BEGINNER LEVEL

The best gift I ever survived

【Part 1】
Imagine, if you will -- a gift. I'd like for you to picture it in your mind. It's not

too big -- about the size of a golf ball. So envision what it looks like all wrapped

up. But before I show you what's inside, I will tell you, it's going to do

incredible things for you. It will bring all of your family together. You will feel

loved and appreciated like never before and reconnect with friends and

acquaintances you haven't heard from in years. Adoration and admiration will

overwhelm you.
【Part 2】

It will recalibrate what's most important in your life. It will redefine your sense

of spirituality and faith. You'll have a new understanding and trust in your body.

You'll have unsurpassed vitality and energy. You'll expand your vocabulary,

meet new people, and you'll have a healthier lifestyle. And get this -- you'll have

an eight-week vacation of doing absolutely nothing. You'll eat countless

gourmet meals. Flowers will arrive by the truckload. People will say to you,

"You look great. Have you had any work done?" And you'll have a lifetime

supply of good drugs.

【Part 3】

You'll be challenged, inspired, motivated and humbled. Your life will have new

meaning. Peace, health, serenity, happiness, nirvana. The price? $55,000, and

that's an incredible deal. By now I know you're dying to know what it is and

where you can get one. Does Amazon carry it? Does it have the Apple logo on

it? Is there a waiting list? Not likely. This gift came to me about five months

ago. It looked more like this when it was all wrapped up -- not quite so pretty.

And this, and then this.

【Part 4】

It was a rare gem -- a brain tumor, hemangioblastoma -- the gift that keeps on

giving. And while I'm okay now, I wouldn't wish this gift for you. I'm not sure
you'd want it. But I wouldn't change my experience. It profoundly altered my

life in ways I didn't expect in all the ways I just shared with you. So the next

time you're faced with something that's unexpected, unwanted and uncertain,

consider that it just may be a gift.

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*Or ask the students which part they work on
 Get Your DAILY Dose of Motivation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk5rWu4DOGA

【Part 1】

The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And

the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet,

keep looking and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when

you find it. Sometimes life is gonna hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose

faith.

【Part 2】

I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going is that I loved what I did.

You've got to find what you love. So you have to trust that the dots will

somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something, your gut,

destiny, life, karma, whatever because believing that the dots will connect down

the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads

you off the well worn path and that will make all the difference.

【Part 3】

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be

trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people's thinking.
Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And

most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They

somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is

secondary.

Procedure:
Week 1: Part 1 Week 2: Part 2 Week 3: Part 3 Week 4: Part 1-3
*Or ask the students which part they work on
INTERMEDIATE LEVEL

Try something new for 30 days - Matt Cutts

【Part 1】

A few years ago, I felt like I was stuck in a rut, so I decided to follow in the

footsteps of the great American philosopher, Morgan Spurlock, and try

something new for 30 days. The idea is actually pretty simple. Think about

something you've always wanted to add to your life and try it for the next 30

days. It turns out 30 days is just about the right amount of time to add a new

habit or subtract a habit -- like watching the news -- from your life.
【Part 2】

There's a few things that I learned while doing these 30-day challenges. The

first was, instead of the months flying by, forgotten, the time was much more

memorable. This was part of a challenge I did to take a picture every day for a

month. And I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing that day. I

also noticed that as I started to do more and harder 30-day challenges, my self-

confidence grew. I went from desk-dwelling computer nerd to the kind of guy

who bikes to work For fun! Even last year, I ended up hiking up Mt.

Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. I would never have been that

adventurous before I started my 30-day challenges.

I also figured out that if you really want something badly enough, you can do

anything for 30 days. Have you ever wanted to write a novel? Every November,

tens of thousands of people try to write their own 50,000-word novel, from

scratch, in 30 days. It turns out, all you have to do is write 1,667 words a day for

a month. So I did. By the way, the secret is not to go to sleep until you've

written your words for the day. You might be sleep-deprived, but you'll finish

your novel. Now is my book the next great American novel? No. I wrote it in a

month. It's awful. But for the rest of my life, if I meet John Hodgman at a TED

party, I don't have to say, "I'm a computer scientist." No, no, if I want to, I can

say, "I'm a novelist."

So here's one last thing I'd like to mention. I learned that when I made small,

sustainable changes, things I could keep doing, they were more likely to stick.

There's nothing wrong with big, crazy challenges. In fact, they're a ton of fun.

But they're less likely to stick. When I gave up sugar for 30 days, day 31 looked

like this. So here's my question to you: What are you waiting for? I guarantee

you the next 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not, so why not

think about something you have always wanted to try and give it a shot! For the

next 30 days.

Procedure:
Week 1: Part 1 Week 2: Part 2 Week 3: Part 3 Week 4: Part 4
*Or ask the students which part they work on
 The Strongest Predictor of Success - Angela Lee
Duckworth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfF2e0vyGM4

【Part 1】

What if doing well in school and in life depends on much more than your ability

to learn quickly and easily? I started studying kids and adults in all kinds of

super challenging settings, and in every study my question was, who is

successful here and why? My research team and I went to West Point Military

Academy. We tried to predict which cadets would stay in military training and

which would drop out. We went to the National Spelling Bee and tried to

predict which children would advance farthest in competition.

We partnered with private companies, asking, which of these salespeople is

gonna keep their jobs? And who's gonna earn the most money? In all those very

different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of

success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health,

and it wasn't IQ. It was grit. Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term

goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out,

not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really

hard to make that future a reality.

A few years ago, I started studying grit in the Chicago public schools. I asked

thousands of high school juniors to take grit questionnaires, and then waited

around more than a year to see who would graduate. Turns out that grittier kids

were significantly more likely to graduate, even when I matched them on every

characteristic I could measure, things like family income, standardised

achievement test scores, even how safe kids felt when they were at school. So

it's not just at West Point or the National Spelling Bee that grit matters. It's also

in school, especially for kids at risk for dropping out.

best idea I've heard about building grit in kids is something called "growth

mindset." This is an idea developed at Stanford University by Carol Dweck, and

it is the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed, that it can change with your

effort. Dr. Dweck has shown that when kids read and learn about the brain and

how it changes and grows in response to challenge, they're much more likely to

persevere when they fail, because they don't believe that failure is a permanent

condition. So, “growth mindset” is a great idea for building grit, but we need

more. We need to take our best ideas, our strongest intuitions, and we need to

test them. We need to measure whether we've been successful, and we have to

be willing to fail, to be wrong, to start over again with lessons learned.

Procedure:
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*Or ask the students which part they work on
ADVANCED LEVEL

How To Succeed In Life

【Part 1】

Who are you gonna be and if you'll notice, I'm not asking, what are you gonna

do, but who are you gonna be? I'm asking you about how you plan to live your

life every day. How are you gonna respond when you don't get that job you had

your heart set on? For all of you who are gonna be teachers, what are you gonna

do if the students in your class next year just don't respond to your lessons? For

all of you going into business, how will you react when your boss gives you a

goal that feels way too high? See, these are the moments that define us, not the

day you get the promotion, not the day you win teacher of the year, but the

times that force you to claw and scratch and fight just to get through the day.
【Part 2】

The moments when you get knocked down and you're wondering whether it's

even worth it to get back up. See, those are the times when you got to ask

yourself, who am I gonna to be? And I want to be clear. This isn't just some

vague platitude about building character. In recent years, we've actually been

seeing a growing body of research that shows that skills like resilience and

conscientiousness can be just as important to your success as your test scores or

even your IQ. For instance, West Point cadets who scored high on things like

grit and determination were more likely to complete basic training than those

who ranked high on things like class rank SAT scores and physical fitness. So

what we're seeing is that if you're willing to dig deep, if you're willing to pick

yourself up when you fall, if you're willing to work and work until your

weaknesses become your strengths.

Then you'll develop a set of skills that you can mold and apply to any situation

you encounter. Any job you might have, any crisis you might confront, but you

go to make that choice. And let me just share just a little secret before I end. As

someone who has hired and managed hundreds of young people over the course

of my career, whether it was during my time as a lawyer, as an administrator, as

a university, a nonprofit manager, even now as first lady, I have never once

asked someone I was interviewing to explain a test score or a grade in a class,

never. I have never once made a hire just because someone went to an Ivy

League school instead of a state school. Never.

What I have looked for is what kind of person you are. Are you a hard worker?

Are you reliable? Are you open to other viewpoints? Have you stepped outside

of your own self-interest to serve others? Have you found a way to serve our

country, whether in uniform or in your community? Again and again, I have

seen that those are the qualities that I want on my team because those are the

qualities that move our businesses and schools and our entire country forward.

And just understand this. Those are the qualities that you all already embody.

There’re values you learned from your parents from the community you grew

up in. And today more than ever before, that’s what the world needs.

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Week 1: Part 1 Week 2: Part 2 Week 3: Part 3 Week 4: Part 4
*Or ask the students which part they work on
 Keep your goals to yourself
https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself

【Part 1】

Everyone, please think of your biggest personal goal. For real -- you can take a

second. You've got to feel this to learn it. Take a few seconds and think of your

personal biggest goal, okay? Imagine deciding right now that you're going to do

it. Imagine telling someone that you meet today what you're going to do.

Imagine their congratulations, and their high image of you. Doesn't it feel good

to say it out loud? Don't you feel one step closer already, like it's already

becoming part of your identity? Well, bad news: you should have kept your

mouth shut, because that good feeling now will make you less likely to do it.

The repeated psychology tests have proven that telling someone your goal

makes it less likely to happen.

Any time you have a goal, there are some steps that need to be done, some work

that needs to be done in order to achieve it. Ideally you would not be satisfied

until you'd actually done the work. But when you tell someone your goal and

they acknowledge it, psychologists have found that it's called a "social reality."

The mind is kind of tricked into feeling that it's already done. And then because

you've felt that satisfaction, you're less motivated to do the actual hard work

necessary. So this goes against conventional wisdom that we should tell our

friends our goals, right? So they hold us to it. So, let's look at the proof.
【Part 3】

1926: Kurt Lewin, founder of social psychology, called this "substitution."

1933: Wera Mahler found when it was acknowledged by others, it felt real in

the mind. 1982, Peter Gollwitzer wrote a whole book about this, and in 2009, he

did some new tests that were published. It goes like this: 163 people across four

separate tests. Everyone wrote down their personal goal. Then half of them

announced their commitment to this goal to the room, and half didn't. Then

everyone was given 45 minutes of work that would directly lead them towards

their goal, but they were told that they could stop at any time. Now, those who

kept their mouths shut worked the entire 45 minutes on average, and when

asked afterward, said that they felt that they had a long way to go still to achieve

their goal.
【Part 4】

But those who had announced it quit after only 33 minutes, on average, and

when asked afterward, said that they felt much closer to achieving their goal. So

if this is true, what can we do? Well, you could resist the temptation to

announce your goal. You can delay the gratification that the social

acknowledgment brings, and you can understand that your mind mistakes the

talking for the doing. But if you do need to talk about something, you can state

it in a way that gives you no satisfaction, such as, "I really want to run this

marathon, so I need to train five times a week and kick my ass if I don't, okay?"

So audience, next time you're tempted to tell someone your goal, what will you

say? Exactly! Well done.

Procedure:
Week 1: Part 1 Week 2: Part 2 Week 3: Part 3 Week 4: Part 4
*Or ask the students which part they work on