Like many things, this flinch can be both a friend and a foe. When we face actual danger, the flight-or-fight reaction can save a life. When we face an important decision or a challenge to the status quo, however, this same instinct can cause us to choke in the moment of need.

Thankfully, this natural aversion to change can be overcome. By overcoming the flinch through voluntary practice, you can build up a tolerance to this instinct.

Take a Cold Shower

While the potential health benefits of cold showering are still being debated (link), the mental fortitude gained is indisputable. You don’t need to shower like this all the time, but do it at least once.

Turn the shower on as cold as possible and simply test the temperature with your hand. Now, as you prepare to step into it, you probably find yourself shivering and looking for a way to back down. Don’t.

After the first few seconds of shock and horror, you will be surprised to find that a cold shower isn’t actually that bad. The hardest part is overcoming the initial flinch.

Read a Book

To the detriment of our society, book worms are becoming fewer and further between. If you read regularly already, this might not be the best challenge for you, but if you rarely read outside of required school topics, this is a great way to face the flinch.

Choose a moderately long book (200 – 300 is a good start) and read it from cover to cover. If you have time, feel free to read it in one sitting, but that is definitely not a requirement. Do, however, read a few pages every day until you finish it.

As with any project, the truly difficult part I the flinch, that moment when you actually pick up the book and read the first sentence. From there, distractions can still tempt you to give up, but the flow of actually starting makes it much easier to ignore them.

Pick Your Fear

While general challenges can definitely help you overcome the flinch, the only person who really knows how to best overcome your flinch is you. What do you really fear?
Whether your fear is a difficult class, a challenging workout, or something else entirely, find small ways to beat your own flinch. Over time, all those small victories will start adding up.

As difficult as you will find it to face the flinch, you will be able to go farther, do more, and live more when you stop running from the flinch. As the Japanese Samurai used to teach, the real battle is internal. Before the first attach or parry, the results of the battle have been decided by the individual contestants. Face the flinch; win the battle.

How will you face the flinch?

Just remember, once is never enough. However little you do, make sure you face the flinch in some manner every single day.

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While the act of exercising is definitely necessary to bring about these benefits, the supporting activities before and after will determine how much a workout can help you.

Follow these guidelines to exercise safely and efficiently.

#1 Warm Up

When was the last time you walked into the gym and immediately started lifting the largest weights possible? Hopefully not recently. By adding a warmup period to your exercise routine, you can greatly increase both your effectiveness while exercising and your ability to avoid injury.

Whether you warm up through a short jog or a stretching session, find an appropriate starting exercise to add to your routine.

#2 Stop Slowly

The best athletes don’t transition directly from a flat out sprint to sitting at their desk. Rather, they understand the importance of cooling down gradually.

Particularly useful in cooler temperatures, gradually warming down over a period of five or ten minutes will help work much of the lactic acid out of your muscles – decreasing stiffness and soreness later.

#3 Drink Water

Because exercise uses large amounts of fluid, you must actively work to replace them after your workout. Particularly important in endurance exercises such as running, fluid intake will increase your performance during prolonged routines and will also speed your recovery time.

Although various sport drinks definitely have some benefits, most amateur athletes will benefit most from plain water.

#4 Eat Healthfully

Surprisingly, (or not) the effectiveness of your exercise sessions is limited in a large part by your diet. When you exercise, you send your body signals to build and repair muscles. To do this, your body will use whatever building materials are on hand.

Eat a balanced diet to give your body the materials it needs to build a strong and durable structure.

#5 Rest Well

After a long workout, one of the best recovery methods is also the most obvious – rest. As simple as it may sound, many budding athletes – particularly those attending college – fail to get enough sleep. Between your class deadlines, exercise routines, and social life, rest many easily seem like an insignificant part of the day.

When you exercise, however, you actually tear down your muscles. Without sleep, your body will not be able to recover properly. Aim for at least seven to nine hours of sleep each night.

#6 Stretch

Stretching – both before and after exercise – will vastly increase your athletic potential. Stretching will help you be more relaxed and natural, improve your posture, increase your range of motion, and help you avoid many injuries.

Even if you only perform the most basic stretches (such as the Hamstring Stretch or the Standing Calf Stretch), forcing yourself to do so regularly will reap many rewards.

#7 Avoid Over Training

Studies have shown that optimal gain generally comes from between two and three workouts each week. If you prefer more mild exercises, you might be able to exercise daily, but you should always be careful to avoid over training.

All the best recovery techniques are useless if you fail to supply one crucial ingredient – time.

How do you recover from your exercise routines?

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Just when you think you are prepared for every possibility, the impossible will hit you. Thankfully, even the worst setback or temporary defeat does not necessitate ultimate surrender.

Apply these principles to recover from the worst and get back ahead.

1. Minimum Effective Dose

After you have assessed the problem, find the minimum effective dose (MED) that will provide the solution.  Often used in a medical context, MED refers to the medicinal dose or procedure that will do the most good in the least amount of time.

Perhaps that ten page, triple edited essay that you lost on your crashed hard drive would have earned you an A+, but can you possibly meet the basic requirements with a three page, once edited version?

We always want to do a task as well as possible, but during a time crunch that simply isn’t possible.  Do what you can in the time that you have.

2. Break it down

If the task before you seems overwhelmingly impossible, break it down into more manageable steps.

As the old joke goes, “How do you eat an elephant?” “One bite at a time. “  Rather than trying to swallow the entire elephant in one giant gulp, do it in manageable steps.

The overall task might seem impossibly large, but you would be amazed how quickly the individual pieces of that assignment can be completed.

3. Wake up early

If you have a couple days before the deadline, try waking up early.

Traditionally, college students are known for pulling all-nighters to finish their assignments and survive a time crunch, but that probably is not the best method for you.  Although it may sound exciting, staying up all night to finish a task will probably not actually be the fastest way for you to get it done.

On the contrary, you will probably accomplish more by getting a good night’s rest and waking up early to give the task your full concentration.

4. Take breaks

As the deadline looms over you, it can be tempting to simply put your head down and push forward.  By taking breaks, however, you can clear your mind, assess the current progress, and resume the task with renewed energy and focus.

Instead of simply pushing harder against a brick wall, you can take a moment to look for a good path around or over the wall.

Studies have shown that students concentrate best in thirty minute study increments.  For twenty-five minutes, you can work on your study or assignment.  At that point, you productivity will start to go down quickly, so you take a five minute break to walk around the block, grab a bit of sleep, or simply read a unrelated book.  Now, with renewed focus you can return to your original task.

5. Do the worst first

The only thing worse than a difficult task is a procrastinated and difficult task.

Although it will be tempting to put off the more painful parts of a project until the end, you will actually be more productive if you do them first.  Just be careful to not get so bogged down in that part of the project that you lose track of time.

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While this definitely is useful and can occasionally come in handy, actually becoming fairly fluent in a foreign language provides many more benefits. Although English is still the most common language in the business world, you may be surprised to learn that both Spanish and Mandarin (Chinese) exceed our native tongue in worldwide speakers.

As our world becomes increasingly international, the importance of learning a second (or third) language will only continue to grow.

Accelerate Your Career

Learning a second language will have a substantial effect on your success in business. The ability to converse freely in multiple languages is so important, in fact, that many companies actually offer financial benefits to employees who can achieve fluency.

If you are working with the general US population, you will probably see the greatest professional gain by learning Spanish, but almost every language is spoken somewhere in the “melting pot”. Whether you are a doctor learning to communicate directly with more of your patients or a customer service representative learning to solve more customer’s problems, expanding your language abilities will provide a major boost to your career.

Sharpen Your Mind

Because learning a second language requires such a paradigm shift, it will provide many intellectual benefits as well. Much like studying a musical instrument, learning a foreign language will provide a mental challenge that will increase your intellectual agility in both school and business.

This effect is so strong that researchers have found each year of language study results in measurable gains on both college and graduate school exams.

Improve Your First Language

Because we are used to speaking, reading, and even thinking in our native tongue since birth, we can often overlook various grammatical errors.

When you learn a second language, your study of the foreign language will force you to draw comparisons and reevaluate your understanding of English grammar. Not only will you learn a second language, but you will actually learn to communicate with more clarity in your first language!

Better Travel Experiences

Traveling – either on your own or in a study abroad program – provides many opportunities to study a foreign culture and learn to think outside of your own culture’s assumptions. As an English speaker in a foreign country, however, your ability to actually experience the country’s real culture will be fairly limited.

By learning a foreign language before traveling, however, you will actually be able to get past the tourist experience to see what the country is really like on the inside. As an added bonus, you can also perfect your language skills during extended stays.

Land a Scholarship

Not only will language learning benefit you in the long-term, but it can also help you pay for college. Many scholarships are available for students who speak a certain language or understand a particular culture. Because these scholarships are offered to a limited group, you will actually have a much higher chance of winning these scholarships than you would in some of the more well known programs.

Do you know a second language?

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In today’s post, we explore seven of the most important browser add-ons for Firefox.

Adblocker Plus

This is almost always the first add-on I install new computers. Adblocker Plus automatically removes most advertisements for a cleaner, more efficient web browsing experience. In addition, it also provides an option to manually block most images and other page elements for the rare occasions when the automatic function misses an advertisement. If you ever don’t want advertisements blocked for some reason, you can easily select to disable Adblocker completely or simply for one site.

LeechBlock

This tool is particularly useful for college students. Since both our work and leisure activities are easily accessible from a computer, it can often be easy to get distracted from our studies. Thanks to this plugin, however, you can quickly set your browser to block the tempting websites during your study sessions. Additionally, you can also change your settings to only limit the amount of extra browsing, such as only five minutes per hour.

Zotero

After hours of researching and writing, you probably don’t want to spend much time compiling your bibliography page. Thankfully, Zotero will help speed up the process. As you research online, you can use Zotero to replace the old three by five note card system. Using tags and searches you can sort your sources and easily import the proper citations to Word or OpenOffice. When working on a class project, you can collaborate over Zotero to share your notes.

FastestFox

This versatile add-on provides a number of useful improvements, including faster downloads and options to download videos. My favorite feature, however, is the Google search modification. Normally, researching in Google involves repeatedly clicking through to the next page to see more results. FastestFox changes this so that the next page automatically loads as you scroll down (much like the scrolling in Facebook).

LastPass

Security. We all know it’s important, but we often ignore it until after it has been compromised. After all, creating secure passwords sounds good, but remembering those passwords is a different story. While saving passwords in Firefox is definitely not a new solution, the default password saving feature has a few crucial problems. For instance, anyone using your computer (if you lose it or someone gains remote access) can easily view and download all your passwords and usernames within a matter of seconds. LastPass not only makes your passwords more secure, but it also allows you to automatically fill forms and gives options to save other data, such as security question answers.

InvisibleHand

As college students, we are always looking for the best deals. Shopping online makes this fairly simple already, but the InvisibleHand add-on takes simplicity to the next level. When you visit a product page, their software automatically checks the pricing on other websites (including eBay, Amazon, and dozens more) to find the best price. Although their results don’t recognize all the factors in pricing (such as free shipping on Amazon Prime), this unobtrusive addition greatly quickens the comparison process.

HTTPS Everywhere

Just as LastPass improves your password storage security, this add-on works to keep your password and other information secure when you sign in. As you probably have heard, many websites including Google and Facebook have options to “force https”, or make sure your connection is secure. Adjusting this for every site you visit, however, is too much of a hassle. Developed by the Tor Project and Electronic Frontier Foundation, HTTPS Everywhere automatically make your internet browsing secure on thousands of the most popular websites.

Do It!

If you have never installed an add-on before, the process is really quite simple:

1. Click the link to the download page
2. Select the download button
3. Confirm the installation
4. Restart Firefox

It’s that simple!

What are your favorite plugins?

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Thankfully, this problem can actually be turned into a blessing. By selling these unused items, we can not only create a cleaner, more open study environment (which will lead to better learning), but we can also add a nice bit of padding to our often frighteningly low bank balances.

Although the process can sound confusing to the uninitiated, modern college students actually have a number of surprisingly simple methods available.

#1 Craigslist

Everyone has heard of it, and you probably have purchased something through this site before, but have you ever considered selling? Completely free for all but the most unusual cases (i.e., brokered apartment rentals in NYC) postings on this site are easily setup and published. Once someone contacts you about your listing, you will be responsible to arrange the payment and delivery with them.

This particular service is excellent when you want to sell something quickly while avoiding the hassle of shipping and online payment processing. As with any online or offline transaction, be careful to only work with purchasers you trust and don’t give out any unnecessary personal information.

Learn more here.

#2 Amazon

Although it is slightly more complicated, Amazon does have an excellent marketplace for used items. They are a little bit pickier about what you can sell, but you can generally list anything that is already on the website.

Using the Fulfillment by Amazon program, you can basically fill out an online form, ship your stuff to Amazon’s warehouse, and wait for someone to purchase it. Unlike Craigslist, Amazon’s service does charge a number of fees including a storage fee, shipping charge, and commission for selling on their site. If you just want to make some money for your junk without having to spend a lot of time shipping and marketing it, however, Amazon’s program could be perfect for you.

Learn more here.

#3 eBay

If you want to take a more active approach, eBay might be the perfect platform for you to use. A combination of auction sales and set prices, eBay provides a great opportunity to learn a bit more about marketing. Easily integrating with PayPal, an eBay auction can be setup in a matter of minutes. The fees charged by eBay are comparable to those on Amazon.

Like Amazon, however, eBay has an option to have someone else handle the shipping and selling. Using a “Trading Assistant”, you can have someone else manage your listing in exchange for a cut of your selling price.

Learn more here.

Conclusion

By selling your extra stuff online, you can better optimize your study space while getting a small kickback for doing so. If you aren’t able to sell your stuff right away, make sure to match your price closely to that of similar items and include as much information as possible. Even if your item is completely brand new and unopened, people will feel more comfortable buying if you include more information on your listing.

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On the contrary, I would contend that “passions” – or areas of particular interest – should be controlled by us rather than be allowed to control us. Not a inborn trait, your interest in a particular topic will wax and wane with time. While “passion” is often treated as a mysterious emotion that cannot be guided, much of it is influenced by external variables.

In today’s article, I will examine a few of the key factors that will help you generate passion on demand.

1. Look for the good

As you go about your job or your studies, look for the parts that you enjoy. If you keep a journal, write down at least one specific instance each day about a piece of your studies that you found fulfilling, challenging, or just plain fun.

When you give the extra effort to look for the areas – no matter how small – that you do find pleasurable, you will find your attitude to the entire subject shifting in the right direction.

2. Stop complaining

Just as looking for the good parts of a task will help you grow your passion, complaining will kill it. Even if you have valid reasons for frustration, simply complaining will not improve anything.

Only voice the complaint if you have a solution to the problem. Otherwise, don’t allow your mind to dwell on the disappointments.

3. Become great

Not surprisingly, very few first year law students are passionate about law. No matter how much you might enjoy a topic, the learning process will be difficult.

As you become more of an expert, however, you will find your enthusiasm for it continually growing. Next time you start feeling burnt out on a particular class remember that the more you learn, the more you will enjoy it in the future.

4. Personalize it

When you find a topic completely dull and seemingly useless, go through the exercise of applying it to your own life. Either find a way to use the information in your current activities or think about how it will fit into your future career.

By grounding the topic in actual reality and fitting it to your own situation, you will find the topic coming alive before your very eyes.

5. Sleep more

As a college student you are probably at the peak health of your life and feel like sleep is a necessary evil to be minimized as much as possible. If you want to enjoy your classes, however, maintaining a healthy sleep schedule is crucial.

When you are behind in sleep, you will be more easily frustrated and confused – two key factors that led to a lack of interest. Next time you want to be more interested in a subject, try sleeping on it.

What are you most enthusiastic about?

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By applying these techniques, you can avoid complete failure and regain your former success in an astoundingly short time.

#1 Over Communicate

The moment you realize that you will be late for the deadline, let the appropriate parties know.  Not only will this begin the path toward your recovery, but it will give them time to adjust their schedule and (hopefully) avoid missing any of their deadlines due to your delay.  If there is anything worse than being late yourself, it is being responsible for making someone else late.

#2 Take Responsibility

It didn’t work in third grade, and it won’t work now.  Even if your dog really did eat your homework, it actually doesn’t matter (yet).  From your professor’s point of view, you are late with your assignment.  Passing the blame will not make you look any better but will actually prejudice the decision maker against you.  Take responsibility and apologize for your error in not anticipating the potential problems.

#2.5 Explain What Went Wrong (optional)

If your dog truly did eat your homework, that might be worth explaining… after you have claimed responsibility for the problem.  Make it clear that you are not trying to excuse the delay, but simply explaining why it happened.

More importantly, mention how you will avoid this particular and similar problems to ensure timely delivery in the future.

#3 Try To Get A New Deadline

While this may not be possible, you never know until you try.  Explain what you have left to complete and how long you expect to need to finish.  Don’t try to get too much extra time, but don’t under estimate the time needed either – you definitely do not want to miss the extended deadline.

#4 Go For Plan B

If you are unable to negotiate an extension, it is time to move to Plan B.  Look for other things that can be cut to give you the time needed to meet the looming deadline.  Perhaps you have too much on your plate and need to remove a few things.  Perhaps this is only a short-term time crunch, and you need to temporarily cut some of the lower priority items.  Either way, now is the time to look for acceptable sacrifices.  Like an expert chess master, look for ways to minimize the damage or even avoid it completely.

#5 Never Miss Another Deadline

Whether you have successfully salvaged your deadline or not, don’t let this failure get you down.  A life without failure is a life without opportunity for success.  Recognize where you made your mistake and create an action plan that will enable you to avoid repeating the mistake.

This particular incident will soon pass, but the lesson learned can be a life-long help… if you let it.

Conclusion

Whether you turn in your paper too late at school or show up to a presentation at work empty handed, the real test is in our response.  Everyone makes mistakes, but only a few recover gracefully.

What deadlines have you missed, and how did you react?

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Because of this, college is the perfect time to form good habits that you might not already have. While the knowledge you gain in college will be important to your career, forming these habits will be just as crucial to your career and to your life in general.

#1 Do it today

Procrastination keeps great people mediocre. If you can conquer your desire to put things off, you will be able to accomplish much more than most people while maintaining a much more stress-free schedule. Because you have a bit more freedom on your assignment times in college than you had in high school, this is the perfect time to learn self-discipline and get things done early. Don’t do it tomorrow.

#2 Be punctual

There may well be a great divide between college and the real world, but this is one of the principles that bridges the gap. No one – not your professors and not your fellow student athletes – want you to show up late to your engagements. Learn to respect the time of those around you, and you will have done much to jumpstart your career.

#3 Work hard

As important as punctuality is, good old fashioned hard work contributes even more to a successful education… and career. Grades are important, but don’t simply settle for good grades. Instead, aim for great grades and – even more important – a thorough working understanding. Your grades might be useful in landing a job, but your real learning – not your all-night cramming session – will help you keep it and move higher.

#4 Invest wisely

During high school, time can seem almost unlimited. As you move into college, however, a greater number of activities will converge to fill your time. Not only will your actual school be more difficult and require more time, but you might have a job on the side to balance with extracurricular sports and student clubs. If you are used to saying “yes”, you just might find yourself overwhelmed and needing at least seven more hours in a day. Make a continual effort to keep your plate just underfilled. You will be better off doing a few things well, than growing stressed while being mediocre at many things.

#5 Learn to enjoy learning

During the first eighteen years of our life, learning was a requirement of living. During at least four years of college, learning will still be a requirement. Once you finish your degree, however, you will no longer have a teacher or professor breathing down your neck with an assignment deadline. Will you continue learning for learning’s sake, or will you happily enjoy the extended summer vacation? Rather than simply “getting through” college, cultivate a love of learning that will help you grow your entire life.

What habits are you forming?

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College only comes once, so make sure you are ready to ace the first try.

Myth #1: College is much harder than high school

While your senior year of college will certainly be more academically advanced than your freshman year of high school, starting college doesn’t mean that the gradual increase in difficulty will suddenly accelerate. On the contrary, the first two years of college are primarily a review of the last two years of high school.

Completing college requires a fair degree of diligence, but the requirements are not nearly impossible.

Myth #2: Everyone will gain the “Freshman 15”

Due to the proliferation of fairly unhealthy but easily available cafeteria food, many incoming freshmen do gain weight. However, a combination of exercise and good eating habits can easily help you avoid this problem.

Not only will these two habits enable you to conquer the “freshman 15”, but they will also help you be more energetic and productive.

Myth #3: Everyone needs a car

While many campuses are filled with cars, this need not be the case. Most of the time, everything is easily accessible by walking or bicycling. By putting off driving for a few years, you will be able to concentrate more time on studying while also getting more exercise and enjoying the outdoors.

Look around your campus, and you will most likely see a number of students using human-powered transportation.

Myth #4: A degree guarantees your dream job

Although this may have been more the case thirty years ago (it never was completely true), a college degree is only one factor in landing your dream job. Although a degree definitely is important, many students actually find work outside of their majors, while others still do struggle with unemployment.

Earning your degree will decrease your chance of unemployment while improving your opportunities for a dream job, but a diploma is not a one-way ticket to success. Look for internships that will improve your resume and expand your abilities.

Myth #5: More extracurriculars are better

We all envy the students who seem to effortlessly juggle difficult classes and multiple sports along with a few clubs and internships for good measure. The fact is, however, that more is not always better.

By focusing on one or two extracurriculars at a time, you can do those well before moving on to the next one. In the end, you will be much better off excelling in a few activities than getting by in a infinite number of them.

Myth #6: Finals week has to be misery

After a long semester of light studying, finals week is upon us! Suddenly, everyone buckles down, pulls all-nighters, and generally maxes out their stress levels in an effort to pass their exams. Sound familiar?

While certain classes may require significant amounts of review during finals week, the majority of your studying should be spread throughout the semester. If, after all your best efforts, you still find yourself overwhelmed, you can still use careful planning to make finals week stress-free.

Myth #7: Online degrees are always fake

While certain online schools are certainly nothing but degree mills, many modern students are increasingly turning to distance learning as an alternative to provide flexibility, alleviate funding problems, or learn at a faster pace.

Through the use of CLEP tests and coaching services like CollegePlus! (disclaimer: CollegePlus! owns this blog), students today can earn their fully-accredited degrees from home.  Unfortunately, most online programs focus on bachelor’s degrees, so it still can be difficult to find a good master’s program online.

What is the strangest myth you once believed about college?

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