Entrepreneurs are never at a loss for unsolicited advice from others who have “been there and done that.”

But sometimes, it’s hard for new business owners to decipher which nuggets of wisdom are helpful and which will actually do harm.

As a new entrepreneur, you will undoubtedly make wrong turns when you start your own business, but it’s better to own your mistakes instead of following bad advice that leads you down the wrong path.

In order to help you determine what to avoid, here is a list of some of the worst advice successful entrepreneurs — such as Warren Buffett and Mark Cuban — have ever received.

SEE ALSO: Burt's Bees cofounder Burt Shavitz died at age 80 — here's his crazy success story

Warren Buffett: "Don't go into the securities business."

For her book "Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966-2011," author Carol Loomis asked Buffett, "What was the best advice you ever received?"

Loomis told ABC News, "I was genuinely surprised when all [Buffett] wanted to talk about was the worst advice."

According to her, Buffett's father and his mentor, Benjamin Graham, told Buffett when he wasn't yet 21 that he shouldn't go into the securities business. Why? Because it was bad timing. Buffett told Loomis, "Maybe their advice was their polite way of saying that before I started selling stocks, I needed to mature a little, or I wasn't going to be successful."

But as we've seen, the investor ignored that piece of advice and went on to become an extremely successful investor with a net worth of $67.4 billion.

Related: 7 Investing Mistakes Warren Buffett Regrets

Barbara Corcoran: "You can’t do it alone."

An insult from a former boyfriend and business partner ended up being Barbara Corcoran’s worst and best piece of business advice. The businesswoman and "Shark" on ABC's "Shark Tank" told Business Insider, “The best advice was the worst advice ... It was from my boyfriend and partner in my first business, The Corcoran-Simone Company, when he told me I would never succeed without him."

She added, “But thank God he insulted me because I would not have built a big business without that insult. It kept me trying everything because I couldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing me fail.”

Read: 13 Million-Dollar Businesses That Turned Down 'Shark Tank' Deals

Mark Cuban: "Follow your passions."

In an interview with ABC News' Rebecca Jarvis last year, Mark Cuban answered multiple rapid-fire questions. When asked about the worst piece of advice he ever received, Cuban answered, "Follow your passions. Instead, you should follow your effort."

Sometimes, it's hard — or impossible — to find a career that falls in line with your passion. If your passion doesn't help you earn a living, you should find something you're good at, work hard at it and embark on that career path.

For most of us, it seems there's never enough time in the day. We all have the same 24 hours, so why is it that some people achieve so much more than others?

The answer lies in good time management. High achievers know how to use their time effectively, and they avoid the common mistakes that most of us fall prey to.

Learn how to master your time by making yourself aware of these time-wasting traps:

1. A DIY fixation.

Do you insist on controlling or doing all the work yourself because you can't trust anyone else to do it correctly? Time to learn the subtle art of saying yes to the person, but no to the task. This skill helps you assert yourself as the leader and manage your time.

2. Operating without a goal.

If you don't have clear goals and well-defined objectives, odds are that your work lacks direction and purpose. When you have goals, you know how to work hard and to achieve those goals. But when you just go from day to day doing whatever comes your way, you end up with poor results (or no results at all).

3. Misplaced priorities.

One of the easiest ways to waste time is by failing to distinguish between what's important and what's urgent. When we make everything urgent, we cannot get to what is important. Start with what's important instead. Hack away at the inessential and the inflated emergencies, and make what's important a priority.

4. Distraction.

One of the most important tools for gaining control of time and doing your best work is knowing how to minimize distractions and manage interruptions. Learn to turn off your phone and stop the pings from social media and email. Practice focused work and improve your concentration so you know how to mange your distractions.

5. Busy-ness.

Some people think being busy is being productive. But if none of it is helping you to meet your deadlines or give attention where it's needed, there's not much value to it besides an adrenaline buzz. "Busy" isn't a synonym for "effective," so slow down.

6. Multitasking.

When you're doing more than one task at a time, it's a near certainty that you're not doing any of them well. A more effective approach is to take things off your to-do list one item at a time on the basis of priority and deadline. You'll be less scattered and produce better work.

7. Procrastination.

When you put off important tasks, you feel guilty and stressed, with a growing sense of dread. Eventually it catches up with you and you end up slamming something together at the last minute, which hurts the quality of your work and leaves you feeling unsatisfied with what you've done.

The way you manage time is the way you manage your leadership. Spend a little effort identifying and overcoming your most common time management challenges. The benefits will be significant, immediate, and sustainable.

SEE ALSO: 21 time-management lessons everyone should learn in their 20s

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While there is no question that what you say matters, studies suggest the words you use make up just 7% of the impact you have.

The remaining 93% is split between your body language and tone.

That's why it's imperative to master the nonverbal cues you send. And since a presenter has only about 60 seconds to hook the audience, it's important to get them right from the start.

We spoke with Darlene Price, president of Well Said, Inc., and author of "Well Said!," about mastering the art of nonverbal communication. Scroll down to see her tips. 

SEE ALSO: The 3 communication skills every leader needs to master

Control your facial expressions.

Oftentimes, we have no idea what our faces are communicating. "Because our facial expressions are closely tied to emotion, they are often involuntary and unconscious," Price says.

Letting our emotions get the best of us can negatively affect the impression we give, whether it's a presentation or a one-on-one conversation. To avoid a misunderstanding, hold a slight smile, nod occasionally, and make sure you show interest, she advises.

Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.

"Make sure 'business casual' is not 'business careless,'" Price says.

Professional attire, such as suits or jackets, should be worn to important meetings and presentations, especially with senior leaders and customers, she says. It's also important to avoid showy accessories, busy patterns, and tight or revealing garments.

Concentrate on the tone of your voice.

Price cites the common phrase: "It's not what you said; it's how you said it." If someone has ever said this to you, they are referring to your paralanguage, or tone, she says. 

"Separate from the actual words used, these nonverbal elements of your voice include voice tone, pacing, pausing, volume, inflection, pitch, and articulation," Price says. Recording a few of your conversations can be a good way to identify the emotions your tone communicates, she says.

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At some point in your career, you’ve likely dealt with a stressful situation.

Frazzled, freaked out, and frayed-at-the-ends are just some ways to describe the experience of emotional and psychological strain we call stress. It is known to cause health problems and can contribute to poor performance at work.

Beyond just gritting our teeth and baring it, taking the perspective that certain kinds of stress can be helpful is actually supported by science. Dr. Kirstin Aschbacher of the University of California in San Francisco found that if a person wasn’t too harried to begin with, short bursts of intense stress actually helped protect cells against the effects of aging. Of course, the emphasis in this study as on the benefits afforded to test subjects who were more relaxed to begin with. But this study does fly in the face of an approach to stress that would have to seek and destroy anything that might excite the nervous system.

So how can you work with stress in a way that motivates and contributes to your general well being if eliminating it is not just unlikely but potentially unhealthy?

1. Evaluate stressors without judgement

Make a point to honestly evaluate your relationship to the things you find stressful. According to management consultant Dr. Karl Albrecht, stress tends to fall into four general categories: time stress, anticipatory stress, situational stress, and encounter stress. Take note during your day of what experiences start to make you feel stressed out, what thoughts and stories come up during those experiences, and what your go-to activity tends to be. Try to think of this as research, and leave any self-judgment or aggression out of it. You can use a notebook to be reflective. You don’t need to change anything yet, but you just want to start noticing how stress operates in your life.

2. Manage the smaller stresses on a regular basis

According to Dr. Aschbacher’s recent research, your ability to confront stress head on in small quantities is similar to building a muscle. You actually increase your capacity to manage stress by dealing with the smaller, daily frustrations regularly, and right away. This also helps ensure that you don’t wait until your breaking point forces you to deal with those issues.

Based on your earlier reflection, you can challenge yourself to confront those smaller, daily frustrations in the workplace. Maybe the most stressful part of your day is interacting with people in the office kitchen, and you usually deal with it by avoiding it altogether. Or maybe the stress of having your hard work go unacknowledged by a manager is wearing on you. Start building that well-being muscle by taking the small steps necessary to be proactive about your experience.

Even if the steps you take don’t ultimately ‘fix’ the problem, the sense of taking charge can help alleviate some of the strain. Notice the areas where you react instead of respond. Do you tend to postpone making decisions about certain topics? Make those pressure points a priority for action.  If you can cultivate a habit of dealing with things in a timely manner, with some forethought rather than rumination, you’ll start to feel like more of an active participant in your daily life.

3. Find a happy medium

A small amount of stress can inspire, help you prepare, and help with focus and cognitive tasks. Richard Shelton, MD, vice chair for research in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, points out that low levels of stress in the system can actually inspire the body to create chemicals that connect the neurons in our brains. Too much, though, and you might trigger a fight, flight or freeze response.

So what’s the sweet spot? Consider your earlier reflection, and think about the areas of your life where that burst of energy can serve as motivation. Notice, without judging yourself, when that tips into a more extreme impact by looking at the accompanying behaviors. When does the motivation turn into a reason to drink to excess or avoid interacting with people? Be flexible, and remember that you can always choose to adjust.

4. Understand that stressful situations will happen

Accepting that most jobs will involve some degree of discomfort changes your relationship to the experience of fear, the emotion that underlies our experience of stress. It’s helpful here to remember that like stress, fear, pain, and discomfort are not in themselves wholly negative. Fear helps us avoid danger, and pain helps us realize when we need to bring our attention to an issue, whether it’s a hand that’s accidentally touched a hot pan or an unacknowledged need in the workplace.

But in addition to accepting that these aspects of experience can be useful, we can also strategize to eliminate the sources of pain and fear that are reasonable and healthy to eliminate. If a manager is being abusive, or stress has reached an unhealthy point, then removing yourself from the situation and seeking help might be the best option.

The point here is not to frustrate yourself further, but to take what you learned while reflecting and discern between what is important to accept, and what is important to let go. One way to do this is to remember the bigger picture. Having clearly defined career goals and knowing what your needs and values are in advance can help clarify what is worth it to put up with and what is a sign that you should make changes.

Lots of people offer advice about how to deal with very specific workplace situations, but when it comes down to it, you’re the only person who really knows if a decision feels right.

5. Don’t feel bad about being stressed!

The worst part about feeling stressed out is often the story you start telling yourself about what that means about your skills and abilities. Don’t add insult to injury by berating yourself or lashing out at others. Use the opportunity to really feel the experience and see what you can learn from it.

Honestly, what you find out might be that you need to leave that position or workplace, but maybe a smaller adjustment in your daily routine would help. You won’t be able to figure that out if you’re busy beating yourself up. Let go of any “if only” stories that might come up and look at what’s actually happening.

6. Know that you can ask for help

Many workplaces are instituting wellness programs because they realize that a chronically stressed office of employees is not a good look. If your office has wellness benefits, or your health insurance offers reimbursements for things like meditation or yoga, take advantage of it. And don’t be ashamed of reaching out to a trained professional in Mindfulness – Based Stress Reduction or psychological treatment for chronic stress and anxiety.

SEE ALSO: This simple acronym can help you manage stress

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A lot of people use the word "manager" as a part of their job title or description, but "leaders" don't get that label simply by being appointed to a post.

Leadership is earned, and is hard-won, by the folks who prioritize and understand the traits and qualities that come with the unofficial title.

Did you ever wonder what separates the leaders from the managers?

You aren't alone. Here are some thoughts on the matter, from people who've worked to understand and define the key differences.

1. Managers rely on control and leaders inspire trust.

Many of the distinctions between the two come down to this central idea. Managers act like bosses by controlling people that work under them and by administering tasks. On the other hand, leaders guide, innovate, and inspire.

They rely upon the trust they've built between themselves and their team members to be a force that motivates and keeps productivity high. It really comes down to leading through control, or managing through fear. In any given workplace example, it's pretty clear to see whether the mindset of the one-in-charge was based in one or the other.

2. Managers keep an organization functioning and leaders work to build a shared vision.

Management and leadership might not be mutually exclusive. Any organization needs a little management so that quarterly numbers are met, goals are set, projects are completed ... it's just that leaders also go a step beyond that, focusing attention on motivating and inspiring employees, working with teams to build a shared vision of the purpose, and future, of the company.

Managers work through items on a to-do list and keep the system running, while leaders go a little deeper. They have their eye on the big picture as well as the finer details. Leaders are also more focused on change, and the future, than managers.

"If the world is not changing and you are on top, then management is essential but more leadership really is not," says John Kotter, Konuske Matsushita Professor of leadership at Harvard University. "Leadership is always about change."

3. Managers manage work and leaders lead people.

It's all in the way you look at it. Is a senior position about overseeing work that needs to get done, or is it about leading the people who do that work? What comes first, the tasks themselves or the people who work to complete them?

Professionals want, and deserve, a job that doesn't treat them like a machine. They want to collaborate and they want to innovate, not feel like a cog in the wheel. The most appealing employers, according to millennials (which is now the largest generation in the U.S. labor force) are the companies that hit these marks.

Companies like Google and Microsoft are known to be innovative and they provide opportunities for professional development and growth. The focus is on the people and their ideas, not the to-do list.

SEE ALSO: 7 TED Talks that will make you a better leader

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Spending time alone might seem useless and boring, especially with unlimited entertainment readily available on your smartphone, tablet, or TV.

But solitude can be highly beneficial to your mental health, creativity, and productivity, psychotherapist Amy Morin writes in her book "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do."

In the book, Morin says mentally strong people "don't fear alone time," since it offers restoration and a chance for reflection.

We spoke with Morin to find out how to take advantage of solitude to increase your productivity, empathy, and creativity. Here's what she said.

1. Learn how to appreciate silence.

It's as simple as turning off the outside noise, namely electronics. "Today's digital world means we have the opportunity to be constantly surrounded by noise," Morin said. "Our electronics help us stay constantly connected, and it often takes extra effort to find a few quiet minutes each day."

Once you're comfortable in a completely silent environment, you can begin using it to your advantage.

2. Take a few minutes every day to be alone with your thoughts.

"For many people, slowing down seems like a waste of time," she said. "But our brains need a chance to process what's going on around us."

All it takes is finding 10 minutes each day to allow your brain to relax and process the day, Morin said. With time, you likely won't feel that you're being unproductive. 

3. Schedule a date with yourself at least once a month.

Why not use your alone time to do something you love? "Time alone doesn't have to be lonely," she said. "It could be the key to getting to know yourself better." 

Make a reservation for one at your favorite restaurant, or go on a hike. "Just be sure to silence your phone and treat yourself with the same respect you'd give someone else," she said.

4. Learn how to meditate to quiet your mind.

Meditation benefits your body and your mind, Morin said. Learning to meditate intensely can take time, but she offers a simple, three-step beginners guide in her book:

1. Sit in a relaxed and comfortable position that allows you to keep your spine straight.
2. Focus on taking deep, slow breaths, and "really feel your breath as you inhale and exhale."
3. Return consciousness to your breath because "your mind will wander and thoughts will enter your mind."

5. Practice mindfulness skills to focus on one task at a time.

"The more you practice, the more you'll become fully aware, and fully awake, throughout all your daily activities," Morin writes. It takes practice to focus on activities as simple as eating or brushing your teeth.

But we need to take a step back and refocus our attention spans. "Eventually, you can learn to train your mind to stop replaying what you did yesterday or worrying about what you need to get done tomorrow," she said. 

6. Start a journal to sort out your emotions.

A daily journal can help you interpret your emotions and identify and manage your stress, Morin said. Basically, it's a chance to vent on paper, rather than to a family member or friend.

Just a few sentences each day about what you did or how you're feeling can help you stay on track, and it "often promotes healing, sparks creativity, and strengthens your resolve to reach your goals," she said.

7. Reflect on your progress and goals daily.

"Long-term goals require you to have healthy habits that you practice on a daily basis," Morin said. And "reflecting on your goals every day can help remind you of why you want to reach them."

In addition to evaluating what is going well and what needs improvement, this can also be a great time to set new goals for the future.

SEE ALSO: 13 things mentally strong people don't do

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I was talking to a friend, who is an attorney, some years ago. We were discussing a small disagreement I was having with a coworker. The friend gave me some advice that I’ve practiced ever since.

“Have him send you an email. Make him write out exactly what his request is.”

Lawyers love this technique, he told me. And the benefits are two-fold.

For one, writing forces clear thinking. It will become obvious if someone doesn’t have a clear idea what they’re asking once they try to put it down on paper.

And secondly, should some disagreement on the topic come up in the future, you will have a clear record of what was said and when. There will be no squabbling over who said what.

It’s an amazing tool that can make a big difference in your personal and professional life. The phrase “get it in writing” often conjures thoughts of a lengthy contact, formal documents with signatures and lawyers involved. It doesn’t have to be that way. “Get it in writing” can be something as simple as an e-mail.

If used effectively, it’s a practice that can stop workplace conflicts before they even show up. Think about how many disagreements in the workplace are some version of this conversation.

“You said X.”
“Well I said Y.”
“I thought you meant Y first, but then X.”
“What I meant was Z first then X, never Y.”

It’s a mess. It can be avoided. All we have to do is respect the power of getting things in writing.

Writing forces clear thinking

We’ve written before about how the best leaders harness the power of written communication.

Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos values writing over talking so much that in Amazon senior executive meetings, “before any conversation or discussion begins, everyone sits for 30 minutes in total silence, carefully reading six-page printed memos.”

“There is no way to write a six-page, narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking,” Bezos has said.

Former Intel CEO Andy Grove calls writing “a safety-net” for your thought process. Grove also found having managers write reports at Intel forced the manager’s thinking to be more precise.

“As they are formulated and written, the author is forced to be more precise than he might be verbally,” Grove wrote. “Hence their value stems from the discipline and the thinking the writer is forced to impose upon himself as he identifies and deals with trouble spots in his presentation. Reports are more a medium of self-discipline than a way to communicate information.”

And more precise communication, as you can imagine, leads to less misunderstanding down the road. Less misunderstanding leads to less conflict. Less conflict leads to more time serving the mission of the company, less time putting out fires.

Or as Grove put it:

“Writing the report is important; reading it often is not.”

When Ameet Ranadive, a product manager for Twitter, previously worked for the prestigious consulting firm McKinsey & Company, he was struck by the time and care that went into the writing on the slides for client presentations.

More striking, Ranadive wrote, was that some slides never made it into the final presentation. He asked a manager if these slides were wasted work.

The manager “responded with what I would later hear from time to time as a McKinsey maxim: ‘Writing clarifies thinking.’”

Written directions are easier to remember and follow

Now that we have clear thoughts on paper, the author has done their job. But the benefits don’t end here.

Not only is writing a more clear way of expressing information, it’s a better way to comprehend and retain information.

Research analyzing new parents being discharged from hospitals shows that those briefed with both verbal and written instruction on care had a better comprehension of caring for their newborn than those only briefed verbally.

Think about it. If you had to trust a new employee to execute a specific process, would you be more comfortable simply explaining it to them, or knowing they were handed a set of specific, written instructions on the process.

How to write great arguments

Let’s explore three common ways to get your thoughts down on paper in the best way.

Follow the Rule of 3

When Ranadive was at McKinsey, he was schooled in the Rule of 3.

“Whenever you’re trying to persuade a senior person to do something, always present 3 reasons,” he wrote.

Great storytellers and persuaders across generations and disciplines have understood the power of doing things in threes. Movies have three acts, the federal government has three branches, Goldilocks met three bears.

Or as Ranadive put it, “most of us have been hard-wired to expect things in groups of three.”

Not only does the Rule of 3 narrow your list to the three most important points, it forces you to prioritize and order your arguments.

Take a position

A main benefit of writing is the way it forces you to prioritize, to take a clear position on something.

As Ben Horowitz, of the Venture Capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, put it on his blog: great product managers take strong positions. In writing.

“Good product managers take written positions on important issues (competitive silver bullets, tough architectural choices, tough product decisions, markets to attack or yield). Bad product managers voice their opinion verbally and lament that the “powers that be” won’t let it happen.”

Be brief

“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”

This quote from French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal holds true today. Getting your thoughts into fewer words is often more difficult than writing on and on. It’s tempting to drone on when writing.

Ian McAllister, director for AmazonSmile program at Amazon, believes writing concisely is a skill of the top 1 percent of product mangers.

“They should understand that each additional word they write dilutes the value of the previous ones,” McAllister wrote on Quora.

It’s great advice. It you want to communicate effectively, avoid conflict and make a strong argument, you’re going to have to know how to write.

As long as you know when to stop.

SEE ALSO: Here's the secret underlying all good writing

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Most of us lead a life that revolves around work. The average US worker, for example, clocks 47 hours a week, and when you add the time we spend commuting, another five to 10 hours, it pushes our total work-related hours over 55. Then there's work-related stress, which damages our health.

All of that can paint a vulgar picture of life in our modern world, one that two or three weeks' vacation can hardly remedy.

Then there are those who refuse to buy into all that and choose to live on the fringe, like Ultra Romance, a 35-year-old from the Connecticut River valley who works as little as possible — usually for six months a year — and then goes adventuring around the world with his bike and modest camping gear.

Since college, 15 years ago, Ultra Romance, aka Benedict, says he hasn't lived more than six months in any one place. He has never owned a car, and he got a bank account just so he could buy and sell bicycle parts on eBay (he keeps the cash he earns in little bags that he buries in the ground). He says he lives on $10 a day.

"We have this preconceived notion of what success is in the modern world," he recently told Business Insider. "I'm not ashamed that I don't like to work. It's just very unnatural."

This week we caught up with Ultra Romance to learn more about how this free spirit has bucked society's expectations and made his own path. He recently appeared on the cover of Bicycling magazine and has become popular on Instagram. Read on to see what he told us about how we work too much and, well, probably live and play too little:

On work

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"I work about six month of the year, as a commercial fisherman or charter fisherman or a guide. I also sell bicycle parts online. It's been very much like, get your work done for part of the year and do whatever you want the rest of the year. For me, work is a segue to traveling."

On going a different route

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"I went to college and got the degree and was trying to be a PE teacher or a personal trainer and do the hustle right out of college. Then it was like, I gotta get a house, I'm 24, I got all these student loans ... Before you know it, things work out and you meet the right girl and you settle down and buy the house and have the mortgage payment and the cars. But ultimately that was not going to be me."

On success

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"We have this preconceived notion of what success is in the modern world. For me, it's part philosophy, part circumstance ... I study history and anthropology, and I'm not ashamed that I don't like to work. It's just very unnatural. I like to simplify things. I'm a handshake kind of guy, so paperwork and bills don't work for me. They were a big stressor in my life, and I sort of eliminated all of them." 

Let’s be honest: our education system is screwed.

I mean, almost all of the important history I learned between grades 5 and 12 I could probably find on Wikipedia and understand within a few weeks now.

And pretty much any scientific knowledge you could ever want to learn is explained with pretty videos on YouTube.

On top of that, you have the most unstable job market in almost 100 years, technology developing so rapidly that robots will be doing half the work in another decade, college degrees that some argue are now worthless, and new industries and technologies being invented practically every six months.

Yet we’re still pushing kids through the same curriculum their grandparents went through.

It’s cliche at this point to say that the most important things you learn in life you don’t learn in school. I know in my life, the most important things I’ve learned I had to figure out on my own as an adult.

But why couldn’t these things be taught in school? I mean, if I had to spend six months learning about Chaucer and Renaissance painters, why couldn’t I spend six months learning about how to save for retirement and what sexual consent was? Or why didn’t anybody tell me that by the time I became an adult, a large percentage of the job market would either be performed by robots or sent overseas?

Call me bitter. Or maybe just an entitled Millennial. But seriously, where were these classes? You know, the ones with the s--- I actually needed to hear?

Obviously, when I rule the world — which should be any day now, waiting to hear back from some people — we won’t have these problems. I will craft a curriculum of the perfect life knowledge to impart upon the populace. And you will all thank me and give offerings of milk and honey and sexy virgins and maybe even slaughter a goat or two in my name (sorry vegans).

But before I get carried away fantasizing, let’s get real. What are the classes we shouldhave had to take in high school, but didn’t? Here are five off the top of my head.

1. Personal finance

Curriculum would include: Credit cards and interest rates and credit ratings and retirement accounts and why you should start saving like $100 per week when you’re 18 because by the time you’re 50 you’ll be like a quadruple-gajillionaire.

Seriously, compound interest runs the f------ planet. How did I not even hear about this until I was like 24?

Why it’s important: Because the average American household has over $15,000 in credit card debt.2 Because 36% of working Americans have NOTHING saved for retirement.3 Because this video exists:

Note: If you would choose the chocolate bar over the silver, and don’t understand why this is a horrible decision, meet me at this footnote. We need to talk. Now.4

If managing your own money was a school, the majority of the US population would be riding the shortbus. And failing. And dropping out entirely.

This financial illiteracy is actually a really big problem. Because, see, if you have a society full of people buying a bunch of crap they can’t afford, retiring with no savings, getting sick and not being able to afford health care — well, that screws all of us in a major way.

You know, like exactly what is happening right now.

2. Relationships

Curriculum would include: Communicating your feelings without blaming or judging each other; how to spot manipulative behavior and cut it off; personal boundaries and not being a pushover; honest discussions about sexuality and how it relates (or doesn’t relate) to love; “F--- Yes” consent and how the experiences of men and women differ.

Basically everything most of us learn by going through excruciating breakup after excruciating breakup.

Why it’s important: Because when you’re in bed dying of cancer, you’re not thinking about how Napoleon got over-zealous in Russia or how the Meiji Restoration totally changed the face of Asian geopolitics or how organic compounds are conspiring to make your brain rot.

You’re thinking about the ones you’ve loved in your life and the ones you’ve lost.

Many things make for a happy life, but few things have as much influence and impact as our relationships do.5 Learning how to not stumble through them like a drunken a------ and how to exercise some conscious control of how you express your emotions and intimacy is possibly the most life-changing skill set I’ve ever come across.

Because we’re not just talking about how to get wifey’d and have sexy time. We’re talking about capital-R Relationships: how to be a good friend, how to not treat your family like dog s---, how to deal with conflict at work, how to take responsibility for your own emotions and problems and neuroses without dragging the rest of the world down with you.

As humans, we are fundamentally social animals. We don’t exist in a vacuum. We can’t. Our social bonds make up the fabric of our life. The question is: are yours made of smooth silk or cheap polyester?

3. Logic and reasoning

Curriculum would include: This question:

The answer, of course, is “false.” 6

Questions like this always felt annoying on standardized tests. But our ability to think through them actually has major repercussions on our beliefs and how we lead our lives. For instance, following the same logical progression as above, but with real-world examples:

“Cindy creates conflict at the office. Cindy is a woman. Therefore women create conflict at the office.” 7

Or:

“Most criminals are poor. Most poor people receive welfare. Therefore most welfare goes to criminals.”

These things are false, yet you see them reported in the media as fact, debated by leaders as if they’re valid arguments, and become the foundation of many people’s biases and prejudices.

Just the other day, I saw possibly the stupidest article I’ve seen in months. It tried to argue that sexual objectification of women is wrong while sexual objectification of men is fine. Why? Because men aren’t raped as often as women are.

That’s like Swiss-cheese territory of logical holes and fallacies.8

Why it’s important: The point is, we’re making these logical fallacies all the time. And often in subtle ways that go unnoticed by us. And often regarding important decisions and beliefs that have life-or-death consequences. They creep up in political campaigns (X is good at making money; governments need to make money; therefore X will be good at government), civil rights issues, moral and ethical decisions (Bob lies to me, therefore I should be able to lie to Bob), dealing with personal conflicts, and so on.

These logical fallacies then infiltrate our lives by causing us to make dumb decisions. Dumb decisions about our health, our relationships, our career, pretty much everything.

The problem is in school we’re rarely taught how to actually think or problem solve. Instead, we’re taught how to copy and memorize things — and then promptly forget them.9 This poorly suits us for sorting through the complexities of adult life. And especially because in the 21st century, life is getting really f------ complex. I feel like maybe the intellectual retreat we’re seeing recently into religious fundamentalism and other simple-minded cultures comes from this complete lack of preparation for a complicated postmodern world.

4. Self-awareness

Curriculum would include: I know what you’re saying right now. “How the f--- do you teach self-awareness?” But seriously, it can be taught and practiced like anything else.10

Self-awareness is the ability to think about how you think. It’s the ability to have feelings about your feelings. To have opinions about your opinions.

For example, I might think something like, “I hate every person named ‘Steve.’ People named Steve are bad people.”

This is a classic example of bigotry, a simple channeling of hatred through some superficial stereotype. And if you lack all self-awareness, you will take this prejudice at face value.

But if one is self-aware, they’ll catch this thought and question it. “Why do I hate people named Steve? Is it maybe because my ex-boyfriend is named Steve? Is it because my father’s named Steve? Am I perhaps channeling my anger for the Steves in my life onto all of the Steves of the world? I feel embarrassed at how hateful I am. I should visit a shrink.”

This is me thinking about my thoughts. It’s me having feelings about my feelings. It’s me having opinions on my opinions. It’s self-awareness. And the majority of people go through most of their life having very little of it.

But it can be learned, like anything else, through practice. Basically anything that requires you to think about what you’re thinking, to have feelings about your feelings, is developing your ability to be self-aware. That could be meditation, talk therapy, journaling, or just having a person really close to you point out your biases and prejudices with some consistency.

Why it’s important: A high degree of self-awareness has been found in research to benefit, well, just about everything. People who develop meta-cognition skills are better planners, more disciplined, more focused, more attuned to their emotions, better decision-makers, and better able to foresee potential problems ahead.11

I also make the point in this article that self-awareness is possibly the most important traitin making a relationship work.

In everything we do in life, there’s only one tool that stays with us from beginning to end: our mind. It is the great filter. Everything we do and everything that happens to us is filtered through our own mind and thinking. Therefore, we need to invest the time and energy to understand our mind as well as we possibly can, because it affects everything. Maybe you are quick to get angry and judgmental. Maybe you’re laid back and overly detached. Maybe you suffer from anxiety in a number of ways that are subtly holding you back. Maybe you are impulsive and an expert at bulls------- yourself.

Whatever it is, we must all figure out our own tendencies and then learn how to monitor them and then adapt to them.

5. Skepticism

Curriculum would include: Why everything we believe is most likely wrong to some degree; why our memories are completely unreliable; how fields as seemingly sturdy as mathematics and physics are full of unresolvable uncertainty;12 how we’re all terrible judges of both what made us happy/unhappy in the past and what will make us happy/unhappy in the future;13 how the most important events in history are always those that are least predictable;14 how it’s certainty and rigidness of belief that leads to evil and violence, not the opposite;15 that much of what passes for scientific knowledge today is based on research that has repeatedly failed to be replicated or verified;16 and so on.

Why it’s important: Pretty much anything good in life comes from uncertainty or a state of not knowing. Uncertainty is what drives you to become curious, to learn, to test new ideas, to communicate your intentions to others. It’s what keeps you humble. It helps you accept whatever comes along. It allows you to see others without unfair judgments and biases.

Pretty much anything bad in life comes from certainty: complacency, arrogance, bigotry and unfair prejudice. People don’t get together and form religious cults and then drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid because they’re uncertain about something. They do it because they’re certain. Governments don’t starve and murder millions of their own citizens because of uncertainty. They do it because of certainty. People don’t fall into deep depression, obsessively stalk their ex, or shoot up a school because they’re uncertain about themselves. They do it because they’re certain.

They’re certain in a belief that, like almost every other belief, is probably wrong.

Skepticism cultivates the ability to open yourself to alternatives, to withhold judgment, to question and challenge yourself and make yourself a better person.

You don’t actually know if Susy at work hates you or not. You don’t actually know whether your boss is a d--- or just bad at communicating. Maybe his wife has cancer or something and he stays up crying all night. Maybe you’re the d--- and you don’t know it.

You don’t really know if gay marriage will ruin the fabric of society or whether men and women really are so different or the same. You don’t know if that new job will make you happy, if getting married will fix your relationship problems (I’m betting on “no”), or whether or not your kid really deserves all those participation awards.

Life is lived in the uncertainties. Our certainties are just strategies we use to avoid that life. To avoid adapting and changing and flowing through it. Because education and learning shouldn’t end when the last textbook slams shut or when the diplomas are handed out. It should only end when we do.

Notes

1. Whenever I write articles bashing the US education system, I often get angry emails from teachers. I just want to make it clear that I’m not bashing the teachers themselves or the work they’re doing. There are great teachers and there are shitty teachers. But they’re all stuck within a shitty system. And I’m sure many of them feel just as hamstrung with the antiquated curriculum as the rest of us.
2. As of July 2015. Pulled from the New York Fed’s Report on Household Credit Debt
3. USA Today. A third of people have nothing saved for retirement.
4. Hi there. Let me guess, you’re having some money problems right now? Maybe own a few too many flat screen TVs that you are having trouble paying off? Maybe a car you can’t really afford but don’t want to give up? Maybe student loan debt five times higher than your annual salary? Well, the good news is, things can get better. The bad news is that when you manage money, it’s not pretty. You do know that ten ounces of silver is worth like $160, right? OK, look, I’m not going to rag on you. You need help. The best beginner-level book on personal finance I’ve read is Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You To Be Rich. Do yourself a favor and read it.
5. Vaillant, G. E. (2012). Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press.
6. The way to approach these logic questions is to always replace the funny names with something more tangible, like: “All Eskimos are Canadian. All Canadians are North American. Therefore all North Americans are Eskimos.” When phrased this way, it’s obvious that there are tons of North Americans who are not Eskimos. A surprising amount of students get questions like this wrong.
7. I love this example because it can be interpreted in both a misogynistic way and a misandrist way. Chauvinist guys will say, “Yeah, Cindy starts all the fights because she’s a woman.” Raging radical feminists will say, “Yeah, men pick fights with Cindy because she’s a woman.” Both conclusions are logically incorrect (and bigoted).
8. This article was so infuriatingly dumb that I’m not even going to link to it. You’re welcome humanity.
9. For instance, most kids drop two grade levels in math over summer break.
10. In psychological jargon, self-awareness is known as ‘meta-cognition.’
11. Schraw, G. (1998). Promoting general metacognitive awareness. Instructional Science, 26(1-2), 113–125.
12. Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem showed that there are inherent limitations in any axiomatic system of mathematics. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle shows that at a sub-atomic level, nothing can be truly measured with any precision.
13. See: Stumbling On Happiness by Daniel Gilbert for more on this.
14. See: The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb for more on this.
15. See: Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty by Roy Baumeister for more on this.
16. The New Yorker. The Truth Wears Off.

SEE ALSO: The 15 best business schools for your salary

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There is a special art to choosing the perfect word for a situation, particularly in the workplace.

You want your vocabulary to be impressive but not so impressive it garners scoffs, professional but not stiff. It has to sound natural in context, like you’ve used it before.

You want people to understand what it means, but maybe Google it “just to make sure.”

Most importantly, it has to make sense, connotation very much included. If you’re looking to stretch your workplace vocabulary without sounding like a pretentious asshole, here are some suggestions.

1. Caustic (kôstik)

Adjective: sarcastic in a scathing and bitter way.

Synonyms: derisive, acerbic, abrasive

Example: I didn’t appreciate the caustic tone of that email.

Note: Yes, it also means “able to burn or corrode organic tissue by chemical action” or “formed by the intersection of reflected or refracted parallel rays from a curved surface,” but this is less likely to be applicable in the workplace. Unless of course you are a chemist or physicist, in which case a liberal arts major who works in book publishing is unlikely to be of much assistance anyway.

2. Idiosyncrasy (idēəˈsiNGkrəsē)

Noun: a distinctive or peculiar feature or characteristic of an individual, place, or thing.

Synonyms: peculiarity, oddity, eccentricity

Example: Ah, just another charming idiosyncrasy of our printers I see. [sarcasm]

3. Paradoxical (par-uh-DOK-si-kuhl) 

Adjective: having the nature of a paradox; self-contradictory.

Synonyms: contradictory, incongruous, anomalous

Example: I know that this idea sounds paradoxical, but I believe it’s our most effective solution.

4. Beleaguer (biˈlēɡər) 

Verb: to cause constant or repeated trouble for a person, business, etc.

Synonyms: harass, pester, badger, vex

Example: The beleaguered school system can’t take much more of this.

5. Exacerbate (iɡˈzasərˌbāt) 

Verb: make (a problem, bad situation, or negative feeling) worse.

Synonyms: inflame, aggravate

Example: I understand that you’re trying to help, but what you’re doing is only exacerbating the situation.

6. Didactic (dīˈdaktik)

Adjective: in the manner of a teacher, particularly so as to treat someone in a patronizing way.

Synonyms: patronizing, pedantic

Example: He would be a good choice for the conferences if his speeches weren’t so didactic.

7. Innocuous (iˈnäkyo͞oəs)

Adjective: not harmful or offensive.

Synonyms: harmless, innocent

Example: There’s no need to be defensive, it was an innocuous question.

8. Parsimonious (pärsəˈmōnēəs)

Adjective: unwilling to spend money or use resources.

Synonyms: stingy, frugal, cheap

Example: In this campaign, there is no room to be parsimonious.

9. Bloviate (blōvēˌāt)

Verb: talk at length, especially in an inflated or empty way.

Synonyms: spiel

Example: It’s tough to watch them bloviate about sweeping change when our internal processes are still such a mess.

10. Aplomb (əˈpləm)

Noun: self-confidence or assurance, especially when in a demanding situation.

Synonyms: poise, composure

Example: It was a tense meeting, but you carried the presentation with aplomb.

SEE ALSO: 20 words you should never put on your résumé

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“Change inspires both fear and excitement, and one of our greatest talents is learning to manage both. Sometimes we have to be a little like a trapeze artist – we have to let go of one bar before we catch the new one.” 

- Nick Williams, author of The Work We Were Born to Do

You just finished college or graduate school and are looking for your first job. You’re in a job you hate. You’re in a job you love, but with no upward mobility. You’re thinking about going back to school. You tried to start your own thing and it didn’t work out. Or you’ve been traveling or having children and are trying to re-enter the workforce.

Whatever situation you’re in, at some point you’re going to wind up asking yourself: “What do I do next? Where do I go from here? How do I figure out my next step?”

In my experience, there are three distinct stages you must pass through in order to be able to answer these questions: turning inward, seeking external inspiration, and then taking action. The first two stages instruct you to basically stop everything. Because figuring out what to do next is like needing to tie your shoelace. You can’t do it while you’re still running; you have to pause and do it properly.

But you also have to keep running eventually. You don’t get anywhere in life by pure philosophizing — you get places by doing, and that’s where the last stage comes in. You’ve given yourself a chance to catch your breath, which you’ve done while honoring the crucial balance between internal reflection and external inspiration, and now you’re well-equipped with the information and confidence you need to make a decision.

Here’s a break-down of the 22 steps I recommend for getting “unstuck” and moving forward with conviction in your personal and professional life.

STAGE 1: TURN INWARD

1. Give yourself time in silence. Spend 15-30 minutes every morning without any noise or distractions. Ask your heart questions (“What is my next step? What would I really be happy doing?”) and listen to what responses come from your intuition. We spend so much of our days doing that we don’t give ourselves any time for just being.

2. Travel. This doesn’t have to be the whole “lose yourself to find yourself” line because I know from 3+ years of traveling that it doesn’t actually happen like that. What I mean is to seek movement and exploration: a long car ride, an afternoon in a place with good people-watching, a short weekend away. A change of scenery is hugely inspirational, as is problem-solving and demonstrating self-sufficiency.

3. Think about your childhood. What things were you naturally good at? What are your happiest memories? What did you dream of doing before the world started pushing and pulling on you? Let your past successes help inform your future.

4. Record your dreams. Dreams are an incredible window into your subconscious mind. Before you go to bed, spend time reflecting and asking yourself for clarity about your next step. Leave a notebook under your pillow and, upon waking, write down your dreams before you move, look at the time, or check your cell phone. Reflect on reoccurring situations, symbols, people, and places.

5. Go for a daily walk. Many great creative and powerful minds swear by walking (no music, no distractions) for inspiration and introspection: Gandhi, Stephen King, Thich Nhat Hanh, J.K. Rowling, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Beethoven. “Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move,” wrote Henry David Thoreau, “my thoughts begin to flow.”

A 2010 study found that walking for 40 minutes 3 times a week enhanced the connectivity of important brain circuits, reduced declines in brain function associated with aging, and increased performance on cognitive tasks.

6. Journal about everything, but make sure you tackle these questions in written format:

• When do I feel most successful/proud/motivated/joyful? Why?
• What have I enjoyed most about my life and career to date? What has caused me suffering? Why? (The “why” is an oft-forgotten piece of the puzzle and we don’t often dig deep enough and keep asking ourselves the “whys”.)
• If I could only change one thing about my life right now, what would it be? (And why?)
• What do I love about myself? What are my talents?

7. Have purposeful dreaming time. This is different from time in silence or time spent journaling. It’s time to actively engage your imagination by visualizing alternate possibilities for your life. The human mind’s capacity to imagine the future with nearly as much sensory details as real life is one of its most precious — and sometimes paralyzing — capabilities. Use it to your advantage!

8. Take money out of the picture. You can put it back into the equation later, but it’s important to spend time really considering what you would do if you didn’t have to worry about finances. This mental exercise also lets you take a step back and see how much money does influence your decision-making, and if it has to influence it to the extent you allow it to. 

STAGE 2: SEEK EXTERNAL INSPIRATION

9. Spend time with inspirational people. Ever heard the phrase “You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with?” When you’re looking to make a transition in your life, surround yourself with the kind of people you aspire to be, ones who can provide insight, connections, and new ideas.

10. Have deep conversations with family and friends. After a period of meaningful (and ongoing) introspection, you can begin to share what you are discovering about yourself and the world with others. Talk openly with the people closest to you and probe deeper than you normally would. Sometimes sharing your thoughts and desires out loud helps clarify — or discover — them for yourself.

11. Don’t ask for advice the usual way. Instead of asking others what they would do in your shoes, ask them how they would decide what to do if they were you. The “how” provides decision-making frameworks that keep YOU in the driver’s seat while still allowing a helpful degree of outside opinion.

12. Read a lot. I recommend autobiographies of people you find inspirational, as well as a few personal development books specifically oriented around career and purpose, such as Body of Work by Pamela Slim and The Work We Were Born to Do by Nick Williams. Also, read widely about topics of interest to you. By following your intellectual curiosity, you can discover new fields you might like to explore.

13. Take up a new hobby. This related to curiosity, too. Learning something new is inspirational, and it also grants you the ability to see yourself succeeding in new frontiers. Not to mention that it often leads to meeting different kinds of people who can enrich your life and open up unforeseen pathways.

14. Do some “productive” stalking. Spend time on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google and create a spreadsheet of all the people and careers you find inspirational. The goal is to answer the question: Who do you admire and why?

STAGE 3: TAKE ACTION

15. Work on your health and physical well-being. It’s easy to forget that the body and mind are intimately connected. Nourishing yourself with daily exercise and a healthy diet will hugely impact your self-esteem — and there’s nothing better for plotting a career move than feeling great about yourself!

16. Reach out. Remember all that “productive” stalking? Now you are going to use that information! Start reaching out to people on email, LinkedIn, and other social media and request short Skype or coffee meetings to pick their brain about their career path (informational interviewing).

17. Set up 5 job interviews. For any jobs at all. It’s important to get out there and hear yourself communicating about your talents and experience. It’s even better to start “practicing” by doing interviews where you are relatively unattached to the outcome so you can still perform well, but feel confident and relaxed. This approach can also lend you new ideas: perhaps you never would have considered a certain position or company before, but casting a wide interview net opened up new realms of possibility.

18. Work for free. This is the greatest test of your talents, experience, and ability to contribute. Those people you reached out to for informational interviews? Do something helpful for them for free. Send them a deck of research on a new market they might be interested in. Connect them to someone you know who could help their business. Make a small database of potential new clients for them. Get creative! Or boldly ask a company you admire if you could work for free for them for 3 months for the sake of exposure — and to prove yourself. 

19. Brainstorm all your options. Sit down and make a list of every conceivable next step you could take: grad school, sabbatical, joining a friend’s start up, creating an online business, staying in your current role, asking for a promotion, making a lateral move, changing fields entirely, etc. Once you’ve brainstormed every route you would possibly want to consider, narrow it down to a list of 2-4 options that seem most interesting to you.

20. Focus on the first step. For your short-listed options, figure out what the first logical step to accomplish them would be. If you think grad school could be the right transitional move, then the first step is to identify programs of interest. If you want to make a lateral move (say you like your position but dislike the company or industry), then you may want to attend a networking event in your field to meet representatives of different companies. The idea is to take small, non-committal steps in a few directions to get a feel for those paths. 

21. Try something. The key to making a transition in life is to avoid paralysis at all costs, because you won’t get anywhere through contemplation alone. It’s important that, once you’ve examined all feasible options and tested the waters with a few short-listed options, you take action! Of course, your actions should be accompanied by an understanding that nothing in life is perfect, nor is anything entirely permanent. You’ll never know until you try, so you simply have to try.

22. Choose to focus on the best case scenario. When change is upon us, we naturally focus on and plan for the worst that could happen, which is a natural part of our survival-based biology. Instead, try making a decision based on the best thing that could happen and see how that inspires confidence in making your next big move.

In the end, it’s paramount to realize that your next step does not have to define the rest of your life, it just has to provide momentum. It has to retain your happiness of today and offer an incremental growth in your happiness of tomorrow, but it doesn’t have to account for your happiness 5 or 10 years from now. Think about how much time and energy you probably waste trying to project yourself 3, 5, 7 years into the future and surmise what “future you” would want and base your decision-making today on that hypothetical person who may or may not ever come into being.

Taking the next step or changing direction doesn’t have to be a long, complex, and emotionally draining experience. In reality, practicing the above steps on a regular basis can actually help to sustain momentum and naturally offer opportunities for personal and professional advancement, allowing you to live a life of seamless transitions and self-assured navigation.

SEE ALSO: 3 new industries you should consider if you want to change careers

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You know that moment during the day when you're staring at your computer monitor and suddenly, as if blown by a chill wind, you shudder with the sense that perhaps your work is completely insignificant, that the great machine we call the globe would run just fine if your cog suddenly went missing? No? Well, good for you, Mr. or Mrs. Self-Actualization.

But anyway, the job market data collectors at PayScale.com decided to poll the existential state of the American workforce, and asked 2 million of its users whether their jobs made the world a better place.

One occupation stood out among all others when it came to meaninglessness: parking lot attendants, only 5 percent of whom thought their toil improved things.

It was the only job within which less than 20 percent found their work meaningful. (That's PayScale's word, by the way, not mine.

Presumably, you can find deep meaning in your work even if you don't think it's doing much to help the lot of your fellow humans.) I can see how looking out over a vast expanse of concrete while sitting alone in a booth might leave one feeling as if he or she is not making much of a contribution to the universe.

But, to me, it seems like attendants are unnecessarily down on their work. Someone needs to watch over the cars. And just imagine what getting out of a stadium parking lot would be like without someone directing the traffic flow.

SEE ALSO: 19 ways to slowly destroy your career

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The most powerful stories are the ones we tell other people about ourselves.

These stories can be opportunities for emotional connection, venues for healthy self-promotion, or beginnings of new relationships.

They can also be vehicles to impart wisdom, moments to entertain at a dinner party, or ways to ace a job interview.

As we teach on day one of our residential program, talking about yourself is the currency of trust and rapport.

And yet personal stories can also produce the opposite effect. For every engaging personal story we’ve heard, we’ve also sat through dozens of self-indulgent monologues told by people who seem more interested in hearing their own voice than in truly connecting.

So how do we talk about ourselves without being that guy? How can we tell stories about ourselves without coming across as boorish, self-involved or smug?

That’s what this article is about: how to talk about yourself without sounding like an a--hole.

Get vulnerable.

There’s something godlike about telling a great story. You’ve lived it, you’re recreating it, and someone else is hanging on your every word. It’s tempting to feel that you have to be Superman by glossing over the uglier parts of a story — in other words, feeling like you need to make yourself look good at every moment.

But as we know, vulnerability is the most powerful way to connect with others. Only when we drop our defenses can we show who we truly are beneath the carefully crafted artifice of a public persona. That’s the person you want to be talking about when you talk about yourself.

Think back to your favorite stories, and you’ll always find imperfections. We’re not drawn to the perfection in people’s stories, but in the dysfunction, the missteps, the mistakes — in other words, the human in them. Once you realize how much you identify with vulnerability and imperfection in other stories, you’ll be more willing to include them in your own. And it’s very hard to be an a--hole when you’re just being human.

Don’t manufacture empathy.

As important as it is to be vulnerable in your stories, it’s just as tempting to manufacture that vulnerability in order to come across as more empathetic.

Many people do this by opening up too much, indulging in details that are too personal, too raw or too intense for the context of the story. Other people do this by straight-up inventing details to hit the right notes, embellishing moments that feel vulnerable. Either way, being overly vulnerable is even worse than making yourself look perfect in your stories.

So how can you stay honest without overindulging your honesty?

The key is to ask yourself if your vulnerability is rooted in authentic moments. Are you including raw details because they were a real part of your experience, or because you want the audience to like you? Are you harping on old wounds because the story depends on them, or because you’re trying to play the role of the vulnerable storyteller?

Examine your motivations for including certain details, and commit to being authentically honest. If a story is coming from a true place, then it will play well. If it’s not, then it will set off your audience’s authenticity alarms, and backfire.

Avoid being “too much.”

Authentic vulnerability is key, but even true honesty has its limits. As storytellers and as audience members, we have crazy sophisticated internal compasses. We just know when people are being self-indulgent or self-involved — in other words, when they’re being “too much.” So how do you keep your story within the appropriate bounds of intensity?

A good general principle is to err on the side of caution. If you think you’re whining, bragging, or going overboard as you talk, assume you are and rein in your story. Stay connected to your experience of yourself, and use that experience to temper your rhythm and intensity.

Of course, your relationship with your audience really matters here. Talking about an excruciating job interview with a circle of close friends is bonding, while talking about the same interview at a dinner party with strangers might turn into a therapy session. Consider the context, and tailor your conversation accordingly.

The key is to trust your instincts. You can always adjust your story as you go, but you can’t take it back when you’re done.

Check in with your audience.

Self-indulgent storytellers drone on without caring about the audience’s experience. So one simple way to avoid being the a--hole is to regularly check in with the audience, and make sure that what you’re saying is truly landing.

Of course, this can be tough when you’re talking about yourself. How can you make a personal story reliably relevant for other people?

In short, by focusing on the common humanity of your story — the details of your story that anyone can relate to. You might be a banker telling a story about the financial crisis to a group of farmers, but all bankers and all farmers understand the themes of crisis, adversity, passion and drive. They also appreciate the same questions, like whether family matters more than work and whether adversity is a good teacher. These themes are common to all humans, and they are the real substance of a great story.

The best way to connect with that common humanity is to commit to authentic honesty, as we discussed above. If you think back once again to the stories you love, you probably haven’t lived anything like them personally — but you have lived enough to connect with the emotions, impressions and themes that underlie them.

Along the way, you must continue to check in visually and auditorily with your audience. Are they holding eye contact? Are they really listening to every word? It’s possible that a great story can still fail to connect with an audience that’s distracted or uninterested. A great storyteller knows when not to tell a story, as much as how to tell a great one. Sometimes the occasion calls for a conversation instead of a story, or you’ll want to make the story more dynamic and interactive. Sometimes you’ll decide not to tell a story at all.

When you’re going to talk about yourself, take a second and ask yourself what you’re really talking about, and why. What is the common, universal experience that you’re talking about? Where’s the shared humor? Why are you talking about yourself at this moment, with these people, in this context? When you focus on creating an enjoyable experience for the people around you, you can rest assured that you’re not being an a--hole.

Be willing to laugh at yourself.

True vulnerability is almost always hilarious. The most humiliating moments eventually become funny. Events that seemed hopeless take on irony with age. The same details that made us cry will eventually make us laugh. That’s the beauty of vulnerability. We connect with embarrassment and tragedy by celebrating it.

As it happens, laughing is one of the best ways to talk about yourself without sounding like an a--hole. Why? Because it’s hard to hate someone who takes their own foibles in stride. When you laugh at yourself as you talk, you signal that you’re not defending your ego or pretending to be something you’re not. That is authenticity.

Jokes are an excellent device to find the levity in your stories, but they don’t need to be pre-planned and perfectly quippy. Simply focusing on the honest, funny moments and appreciating their absurdity achieves the same effect. So as you talk about yourself, really hunt for the less-than-stellar experiences you’ve had. Can you build stories around those moments? Which key details come to mind? What about those details do you now find funny? As you tell those stories, be willing to laugh at yourself, and discover that you can talk about yourself without creating a negative impression.

Avoid the humblebrag.

We all know the cliche of the guy who mentions in casual conversation that he “went to college in Cambridge.” You ask which college, and he mumbles “Harvard” with a practiced nonchalance.

This kind of humblebrag has become a fixture of our generation. It actually speaks to how badly we need to talk about ourselves in a world defined by self-branding, but how insecure we are about truly owning our experiences.

Now, some humblebrags are perfectly fine if you simply stop apologizing for them. But many humblebrags are thoughts that, stripped of their false humility, would be the very comments that make you seem like an a--hole. “Ugh, owning a Ferrari is such a pain ‘cuz I’m constantly getting pulled over” is a particularly annoying brag, and doesn’t get much better by removing the humble. Other humblebrags, like “Just won a Fulbright Scholarship, freaking out, no big deal,” are perfectly fine to share, if you simply own the accomplishment.

Those accomplishments also come across better with a touch of self-deprecation. “I went to Harvard. I know, I know, but I’m only a little pretentious, I promise,” is a great example. Once again, you’re laughing at yourself, and the humor defuses whatever negative charge the humblebrag contains. But just like honesty, self-deprecation has to come from a real place. Simple tacking it onto a statement is manipulative, but genuinely celebrating the irony is meaningful.

When you think about it, bragging is just pride with the wrong intentions. You can celebrate your wins by authentically owning them and sharing them with your audience, or you can talk about them with false humility for your own benefit.

Remember that talking about yourself will always involve some form of self-promotion. Self-promotion isn’t inherently bad; it’s inauthentic self-promotion that becomes a problem.

The a--hole mentions how quickly he climbed the ranks at Morgan Stanley within the first few minutes of meeting someone. The good storyteller listens to someone talk about his first job, then shares a similar tale about his brutal first year at Morgan Stanley and the mistakes he made on his way up the ladder. It’s all about owning your accomplishments, then combining that pride with the right intention, self-awareness and audience connection.

Talk about yourself by talking about others.

Sometimes, it will be difficult to talk about yourself without sounding pompous or self-involved, no matter how well you tell the story. This often happens in networking conversations and job interviews, where you need to be clear about your accomplishments without coming across as big-headed.

One way to get around this problem is to talk about yourself by talking about others. People can infer a great deal about you when you discuss how you work with other people.

For example, when talking about your furniture design business, you might open up about your dad, how he taught you how to build furniture for the house, and why you owe your business to him. When talking about your sales records at your previous job in an interview, you might mention your boss’ guidance and wisdom, which helped shape you into the salesperson you are today.

Bringing other characters into your story allows you to brag without coming across as self-centered. It signals a clear empathy in the way you view your past and demonstrates the way you build relationships with other people. In some contexts, like a job interview, this is precisely the quality your audience will be looking for. In others, it will simply be a helpful device to avoid sounding self-obsessed.

Final thoughts on talking about yourself

Following these tips will keep your personal stories meaningful and balanced. But as you learn how to talk about yourself, you’ll almost certainly stumble into moments of self-indulgence.

If you find yourself coasting into a--hole-ville, there’s nothing wrong with stopping, laughing at yourself, and commenting on it to your audience. “Oh man — I’m seriously bragging right now, aren’t I? I’m sorry. I just get really excited sometimes.”

By calling it out, you’re saying a few important things: that you’re self-aware enough to recognize your missteps, that you’re human enough to admit it, and that you’re more interested in laughing than talking about yourself. You can then pivot the conversation toward your audience, and invite them to talk about themselves. In most cases, that will save you from being “too much.”

At the same time, you also have to risk making mistakes from time to time in order to develop your social persona. You can’t control 100% of people’s perceptions of you — in fact, doing so will stop you from authentically being yourself. As important as it is to check in with your audience, you also have to give up control over what they think of you.

Ultimately, talking about yourself is both an art and a science, and it always reflects your intentions, good or bad. Stay focused on the fundamentals — authenticity, vulnerability and a genuine interest in your audience — and you’ll find yourself talking about yourself in that sweet spot between self-absorption and insecurity. That sweet spot is true connection, the reward for talking about yourself in just the right way.

SEE ALSO: 5 nonverbal communication cues all great speakers have mastered

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We experience rudeness and incivility all the time.

From simple insults and offhand remarks to purposely excluding others from groups, these behaviors are largely tolerated in our daily lives and in the workplace. The question is, what effect do these behaviors have on us?

It’s pretty clear that high-intensity negative behaviors like abuse, aggression and violence are harmful. But what’s the harm in just being rude and uncivil?

A growing body of research offers compelling evidence that experiencing rudeness, and even simply witnessing rudeness, can have surprisingly harmful effects on performance, creativity and even helpfulness. However, it might not even end there.

What if rudeness was actually contagious? This would mean that rudeness may not only hurt those who experience or witness it, but also have secondary effects. People who’ve experienced rude behavior from others are now “infected” with rudeness themselves, and will be rude to the people they interact with next.

Office rudeness is contagious, just like the common cold

To explore this phenomenon, my colleagues and I at the University of Florida (Andrew Woolum and Amir Erez) conducted a study to find out if rudeness was contagious from one person to another.

Over the course of a seven-week period, the participants (students engaged in a negotiations course) engaged in 11 negotiations exercises with various partners.

After each negotiation, participants had the opportunity to rate how rudely their negotiation partner had behaved. The structure of this exercise allowed us to explore how rudeness could be contagious by examining how the rudeness experienced in one negotiation influenced rude behaviors in the next negotiation. We didn’t instruct participants to be rude; we simply measured the normal rudeness that was present in the negotiation setting.

We found that rudeness is in fact contagious. If negotiators felt that their negotiation partner was rude, when they went on to their next negotiation, their new partner in turn perceived them as rude.

Another surprising finding was how long this effect lasted. Some of the negotiations took place one after another, and some took place up to seven days apart. We found that the time between negotiations didn’t seem to matter. Even if negotiations were a week apart, the rudeness experienced in the previous negotiation still caused participants to be rude in their next negotiation.

Why does rudeness spread from one person to another?

Prior research has shown that both emotions and behaviors can be socially contagious.

For example, when people around you are feeling happy, it is likely that you will start to feel happy too.

Similarly, when people around you tap their toes or fold their arms, often you will start doing the same thing.

Since these effects are usually described as simple subconscious mimicry, they probably can’t describe why rudeness can make us more rude. So how does it happen?

To tackle this question, we explored whether a process occurring in a subconscious part of the brain was responsible. When we experience social stimuli (like a conversation with a coworker), they can activate concepts deep in the subconscious part of our brains.

A concept could be anything. We have a concept for anger, happiness, sadness, power, and, of course, rudeness. The activation of concepts is automatic – meaning when it happens, we aren’t aware of it. And when concepts are activated, this changes the way we perceive the world a little bit.

For example, just seeing a happy face could activate the happiness concept, causing us to perceive future stimuli as more happy. Furthermore, researchers have found that when people write a short vignette about power, that can activate the power concept, causing people to feel more powerful.

So if that rude concept is activated, it causes us to perceive stimuli as a little bit more rude. And that’s what we found in two experimental studies. When people experienced (or even witnessed) rudeness, they noticed rudeness in their environment more, making them more likely to perceive things as rude, and this perception of rudeness caused them to respond with rudeness.

For example, imagine someone walking by you and saying “Hey, nice shoes!” You might interpret that as a compliment, or you might interpret it as an insult – it’s sort of hard to tell, and your brain has to decide. Well, when you’ve recently experienced rudeness, you are more likely to perceive that comment as rude even if it wasn’t meant that way. Then, subsequently, you will respond to the perceived rudeness with more rudeness.

What is so scary about this effect is that it’s an automatic process – it takes place in a part of your brain that you are not aware of, can’t stop, and can’t control. So, you would not necessarily be aware that the reason you (mis)interpreted the “nice shoes” comment is that you had recently experienced rudeness. This means you can’t temper the process.

Just don’t be rude

This evidence that rudeness is contagious really underscores how harmful these behaviors can be, particularly in organizational settings.

While prior evidenceshowed that rudeness could be harmful to performance, creativity and helpfulness, this research shows that the effects are not limited to the parties of the rude interaction.

In this way, rudeness can spread out like a virus, not only harming the performance of those who experience it but also making them carriers likely to pass the harm on to those with whom they interact next.

This means that maybe we need to rethink what behaviors are acceptable in the workplace. Behaviors like aggression, abuse, and violence are not tolerated at work, but sometimes rudeness tacitly is – but maybe it shouldn’t be. Up to 98% of workers report that they have experienced rudeness in the office, and 50% say they experience it weekly. So just be nice.

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Make an estimate on how many times are you are distracted during an average work day.

Now take that number and multiply it by 25.

That’s how many minutes of concentration you’re losing. It takes an average of about 25 minutes (23 minutes and 15 seconds, to be exact) to return to the original task after an interruption, according to Gloria Mark, who studies digital distraction at the University of California, Irvine.

Multiple studies confirm this. Distractions don’t just eat up time during the distraction, they derail your mental progress for up to a half hour afterward (that’s assuming another distraction doesn’t show up in that half hour).

In other words, that “30 seconds to check Twitter” isn’t just 30 seconds down the drain. It’s 25 minutes and 30 seconds.

And all these distractions not only hurt productivity, they have negative emotional effects.

“Our research has shown that attention distraction can lead to higher stress, a bad mood and lower productivity,” Mark wrote in the New York Times.

How distraction is measured

For Mark’s research, observers were sent to shadow knowledge workers at multiple tech and finance companies for three and a half days, Mark told Fast Company. Researchers logged each worker’s activities and timed every task to the second. They found people switch activities an average of every three minutes and five seconds.

They also found that about half the interruptions were self-inflicted. Working on a task and switching tabs to check Facebook, for example, is a self-inflicted interruption. As opposed to, say, a coworker walking over to discuss a project.

We are, essentially, playing tennis with our cognitive energies, volleying them back and forth at a moment’s notice. Only unlike a tennis ball, our brain takes a little time to switch directions.

“People have to shift their cognitive resources, or attentional resources, to a completely different topic,” Mark said. “You have to completely shift your thinking, it takes you a while to get into it and it takes you a while to get back and remember where you were.”

And the problem isn’t just the time wasted. We’re sacrificing some of our best thinking.

“I argue that when people are switching contexts every 10 and half minutes they can’t possibly be thinking deeply. Mark said. “There’s no way people can achieve flow.”

You are not the exception

Let me guess. You think you’re the exception, right? You’re the one special little snowflake who actually can multitask and manage distractions while staying focused? Careful with that kind of thinking.

The Legendary management consultant and author Peter Drucker warned against it in his 1967 book “The Effective Executive.”

“There was Mozart, of course,” Drucker wrote. “He could, it seems, work on several compositions at the same time, all of them masterpieces. But he is the only known exception. The other prolific composers of the first rank – Bach, for instance, Handel, or Haydn, or Verdi – composed one work at a time. They did not begin the next until they had finished the preceding one, or until they had stopped work on it for the time being and put it away in the drawer. Executives can hardly assume that they are ‘executive Mozarts.’”

Just to be safe, let’s all assume we’re not Mozart. So how do we stay on task and avoid getting sucked in to distractions?

Staying focused, the non-Mozart way

Start by setting aside uninterrupted blocks of time for focusing. Work on one masterpiece at a time. Even brilliant people need uninterrupted focus to do great work.

Granted, times have changed since Mozart’s era. Back then, you almost had to schedule in time for distractions.

“I’ll work all day and check the day’s mail at 3 p.m.,” the thinking went.

If you got in the zone on your work, you might just work all day and forget to check the mail.

Today’s problem is the opposite: If you don’t plan on getting in the zone, you’ll check your mail all day and forget to work.

Big problem.

At Intel, members of the Software and Services group noticed this problem coming up. They were concerned they weren’t getting enough time to think deeply, and creatively, about problems.

So managers instituted four weekly hours of “think time” that was scheduled and tracked on a shared calendar. During this time, employees weren’t expected to respond to emails or distractions that weren’t urgent.

The program had success early on, with one employee even developing a patent application according to a Wall Street Journal report.

It’s worth knowing the true cost of distractions. Try to fight it by planning time for distraction-free thinking and working. Let the people in your life and organization know what this time is for. Encourage them to do the same. You’ll get more important things done. You might not become the next Mozart.

But maybe the next Bach.

SEE ALSO: Researchers discovered a psychological trick that will help you stop procrastinating

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This answer by James Altucher originally appeared on Quora as an answer to the question: What are some of the most useful skills to know?

The other day I asked an old friend of mine, "Why did everyone hate me at that job?"

He said, "everyone thought you were an arrogant jerk."

Then they fired me.

I had forgotten how to communicate. I had forgotten the basic premise that allowed for the survival of our species. The ability to communicate far better than any other species.

Right now there is writing, instagramming, tweeting, status updates, YouTube videos, Quora answers, podcasting, and basic one-one communication.

We have to learn the basic tenets of communication so that in this world where we receive up to 20,000 messages a day in all of its varieties, our communications can rise to the top. Our message can be heard. Our MEANING can have an impact.

Here's what I do now to help myself communicate better.

1. It's not about me

I'm one person out of seven billion. There are so many problems on the Earth: war, poverty, sickness.

There are also many ways to solve these problems. There's innovation every day. There are cures invented every day. There's people who want to help and have the resources.

The pain in the world is caused by the gap between the problems and the solutions: corruption, bad education, fear.

Having "Meaning" in life is when you can stake out your own small little way to close that gap. That is the gift your existence brings to history.

When I made a lot of money, I forgot to create Meaning in my life.

This left me with no "next step" in my life. Nothing worth saying to anybody. Having a vision had helped me make the money. But suddenly I no longer had any vision.

So I went straight down.

I forgot to ask at the end of every night, "Who did I help today?"

2. Listen

Listening is the underpinnings of communicating.

You can't solve a person's problems by giving them money (although that sometimes is a solution).

We are all constantly trying to tell our story. We wear masks, put on appearances, dance the dance.

The gap occurs when the story we tell is different from the story we are trying to tell. The story of who we are inside.

The one who listens is the one who can figure out that story. This is the first step at communicating to that baby child inside that wants to come out and play.

3. Questions

Without the right question, you'll never get the right answer.

We're not really smart enough to come up with the right answers. But if we listen carefully, we can ask the right questions.

One question leads to another. 1000 questions might lead to one answer. One solution.

I've done 100s of interviews. A bad interview is when you have pre-canned questions and you already know the answers.

A good interview is driven by curiosity. Dig a little deep. Get someone to take off the masks a little but so you can see who they really are.

People love people who ASK them. People don't like people who TELL them.

4. Stories

When my daughters were real little they wouldn't go to sleep until I told them a story about when I was a kid. I had to tell them a new story every day.

They didn't want a lecture on why you shouldn't steal. They wanted to know about the time I stole and got caught.

Between you and me there is a vast river. A story is a boat. An idea is a passenger on that boat.

Only when you put the idea in the boat and send it in the right direction, when the wind is blowing just so, and the weather is the right temperature, does it have a chance of reaching the other side. At reaching you.

5. Laughter

Laughter is before language. It's primal communication.

If there was a rustling in the bush: could it be a lion? Or is it just the wind?

Once a mammal discovered it was just the wind, an instinctive laugh would come out, informing the other members of it's tribe that there is nothing to worry about.

Danger transforming into relief is communicated via laughter. This is true for at least the last 2 million years.

Everyone is in danger constantly. How many people around the world woke up at three in the morning today, scared of something that will probably never happen.

I know I did.

Getting people to laugh tells people the danger is ok. You're safe here. In this spot, right now. With me.

6. Vulnerability

I used to go on a lot of news TV shows. I'd be on these panels and they'd tell us when to argue with each other.

I'd be sitting in a dark room in the studio with a camera facing me and an earpiece in my ear and ever now and then a voice would say, "OK, argue now!"

And we all had to be perfect. Nobody was allowed to say, "I don't know".

I was always so scared because I never knew. But I foolishly felt like being on TV was a good thing. So, like everyone else (although that's not an excuse), I'd pretend to know.

And then we'd all go home. Great job! But when I took a shower I felt like I could never get clean.

So many things I got wrong. So many times I tried to be perfect and couldn't handle it unless I was perfect. To the point that perfectionism almost led to a very imperfect suicide.

Deep down, we're all trying to figure this out. Why are we here? Why did this happen to me? How can I do better?

When we admit it, share it, question it - we can communicate with that primal emptiness inside of everyone that just needs to be heard. It's in those moments of vulnerability that we become the best communicators.

7. Silence

How can silence be a way to communicate? We all think about 60,000 thoughts a day.

The only problem is: 95% of those thoughts are the same thoughts as yesterday. Silencing some of those thoughts would result in less stress, less anxiety, fear, regret.

We speak about 10,000 words a day. What if we spoke one half of that?

Whenever I write a book I try to go on a silent retreat. Not to get rid of distractions. To get rid of me! When you speak, you spill your energy everywhere. It disperses into the sky. Into nothingness.

Here's a good trick to try: When someone is talking to you, if you are already thinking of a response while they are still talking, then you aren't listening.

Let them finish. They have something to say to you.

There's other skills of course: sales, languages, building things ... I don't know.

I'm not really good at most things that people consider valuable skills. I'm shy and like to sit in my room and I'm afraid to meet new people.

But I force myself to because I think, "this will take me out of my comfort zone." And then I will have something new to say.

Then I can maybe help someone.

Then I will have an answer to the only question that is ever important. At the end of the night, when the lights are out, when there's nothing left to say or do or think, to just wonder, even if there is no answer:

"Who did I help today?"

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It's been six years since the Great Recession technically ended.

Since then, job numbers have come back up, and unemployment has gone back down. In April 2014, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the number of US private sector jobs had finally returned to their pre-crash peak.

But not all cities have recovered equally.

"We know every city was hit hard," says Glassdoor's chief economist, Andrew Chamberlain, who's been looking at which areas are still struggling six years later, and which places are now booming. 

The short answer: Go West, young man. Of the top 10 cities on Glassdoor's "Recovery Index," seven are in the Western states, and five of the top 15 are in Texas alone.

Chamberlain looked at three criteria to get his ranking: how much the unemployment rate has dropped in the years since 2009, how much job growth each city has seen since 2009, and how much wages have increased since 2009.

That doesn't tell us everything. "It doesn't tell us anything about the inequalities in cities, for example," he notes. "It doesn't tell us about side-lined workers who have left the labor force." And it doesn't look at where cities were before the recession; what we're looking at here is the growth (or lack thereof) that's happened since then.

The three indicators still paint a pretty good picture of recovery, Chamberlain tells Business Insider. Based on those metrics, here are the top 15 cities that have rebounded the most since the recession:

1. Midland, Texas(-2.7% unemployment since 2009, 30% job growth, 27% wage growth)

2. Odessa, Texas (-4.6% unemployment, 26% job growth, 20% wage growth)

3. San Jose - Sunnyvale - Santa Clara, California (-6.3% unemployment, 25% job growth, 14% wage growth)

4. Greeley, Colorado (-3.9% unemployment, 28% job growth, 7% wage growth)

5. Provo-Orem, Utah (-3.8% unemployment, 24% job growth, 10% wage growth)

6. Laredo, Texas (-4.0% unemployment, 24% job growth, 9% wage growth)

7. Houston - The Woodlands - Sugar Land, Texas (-3.3% unemployment, 19% job growth, 13% wage increase)

8. Ames, Iowa (-2.3% unemployment, 21% job growth, 12% wage growth)

9. Charlotte - Concord - Gastonia, North Carolina-South Carolina (-6.5% unemployment, 19% job growth, 10% wage growth)

10. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (-2.4% unemployment, 19% job growth, 14% wage growth)

11. Naples - Immokalee - Marco Island, Florida (-6.2% unemployment, 23% job growth, 5% wage growth)

12. Austin - Round Rock, Texas (-3.6% unemployment, 23% job growth, 7% wage growth)

13. Columbia, Missouri (-2.3% unemployment, 16% job growth, 13% wage growth)

14. Raleigh, North Carolina (-4.1% unemployment, 18% job growth, 9% wage growth)

15. Burlington, North Carolina (-6.7% unemployment, 17% job growth, 8% wage growth)

What to make of it? "This is an oil and gas story," Chamberlain says, bluntly. Midland, Odessa, and Greeley all top the list thanks to the boom in hydraulic fracking, according to Chamberlain. 

San Jose, Provo, Charlotte, and Raleigh, meanwhile, are all "places where there have been technology booms," he continues. San Jose is obvious because it's the center of tech, but Provo has a powerful start up culture, too, as do Charlotte and Raleigh.  

"All the cities in which the tech industries is growing fast have universities nearby that feed skilled workers into those companies," he says. But while tech depends on a constant flow of new graduates, the oil and gas industries are "quite a different story," demographically speaking.

In Midland and Odessa, for example, there's a tremendous need for oil field service workers coming from blue-collar trade backgrounds.

It's not necessarily surprising the oil, gas, and tech industries are fueling growth in these 15 cities, but the data here does provide an important lesson, according to Chamberlain: "All labor markets are local." Midland, Texas, can have a robust economy even while the economy in Ocean City, New Jersey, flails. (Ocean City comes in last on the list, coming in at number 327).  

That's information you can act on: You can't control economic trends, but you can — to some degree, at least — control where you live. "The rapid migration away from cities like Detroit and toward cities like Phoenix in recent years largely reflects this type of migration: workers moving away from poorly performing cities toward areas with rapidly growing job markets," he says. 

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Presenting to one of your higher-ups may be a nerve racking experience, but it can be a crucial time to stand out as an employee.

A great way to learn how to impress your bosses is to familiarize yourself with the traits other leaders look for in their employees.

Darlene Price, president of Well Said, Inc., and author of "Well Said!," has interviewed more than 200 senior leaders in Fortune 100 companies. She asked them, "What qualities do you value most in speakers who present to you?"

There were three common responses:

1. Be clear.

"Create a structured message with lucid logic that is easy to follow and understand," Price says. A well-structured and ordered speech "shows the decision maker that you are prepared and organized," she says.

It starts with having an effective framework, meaning clear opening, body, and closing sections. Additionally, it's better to use quantifiable language, such as "25% growth," as opposed to generalizations like "significant increase," Price says.

2. Be concise.

"Don't make executives wait for the punch-line, which tests their patience," Price says. "Deliver the gist right away." 

Including a preview in your opening is important, but it shouldn't drag on. Introduce your purpose and key points, and then jump into your main idea, Price says. "Provide supporting material ideally using no more than three key points," Price says. And finally, close out your discussion with a brief recap and a suggestion of future action.

The goal is to provide an exciting proposition without offering too much information. Deliver the need-to-know facts rather than the nice-to-know details, Price says.

3. Be credible.

Credibility is key in any field, but lacking it will be detrimental to your presentation. There are three main areas where speakers can improve their credibility, Price says:

1. Know your audience: Prove that you've done your homework and tailor your message around the specific audience.
2. Look and sound the part: Use confident body language, dress professionally, and speak with a steady pace.
3. Embrace the Q&A: Expect questions and objections, and approach them calmly and confidently. Be honest if you don't know the answer.

Each of the three traits to high impact communication, if done correctly, work well together. "You will inspire trust in the minds of your key stakeholders and deliver a confident, convincing message that gets results," Price says.

SEE ALSO: 5 nonverbal communication cues all great speakers have mastered

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This answer by Jordan Gray originally appeared on Quora as an answer to the question: What are the inherent benefits of being an introvert?

Absolutely there are. Especially in intimate/social relationships...

1. Rapport building 

Introverts are master rapport builders in all kinds of relationships. It is an unfortunately common misperception that introverts don’t like being around people. This is simply not true.

Introverts actually have a greater need for intimacy and depth in their relationships than their extroverted counterparts. They would much rather have a smaller social circle with greater understanding and connection with each person, than having a large group of acquaintances that they have less emotional intimacy with. Surface level communication frustrates introverts and gives them a feeling of ‘What’s the point of just chatting? We aren’t having a real conversation.”

This propensity towards deep rapport building helps introverts massively in the dating scene. Women need trust and comfort to build an emotional connection with the person that they’re interested in… and introverts deliver this in spades.

Studies have shown that introverts outperform extroverts in high-ticket sales positions because they are wired to be able to nurture longer lasting relationships with more depth and patience. It is this exact trait that allows introverts to gain quick and thorough connection with people that they have just met.

Introverts are also more prone to talking about certain ‘heavier’ topics such as sexuality, values, morals, and religion that many extroverts don’t get the chance to discuss because they are too often stuck in their surface-level world of small talk. The fact that introverts aren’t afraid to discuss such topics makes relationships with card-carrying introverts a true gift.

2. Ability to listen 

Few things turn women off more than going on a date with a guy that can only talk about themselves. Introverts are world-class listeners. They communicate with their conversational partners like laser beams – seeing into the soul of the speaker with intuition and clarity.

Extroverted conversations have the partners stepping on each other’s toes with their words … rapid fire question and response, rambling stories, and quickly changed conversational topics. Watch a small group of introverts communicating with each other and every one is heard equally and people are very rarely interrupted in the slightest.

3. Thoughtfulness and caring

Introverts are more introspective and self-aware than most extroverts. It is often said that the world is made up of people who think, and people who do (introverts and extroverts respectively). The world needs action takers and people who are more thoughtful … it keeps the world in balance. To draw an analogy, think of how one shoots an arrow from a bow.

If the world were only made up of introverts, the arrow would be cocked and ready to be fired, but the shooter would always be recalibrating and aiming the arrow before it ever took flight. If the world were only extroverts, the arrows would be flying every which way but never hit any targets. It would be absolute chaos. Thus, the world needs those who can aim, and those who can let go.

You’ve likely heard the phrase “it’s the thought that counts”. Introverts are keenly self-aware and, due to their sensitivity to their environments, are more likely to store information about their significant other (whether on a first date or fiftieth), and therefore make their partner feel more cared for.

4. Self-reflectiveness and error-correction

Another common strength among introverts is the fact that they are self-reflective and are magnificent at error correcting. From all of the time introverts spend doing their internal homework, they are brilliantly adept at continually making sure that they are in integrity with themselves and living from a congruent place. This also generally results in lower incidences of egomania because introverts are much less interested in keeping up with the Jones’s and chasing external status symbols.

They value things like thoughtfulness, moral integrity, and empathy over extroverted traits like charisma, or being seen as fascinating, or socially dominant.

So how does error-correction help you in your relationship management?

You’re bound to mess up something in your dating life. Introverts have a much easier time self-reflecting, realizing what they did wrong, and admitting to it openly. Show me a boyfriend that can admit when he was wrong, and I’ll show you his happy girlfriend.

5. Depth vs. breadth

This is one of the biggest points in this list (and could just as easily be the #1 point). Introverts prefer depth of connection in their social and intimate lives, where extroverts are more drawn towards breadth of connections.

I personally know many introverts who are passionately loyal friends to about three to five people in their lives. And to them, that’s more than enough. In fact, they set clear boundaries around their social lives and when people try to start relationships with them they are very clear that their social lives are already “full” and that, although they appreciate the offer, they don’t have any more time for new friends. This is an element of introversion taken to a bit of an extreme case, but it’s admirable nonetheless.

(The above is an excerpt from my article on introverted strengths in dating that you can read more about at How Being An Introvert Helps You In Love.)

SEE ALSO: 23 introverts who became extremely successful

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Possibly more than any other single factor, your mindset determines your success.

What you think is what you become.

Internal dialogue — the ongoing conversation we all have with our mindset — is the driving force behind every success story, and also behind every failure.

The difference between who you are and who you want to be stems from your mindset. Once you start to change your mindset, you will immediately start to change your behavior.

Here are seven mindsets that will radically improve your business and your life.

1. Self-trust mindset.

To do anything great, you have to be able to trust yourself and believe in your capabilities. Success is not something that just happens but something you create. You have to have the confidence to banish any negative voices in your head. Don't give up on the things you believe in — and most important, don't give up on yourself.

2. Goal-setting mindset.

Knowing what you want and willing yourself to reach it are two different things. When you know your goals, they motivate you. Remember, if it doesn't challenge you, it won't change you. Set high goals and don't stop until you reach them.

3. Patient mindset.

There's a fine line between moving forward and standing still. The most successful people do all they can to move forward, but they also have the patience to wait and watch. Those who are impatient tend to lose out on great opportunities. Sometimes you have to wait for the right thing.

4. Courageous mindset.

Doing anything great requires courage, but fear always has a way of showing up. Courage does not mean being unafraid; having courage and showing courage means facing your fears, saying "I am scared and I am moving forward anyway." Courage is like a muscle you can strengthen with use.

5. Focused mindset.

One of the worst setbacks that can happen is losing focus and allowing procrastination to step in. Important as it is, it's difficult to be focused and disciplined. The best way is to stay in the here and now and to concentrate on everything going on in this particular moment. Distraction wastes time, and procrastination keeps you from moving forward. Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment, and a mindset of focus builds that bridge.

6. Positive mindset.

Choosing to be positive and having a good attitude will determine a lot about your life. If you set your mind to positivity it can go a long way. Be positive, not passive. Instead of giving yourself reasons why you can't or shouldn't, give yourself reasons why you can and permission to go for it. Happiness doesn't come from circumstances but always from within.

7.Learning mindset.

Just because you are struggling, that doesn't mean you're not learning. Every failure has something to teach you, and everything you learn helps you grow. If you are unwilling to learn, no one can help you; if you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.

Every great success requires some kind of struggle, and good things really do come to those who work hard and struggle to pursue their goals and dreams they believe in. To radically change your life, you have to change yourself. Start building your new mindset today — think the thoughts that will help you move toward your goals right now.

SEE ALSO: 2 ways to achieve a lifetime of happiness

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