired area, and the rest of the space will fade away. This is called the Troxler Effect, or Troxler Fading. It was discovered way back in 1804 by Ignaz Troxler, a physician and philosopher. Take a look at the circle to the left. Focus on the red dot at the middle. After less than thirty seconds, the circle should just fade away. The mind then fills in the area where the circle used to be with the white that surrounds it. It’s worth doing an image search on Troxler Effect, since there are a ton of illusions with it on the internet. There are whole paintings that fade away. There are moving objects that disappear with enough focus. You can spend a happy twenty minutes observing your brain erase the world.
A less happy ten minutes would be spent staring in a mirror. A paper in Perception outlines an experiment in which people were asked to stare into a mirror, in low light, for ten minutes. They do not sound like a fun ten minutes, according to the report.
The descriptions differed greatly across individuals and included: (a) huge deformations of one’s own face (reported by 66% of the fifty participants); (b) a parent’s face with traits changed (18%), of whom 8% were still alive and 10% were deceased; (c) an unknown person (28%); (d) an archetypal face, such as that of an old woman, a child, or a portrait of an ancestor (28%); (e) an animal face such as that of a cat, pig, or lion (18%); (f ) fantastical and monstrous beings (48%).
The Troxler Effect fades out features that a person isn’t directly staring at. Those features are filled in with what’s around them. It works on a white background, but a face looks horrifying when, for example, a slice of forehead and cheek are subbed in for an eye. Plus, the effect doesn’t stay in one place. The Troxler Effect wanders over the entire face, distorting it massively. The person then often instinctively turns those distortions into things that they can actually recognize, even if it scares them. This is how mirror monsters, like Bloody Mary, develop. The brain gets tired of processing the mundane and, accidentally, cooks up a monster to entertain us.
Image: Mysid
Via MoIllusions, Psych World, and Perception.
What is the difference between happy people and unhappy people? Of course, it may be very obvious, happy people are happy while unhappy people are unhappy, right? Well, that is correct, but we want to know what are the things that these people do differently and that is why, I have put together a list of things that HAPPY people do differently than UNHAPPY people.
1. LOVE vs. FEAR. Well, I can tell you for sure that those people who are really happy, FEAR less and LOVE a lot more. They see each moment, each challenge, each person as an opportunity to discover more about themselves and the world around them.
2. ACCEPTANCE vs. RESISTANCE. Happy people understand that you can’t really change a situation by resisting it, but you can definitely change it by accepting that it is there and by understanding that there might be a reason for its existence. When something unpleasant happens to them, they don’t try to fight it, knowing that this will make the situation even worse, but rather, they ask themselves questions like: What can I learn from this? How can I make this better? and they go from there, focusing on the positive rather than on the negative. They always seem to see the glass half full no matter what happens to them.
3. FORGIVENESS vs. UNFORGIVENESS. Really happy people know that it’s not healthy to hold on to anger. They choose to FORGIVE and FORGET, understanding that FORGIVENESS is a gift they give to themselves first and foremost.
“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”Buddha
4. TRUST vs. DOUBT. They trust themselves and they trust the people around them. No matter if they talk to the cleaning lady or the C.E.O. of a multi billion company, somehow they always seem make the person they are interacting with feel like there is something unique and special about them.
They understand that beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies, and because of that, they make sure to treat everybody with love, dignity and respect, making no distinctions between age, sex, social status, color, religion or race. These are the great men that Mark Twain was talking about: “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” Mark Twain
5. MEANING vs. AMBITION. They do the things they do because of the meaning it brings into their lives and because they get a sense of purpose by doing so. They understand that “Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life” like Wayne Dyer puts it, and they care more about living a life full of meaning rather than, what in our modern society we would call, living a successful life.
The irony here is that most of the time they get both, success and meaning, just because they choose to focus on doing the things they love the most and they always pursue their heart desires. They are not motivated by money; they want to make a difference in the lives of those around them and in the world.
6. PRAISING vs. CRITICIZING. Happy people would probably agree with Carl’s Jung theory on resistance: “What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size”. They don’t criticize the absence of the behavior they want to reinforce, but rather, every time the behavior is present, even if it’s not that often, they know that by praising the person and the behavior, they will actually reinforce the positive behavior.
When a parent wants to make sure that his 7 years old boy will learn to always put the toys back in the box after he’s done playing with them, he will make sure not to focus on the many times the child won’t do it, criticizing him and his behavior, but rather, every time the little boy does put the toys back, the parent will praise him and his behavior and that is exactly how he will reinforce the positive behavior, and in the end geting the wanted results.
7. CHALLENGES vs. PROBLEMS. Happy people will see PROBLEMS as CHALLENGES, as opportunities to explore new ways of doing things, expressing their gratitude for them, understanding that underneath them all lies many opportunities that will allow them to expand and to grow.
8. SELFLESSNESS vs. SELFISHNESS. They do what they do not for themselves, but for the good of others, making sure that they bring meaning, empowerment and happiness in the lives of many. They look for ways to give and to share the best of themselves with the world and to make other people happy.
”Before giving, the mind of the giver is happy; while giving, the mind of the giver is made peaceful; and having given, the mind of the giver is uplifted.”Buddha
9. ABUNDANCE vs. LACK/POVERTY. They have an abundant mindset living a balanced life, achieving abundance in all areas of life.
10. DREAMING BIG vs. BEING REALISTIC. These people don’t really care about being realistic. They love and dare to dream big, they always listen to their heart and intuition and the greatness of their accomplishments scares many of us.
“Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.” Goethe
11. KINDNESS vs. CRUELTY. They are kind to themselves and others and they understand the power of self love, self forgiveness and self acceptance.
12. GRATITUDE vs. INGRATITUDE. No no matter where they look, no matter where they are or with who, they have this capacity of seeing beauty where most of us would only see ugliness, opportunities, where most of us would only see struggles, abundance where most of us would only see lack and they express their gratitude for them all.
13. PRESENCE/ ENGAGEMENT vs. DISENGAGEMENT. They know how to live in the present moment, appreciating what they have and where they are, while still having big dreams about the future.
“When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it. The mind in itself is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek your self in it and mistake it for who you are.” Eckhart Tolle
14. POSITIVITY vs. NEGATIVITY. No matter what happens to them, they always seem to keep a positive perspective on everything and by doing so, they tend irritate a lot of negative and “realistic” people.
15. TAKING RESPONSIBILITY vs. BLAMING. They take full ownership over their lives and they rarely use excuses. Happy people understand that the moment you choose to blame some outside forces for whatever it is that happens to you, you are in fact giving all your power away, and they choose to keep the power for themselves and taking responsibility for everything that happens to them.
Is your resume boring or superhero style? Find out how to create a resume and cover letter that will get you called in for that coveted interview.
It seems that the brain, in specific situations, literally gets bored and starts scaring you. The easiest way to prove this is to perform the simple experiment of looking steadily into a mirror, for a few minutes at a time. Soon, you’re very likely to see a monster. That monster is a combination of your face and your brain. Does that make it better or worse? 
