Husky Getting Nervous At His First Swimming Lesson

What do you think is required from a person to succeed ?

I study successful people on a daily basis and it’s one of my favorite hobbies. I read their biographies, befriend them, interact with them regularly, and learn from them. Most important personality traits I’ve isolated and identified:

Required

Discipline (linked with consistency): Work ethic, dedication, timeliness, organization, and consistency of effort. On consistency, it’s okay to change your mind (Ne-dom and Ne-aux types, are you listening to me right now?) but change your mind within a consistent framework. For example, DO: “If x doesn’t happen, we’ll change our method and try y.” For example, DON’T: “Let’s do A, B, C, M, Z, Y, K, your mom, Jumanji, I’m coming in to work today but not tomorrow, nm I won’t be coming in at all, let’s study cars, let’s study balloons, hey let’s go over here, there, everywhere.” Being inconsistent will lose the trust and respect of your peers and superiors. It’s also annoying as shit.

Competence: Every successful person has a ‘pocket skill’, something they’re exceptionally good at, something they’ve practiced and perfected, and something they’re known for. Warren Buffett for investment, Ben Carson for pediatric neurosurgery, Roger Federer for tennis, etc. Never stop learning and developing your craft.

Charisma: Communication skills, listening skills, people skills, networking skills, compassion, empathy. The ability to understand people, what they want, what they need, and how to convey your thoughts and ideas to them with impeccable clarity and precision. To be successful you must have the ability to make people not only like you, but trust and respect you.

Resilience: The emotional, mental, and psychological fortitude to endure stress, the ability to recover from failure and setbacks, the physical strength to work long hours. To be successful you must be able to endure pain, discomfort, disappointment, and fatigue because nothing will come easy and the road is long and hard.

Passion: The strong belief in a goal or cause, the commitment to achieve high levels of performance to serve that goal or cause. Passion is not the same as ambition.

Summary

Successful people are disciplined and consistent. 

Successful people are skilled at something. 

Successful people are liked, trusted, and respected.

Successful people are durable and undeterred. 

Successful people have a sense of purpose. 

Optional (and helpful), but not required

Intelligence: All the thinkers will be surprised that I listed intelligence is optional, but it is. There are a lot of smart people who never make it in life for various reasons. Filtering the external factors (like being born in a third world country or a war zone), discipline is the key differentiating factor between an intelligent person who succeeds and one who fails.

Money: It’ll help expedite your way to success, but it’s not required.

Krishna and Rukmini for the Compass Rose meme. Thanks.😄

North

first encounter | (turnabout is) fair play | fool’s gold | forbidden fruit | the female of the species is more deadly than the male

They watch her, eyes glittering with greed, and anger tightens Rukmini’s throat once more: to this crowd of shameless men, she is no more than a prize, a possession that their friend has already claimed.

She forces herself to smile.

Let them look; they will never have more than this illusion of her, docile and demure. They are fools, each and every one of them, and treasure knows better than to stay in their hands.

South

(cold) comfort | confession | cloak and dagger |  crocodile tears | charmed life

Perhaps it is a tad dramatic to send a secret letter.

Rukmini cannot bring herself to regret it, though: always she has been wise Rukmini, prudent Rukmini, Rukmini to whom all answers are known. Some might suppose it was only that she craved some excitement in her life; so, at least, her brother supposes in her fury.

But in truth, she has as much of a taste for intrigue as her husband — and when one feels so, when one fights for her very life, who would not expect wise and prudent Rukmini to plot and scheme?

East

stars | songs and stories | (politics/misery makes for) strange bedfellows | silver lining | sea change

Someday, Rukmini knows, Dwaraka will return to the sea. She does not regret this: her kingdom, though beautiful, is but borrowed from the ocean, and outsiders may not enjoy his bounty for long.

No, what she dreads is that Dwaraka dares not abandon its duty while Krishna lives, but he cannot do so forever. Someday, Rukmini knows, Krishna must return to the heavens from which he came—and that day shall be her last on this earth.

West

just in time | joined at the hip | jam tomorrow | juvenile | journey’s end

Her heart stops a dozen times, once for every step that leads down the Devi temple. She feels alone, flanked though she is by waiting-women—at least until she hears the thunder of trotting horses.

A hand takes hers, and tugs her into the chariot; Rukmini laughs in delight.

“I trust,” says Krishna, “that I am not too late.”

“Not at all,” Rukmini replies, in every bit as excessively solemn a tone. “You are just in time.”

They beam at each other.

Snowstorm | Original by Great Wide World Photography

Taken in Alberta, Canada 

Please don’t remove credits

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What advice or suggestion would you give for a person who is trying to develop their inferior Te? Would there be any signs of improvement after doing so?

Combined with the following ask:

Hi, INTJ here. I think my Te is sort of…wonky. Do you have any advice about how to go about developing it? Also, I’d just like to say that I really like your blog. You offer very helpful and informational insight. Thanks! 

Anyone who wants to develop Te (extroverted thinking) needs to practice the scientific method in their daily lives. Cognitive functions are like muscles and need to be exercised to strengthen and refine. I’d develop Te by setting small “SMART” goals (”SMART” is defined as: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound) and working towards them. Examples:

Aiming for a specific grade in a school subject

Ex: Raise grade to 85% in Calculus II by the end of the semester

Setting a target weight to reach through diet and exercise by a certain time

Ex: Lose 10 pounds by the end of the month

Ex 2: Run 1 mile in under 10 minutes by the end of August

Learning a new coding language/instrument/art form with a set level of proficiency

Ex: Be able to play [song] by [composer] by mom’s birthday

Planning an event with an attendance/donation goal

Ex: Raise $500 to fight AIDS for AIDS Walk by the event deadline

Ex 2: Register 50 new people in the bone marrow registry by your birthday

Winning a competition (athletic, gaming, academic)

Ex: Earn first place in Science Olympiad

I’d then formulate a plan to best achieve the goal through research and logical estimation. Examples:

Goal: Raise grade to 85% in Calculus II by the end of the semester

Plan: Enroll in campus tutoring, attend Professor’s office hours every week, do 15 problems per day in the textbook, redo all the mistakes on the test until you understand the concepts

Goal: Lose 10 pounds by the end of the month

Plan: Cut food portions in half, drink 2 liters of water per day, stop eating junk food, increase vegetable and fruit intake, exercise 30 minutes per day

Goal: Register 50 new people in the bone marrow registry by your birthday

Plan: Engage social media (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr), advocate on campus, connect with family members and friends, distribute flyers in class. run ads in the school newspaper

Finally, I’d execute the plan. This might sound obvious but it’s not. The majority of people make elaborate and grandiose plans only to give up on them without even trying. Do what you planned– you’ll either succeed and gain confidence or you’ll fail and gain knowledge and experience. Either way, you’re better off than when you started. If you aim to lose 10 lbs but only lose 5 lbs then you’ve failed at your goal but you’re still 5 lbs lighter.

One of Te’s biggest strengths isn’t that it’s always right (far from it), it’s that it’s not afraid to be wrong. Being wrong simply means more data and more input to refine the process, refine the method, and refine the plan to attack the problem or goal again much stronger, faster, and wiser than before. Te knows that it doesn’t know until an attempt is made because the results from the effort will reveal new information that planning and brainstorming can’t possibly predict. Te dares to try, fail, and succeed.

For inferior Te types like INFPs and ISFPs the most obvious improvement I’ve seen is taking all those inner thoughts and dreams and turning them into reality. INFPs and ISFPs who can organize their thoughts, align their goals with a realistic strategy, abandon that feeling of despair from overwhelming odds stacked against them, and execute that strategy have a seismic effect on the people and environment around them.

"Remember how long you've been putting this off, how many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn't use them. At some point you have to recognize what world it is that you belong to; what power rules it and from what source you spring; that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return."

Marcus Aurelius - Meditations, Book 2, 4.

5 AU Headcanons: Rama Accompanies Sita Into Exile

For @marauderstar!

1. There are more than a few similarities between Rama’s first exile and his second.

Sita’s presence at his side is, of course, the most important: a constant of the universe save for those terrible months when it hadn’t been. Even now his stomach rebels at the remembrance; even now he reaches unconsciously for her hand to reassure himself she hasn’t somehow been stolen away once more.

The second is this: the aching, burning necessity to flee before he can be stopped. Before it had been Father’s men and the subjects of Ayodhya. Now it is no less than his own brothers. Already Lakshmana has protested loudly at not being allowed along, but Rama cannot do Urmila such injustice twice. And should he be persuaded to allow her presence, why, then there were Bharat and Shatrughan already cross at having been once left behind, along with their their wives—which didn’t even begin to account what their mothers might say. Before he knows it, Rama is sure, he would find himself housing his entire family in the woods and he doesn’t even want to begin to speculate how enormous a cottage that would require. Surely more than he and Lakshmana could assemble in a single afternoon.

No, Rama decides, and a faint smile flickers across his face (as has been the case every other time he happens to remember the swell of his wife’s stomach; a cottage for three will so quite well enough.

2. So long as he remembers he has wanted to be King.

Wanted, perhaps, is not the right word; expected is better, and expected by everyone else better still—and yet even that doesn’t explain his readiness to give it all up for a single rumor.

Ravana, he knows with bone-deep assurance, had both wanted and expected to be King, craved it to maintain his conception of the world. All too easily Rama could become much the same, and he recoils from it. Ravana was a monster for many reasons, least of which was his ancestry; and Rama would not become his shadow, not for a kingdom that turned on his wife for no fault of her own. 

Not for a kingdom that wants him but does not need him, not the way it believes it does. 

3. As it happens he doesn’t need to build any sort of cottage at all. Rama, who is guiltily remembering that Lakshmana was far more successful at the brothers’ architectural ambitions he last time around is not a little relieved when they stumble, almost literally, upon the hermitage of a worn wary man who calls himself Valmiki.

“I am afraid,” Rama feels the need to confess, almost as soon as Valmiki’s invitation to stay is spoken, “that we—we come bearing scandal.”

Valmiki’s mouth quirks into a sudden grin, one that was once (as Rama will discover) the terror of travelers passing alongside this road. “Rest assured,” he replies, with such good humor Rama cannot refuse him, “that I am no stranger to scandal myself.”

4. Their warm welcome, it soon turns out, is due as much to their host’s kindness as to the fact that he is composing an epic on Rama’s exploits. Rama flushes to hear of it, and all the more to listen to line after line of his supposed virtues, but Sita laughs outright–and takes impish delight in suggesting all the more wilder exaggerations when asked by Valmiki to confirm the facts as she knows them.

“This bow,” Valmiki says, “by which your husband won your hand–”

“Six feet long,” Sita replies promptly, sketching out unrealistic dimensions with her hands, “and twice a man’s weight to draw.”

Rama groans. “Half a man’s. If that much.”

“Did I say six feet?” Sita very nearly manages not to giggle. “Surely I meant eight.”

“Eight?”

“Perhaps, dear daughter,” says the poet, straight-faced; “you might be mistaken. Ten seems far more likely.”

By the time that afternoon’s composing is complete, the bow is twelve feet and Rama utterly mortified–but Sita is laughing, and Valmiki humming with satisfaction, and Rama can bear a bit of mortification for that.

5. There are two boys, not one; the first already boasting a head of dark hair that stands upright like spikes of kusha grass, the second golden and grasping for his father’s finger.

Rama reels with the wonder of it, and all the more with the knowledge that he has a lifetime with them, years to watch them grow into the men they are meant to be. This must be what his father had always wanted for him, Dasharatha who had performed a thousand prayers for just that life. He would give up a hundred kingdoms for that, a thousand; he is certain–no matter how much news might trickle out from Ayodhya that its citizens still mourn their lost son, that its King swears to perform the Aswamedha Yagna in twelve years’ time, should he be reunited with its brother by its end. 

There are two boys, not one; and they are both perfect. Sita is well, and happy, and they have a home. 

Rama wants nothing more.

HOUSE OF THE MEAN GIRLS