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I must confess, I laughed when I saw that Maria Shriver has come out with a book called, Ten Things I Wish I Had Known Before Going Into The Real World. The real world? Come on, she grew up a Kennedy and married the biggest action movie star of all time! That aside, it got me to thinking: What are ten things I wish I would have known before going out into the real world? So, here they are: Life isn’t fair. You know, your mother always told you this but as kids we never believe it. We think that somehow mom was two tacos short of a combo plate and that eventually we will go into the real world and show her how those who work hard and do right always do come out on top. Then after about five years we become disenchanted and start to smell the coffee. Life isn’t fair! Why didn’t anybody tell me that? I guess they did, didn’t they? Unfortunately, sometimes the bad guys wins. Sometimes people die early. We shouldn’t take this lightly, but we must be realists. While we accept what comes our way, we still strive to work hard, dream big, and do right. People play favorites. It is true that it isn’t what you know but who you know that counts. This is because people play favorites. Sometimes it doesn’t matter that you are the best person or have the lowest bid. People will regularly cut deals with people they like or who can scratch their back in return. I guess the lesson to learn is that while we strive to achieve much and have excellent skills, we should also develop a strong network of healthy relationships. People will let you down. Being a person who does what he says can be a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because I am able to look at myself in the mirror each day. It is a curse because if you are like that, you will most likely expect that from others and yet they will regularly let you down. People can be bad at keeping their word or doing what is right. I could have relieved a lot of emotional stress if I would have known this one before getting out into the real world. Not everybody wants to grow personally. I just assumed that everybody loved to learn and to grow. I thought everybody wanted to get better at what they did. The reality is, however, that most people do not. That is why there is something that we call average. Most people want to stay where they are. That is why they do. Those who strive to go forward will always be cutting against the grain and will often be resented, even if quietly, for it. The stock market goes down sometimes. Some of you older folks knew this. But us young whippersnappers, we have been riding it high on the hog for a while. This is good in a sense, but unless you have some common sense of how financial markets work, you can get quite a shock from time to time. You see, before you get into the real world, everything gets handed to you and you really don’t have to work for much. Then you do and you think that every investment will turn out grand whoops! The older you get, the harder it is to lose weight. I was always a little pudgy. Nothing big, just not like the cover guys of Men’s Health Magazine (You know, the ones that say “Six-pack abs in 20 minutes a day.” I think that means they only eat twenty minutes a day, and it is usually stewed vegetables! But I digress). If I would have known better, I would have worked harder when I was younger to keep the weight off so I wouldn’t have to work that much harder now! Marriage is work. A good marriage is more work. When you are young you think, “I’ll find the girl of my dreams and we’ll live happily ever after.” Well, hello! You forget that your spouse is human and you are too, most of the time! To live under the same roof with someone and to work out likes and dislikes, personalities, and schedules, not to mention life goals and the like is HARD WORK! Not drudgery, just work. Yes, there will be plenty of bliss and joy, but marriage will make you work for it! It takes longer to get out of debt than to get into it. I have never really had much debt. I did take out student loans to pay for school and wow, do they take a long time to get out of. Fortunately I have them paid off but for a while there, it was one of the big checks we wrote every month. Many people think credit cards are great because they can have what they want when they want it. Too bad they don’t realize that twenty minutes of shopping ecstasy will result in months or years of payments. It doesn’t work to try to please others. I have always wanted people to like me. Many times, I wanted them to like me too much. That isn’t good. This doesn’t work because I realized that most of the time, people liking or disliking you has nothing to do whatsoever with rational thought. Some people will dislike you, no matter how well you have done, and others will love you, warts and all. So I do my best and let the chips fall where they may now. You need to tend to your spiritual, emotional, and physical health or you will crash hard. If you don’t take time for yourself, both inwardly and outwardly, your body will catch up with you. You can take time for yourself by choice or not. It is much more fun by choice! Life is hard and it can and will weigh you down. We need to tend the fires of spirit and mind while keeping our physical bodies tuned for success as well. If not, our bodies break down. Bonus: In spite of the above, life is very much worth it! Some of the above may seem like bummers. They aren’t the “positive” things we like to focus on, but they are true. Being positive doesn’t mean sticking your head in the ground in order to avoid the negative of life. What it means is that we are realists who understand the negative aspects of life and choose to be optimists instead. We deal with the negative and pursue the positive. That is why I can say that life is worth living no matter how expensive or painful the lessons I have had to learn have been. Life is good and I can make it better! So I had to learn some lessons AFTER I got into the real world. So what? At least I learned them and can live the rest of my life to the fullest from now on! I hope you can too! MY THOUGHTS The article is critical. It remind me that the world is not peaceful everywhere, most of the time, people are not equal. Mr. Daly, thank you a lot for this life-beneficial article!
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ARTICLE Scoring 100% in Time Management BY FRANCIS WADE Excellent school Exam grade “Most people who attempt to learn a new time management system fail.” I can’t prove the above statement with hard facts, but I have a sense that it’s true, based on my personal experience and observations. If success is defined as 100% successful implementation, then that statistic is most certainly true. On the other hand, perhaps 99% of the people who take a time management program put down the book, or drive back home, agreeing with 100% of the ideas. So, the million dollar question is: what’s the problem? Did the time management gurus blind them with their brilliance? Or does it prove that we are all a bunch of lazy good-for-nothings with short attention spans, suffering from various degrees of ADHD? The problem is not something that’s addressed by the gurus, and it’s actually something that is being ignored by gurus and devotees alike. It’s a problem in what we think time management IS. Learning a new time management system is not like learning differential calculus, financial accounting or particle physics. Each of these subject-areas are new to most people, who typically come to them like a blank canvas, and without any homegrown capability whatsoever. Most of us haven’t figured out our own system of computing depreciation before stepping into accounting 101. Ironically, our ignorance helps.. A new system of thinking is easier to learn when it’s completely fresh to us, and only requires us to be ready, willing and able. Learning a new approach to time management is much more difficult, because standing in the way of a shiny new system is the one that we are already using. That’s the same one we first put together when we entered high school, refined when we were in college, adapted when we got our first job, and started suffered with when we got married and found a bunch of stuff falling through the cracks for the first time. That’s “the time management system we never knew we had.” (For some of us, calling it a system might be too much of a mental leap, but it’s tough to get through college without having put something in place.) This “system we never knew we had” is comprised of habits, practices and rituals that have been practiced over the years and are now built into our neuro-muscular systems. In this sense, we are more like smokers trying to quit some dangerous behaviors, than we are mathematicians learning some brand new techniques. Ask President Obama, or any smoker, and they’ll tell you… quitting is tough. But time management gurus don’t tell you that changing the habits that make up your current time management system is just as challenging. They don’t get you to appreciate what you are up against as you try to reverse decades of practice, reinforced by some positive results that convinced your subconscious that you had this time management thing beaten. Not only don’t you know all this, but most people try to learn a new time management system when they KNOW that their system is no longer successful. As you ponder your latest failure, you are driven crazy with desire for the new system being offered that seems to be so logical, sensible and easy to understand. This only adds to the frustration. It appears to be easy, but isn’t. Here’s a concept: Forget about learning a new time management system, and instead take a program in “Habit Changing 101.” Discover the unique set of actions you must take to change your ingrained habits so that they stay changed. Figure out the unique blend of goal-setting, community support, backup plans, rewards, punishments, reminders, coaching, etc. that you need to succeed. Once your special cocktail is figured out, then take any time management program that you want, implement the changes slowly (one habit at a time,) and take enough time to ensure that you won’t lapse into the old habits when the inevitable crises hit. You may still be failing to implement THEIR system the way it “should” be done, but you’ll be 100% effective at upgrading your own. MY THOUGHTS Learning time control is not easy, but I the key is not limiting yourself. Once you find passion to do something, you can achieve your goal.
We always see news about success people, and sometimes, we thought life is unfair. But what we think is not true. We only see people's success, but we cannot see what they have done to make them successful. So, stop complaining and work hard to realize your dream.
For me, as a student, my goal is making my grades great again. To achieve this goal, I should have my work done nice and well on time. For the future, I should work hard now to get a good job several years later. What I want to mainly talk about is discipline. Discipline means I need a good plan for study and I should stick to my plan. But now I am not doing so well, sometimes I don't hand in homework on time. So, I need more self-control. People who have no discipline cannot achieve big goal like getting into a good university or good college. I hope people who see this can be benefited and become closer to his/her dream. The key to success is action, this is easy to say but hard to do. I always make good plan for myself and don't stick to my plan. I really need more self-control to do what I planed to do. Today, I start reading a book called "Self Control", it's written by Kelly Mcgonigal, who is a professor of Stanford University. The book provides a 10 weeks plan for readers to build their self-control. I think this book will help me a lot. I have start taking action to make myself a better person.
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