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Author: willrjconroy

The Weekly Optimist Newsletter: Don’t Originate, Reiterate

The Weekly Optimist Newsletter: Don’t Originate, Reiterate

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Monday, October 10, 2022 Repetition is as important as it is popular. The most popular topics are often paraphrased or reworked to emphasize something that is already known or accepted. But even when we come across new or innovative ideas, they are inspired from past events and external influences. Rarely do we acknowledge the fundamentals that shape the foundation of innovation. Fundamentals are boring, but boring is effective, and often simple. The space race of the 1960’s tracked the progress…

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The Weekly Optimist Newsletter: What do you want to be when you grow up?

The Weekly Optimist Newsletter: What do you want to be when you grow up?

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Monday, October 3, 2022 What do you want to be when you grow up? It is a lot easier to answer this question when we are children. Career ideas pop into our heads naturally as images of those we idolize most come pouring into our thoughts. We want to be like people who we think are good, or who do work that we think is good. Over time, our priorities can change as stress and pressure mount in the pursuit…

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Slow Down: You Have Time

Slow Down: You Have Time

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Slow down. It is so important to pump the breaks, practice patience, and actually give yourself the time it takes to develop new skills and start a career. Just like the uncertainty of choosing a college between 16 and 18 years old, how are we supposed to know what we want to do for the rest of our life when we graduate college? I didn’t know what I wanted to do at 22. I still don’t have all the answers….

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The Weekly Optimist Newsletter: External Surroundings

The Weekly Optimist Newsletter: External Surroundings

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Monday, September 26, 2022 Human beings are drawn to their external surroundings. We want to know how other people think. We want to know how machines and objects work. We want to see new places, attend exciting events, and acquire external accolades often associated with accomplishment and status. We also want to know how we are affected by our external world. What I keep coming back to in life is that people want to figure themselves out. They want to…

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Your Career is a Staircase

Your Career is a Staircase

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Your career is a staircase. But not in the way you think. Most people associate growth, progress, and success with forward or upward movement. The vertical trajectory is a constant reminder to develop and master a lucrative skillset and to generate external interest or overcome external competition. A staircase takes people up, forward, and to a new destination. Sure, the analogy sounds nice – eventually you end up at the top of countless steps, or at the tail end of…

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The Weekly Optimist Newsletter: You Have to Start.

The Weekly Optimist Newsletter: You Have to Start.

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Monday, September 19, 2022 You have to start if you want to win. Expect yourself to start. Expect yourself to win. Starting is simple, but not always easy. Simple means uncomplicated in form, nature or design, and/or straightforward. So if starting is simple, you should just start. Doing a pushup is simple in nature and design. Reading one word and understanding it can be simple in nature and design. Going for a walk can be simple. However, when these simple…

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The Art of Productive Practice

The Art of Productive Practice

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Practice makes perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Practice makes progress. Let’s start from zero, by establishing that practice does not have to make anything. In its simplest form, practice is doing. Practice is studying, performing, presenting, speaking, loving, and trying. Practice takes effort regardless of its outcome. Practice is a lifestyle and an ongoing commitment to ideas, goals, and tasks that we must accept as part of a bigger process, or a bigger meaning. The beauty of practice lies in…

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The Weekly Optimist Newsletter: No Secret to Success

The Weekly Optimist Newsletter: No Secret to Success

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Monday, September 12, 2022 There is no secret to success.  What does success look like to you? For some, success is starting for the first time. For others, success means continuing, or even starting again after stopping. My wife, Taylor, is an avid runner. She ran track and cross country at Cornell University. I always joke that she is smarter and more athletic than me and that I “married up”. What impresses me most, however, is her continued commitment. Her…

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The Secret To Success

The Secret To Success

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There is no secret. I have struggled with this topic for a long time. I have jumped back and forth about what success looks like for me or maybe what it should look like. I find it hard to define and it no longer feels like something I should ask other people about if I want to achieve my definition of success. What does it look like to you? I hear success stories all the time. A lot of us…

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Notice, Analyze, Focus, Act – NAFA

Notice, Analyze, Focus, Act – NAFA

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The world’s highest achievers embrace focusing on one task at a time. We are surrounded by distractions disguised as resources that make us believe we are not doing enough. At work, we manage several projects or clients simultaneously while messaging back and forth with our teammates about yet another topic. Sending an email on Outlook is followed up with a message on WhatsApp and then a job posting on the company’s LinkedIn page. You can never post enough. In school,…

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