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Everything about life in the USA 🇺🇸 Buy ads: https://telega.io/c/american @Source_Ads ↪️ Feedback : @cobbl
If you don't like your life than change it.
You always have a choice.
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William Shakespeare the greatest dramatist of all time:
There is documentary proof that Shakespeare was baptised on 26th April 1564, and scholars believe that, in keeping with the traditions of the time, he would have been baptised when he was three days old, meaning Shakespeare was probably born on April 23rd.
Shakespeare married his wife Anne Hathaway when he was 18. She was 26 and three months pregnant with Shakespeare’s child when they married. Their first child Susanna was born six months after the wedding.
Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway had three children together – a son, Hamnet, who died in 1596, and two daughters, Susanna and Judith. His only granddaughter Elizabeth – daughter of Susanna – died childless in 1670. Shakespeare therefore has no descendants.
Few people realise that apart from writing his numerous plays and sonnets, He was also an actor who performed many of his own plays as well as those of other playwrights.
During his life Shakespeare performed before Queen Elizabeth I and, later, before James I who was an enthusiastic patron of his work.
Shakespeare lived a double life. By the seventeenth century he had become a famous playwright in London but in his hometown of Stratford, where his wife and children were, and which he visited frequently, he was a well known and highly respected businessman and property owner.
During his lifetime Shakespeare became a very wealthy man with a large property portfolio. He was a brilliant businessman – forming a joint-stock company with his actors meaning he took a share in the company’s profits.
On his death Shakespeare made several gifts to various people but left his property to his daughter, Susanna. The only mention of his wife in Shakespeare’s own will is: “I gyve unto my wief my second best bed with the furniture”. The “furniture” was the bedclothes for the bed.
Shakespeare’s burial at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford Upon Avon is documented as happening on 25th April 1616. In keeping with traditions of the time it’s likley he would have been buried two days after his death, meaning Shakespeare likely died 23rd April 1616 – his 52nd birthday.
Shakespeare penned a curse for his grave, daring anyone to move his body from that final resting place. His epitaph was:
Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here:
Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones.
Though it was customary to dig up the bones from previous graves to make room for others, the remains in Shakespeare’s grave are still undisturbed.
Although Catholicism was effectively illegal in Shakespeare’s lifetime, the Anglican Archdeacon, Richard Davies of Lichfield, who had known him wrote some time after Shakespeare’s death that he had been a Catholic.
During his life, Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays, 154 sonnets and a number of poems! that we know of. In addition there are a number of “lost plays” and plays that Shakespeare collaborated on. This means Shakespeare wrote an average 1.5 plays a year since he first started writing in 1589.
Shakespeare is most often referred to as an Elizabethan playwright, but as most of his most popular plays were written after Elizabeth’s death he was actually more of a Jacobean writer. His later plays also show the distinct characteristics of Jacobean drama.
Shakespeare has been credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with introducing almost 3,000 words to the English language. Estimations of his vocabulary range from 17,000 to a dizzying 29,000 words – at least double the number of words used by the average conversationalist.
According to Shakespeare professor Louis Marder, “Shakespeare was so facile in employing words that he was able to use over 7,000 of them – more than occur in the whole King James Version of the Bible – only once and never again.”
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William Shakespeare is acknowledged as the greatest dramatist of all time. He excels in plot, poetry and wit & his talent encompasses the great tragedies of Hamlet, King Lear, Othello
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Global warming and it's effect on the environment
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Pescatarian
An omnivore who excludes poultry, beef, and pork from their diet but includes fish ( or shrimp, oysters, scallops, etc.) They're not vegetarian bc consume meat.
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Corinthians
Bible says: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves”. (1 Corinthians 13:1)
Love is something wonderful.
Love decides everything in this world. It doesn‘t have any conditions or boundaries. We don’t know exactly what love is and where it comes from. But one thing is sure: we are nothing without love! There are times when we feel shy and timid, when we are afraid of expressing the love we feel. Being afraid of embarrassing the other person or ourselves we hesitate to say the actual words “I love you”, which can be said in many ways: by means of nice presents and little notes, smiles and sometimes helping and sometimes tears.
In everyone's life there are different experiences; one of them is the first love. My first love was dazzling yet aching. Every time I go back to those memories, my eyes water and I feel like I could have done so much better. My story began few years ago, when I was very little. I was inexperienced and naive; I thought that there was no heart break in this world.
It was a Saturday when I first saw him. His brown caramel eyes made my heart skip a beat for I had never seen anything so breathtaking. His skin was a russet color and his hair was a shady black. That first moment when I saw him is engraved in my head. I can still hear my heart throbbing loudly in my chest as his eyes landed on me in that small room. We stared at each other as he made his way to the seat in front of me and a smile flicked on his lips to seal that moment.
It took a longtime for me to talk to him; he never knew I even existed. We became best friends but nothing more. His life was mine, his thoughts were mine, he was my world and he didn't even know. Everyone said that we had something between us, he always laughed because he never notice how I shatter every time he notice someone else, but what really destroyed me was the day he broke the news that he was leaving and maybe never coming back.
Years passed and I never heard from him and because of that, feelings almost vanished along with him but there were still memories hunting me for what I once felt. Now that he is back, it is he who looks for me, it is his heart that breaks, for I once promise myself that I would not drop another tear. As much as I want him vanish from my life again he would not go.
My love for him is like the waves in the sea, it comes and it goes. His name is now carved in my soul for he is part of who I am now. He made me cry but he also made me laugh. He was my first love and as much as I want that part of my story to end, deep inside I know that it isn't over... or is it?
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Interstellar
If you’re one of the estimated 3 gajillion people who have seen or will see Chris Nolan’s blockbuster movie Interstellar, one thing is already clear to you:
this is not a documentary.
That means it’s fiction, specifically science fiction, which is how you get the sci and the fi in the sci-fi pairing.
So if you go into the movie looking for a lot of scientific 'gotcha’ moments, let’s stipulate up front that you’re going to find some.
That being said, part of Interstellar’s considerable appeal is that it does go heavy on the science part of things. Nolan enlisted Caltech cosmologist Kip Thorne as the film's technical adviser, and Thorne kept a whip hand on the production, ensuring that the storyline hewed as closely as possible to the head-crackingly complex physics that govern the universe.
So where did Interstellar play it absolutely straight and where did it take the occasional narrative liberty? Here are a few of the key plot points and the verdict from the scientists (warning, there may be spoilers ahead):
1. A worm hole could open in space, providing a short cut from one side of the universe to the other.
Verdict: Mostly true
Worm holes are a pretty well-accepted part of modern cosmology and it’s Thorne’s theorems that have helped make them that way. The idea is that if you think of space-time less as a void than as a sort of fabric—which it is—it could, under the right circumstances fold over on itself. Punching the necessary holes in that fabric so that you could make your universe-transiting trip would be a bit more difficult.
That would require what’s known as negative energy—an energetic state less than zero—to create the portal and keep it open. There have been attempts to create such conditions in the lab, which is a long way from a real wormhole but at least helps prove the theory.
One bit of license the Interstellar story did take concerns how the wormhole came to be. It takes a massive object to generate a gravity field sufficient to fold space-time in half, and the one in the movie would have to be the equivalent of 100 million of our suns.
Depending on where in the universe you placed an object with that kind of mass, it could make a real mess of the surrounding worlds—but it doesn’t in the movie.
2. Getting too close to the gravity well of a massive object like a black hole causes time to move more slowly for you than it would for people on Earth. Verdict: True
For this one, stay with space-time as a fabric—a stretched one, like a trampoline. Now place a 500-lb. cannon ball on it. That’s your black hole with its massive gravity field. The vertical threads in the weave of the fabric are space, the horizontal ones are time, and the cannon ball can’t distort one without distorting the other, too.
That means that everything—including how soon your next birthday comes—will be stretched out. Really, it’s as simple as that—unless you want to spend some time with the equations that prove the point, which, trust us, you don’t.
3. There is something known as Hawking radiation, discovered by, well, guess who. When a particle falls into a black hole, the fact that it's falling creates another form of negative energy. But nature hates when its books are unbalanced—a negative without a corresponding positive is like a debit without a credit.
So the black hole emits a particle to keep everything revenue- neutral. Zillions of those particles create a form of outflowing energy—and energy can be encoded to carry information, which is how all forms of wireless communication work.
That’s hardly the same as being able to radio down to Houston from within a black hole’s maw, but it takes you a big step closer.
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In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a 10 year old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him.
“How much is an ice cream sundae?”
“50 cents,” replied the waitress.
The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied a number of coins in it.
“How much is a dish of plain ice cream?” he inquired. Some people were now waiting for a table and the waitress was a bit impatient.
“35 cents,” she said brusquely.
The little boy again counted the coins. “I’ll have the plain ice cream,” he said.
The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and departed.
When the waitress came back, she began wiping down the table and then swallowed hard at what she saw.
There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were 15 cents – her tip.
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Potatoes, Eggs, and Coffee Beans
Once upon a time a daughter complained to her father that her life was miserable and that she didn’t know how she was going to make it. She was tired of fighting and struggling all the time. It seemed just as one problem was solved, another one soon followed.
Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Once the three pots began to boil, he placed potatoes in one pot, eggs in the second pot, and ground coffee beans in the third pot.
He then let them sit and boil, without saying a word to his daughter. The daughter, moaned and impatiently waited, wondering what he was doing.
After twenty minutes he turned off the burners. He took the potatoes out of the pot and placed them in a bowl. He pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl.
He then ladled the coffee out and placed it in a cup. Turning to her he asked. “Daughter, what do you see?”
“Potatoes, eggs, and coffee,” she hastily replied.
“Look closer,” he said, “and touch the potatoes.” She did and noted that they were soft. He then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee. Its rich aroma brought a smile to her face.
“Father, what does this mean?” she asked.
He then explained that the potatoes, the eggs and coffee beans had each faced the same adversity– the boiling water.
However, each one reacted differently.
The potato went in strong, hard, and unrelenting, but in boiling water, it became soft and weak.
The egg was fragile, with the thin outer shell protecting its liquid interior until it was put in the boiling water. Then the inside of the egg became hard.
However, the ground coffee beans were unique. After they were exposed to the boiling water, they changed the water and created something new.
“Which are you,” he asked his daughter. “When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a potato, an egg, or a coffee bean? “
Moral:In life, things happen around us, things happen to us, but the only thing that truly matters is what happens within us.
Which one are you?
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In the loving memory of all the firefighters of the Plasco Building in Tehran. "You'll always be remembered!"
When a man becomes a fireman his greatest act of bravery has been accomplished
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4. The health system as a whole. The U.S. government and other donors are finally recognizing and addressing health systems as whole, complex entities, rather than reducing them to series of disease-specific services. There’s even a first-of-its-kind bill pending in the U.S. Congress devoted to strengthening health systems as part of foreign aid, and global health security and planning is becoming a greater priority for the U.S. and the global community.
3. Politics and power shifts. The stakes are high for global health and development during any U.S. presidential election year, and this one will be no different. The U.S. is slated to contribute $37.9 billion in foreign aid during fiscal year 2016. But changes in the White House determine development policies and funding, and certain public health topics become highly politicized targets (reproductive health and family planning come to mind). For all countries – rich or poor – powerful data and up-to-date information are crucial when it comes to advocating for health investments.
2. The enduring wealth gap. Globally, the percentage of people living at or below $1.90 per day dropped from 44 percent in 1981 to 12.7 percent in 2012. Despite this remarkable progress, the wealth gap is growing. New Oxfam research indicates that the world’s 62 richest billionaires possess as much wealth as the 3.65 billion people who make up the poorer half of the human population. This inequality goes beyond wealth disparities; it means health disparities as well, as the poor are more likely to suffer chronic health problems, more likely to fall into financial hardships because of health costs, and less likely to have access to health care.
1. There are more than 59.5 million refugees today. That’s more than at any time in human history, even at the end of World War II. The movement of people – not just of those exiting Syria, but of all who are on the move worldwide – has huge implications for health systems around the world. The challenges of providing care to so many who’ve been displaced are staggering. And what about the families and friends they’ve left behind? Any mass exodus is sure to include skilled health workers, particularly as they and their facilities are common targets during wartime. And when health workers are forced to flee, their home towns are left without care. As the numbers shift in 2017, we’ll see the true public health implications of such a massive population of vulnerable human beings.
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GLOBAL HEALTH
The persistent wealth gap worldwide is growing. Some global health threats take us by surprise, sparking fires we never expected to fight. Take Ebola, for instance – the world couldn’t have foreseen the 2014 outbreak, particularly in West Africa, which had never before experienced it. Other fires, though, have been smoldering quietly for decades, and are now building strength and becoming difficult to contain.
What many global development organizations do this year and how we do it:
10. Ebola’s unprecedented survivors. Never before have there been so many survivors of the virus. Survival, it turns out, is both a boon and a burden – many now face a lifetime of social exile and chronic health problems. Ebola survivors will present new health-care challenges in 2017 as health workers learn to care for their unique needs.
9. Mental health for trauma survivors. In 2016, the mental health consequences of war, displacement, Ebola, gender-based violence, natural disasters and other traumas will become more and more apparent. Today’s global health workforce isn’t ready for these challenges – there are too few social service workers and others trained to provide complex, specialized mental health care, and far too few are based where the need is greatest. In fact, there just aren’t enough health workers right now to go around – period.
8. A reversal in the health worker shortage. According to the World Health Organization, there’s a global shortage of 7.2 million doctors, nurses and midwives. As we begin the first full year of our new Sustainable Development Goals, more countries will be working toward universal health coverage and to meet their health-related targets through stronger, more equitably distributed health workforces that include community health workers, widespread access to technology and a health team approach to bringing care to those in need. And for the first time ever, there'll be a global strategy to achieve it.
7. Air pollution. A study last year linked air pollution to 6 million deaths per year in China. Last month, Beijing issued its first red alert for smog. And smoking, which contributes to poor air quality, continues to rise in China, where it may cause about 20 percent of all adult male deaths during this decade. But air pollution is even worse in the United Arab Emirates, where the air contains 80 micrograms of pollutants per cubic meter, compared to China’s 73 and India’s 32. Health workers and systems around the world should be preparing for a rise in respiratory and other related health troubles.
6. Emerging and waning health threats. Polio and HIV are two of the most devastating diseases of our time – but they’re waning or, in the case of polio, on the verge of eradication. At the same time, Zika virus, Ebola flare-ups and other unexpected threats will make headlines in 2017, and pose challenges to global health security. For many health systems around the world, these dangers are already in the back yard.
5. Climate change. More extreme weather and rising sea levels, temperatures, and carbon dioxide levels could usher in a wide array of human health effects, the CDC warns – from asthma to chikungunya to mental illness. Will countries begin to make progress in curbing carbon emissions after the Paris climate accord of 2016? Or will the commitments made there fall by the wayside? And will progress come in time to protect the most vulnerable countries, such as the low-lying Marshall Islands, which are already disappearing as sea levels rise?
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Global Health: According to the World Health Organization, there’s a global shortage of 7.2 million doctors, nurses and midwives.
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Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 18, William Shakespeare
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The planet is warming, from North Pole to South Pole. Since 1906, the global average surface temperature has increased between 1.1 and 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.6 to 0.9 degrees Celsius)–even more in sensitive polar regions. And the effects of rising temperatures aren’t waiting for some far-flung future–signs of the effects of global warming are appearing right now.
The heat is melting glaciers and sea ice, shifting precipitation patterns, and setting animals on the move.
The planet is already suffering from some impacts of global warming.
Ice is melting worldwide, especially at the Earth’s poles. This includes mountain glaciers, ice sheets covering West Antarctica and Greenland, and Arctic sea ice.
Many species have been impacted by rising temperatures. For example, researcher Bill Fraser has tracked the decline of the Adélie penguins on Antarctica, where their numbers have fallen from 32,000 breeding pairs to 11,000 in 30 years.
The sea level has been rising more quickly over the last century.
Some butterflies, foxes, and alpine plants have moved farther north or to higher, cooler areas.
Precipitation (rain and snowfall) has increased across the globe, on average.
Some invasive species are thriving. For example, spruce bark beetles have boomed in Alaska thanks to 20 years of warm summers. The insects have chewed up 4 million acres of spruce trees.
GLOBAL WARMING could do more than just melt polar ice. It could change our maps, and displace people from cities and tropical islands.
Other effects could take place later this century, if warming continues.
Sea levels are expected to rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 and 59 centimeters) by the end of the century, and continued melting at the poles could add between 4 and 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters).
Hurricanes and other storms are likely to become stronger.
Floods and droughts will become more common. Rainfall in Ethiopia, where droughts are already common, could decline by 10 percent over the next 50 years.
Less fresh water will be available. If the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru continues to melt at its current rate, it will be gone by 2100, leaving thousands of people who rely on it for drinking water and electricity without a source of either.
Some diseases will spread, such as mosquito-borne malaria (and the 2016 resurgence of the Zika virus). Ecosystems will change: Some species will move farther north or become more successful; others won’t be able to move and could become extinct.
Wildlife research scientist Martyn Obbard has found that since the mid-1980s, with less ice on which to live and fish for food, polar bears have gotten considerably skinnier. Polar bear biologist Ian Stirling has found a similar pattern in Hudson Bay. He fears that if sea ice disappears, the polar bears will as well.
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Living as a Pescatarian
Becoming a pescatarian was one of the most important and life-changing decisions that I’ve ever made — and I made it at age 12. I have not eaten meat since then except for fish, and I don’t plan to for the rest of my life.
You may be wondering, “What is a pescetarian?” Pescetarianism, or pesco-vegetarianism, means being vegetarian while still including seafood in your diet. One still cuts out red meat, pork, poultry, etc. from his or her diet like a vegetarian, but does not cut out fish and other seafood.
Many people ask me “How did you do that? I could never give up meat!” What a lot of people don’t realize is that over time your body’s unnatural craving for mammal and poultry meat disappears, and a healthy body will get sick from beef, pork or chicken if eaten again after a period of a pescetarian diet. This is because land-animal flesh is filled with toxins, uric acid and fecal bacteria.
And frankly, I believe that the human body should always reject these meats, but we are feeding it to our toddlers and convincing them — as we have been convinced — that it is natural and normal. But consider this, do natural carnivores have to cook their meat in order to not get sick and season it so it can taste good to them? Would a human baby kill and eat raw a live chicken out of instinct as for example a baby lion would? No.
Here’s another thing to think about — can we eat raw fish and seafood if it’s healthy and clean and not get sick? Yes. Do we always have to season fish and seafood for it to taste good? No. Are there the same health risks from eating healthy, fresh fish as there are from eating land animals? No.
The only reason the human race started to eat land animals was back when cavemen had to survive in the wild, and berries and vegetables were scarce and killing mammals was their only way to survive. I would say we have definitely advanced since then — everyone could survive on a vegan diet if they chose. That’s all it is. It is making a decision to not only improve your health and extend your life, but contribute to saving our planet and natural resources — and our animals — who deserve to live a free and happy life as much as we do.
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List of Foods That a Pescatarian Can Eat
Fish are on the menu if you're a pescatarian.
Pescatarians are semi-vegetarians that focus on a plant-based diet with the inclusion of fish.
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The Trip
When I was 5 my Dad had a trip to London which I went on with because it was school holidays. We got there late at night and I was starving and the hotel we were staying at, had closed their kitchen. My Dad went to find some food and left me with my nanny. I sat at the edge of the window overlooking the river Thames flow by, it was magical. I sat on that edge for a good hour and half just watching, I loved it. We stayed in London for few days, doing absolutely nothing but going shopping and eating. Then we came back to Los Angeles.
My birthday falls on the last couple of days of term every year and I always had to go to school (that's a lie I loved school and wanted to go for the most part). Anyway on this particular year, when we came back, I went into my bedroom to find my mom and uncle in there, they had spent the entire four days that we were away
re-wallpapering and redecorating my bedroom.
I had carebear Wallpaper (which I had until I was 12 ya - the shame) and carebear lampshades and curtains and a captain bed (like a bunk bed but instead of having a bed on the bottom it has a wardobe, desk and shelving units). For once in my life I was absolutly speechless. I realized my Dad taking me with him was a planned decision, so my mom and uncle could finish decorating my room. I always remember the love I felt for this little crowd at that moment; the memory of the river flowing, and the kind of care I felt from my parents. To date every time I think of them, I remember those few days and my eyes flicker.
So what is your best memories from your childhood?
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4. It would be possible to survive the leap into the black hole from which you hope to do your communicating in the first place.
Verdict: False—except…
Cosmologists vie for the best term to describe what would happen to you if you crossed over a black hole’s so-called event horizon, or its light-gobbling threshold.
The winner, in a linguistic landslide: spaghettification—which does not sound good. But that nasty end may not happen immediately.
“Most people would agree that a person who jumps into a black hole is doomed,” says Columbia University cosmologist and best-selling author Brian Greene, “but if the black hole is big enough, you wouldn’t get spaghettified right away.” That's small comfort, but for a good screenwriter, it's all the wiggle room you need.
5. And finally: Anne Hathaway could move through time and space and help save all of humanity and her hair would still look fabulous.
Verdict: Who cares? We wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Value
A popular speaker started off a seminar by holding up a $20 bill. A crowd of 200 had gathered to hear him speak. He asked, “Who would like this $20 bill?”
200 hands went up.
He said, “I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this.” He crumpled the bill up.
He then asked, “Who still wants it?”
All 200 hands were still raised.
“Well,” he replied, “What if I do this?” Then he dropped the bill on the ground and stomped on it with his shoes.
He picked it up, and showed it to the crowd. The bill was all crumpled and dirty.
“Now who still wants it?”
All the hands still went up.
“My friends, I have just showed you a very important lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20. Many times in our lives, life crumples us and grinds us into the dirt. We make bad decisions or deal with poor circumstances. We feel worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value. You are special – Don’t ever forget it!
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Can you change your personality?
A question for the ages: Are you stuck with yourself?
Plenty of researchers who study personality would answer in the affirmative. For a long time, the study of personality was stuck in two extremes: Some psychological scientists argued that your personality is so stubborn that it forms once and for all in early childhood, staying essentially the same. You are who you are, and there is not much that you can do about you. Others would say that personality is so unstable that trying to measure any change is hardly worthwhile.
Lately, personality psychologists have taken a more moderate view: If personality traits do change, they change slowly, and the overall difference over time tends to be modest.
All of which is why a big new review of studies on personality-trait change is so intriguing. In an analysis of 207 studies, published this month in the journal Psychological Bulletin, a team of six researchers found that personality can and doeschange, and by a lot, and fairly quickly. But only with a therapist’s help. (Imagine that.)
Therapy, this analysis found, seems to be especially effective at decreasing neuroticism, a trait that “not only disposes you to anxiety and other negative emotions, but to spending lots of time ruminating about all those feelings." Past research has suggested that people’s personalities generally tend to mellow as they get older; in particular, neuroticism tends to decrease with age.
This is like that natural process, only sped way, way up: The review found that three months of therapy lowered neuroticism “by about half the amount you might expect to see over 30 to 40 years of adulthood,” as science writer Stephanie Pappas succinctly explains it. Let’s restate that, because it is bonkers: That’s half of the change it would typically take 40 years to accomplish, done in just a few months’ time when guided by a therapist.
A person’s gender or age didn’t make a difference one way or another; likewise, the type of therapy didn’t matter much, though psychotherapy was a bit better than medication on its own. These changes happened quickly, as “most of the gains were made within the first month of therapy,” the authors write, and there was “no evidence that the effects of therapy faded away."
A somewhat strange thing about research in psychology, is how separate it usually stays from clinical psychology. Psychotherapy is one thing; psychological research is often quite another.
There are some caveats here, changes in neuroticism may be a return to baseline rather than a true personality-trait change; if someone is in therapy for depression or anxiety, for example, their neuroticism may be operating at a higher level than usual, and perhaps their therapist is simply helping them return to normal.
Really, though, the key takeaway here may be the optimistic notion that changing your personality is possible at all. “For a long time, the argument between the extreme positions was dominating the conversation,” Srivastava explained. “Now we are learning that the people who weren’t drawn in to either of those extremes were right all along.” In an intriguing study that Cari Romm reported on last fall, when high-schoolers were given simple writing exercises encouraging them to think about how personality can change in adolescence, they were better able to reframe their social dramas with the other kids at school as mere challenges, as opposed to insurmountable obstacles. Taking the long view of their own personalities, in other words, seemed to help them gain a similar zoomed-out perspective on the problems they were currently facing, too. Your problems can and will change; so can and will you.
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Colonel Harland Sanders the inspiring individual behind Kentucky Fried Chicken Franchises in the US.
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