• Khalil Gibran was born on 6th January, 1883, in the mountainous area of Northern Lebanon. He had a half-brother six years older than him and two younger sisters. When Gibran was eight years old, his father was imprisoned for tax evasion which resulted in the Gibans' property being confiscated. As a result, the family was homeless and lived with relatives for a while before his mother, a strong-willed woman, decided to emigrate to the US to seek a better life. There they settled in Boston's South End.
    Although originally placed in an ungraded class where immigrant children had to learn English from scratch, Gibran soon caught the eye of his teachers with his sketches and drawings, which eventually led to him being supported by an artistic benefactor, Fred Holland Day, which allowed Gibran to develop his talents to become a high-profile philosophical essayist, novelist, mystical poet and artist.
    Him most famous work and the one that he will always be remembered for was The Prophet, a book of 26 poetic essays originally published in 1923 and since translated into over 20 languages. The book became a counterculture guide in the 1960s and has remained a favorite of spiritual and New Age communities ever since.

    Chapter I - The Coming of the Ship






    Chapter III - Marriage





    Chapter V - Giving



    Chapter VI - Eating and Drinking






    Chapter VII - Work






    Chapter VIII - Joy and Sorrow




    Chapter IX - Houses








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  • Here are the best 10 creativity related and inspiring TED talks 

     (I) Julie Burstein: 4 lessons in creativity
    In this talk, Burstein identifies four lessons that creative people should embrace:
    1. Pay attention to the world around you, and be open to experiences that might change you.
      .
    2. Realize that the best work often comes out of the life experiences that are most difficult.
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    3. Get comfortable with the fact that pushing up against a limitation can actually help you find your voice.
      .
    4. Don’t be afraid to explore loss — be it rejection, heartbreak or death — because making beauty out of these things is so powerful.




    (II) Elizabeth Gilbert: Your elusive creative genius


    Gilbert reframes how we think about creativity—that rather than there being “geniuses” among us, that all of us have a bit of genius within us.





    (III) David Kelley: How to build your creative confidence

    He shares why he believes it is problematic to think of society as split into the creatives and the technical-minded. Here, he shares how people who think of themselves as the latter can build up their creative muscles, as we all have them — whether we know it or not.


    (IV) Isaac Mizrahi on fashion and creativity

     Mizrahi shares how his creative process heeds him to pay attention to tarot card readers and to the unique coloration of film, as well as to hop out of cabs and follow people who strike him as interesting on the streets of New York City


    (V) Amy Tan: Where does creativity hide

    Amy Tan became a writer because she found herself fascinated with one question: why do things happen the way they happen? In this talk from TED2008, Tan shares why it is so appealing to be the creator of her own universes — the one responsible for pulling strings and creating meaning.





    (VI) Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from

    When people tell the story of an invention, they usually describe a “eureka” moment. But author Steven Johnson wonders if that might be a fallacy. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2010, Johnson looks at how breakthroughs are slow to build and usually happen in dialogue with other thinkers of the time.


    (VII) Janet Echelman: Taking imagination seriously

    Artist Janet Echelman is known for creating enormous, undulating sculptures out of fishnets. So how did she come up with this unconventional form? In this talk from TED2011, Echelman explains that she found her voice when her paints went missing on a trip to a fishing village in India, and she was forced to work in a new medium.


    (VIII) Kirby Ferguson: Embrace the remix

    In this talk from TEDGlobal 2012, Kirby Ferguson unleashes a bold idea: that maybe creative types shouldn’t be so concerned with originality. As Ferguson sees it, creativity is all about copying, transforming and remixing things that already exist. In Ferguson’s eye, everything is a remix.


    (IX) Malcolm McLaren: Authentic creativity vs. karaoke culture

    The manager of the Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLaren helped shape the counterculture of the late ‘70s and ‘80s. In his final speech before passing away in 2010, McLaren shares his fears about what he calls “karaoke culture,” where success is about mimicry rather than emotional honesty. Because as McLaren sees it, no one should be shielded from the messy, difficult struggle of creating something new.



    (X) Tim Brown: Tales of creativity and play

    What is the difference between being a designer and just playing around? Not as much as most people think, says Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO. At Serious Play 2008, Brown shares how building a successful firm was as easy as giving employees a place to experiment without fear of being judged — just like kids do on a daily basis.






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  •

    Life Without Limits: Inspiration for a Ridiculously Good Life


    Nick Vujicic is a man who was born without his 4 limbs. Yet this is not a story of a man who is needy, but one who is so full of joy and hope that he himself brings light to people around him.
    Nick Vujicic is a man without limbs. Yet Nick is not someone who is depressed, bitter or upset about what has happened in his life. In fact, he’s someone full of joy and happiness in his life.
    This is a great testimony for all of us to learn about making the best that we have. Nick Vujicic once said that the greatest disabilities that all of us have are not physical; guilt and fear are what cripple men the most.

    And with that life philosophy, he goes on to live his life with purpose. Now, he goes all over the world speaking in huge events and conventions.

    If there was anyone that can complain about not being ‘entitled’ enough in life, it would be Nick Vujicic. But he chose to take what he had and maximized all of it. We must have the same attitude to life as well. Instead of constantly thinking about what we don’t have, perhaps it is time to start thinking about what we have. People who constantly think about what is lacking in their lives will come out bitter, depressed or angry. These actually describes a lot of people out there in our world, and they end up never doing anything great in their lives.

    When we start focusing on what we have in our lives, we will maximize our potential by continually exercising our talent. We think about our core competencies and we focus our energies to hone ourselves till eventually, we become experts at it.

    Nick Vujicic is truly a real life inspiration to all who see and hear him





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  • The Facts Of Luck By MICHAEL J. MAUBOUSSIN

    Sometimes, all your career needs is a little luck--even if you have to make it yourself. Here's a realistic look at skill, luck, and what you can do to change your odds.

    One of the greatest computer programmers of all time grew up near Seattle. He saw an upstart company, Intel, making computers on a chip and was among the first people to see the potential of these so-called microcomputers. He dedicated himself to writing software for the new device and, by one account, “wrote the software that set off the personal computer revolution.”
    In the mid 1970s, he founded a company to sell software for micro-computers. In the early history of the company, “the atmosphere was zany,” and “people came to work barefoot, in shorts,” and “anyone in a suit was a visitor.” But the company was soon highly profitable, and by 1981 its operating system had a dominant share of the market for personal computers that used Intel microprocessors.
    For all of its early triumphs, the company’s watershed moment came when IBM visited in the summer of 1980 to discuss an operating system for its new PC. After some negotiation, the two companies struck a deal. In August 1981, retailers offered the company’s software alongside the brand new IBM PC, and the company’s fate was sealed. The rest is history, as they say.
    In case this story’s not familiar, here’s the ending. This pioneer of computer technology entered a biker bar in Monterey, California, on July 8, 1994, wearing motorcycle leathers and Harley-Davidson patches. What happened next is unclear, but he suffered a traumatic blow to the head from either a fight or a fall. He left under his own power but died three days later from the injury, complicated by his chronic alcoholism. He was fifty-two years old. He is buried in Seattle and has an etching of a floppy disk on his tombstone. His name is Gary Kildall.
    You’d be excused for thinking that the first part of the story is about Bill Gates, the multibillionaire founder of Microsoft. And it is certainly tantalizing to ask whether Gary Kildall could have been Bill Gates, who at one point was the world’s richest man. But the fact is that Bill Gates made astute decisions that positioned Microsoft to prevail over Kildall’s company, Digital Research, at crucial moments in the development of the PC industry.
    When IBM executives first approached Microsoft about supplying an operating system for the company’s new PC, Gates actually referred them to Digital Research. There are conflicting accounts of what happened at the meeting, but it’s fairly clear that Kildall didn’t see the significance of the IBM deal in the way that Gates did.
    IBM struck a deal with Gates for a lookalike of Kildall’s product, CP/M-86, that Gates had acquired. Once it was tweaked for the IBM PC, Microsoft renamed it PC-DOS and shipped it. After some wrangling by Kildall, IBM did agree to ship CP/M-86 as an alternative operating system. IBM also set the prices for the products. No operating system was included with the IBM PC, and everyone who bought a PC had to purchase an operating system. PC-DOS cost $40. CP/M-86 cost $240. Guess which won.
    But IBM wasn’t the direct source of Microsoft’s fortune. Gates did cut a deal with IBM. But he also kept the right to license PC-DOS to other companies. When the market for IBM PC clones took off, Microsoft rocketed away from the competition and ultimately enjoyed a huge competitive advantage.
    When asked how much of his success he would attribute to luck, Gates allowed that it played “an immense role.” In particular, Microsoft was launched at an ideal time: “Our timing in setting up the first software company aimed at personal computers was essential to our success,” he noted. “The timing wasn’t entirely luck, but without great luck it wouldn’t have happened.”
    Making Your Own Luck
    Since luck is intimately intertwined in all of our lives, it comes as no surprise that there are plenty of aphorisms that address luck:
    • “You make your own luck.”
    • “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
    • “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”
    Preparation and hard work are essential elements of skill. They often lead to good outcomes. But the aphorisms don’t really address what’s happening. If you prepare and work hard, you are successful not because your luck improves. Luck doesn’t change at all. Only your skill improves. And you can work hard and prepare and build the best American diner on Route 66 just when the Interstate highway bypasses your town and puts you out of a job.
    There’s another popular argument that says you can’t get lucky unless you get in luck’s way. For example, you can’t win the lottery unless you play. On one level, of course, this is true. But it glosses over two important points. Luck can be good or bad. While winning the lottery does seem like good luck, it’s hard to say that losing the lottery is bad luck. Losing the lottery is expected. Lotteries are designed to take in more money than they dole out, so they are a loser’s game in the aggregate. The main issue is that putting yourself in a position to enjoy good luck also puts you in a position to lose.
    The other point is that the very effort that leads to luck is a skill. Say that you need to complete ten interviews with prospective employers to receive one job offer. Individuals who seek only five interviews may not get an offer, but those who go through all ten interviews will have an offer in hand by the end of the process. Getting an offer isn’t luck, it’s a matter of effort. Patience, persistence, and resilience are all elements of skill.
    The best-known advocate for the idea that you can create your own luck is Richard Wiseman, a professor at the University of Hertfordshire who holds Britain’s Chair in the Public Understanding of Psychology. Wiseman’s investigations are offbeat and fun. For example, he conducted a “scientific search” for the world’s funniest joke. (The winner: Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator says, “Calm down. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says, “OK, now what?”) He also argues that he has found “a scientifically proven way to understand, control, and increase your luck.”
    Wiseman collected a sample of hundreds of individuals and had them rate themselves on their beliefs about luck. He then sought to explain “the different ways in which lucky and unlucky people thought and behaved” and identified the “four principles of luck.” The principles include maximizing your chance opportunities, listening to your lucky hunches, expecting good fortune, and turning bad luck into good. Wiseman’s research is unfailingly lively and provocative and he comes across as an energetic and intellectually curious man. Unfortunately, good science this is not.


    In one experiment, Wiseman asked people playing the U.K. National Lottery to submit a form that included information on how many tickets they intended to buy and whether they considered themselves lucky. Of the seven hundred–plus respondents, 34 percent considered themselves lucky, 26 percent unlucky, and 40 percent were neutral. Thirty-six of the respondents (about 5 percent) won money that night, split evenly between the lucky and unlucky people. Individuals lost £2.50 on average, just as you would expect according to the number of tickets purchased. Wiseman points out that this experiment shows that lucky people aren’t psychic (just in case you thought they were); he also rules out any relationship between intelligence and luck.
    Suffice it to say that there is no way to improve your luck, because anything you do to improve a result can reasonably be considered skill.
    Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpted from The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing. Copyright 2012 Michael J. Mauboussin. All rights reserved. 
    Michael J. Mauboussin is an investment strategist and has been in the financial services industry for more than twenty-five years. He has also taught at the Columbia Graduate School of Business since 1993, and is on the board of trustees at the Santa Fe Institute. He is the author of two previous books, "Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition and More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in unconventional Places" and is coauthor, with Alfred Rappaport, of "Expectations Investing: Reading Stock Prices for Better Returns."
    [Image: Flickr user Bill S]

  • Stop and Listen to Your Gut By David Allen Ibsen

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    The mind can assert anything, and pretend it has proved it. My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept.—D.H. Lawrence
    The author D.H. Lawrence was right. We can rationalize our way into virtually any decision, but it is our gut instincts that often hold the answers to true success.
    We’re taught in school about logical, well thought-out, and fact-based decision-making. There’s usually a “right” and “wrong” answer to a college test question. These thought-out decision-making habits are then reinforced in business as we are trained in the “right way” to talk to a customer, and the “wrong way” to present in front of a large group of people. We’re taught that “The customer is always right” and to “listen to your boss.”
    Yes, thinking things out is a practiced habit of decision-making. It is a back-and-forth analysis, a system that can be skewed towards one decision or another if we apply our own bias to the analysis.
    However, skewed analysis often happens when we over-think a decision, or when we start the decision-making process with a predisposed desired outcome.
    Consider the habit of developing lists of “pros” and “cons,” a commonly regarded “foolproof” decision-making process. Maybe you created a list of eight reasons in the “pro” column to use your credit card to pay for that new camera you want to buy. and only four in the “con” column. Where’s my Visa card?
    Instinct, on the other hand is an untaught ability. It may deliver a more reliable and unbiased result.
    A research study from Leeds University Business School published in the British Journal of Psychology in 2008 applied some science to the idea that "gut feelings" are in fact not in our gut at all, but in fact are a specific brain activity.
    According to the researchers, intuition represents one of the ways our brains store, process, and retrieve information. The researchers analyzed a wide range of previous studies and concluded that intuition is the brain drawing on past experiences and current external cues to make a decision; the process is so rapid that the reaction is subconscious. It is part of the brain that allows us to make fast, instinctual decisions.
    In essence, when we “go with our gut,” the brain is not giving us a chance to talk ourselves out of a decision.
    Consider when gut decisions come to us: when we react immediately and instinctually under pressure, or when we set aside the hard thought of evaluating pros and cons. We just let our body and our brain free itself up to allow instinct to take over. Instinct is intelligence incapable of self-consciousness.
    Consider the example of a long-time client of mine. Eileen is a serial entrepreneur—the founder of four technology start-up companies over the years. She makes decisions every day that can make or break her company.
    Admittedly, Eileen has made her share of good and bad decisions. One day she decided to analyze the good and bad choices, examining how she came to these decisions. She realized that when she made decisions by listening to her gut, she had a far better success rate than when she followed a strictly logic-based decision process. Going with her gut worked when she had to make split-second decisions, as well as when she allowed her gut to marinate on an idea for a while, and catch up to logic. She began to lead with her gut, and she saw an improved success rate in her decision-making process. She has created a well-bred instinct that meets reason halfway. As she puts it, “Calculation never made a hero.”
    Follow your instincts. That's where true wisdom manifests itself. —Oprah Winfrey
    So the next time you are faced with a decision under pressure, take a second or two — and only a second or two — to evaluate whether you can hear your instincts telling you what to do, pulling you towards one path or another. They may be quietly whispering to you, but they are always worth listening to. Stop, take a breath, and filter out the rational noise. Hear that beautiful voice: your inner thoughts giving you true wisdom.
    Call it a “gut check.”
    Author David Allen Ibsen is CEO of Five Meetings Before Lunch, a market-driven business strategy company, with over 25 years experience helping emerging companies and established brands build effective strategies and programs when they’re ready to launch, pivot or grow. He also is Editor-in-Chief of the online magazine FIVE THôT at the intersection of creativity and commerce.

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