OE: Only Entrepreneurship

We’ve all had our moments in life when we feel like we just can’t take it anymore. Life gets us down. We feel beaten, broken, and like there’s no way out. But what is the difference between the people who can turn it around and make lemonade out of lemons? It all lies in how you think. If you are mentally strong, you can be happy in many different situations. If you want to be one of those people, here are 14 things that they do in order to be successful:

1. THEY CONTROL THEIR EMOTIONS.

Mentally strong people don’t let their emotions control them. That’s not to say that they don’t have emotions. They do. They just don’t let them overwhelm them in any given situation. They have the ability to step outside themselves and put their logical side in the driver’s seat, while keeping the emotional part of themselves on the passenger’s side.

2. THEY RE-FRAME THE SITUATION.

Instead of looking at obstacles as problems, mentally strong people see them as learning opportunities. They don’t see tragedy, they see triumph. They realize things could always be worse. They know that other people are worse off than them. So they immediately (or eventually) re-frame the situation in more positive terms.

3. THEY STAY CALM.

If they are facing a crisis, they don’t freak out for very long. For example, if they find out that they are going to be laid off from their job, they don’t sink into a deep depression or start crying and screaming about it. They simply breathe, center themselves, and decide that everything will turn out fine. Then they take action immediately to solve the problem (like starting to apply to new jobs).

4. THEY ACCEPT THINGS THEY CAN’T CHANGE.

You have to pay taxes. You can’t change that. You have to pay your mortgage if you want to keep your house. You can’t change that. You have to get along with your spouse or co-workers. And you can’t change them. So all you can do is accept the things you can’t change. That’s what mentally strong people do. They know the difference between what they can and can’t change. And they simply accept it because to do otherwise would only be putting more negative energy into the situation.

5. THEY APPRECIATE WHAT THEY HAVE.

I know a lot of people who have absolutely wonderful lives but the do nothing but complain about what they don’t have. Mentally strong people don’t do that. They know they are lucky. They look at what they do have and give regular thanks and appreciation for it all. The emotion of appreciation has one of the highest vibrations, and it brings more goodness into your life.

6. THEY DON’T DWELL ON THE NEGATIVES.

Instead of seeing the glass as half empty or even half full, mentally strong people see the glass as always full – half liquid and half air. They focus on solutions. For example, if they have marriage problems, they focus on what they love about their spouse, not what they don’t. Then they work with the other person to find solutions.

7. THEY TAKE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS.

If something goes wrong in their life, they don’t point the finger at other people. Mentally strong people know that they are the only ones who are in charge of their successes or failures. They never see themselves as a victim.

8. THEY LOVE THEMSELVES.

A lot of people think that self-love is the same as being conceited or having a big ego. That is far from the truth. People who truly love themselves don’t go around telling others how great they are because they don’t have to. People already know they are awesome because they see their greatness. And mentally strong people love themselves and believe they are capable of doing anything.

9. THEY LEARN FROM THE PAST.

Many people like to put their heads in the sand and ignore the past – especially when it is painful looking back. But mentally strong people know that their past has made them into who they are today. They look at what did and didn’t work in the past, and they do it better in the future. As Maya Angelou says, “When you know better, you do better.” Mentally strong people don’t see the past in terms of ‘mistakes’ or ‘failures,’ they see these things as ‘lessons learned.’

10. THEY CHANGE WHAT THEY CAN.

As I said in point 4, some things you can’t change. But most of the things in life are changeable. So if a mentally strong person doesn’t like their job, they look for a new one. If their relationships aren’t up to par, they talk to the person so they can work on it. They don’t settle for being stagnant. They keep moving forward by implementing positive change.

11. THEY ARE SELF-REFLECTIVE.

Mentally strong people continually examine themselves to understand why they are the way they are. It’s a skill that can be developed by almost anyone, but mentally strong people have mastered it. They know who they are and how their behavior is affecting their life and their relationships. You can’t change what you don’t recognize, and they know that.

12. THEY HAVE SELF-DISCIPLINE.

Sure, we all have things we dislike doing. But while many people go into avoidance or procrastination mode, mentally strong people train their minds to do what they need to do. They don’t shy away from taking actions that might not be pleasurable if they need to be done. They welcome the challenge and hold themselves accountable.

13. THEY DON’T GET JEALOUS OF OTHER PEOPLE.

The ‘Green-Eyed Monster’ can be a terrible thing. Many people are constantly comparing themselves to others and thinking they are inferior. People who are mentally strong don’t do that. They appreciate what they have and realize that everyone is different. Everyone has their own path. They celebrate everyone’s success – including their own.

14. THEY KEEP GOING.

Mentally strong people never give up. They never see themselves as a failure. If things aren’t going according to plan, they just make a new plan. They don’t get stuck. They are always moving forward toward making a better future.

If you think you’re not mentally strong, don’t worry. You can get there. All it takes is the desire to actually do it. And practice. But it can be done. So make a decision right now that you not only can – but will – become mentally strong.

To your success!!!

via higherperspectives

It seems like these days you can learn just about anything online for free, but of course some of that information is better than others. The good news is there are plenty of reputable places to educate yourself online for free, and here’s a good 20 of them to get you started.

1. COURSERA

The coolest thing about Internet learning is that you can take college courses which in the past were only available to people who forked over immense sums of money to attend elite colleges.

Coursera brings a bunch of those classes together into one site, offering nearly 400 courses ranging from Introduction to Guitar from Berklee College of Music to Constitutional Law from Yale. Courses typically include videos and certain coursework (such as online quizzes) that must be completed in a certain amount of time, as these courses are monitored by a professor.

Stop by regularly to see what’s new, or search for topics that interest you can put them on a watch list so you’ll be notified when a new class begins.

2. KHAN ACADEMY

Home to more than 3,000 videos on subjects ranging from SAT prep to cosmology, art history to calculus, Khan Academy is a great place to learn. Detailed courses are broken into smaller sections of text or videos for ease of learning that fits into your schedule, and all are self-paced so you can spend as much or as little time with the subject as you like.

You can also leave comments or ask questions if you want more information or if something isn’t clear in the lessons.

3. OPENCOURSEWARE

The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a worldwide effort to make college and university level course materials accessible for free on the Internet. Search for a specific topic that interests you, or search by language (20 are available) or the source of the coursework.

There are more than 5,000 classes in English alone, covering everything from statistical thermodynamics (Middle East Technical University) to Epidemics in South African History (University of Cape Town) and Creole Language and Culture (University of Notre Dame).

4. ALISON

A global-learning resource with courses in English, French and German,ALISON covers everything from SAT prep to health and safety courses required in Ireland. There are lessons on everything from study skills to American copyright law, currency exchange to nonprofit fundraising, and general accounting to negotiating when buying a house.

Completion of a course grants you “certification,” which is a British designation, but it’s still kind of fun.

5. MIT OPEN COURSEWARE

If you always wanted to attend a big-name school like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, now you can do the next best thing by taking many of its courses for free from your home on your own time. The MIT Open Courseware site posts course materials from a wide variety of classes you can search by department.

Choosing a course will show you when it was originally taught and by whom, and will give you access to the syllabus, course calendar, readings, assignments and study materials. You can download the course materials and work through the course at your own pace.

6. ACADEMIC EARTH

If you’d like a broader collection of courses than MIT provides, Academic Earth is a great place to look. This free course aggregator has a stunning collection of courses from around 50 universities across the globe. You can search by source or general subject.

Don’t miss the curated playlists on topics such as natural laws, the nature of evil and the economic crisis. The video electives—with subjects like how to take a punch and why World War II made us fat—are lots of fun, too.

7. OPEN LEARNING INSTITUTE

The Open Learning Institute from Carnegie Mellon University allows access to a handful of course materials so you can learn at your own pace from the same kind of materials and self-guided assessments that would be used in a classroom. Their offerings are limited, but there’s a lot of detail in the coursework. Instructor-led courses are also sometimes available.

8. OPEN CULTURE

This site isn’t very pretty, but Open Culture does boast a collection of more than 700 downloadable courses, including college-level, certificate-bearing classes, language lessons, educational materials for K-12 and more.

There are also just some interesting links that aren’t to courses but you’ll still learn something from, such as this post on a reading list suggested by Ernest Hemingway.

9. OPEN EDUCATION DATABASE

The well-designed Open Education Database claims more than 10,000 courses from universities from around the world. Search by topic and you’ll see the number of full courses, as well as which courses have audio lessons, video lessons or mixed media, so you can learn in whatever way you like.

You can also use this site to learn about online and offline schools, should you choose to continue your education in a more formal way.

10. ITUNES U

Many of these same online courses can be accessed away from your computer with the help of iTunes U, a free app that can be downloaded to you iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. It says that it includes 500,000 different courses, with material ranging from elementary school to college-level.

There’s also educational material here from respected institutions like the New York Public Library and MoMA. You can also add notes to the videos, share with friends and keep your course materials in iBooks so you have everything you need to learn wherever you are.

11. TED

The TED talks are a legendary source of information on all sorts of topics, and any discussion of how to educate yourself for free online needs to include them. There are now thousands of videos on all sorts of topics available on the site.

If you’re a fan of whimsy you can also get the site to suggest a fascinating, beautiful or informative video for you, among other tags. This may not be formal education but it certainly can be life-changing.

12. 99U

Love videos by experts on all sorts of topics? After you visit TED, check out99U, which is another great source of educational videos on all sorts of topics. It has a strong focus on the subject of creativity, business development and innovation, so it’s sure to be of interest if you’re an entrepreneur or in a creative line of work.

13. IGNITE

If you want to learn something new and you’re really pressed for time, check out Ignite videos. The purpose of this series of speaking events is to have each person share something innovative or inspiring in just five minutes. Sounds silly, but you can get a big dose of greatness in a short amount of time.

14. WIKIVERSITY

If you prefer your learning to be text-based, check out Wikiversity. As you might imagine, this site is part of the Wikimedia Foundation and includes detailed pages on a variety of subjects. It includes information of value to learners from preschool to college and beyond, and like other wiki projects is open-source and collaborative.

This is a good site or browsing, and the “random” button is a lot of fun.

15. PROJECT GUTENBERG

Access more than 4,200 free ebooks at Project Gutenberg, an excellent source for public domain books from throughout history as well as contemporary free ebooks. You’ll find literature, historic documents, nonfiction books on all sorts of subjects and much more, all free and downloadable to your computer or ereader.

16. BARTLEBY

A similar resource is Bartleby, which boasts a large collection of reference works, poetry, fiction and nonfiction. There are some really great resources here such as The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction, Oxford Shakespeare, Bullfinch’s Mythology, Bartlett’s Quotations and much more.

This is a great site to look at if you’re looking for quotes about a specific subject or just want to delve into the classics you probably should have read in school.

17. THE FREE LIBRARY

Boasting a collection of more than 21 million free articles and books, The Free Library is the place to go for access to newspapers, magazines, journal articles (from 1984 to the present) and classic books. It’s a great place to start if you’re doing research for an academic paper or just want to find out more about a particular topic.

You can search by keyword or browse by source, topic or author, or just look at random articles and see what develops.

18. UDACITY

Video courses in math, computer science, business, physics and psychology are available for free at Udacity. This clean site is easy to navigate and has the added bonus of a little icon next to the videos that shows you how advanced a course is so you know to start with an easier course if you’re new to a subject.

19. YOUTUBE

It seems that just about anything you could ever want to learn is available these days on YouTube for instant, bite-sized, free consumption. Browse channels to find general topics that interest you, or search for the specific thing you want to learn and you’ll be on your way in no time.

There are more than 6,000 channels in the science and education section, more than 600 in cooking and nearly 2,000 in DIY, so whatever you want to educate yourself about you’re sure to find something good here.

20. GOOGLE, ETC.

The search engines are a great place to start if you have something specific you are looking for. Google in particular provides a great overview of subjects right in your browser. Search for a person and you’ll get a mini bio without clicking on any other pages, and you’ll have lots of places to go for more information. This is your best bet if you’re looking for specialized information, because all of these sites are general and Google can let you know the best places to go to find exactly what you’re looking for.