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Showing posts from August, 2023

12 Personal Development Books to Take Control and Jumpstart Your Life

Our world is evolving around us faster than ever. From positive changes like technological advances to uncertainties about the economy or the climate, it’s easy to feel out of control. We have manuals for our dishwashers and our cars, but what we really need is guidance on how to operate ourselves. Thankfully, the best personal development books provide the tools and strategies—the instruction manuals—needed to perform at our best levels. Today, understanding the basics of personal development has become more important than ever. As with learning any new skill, personal growth takes skill and effort. But with so many book options available, it’s easier than ever to read more . With that in mind, let’s look at the 12 best personal development books to help you optimize the most important person in your life : you . Classic personal development books 1. The Art of Exceptional Living By Jim Rohn With both humor and directness, Rohn lays the groundwork for personal development and p

A Noncompete Clause Ban Is on the Table—Here’s What Employees Should Know

When Sara Davenport realized her workplace was making her miserable and taking a toll on her mental health, she faced a difficult dilemma. The then-TV anchor couldn’t just swap one TV station for another; rather, a strict noncompete clause limited her career choices. To continue pursuing her dream job, Davenport needed to stop working for an entire year to remain in the Houston market or she would be forced to once again uproot her family, including four school-aged children, to take a job in a different area. Davenport recalls feeling trapped as she struggled to figure out how to navigate this crossroads in her career. She ultimately decided to leave the industry altogether to pursue entrepreneurship . Although she’s happy in her new career, Davenport still wonders about what might have been, had she not been subject to that noncompete clause—an inherent feature of most employment contracts in TV news. “It massively affected the direction of my career and the next decade of my life,”

The Inclusive Obesity Care Initiative Sheds the Stigma Around Weight with Queen Latifah’s Help

Whatever’s going on in the inclusivity world, one superstar hip-hop icon is here for it. Queen Latifah has just joined forces with Novo Nordisk’s It’s Bigger Than Me campaign to lend her voice to the leading global health-care company’s new Inclusive Obesity Care (IOC) initiative. She champions the changes necessary for the world to focus less on weight loss and more on body acceptance .   Novo Nordisk is by her side, taking on the obesity problem by helping health-care providers do a better job when patients come in seeking care. Job number one is to make the IOC logo synonymous with safe spaces that are free from bias and filled with empathetic care for people living with obesity. Novo’s plan is to work directly with its current roster of health-care providers to display the Inclusive Obesity Care branding in practices as a means to demonstrate the providers’ support for judgment-free care. Latifah is perfect for the role of spokesperson because she has seen the impact of obesity

7 Tips to Help You Plan for Retirement

Retirement planning is usually the most significant financial goal people will work toward. No matter where you are in your career, considering how to plan for retirement is essential so you can spend your golden years on your terms. As you think about retirement, creating a road map to follow through the decades can help you confirm you’re on track. It can also save you some uncertainty about the future. To ensure you retire the way you want to, start thinking about how much you’ll need and what you want your retirement to look like. Keep reading for some tips to help spark the planning process. 1. Determine how much income you’ll need to plan for retirement. Many factors determine how much income you’ll need to plan for in retirement. Where you live, the kind of car you drive, health care costs and travel plans, among other things, will drastically affect what you spend during retirement and, therefore, how much you’ll need to save.  Many experts estimate that you’ll need to repl

Employee Perk or Productivity Secret? Corporate Wellness Programs Deliver on Both

In decades gone by, the only perk you might have received from your boss was a fruit basket around the holidays. Now, corporate wellness programs are tipping employees’ decisions as they consider two companies to work for, and might be contributing to retention as well. They are in abundance as developers jump on the corporate wellness train: there are mental health apps with therapists in your pocket. There are gym memberships and bonuses for working out. There are on-site clinics making preventative wellness accessible. And so much more. This leaves employers with a decision to make: Are corporate wellness programs worth the investment? Will they pay off for employees, and the business, in the long run? Employers also have to contend with the “how” they will make it happen, from voucher systems that give employees more choice over their program selections, to determining through company research which options are being used the most. A 2023 report from Gitnux reveals that more tha

4DWW Challenge: How IWT spends its long weekend

This is part of our series on IWT’s 4-Day Workweek Challenge, where we take you behind the scenes to show what it’s like for us as we test out a compressed work schedule. The post you’re about to read is written by Tony Ho Tran, a professional journalist for The Daily Beast and a former […] Source from I Will Teach You To Be Rich https://ift.tt/LFJao7k

What Does the TikTok Trend of De-influencing Mean for Your Brand?

In a TikTok from February, user @matchabuttercookie faces the camera to address her more than 27,000 followers. Her face is serious, and her voice is sincere. “OK, this is me jumping on the de-influencing train,” she begins, before listing some of the home goods and kitchen items—including Caraway pans and Urban Outfitters furniture—that she’s regretted buying. The video, which was approaching 100,000 likes at the time of publication, shares an overall view count of more than 829 million among TikToks using the #deinfluencing hashtag. Content creators have jumped on the trend this year to dish about makeup products, furniture and Amazon gadgets that didn’t live up to the hype: the Dyson Airwrap, portable blender bottles, that one Stanley cup—no product, no matter how beloved or once viral, is safe. De-influencing’s meteoric rise Influencing is a popular profession and a coveted income stream for brands—influencer recommendations can skyrocket a product’s popularity, especially in

3 Soft Skills Those in Leadership Roles Should Develop to Be Better

No one succeeds in a vacuum. Looking up and around, taking in the ideas and views of others and integrating them into your planning is the path to achievement, says Hamza Khan, the author of two bestselling books on leadership, resilience, productivity and change. “I wake up every single day obsessed with the question: How can we best equip leaders to be prepared for the leadership moments well in advance? And how do we help them learn on the job?” Khan says. One answer, he believes, is those in leadership fine-tuning their soft skills. Khan, who has worked in academia and found his calling in entrepreneurship, co-founded SkillsCamp in 2015 to do just that: teaching those in business leadership roles and educators soft skills. Soft skills, Khan says, enable leaders to develop open systems that thrive on input instead of closed systems that collapse in on themselves. Open systems welcome feedback from diverse perspectives within and without the organization. To take an idea to frui

4DWW Challenge: 4 leadership lessons from 4DWW

This is part of our series on IWT’s 4-Day Workweek Challenge, where we take you behind the scenes to show what it’s like for us as we test out a compressed work schedule. The post you’re about to read is written by Tony Ho Tran, a professional journalist for The Daily Beast and a former […] Source from I Will Teach You To Be Rich https://ift.tt/tzEsfYJ

3 Ways to Silence Your Inner Critic When Trying Something New

Have you ever wanted to try something new, but as soon as you started thinking about it, that nagging voice in your head started telling you that you can’t—or shouldn’t? If we’re not careful, our inner critic can keep us stuck right where we are. Without trying new things, we might never discover that we love piano or poetry or Portuguese. We might never feel the exhilaration of windsurfing, laughing until we cry and falling in love. Instead of a collection of memories, we’re likely to end up with a pile of regrets. In the short-term, we often regret the things we did that we wish we didn’t. But in the long run, it’s often the missed opportunities and things we didn’t do that we end up regretting the most . Unfortunately, these are the very opportunities that our inner critic likes to thwart. How can we keep it from getting in the way of new opportunities? 3 Ways to Silence Your Inner Critic When Starting Something New 1. Lower the stakes of starting One thing that can keep us f

Virtual Reality Platform Innerworld Offers a Safe Space for Peer-Led Mental Health Support

When Noah Robinson was a teenager, he realized that he was gay. Not knowing where to turn or who to talk to, he became anxious and depressed. And then, he discovered RuneScape, a virtual reality platform and online community. Quickly, he became fascinated with it. “I escaped into this online world and spent almost 10,000 hours in it,” he says. “I was anonymous as an avatar, but I felt so connected in that community .”  Robinson made friends there, and over time, he felt comfortable enough to talk about what was going on in his life.  “I came out of the closet in RuneScape,” he says. “And then, I came out in the real world when I was 18.” When Robinson went off to the University of Maryland for college, he studied psychology and became a therapist. Now in his second-to-last year of grad school for clinical psychology, he’s developed Innerworld, a virtual reality app where people create anonymous avatars, receive support from their peers and practice Cognitive Behavioral Immersion

Success Decoded: James Whittaker’s Personal Journey to Win the Day

Why does a sense of purpose so often elude us? With the advantages of instant communication and the world’s knowledge at our fingertips, motivated people may struggle to obtain personal achievement and find meaning. According to bestselling author James Whittaker, discovering our own path to success requires a change in mindset. He has strategically mapped this approach, and he calls it Win the Day. “By default, we often lose the day,” Whittaker explains from his Los Angeles residence. “Our modern comforts make it too easy to become distracted, procrastinate and sit there scrolling through our phone.” Today, Whittaker has appeared in global media including The Today Show and The Sydney Morning Herald , and his Win the Day podcast has drawn more than 30 million views. Money Magazine named his personal finance book, The Beginner’s Guide to Wealth , “Book of the Month,” and his second title, Think and Grow Rich: The Legacy , has been translated into six languages. How Whittaker dev

Agreement vs. Contract: Why Business Owners Are Using Informal Agreements for Clients

When James Sperling first started his marketing and branding agency Sheep Don’t Bark, he noticed a pattern: His clients didn’t like contracts. “When we said we’d put together a contract, it would scare some of them,” he recalls. “They didn’t want to sign it.” With the help of his team, he came up with a plan to offer agreements instead. The agency found that clients were much more willing to sign agreements, which would shield both parties if anything went wrong. “Business owners may want to work on a handshake if they are hungry for work, and that can be very bad,” Sperling says. “An agreement can protect everybody.” Bryan Clayton, CEO and co-founder of GreenPal, an online marketplace connecting homeowners with local lawn care professionals, initially used long, exhaustive contracts. But like Sperling, he found that he was scaring people off. “It seemed like overkill,” he says. “A hefty contract can create an intimidating barrier that can deter potential customers. Based on the r