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On Friday night, the host of a concert where I was playing stepped in front of the audience after one of the pieces and asked people what sorts of mental images the music had stirred up in them. About a dozen people came up with a variety of answers.

Want to live and breathe easier in life and relationships? Here's a good place to start.

Darning socks is something I’ve done since I was a kid.  This was yet another weird thing I did that my mother thought was hilarious. I understand there aren’t many of you that want to know how to darn a sock, but if you have a favourite pair and particularly long toenails, it’s something that might interest you.

I love ACX.com and I am all in with my fiction there, but I’m also a podcaster and after years of doing my own interviews and audio, I decided to read my own non-fiction audiobook, and sell it direct! Here’s how.

My "10-minute rule" is pretty straightforward: Every task on your to-do list should take no more than 10 minutes to complete. If it takes longer than 10 minutes, then you should have broken it down into smaller tasks or delegated it to someone else. The key to this rule is in enforcing it, which means setting the timer on your phone to go off at the 10-minute mark. The level of speed and focus that this brings to your day is nothing short of astounding.

If you’ve just finished decorating your room but find yourself staring at a blank wall, you’ve got one more project ahead of you. Wall art is often the most ignored but most important element in interior design. The right piece of wall art can provide focal point, color and texture to a room, creating an overall impression of harmony.

What are some of the behaviors we all need to unlearn to become effective leaders? Here are the ones Brügmann says she encounters most often.

Shin bones decorate the ceiling, skulls line the walls and over 21,000 bodies are buried in the basement.

The Idea of leaving traditional employment and seeking the entrepreneurial or freelance lifestyle is a choice that many have decided to make for this year. Maybe you want to quit your job and start that bakery business you always dreamed of, or maybe you want to follow a life long passion such as writing or doing tasks that you are qualified to do. Knowing the commitment you will have to make and how it will fit into your life is very important.  Entrepreneurs and freelancers play different roles in society, but make no mistake, they are both key in our economy and to its growth. How do you decide if you want to be an entrepreneur or freelancer?

Airdancers—better known as wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men—are staples in used car parking lots and discount stores everywhere. The ubiquitous dancer exists thanks to famous Trinidadian artist Peter Minshall, who designed puppets for Carnival. For the 1996 Summer Olympics, Marshall was commissioned to help create the opening for the Atlanta-based games, according to the video above from Great Big Story. He designed the inflatable tube man and enlisted the help of engineer Doron Gazit to make it a reality. Unfortunately for Minshall, Gazit ended up getting a patent for the design—notoriously, without the artist—and now the wacky inflatable arm men are everywhere.

Here’s how to grow your business without a lot of money and resources.

You’re good enough. You’re capable and probably doing really well today. You just have to realize that. Here are 10 ways to start appreciating yourself...

If you've ever felt like being MacGyver was a feasible career choice for yourself, we can help. As it turns out, it is possible to combine a few seemingly normal household items together to create something awesome, VOLTRON-style.

Every revolutionary age produces its own kind of nostalgia. Faced with the enormous social and economic upheavals at the nineteenth century’s end, learned Victorians like Walter Pater, John Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold looked to High Church models and played the bishops of Western culture, with a monkish devotion to preserving and transmitting old texts and traditions and turning back to simpler ways of life. It was in 1909, the nadir of this milieu, before the advent of modernism and world war, that The Harvard Classics took shape. Compiled by Harvard’s president Charles W. Eliot and called at first Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf, the compendium of literature, philosophy, and the sciences, writes Adam Kirsch in Harvard Magazine, served as a “monument from a more humane and confident time” (or so its upper classes believed), and a “time capsule…. In 50 volumes.”

We love seeing our home state represented on the big screen. Some people don’t know that Pennsylvania has a rich cinematic history, from Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh and in between. Many directors have brought their film crews here to create scenes that have become iconic to the American psyche. Read on to discover where these famous moments were created.

The Book on Rental Property Investing, written by real estate investor and co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast Brandon Turner, contains nearly 400 pages of in-depth advice and strategies for building wealth through rental properties. You’ll learn how to build an achievable plan, find incredible deals, pay for your rentals, and much, more more! If you’ve ever thought of using rental properties to build wealth or obtain financial freedom, this book is a “must read.” Pick up your copy today!

Overhauling your life, whether it’s your home, job or your relationship, can seem an impossible task. But these five self-help gurus are here to get you started.

Runners, in particular can reap gigantic benefits from practicing yoga — deep stretching after a run will keep your muscles long and loose as well as prevent soreness and stiffness caused by the buildup of lactic acid. Not to mention, it can teach you to cope with the discomfort and intensity of both long runs and tempo runs — practitioners of yoga see a heightened ability to control emotions while running. We're not saying you have to attend an hour yoga class twice a week — you can hold poses or run through a quick sequence before or after your runs.

How many times have you gone to open a can of tomato sauce and misplaced the can opener? Not anymore! It turns out that there is an easy way to open a can without a can opener. This incredible video by the CrazyRussianHacker shows exactly what you should do if you ever find yourself in that situation again.

Do you really think Steve Jobs paused several times a day to look upon a task list and asked himself, “What’s my next action?”. Do you really think Mark Cuban has a long list of to-dos that he sorts by A1, A2, B1, B2, B3, C1, and so on?

Whether you want to learn a new language, learn to cook, take up a musical instrument, or just get more out of the books you read, it helps to know how your brain learns.

People always say health is the most important thing but how many people live by this belief? We need to start today. In order to help us stay on the path to health I have translated an extract from one of the Shaolin Classics. Written by a monk who was a great martial artist and scholar, here he gives advice to lay people as to how to stay young and healthy.

Success is not a part time thing, it’s not a full time thing, it’s an all the time thing.

Most of us have been tempted to splash our hard-earned wages on a designer handbag. But, after taking one look at the eye-watering price tag, buying second-hand seems like a desirable option. However, you need to proceed with caution: designer totes are some of the most counterfeited items in the world and it's crucial to know you're getting the real deal.

Winter’s here, and for lots of us, that means dealing with a foggy windshield full of condensation when we go to start our cars. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t take that long for your defroster to clear your windshield, but if you’re harried and already late for work, that extra time waiting can feel like an eternity. And it’s no good to be driving around looking through a half-obscured windshield like a dingus.

In his surreal year as a protégé, Tom Shoval found himself on the red carpet at the Oscars for a short film he co-wrote and also spent weeks on set in the Canadian Rockies with the Academy Award-winning director of ‘Birdman’, Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Apple, Microsoft, Sony. Seeing their logos can evoke an emotional response, linking their userbase with their ideals. On the flip side, if poorly designed, these symbols can also make a company look out of touch or a little strange.

In the office, your desk is your command center. And experts said how well it's organized can help set the tone and productivity level at work.

If there's a mathematical idea that applies itself to almost everything in everyday life but is almost unknown outside the scientific world, the Fourier transform has to be the most unsung contender. It pops up wherever scientists need to study complex things that fluctuate in the real world – sound, heat, light, stock prices – and has been used to separate the signal from the noise in data collected for astronomy, medicine, genetics and chemistry. It is also the main equation used in the compression of digital images and sound on the web.

We get distracted. Easily settle in ruts. Get comfortable. Lose track of what really matters. Once you go through these cycles enough number of times, you realize that it is not really that hard. It doesn’t have to be all that hard. All you have to do is focus on the 1%.

Novelists, poets and artists can help us to piece together the mystery of human consciousness, says Mark Haddon.

When you hear the term “Swiss Design” the first thing you might think of is clean, minimal, and modern. While all of those descriptions do fit, there’s much more to it than that. The use of lines, colors (or lack thereof), shapes, and personality is what make Swiss Design unique. Incorporate these 10 Swiss-inspired lessons below to make your designs truly epic.

Successful people are not necessarily smarter or luckier than most. They simply understand that, as Aristotle said, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit." Here are 15 things that exceptional people think, say, and do every day to achieve their success.

There are many arguments for and against flat design, so in this article I wanted to take a quick look at how flat design can actually affect your bottom line. When it comes to arguments, nothing speaks louder than actual dollars. I examine three case studies where flat design has increased conversion rates (and in some cases sales!) and how you can apply these to your next project.

People’s decisions — good or bad — can be predicted by how big their pupils are moments before they even make the decision, a new study finds.

We’ve rounded up our favorite secret streets in some of the most sought-after destinations worldwide. Read on for the list, or jump ahead to your city of interest: Barcelona; Beijing;Boston; Chicago; London; Los Angeles; Maui; Rome; San Francisco; and Tokyo.

The forces that drain your bucket aren’t all negative, of course. To live a productive life, it can be important to have some of the things flowing out of your bucket. Working hard in the gym, at school, or at the office allows you to produce something of value. But even positive outputs are still outputs and they drain your energy accordingly. These outputs are cumulative. Even a little leak can result in significant water loss over time.

Do you ever have that feeling that everyone else is more successful than you? If you think that's bad - try being Leonardo Da Vinci. This is the first of a two-part series on our distorted view of creativity and success.

It isn't enough simply to sign a bunch of papers establishing an estate plan and other end-of-life instructions. You also have to make your heirs aware of them and leave the documents where they can find them.

One bit of realism that corny '80s action movies brought to cinema is the one-liner: as we have mentioned before, soldiers have a surprising way with words when it comes to those badass boasts we all wish we could think of with when faced with a threatening situation. Not only do they have ample ability to come up with zingers, they often manage to chuck them out with deadly accuracy while staring death right in the eye until its bony balls shrivel and it skulks away grumbling.

If we could just have one less unhealthy food per month, by the end of the year we would increase our energy, decrease our risk for many diseases and improve our over all quality of life. What we put into our body has a direct correlation over time with how we feel both physically and emotionally. We all know about the "sleepiness" that comes after having a meal loaded with carbs … or the indigestion that may come with having a large meal too close to time for bed… or even how having too much dairy or red meat and not enough water may make us constipated. There are many foods that cause inflammation, and disease and while we don’t have to eliminate everything that we love to feel healthy, there are a few that we should consciously avoid whenever possible. Here are 5 foods to consider removing from your diet this year!

True power resides in the present moment. We can tap into the present moment in many ways and it first involves turning off the phones, computers, TV’s and anything that might distract you once you begin. We are so often caught up in the past and reacting from past patterns and behaviors. Tapping into the present moment grants us the ability to assess how we are feeling; what is feeling wonderful? and what is feeling “off”? Presence also grants us the peace of mind we need to be in to receive guidance. As this world keeps moving faster and faster it becomes more and more challenging to get that quiet time. I am happy to offer you five (5) ways to tap into the present moment so you can move forward with clarity and purpose.

Whether you play weekly, join the office pool, or swear off gambling entirely, everyone can learn a little something from those hapless souls whose lives took a turn for the worse when their lottery dreams came true.

The first true e-commerce transaction didn’t happen until 1994 with the advent of the Internet as we more or less know it today. Though Pizza Hut often gets credit for the first e-commerce transaction (they started selling pizzas online in late August 1994) the actual credit goes to Dan Kohn, a 21-year-old entrepreneur who ran a website based in New Hampshire called NetMarket.

This list — a compilation of exotic fare and basic duos — represents the symbiosis of texture, aroma and, most importantly, taste. But this guide should act as a springboard, not an unyielding rulebook, for your own adventures in the kitchen this new year.

You’ve done all the hard work to create a stellar LinkedIn profile. You have a professional headshot, a compelling headline and a complete, authentic summary (if you are still working on this, read this post for guidance). When LinkedIn says your profile is “all-star,” it’s time to turn your hard work into a tool that will advance your career. Here are seven actions to take (in four categories) to maximize the value of your perfect profile:

When you overthink, your judgments get cloudy and your stress gets elevated. You spend too much time in the negative. It can become difficult to act.

Winter loses its appeal, and the cold weather is no longer beautiful, romantic, crisp or exhilarating. It is just winter: Cold, gray and apparently lasting for the rest of your life. Which is why the winter holiday in a warmer climate was invented — and also probably why nine of TripAdvisor's 10 most popular destinations for U.S. travelers this winter are to warm weather locales.

If you throw a frog into boiling water, it’ll jump straight out. However, if it’s placed in cold water and the temperature gradually increased, it’ll be found dead without any attempt to escape. We’ve all experienced that subtle death. Neuromarketing takes advantage of that vast blind-spot beyond our conscious awareness; leveraging psychological phenomenons in subtle ways to lead us into certain decisions. Here are 10 subtle neuromarketing strategies to start leveraging:

If you’re like most photographers, nothing gets you more excited than a new tip or trick that can help you make your photographs more awe inspiring. The problem is that a lot of these processes can take some time to learn and execute correctly. Pretty quickly you realize that it may take you more than a few tries to master the new technique to become a better photographer.