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A lot of people have the impression that getting smarter involves reading tons of books. This couldn't be further from the truth. One can easily increase their intelligence quotient by broadening their horizons with even the smallest of activities. How we approach certain situations can substantially improve our mental horsepower. Getting smarter doesn't involve a huge commitment of time and energy. A little bit of effort every day can take you a long way. We've compiled a list of 10 simple actions that will make you a smarter individual. Read the day's paper When you are up to date with the events happening all around the world, you can strike up meaningful conversations with almost anybody. Not only that, you'll also learn to form informed opinions on varied subjects like politics and science. Follow interesting people We have a world of information at our fingertips today thanks to social media. Following interesting people on Facebook and Twitter and ...

“It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.” ~Mahatma Gandhi Cancer. I’ll never forget the moment the words fell from my doctor’s mouth. In one fell swoop, the “perfect” persona that I’d spent thirty-plus years carefully constructing received what would ultimately become a fatal blow. Following that fateful day of demarcation, my life would never again be the same. But let me back up a bit. By the time I’d arrived at my early thirties, I was cloaked in all the trappings of outward success: a lucrative career in the high-paced, high-stress world of high-end commercial real estate; a swanky West L.A. apartment filled with pretty things and a closet full of designer clothes; and a perfect size-two body that I’d finally learned how to punish and deprive myself into maintaining. At that time, I was what I would now refer to as an expert in applying “Band-Aids.” Desperate to avoid confronting anything uncomfortable—whether in the realm of my body, mind,...

If you realize the importance of internal relationships, and you know how much our emotional intelligence helps to put people at ease, create trust and respect, align people and further a can-do attitude, then I believe you will appreciate this blog post. If you are not especially familiar with emotional intelligence and the part it plays in highly effective leadership, I hope you will read this blog post carefully. Either way, I would certainly welcome your feedback and ideas Emotional Intelligence Leads to Personal Achievement, Happiness, and Professional Success It is widely accepted that soft skills such as active listening greatly affect how people feel and respond to their boss and senior management. If they feel valued, appreciated, and heard, they are engaged and motivated to achieve goals set out by leadership. Great leadership is, in fact, servant leadership: attending to team members with empathy and helping them succeed. Emotional intelligence deepens our empathy—a c...

“Love yourself first so you know what you deserve.” Lately I have been meeting people who have been pretty disappointed when it comes to the word “love.” I have heard the laundry list of woes on romance from being afraid to be alone out of fear of never meeting someone to compromising happiness and settling for second best in a relationship. Then there are the common questions of, “If not this person then who?” and “When will I meet someone I really love and loves me?” or “How can I love myself?” How can we find ourselves beyond a romantic relationship, and does a romantic relationship have to define our sense of self? I feel like it has become this ingrained belief that we need a relationship to define our path and identity and if we don’t have that relationship by a certain time frame in our lives then we have missed the window for that fairy tale ending. We may question if something is wrong with us and why don’t we have that special someone with kids like “everyone” else...

   1. An S.O. who lifts you up and reminds you how awesome you are when you really need to hear it Being in a relationship should feel good, not anxious or stressful! Your significant other is someone you can go to for support and to help you overcome challenges you’re facing. While people in our lives push us to be the best people we can be, a partner in a healthy relationship accepts and loves you for the person you are today.    2. Having a safe place to vent and share your feelings Being in a healthy relationship means having really great communication, which encompasses a lot of different things. Communicating can mean negotiating and finding mutually beneficial solutions to arguments, but it can also mean feeling comfortable sharing with your partner. So at the end of a long day, you should count of your partner to be there and listen – and vice versa!    3. Being with someone who will sweep you off your feet, not step on them Good partners recogniz...

Emotional intelligence. You may not be aware of it. It may be something you wouldn’t really bother to know. But what does having low emotional intelligence imply? Does having it mean disaster? To set a bit of groundwork, let’s use the definition of emotional intelligence by John Mayer and Peter Salovey—two people who have made a significant contribution on the subject: Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth. Other definitions of the term have come out, but they all basically have the same gist. Also, discussions on emotional intelligence won’t be complete without mentioning Daniel Goleman, whose 1995 book “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ” made the term popular to this day. Having low emotional intelligence could take its toll if you d...

Your mindset, your values, and general approaches to life are based on your beliefs. You observe the world through the lens of convictions that you’ve formed over the years. The problem is that those beliefs often get distorted and you deliberately avoid the truth. And the reason for that is simple: the life is easier to enjoy if you don’t embrace the bitter reality. People enjoy believing in what they want to believe because the harsh truth can make people feel embarrassed and miserable. It often requires the change of status quo and the need to challenge the social standards. Unfortunately, most people prefer to avoid changes. They are better off staying within their comfort zone regardless of how bad it is. Become bold enough to admit the harsh truth. Embrace the reality that makes you feel uncomfortable. Get rid of the prejudices that hold you back. Take the first step towards making the most of your life. The 7 harsh truths everyone knows but no one wants to admit are: ...

Everybody’s life is filled with ups and downs, but new research suggests everyone’s life follows a particular pattern when it comes to our general contentedness. Around mid-life, we all seem to be pretty bummed. According a new analysis of life satisfaction from the National Bureau of Economic Research, which encompasses seven massive surveys and 1.3 million randomly sampled people from 51 countries, rock bottom is somewhere around the early 50s for most folks. On the other hand, people report being pretty happy in their early 20s and their 60s once retirement kicks in. All in all, our life seems to follow a specific parabola of satisfaction (the Washington Post has a great chart you can check out). What’s interesting is not all surveys used the same framing when asking people in different parts of the Western world how they felt at different points in their lives—some of them asked for ratings of general satisfaction, others were asked in terms of being happy or unhappy—but th...

Steve Jobs' had brilliant inventions, innovative designs and an incredibly amazing approach to entrepreneurship. This, among other things, keeps his legacy alive. Years ago, a speech Steve Jobs gave came up on my YouTube feed. I played it not realizing that what he was going to say would soon become my mantra. When in doubt or in time of confusions I tend to come back to this saying. Over the years I've notice how much it's shaped my entrepreneurial spirit, and my role as a leader. I've come to realize how impactful those words are to more than just me, but to all entrepreneurs. And to all people finding their own paths in life.  Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Huffington Post have all discussed the correlation between ADHD and entrepreneurship. There's a myth out there that people with learning disorders make great entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurial space is full of people forging their own paths and building their own plans. Most of the time because they rea...

               I have often wondered what it is that makes me who I am. Is it my personality, or my character? Is it the way that I dress? Maybe it is my choice of career? Or, maybe it is a combination of all of these things, because I don’t think that there is one description or label that is capable of defining me completely.             I like to think that for the most part, I am a pretty easy person to get along with. I am generally a positive person to be around and I try not to judge anyone for the choices that they make or the beliefs that they subscribe to. I just treat everyone with the same respect that I would like to be treated with. However, this does not mean that I am a pushover. I do not suffer fools gladly and if you try to take advantage of me you are very likely to see a completely different side of me! I think that this is something that is probably true of most people though, so maybe I am ...

No matter how old people are, they seem to believe that who they are today is essentially who they'll be tomorrow. That's according to fresh research that suggests that people generally fail to appreciate how much their personality and values will change in the years ahead — even though they recognize that they have changed in the past. Daniel Gilbert, a psychology researcher at Harvard University who did this study with two colleagues, says that he's no exception to this rule. "I have this deep sense that although I will physically age — I'll have even less hair than I do and probably a few more pounds — that by and large the core of me, my identity, my values, my personality, my deepest preferences, are not going to change from here on out," says Gilbert, who is 55. He realized that this feeling was kind of odd, given that he knows he's changed in the past. He wondered if this feeling was an illusion, and if it was one that other people share...