How to Go to College Almost for Free
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Bill and Melinda Gates, his wife, are very well known philanthropists. The extent of money they have donated the world over to numerous charities and causes are also no secret from people.
In fact, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is the largest transparently operated private charitable foundation in the world.
The causes they support are mainly concerned with healthcare, poverty and within the United States, education and information technology access.
Every year, millions of people globally feel the far reaching impacts of the benevolence of these two philanthropists.
One salient cause supported by Bill Gates though, is education. And an initiative that best exemplifies his support of education is the Gates Millennium Scholars Program, commonly known as the Bill Gates Scholarship.
The Bill Gates Scholarship program works with the aim of providing higher education to meritorious minority students who have significant financial need. Its goal is to allow these minority students an opportunity to maximize their potential and achieve greatness.
In low income pockets of the country, the Bill Gates Scholarship is seen as a way out of the situation these students are stuck in by giving them a life they couldn’t imagine they could have.
It works purely on the basis of the child’s skill and his or her need for the funding.
Every year, one thousand students, through the Bill Gates Scholarship program, receive good-through-graduation scholarships, which they can then use at a university of their choice, to follow their dreams and achieve unbounded success without having to worry about paying college bills.
The Bill Gates Scholarship, specifically the Millennium Scholars Program promotes meritocracy and urges students in these low income pockets to think beyond their circumstances and also to make an attempt to make their way out of those circumstances. In addition, in also promotes a healthy sense of competition and determination amongst those who might otherwise lack motivation.
 Outliers : The Story of Success As I started to write this article I thought I’d start out by saying that it wasn’t possible to become great at literally “anything.” But the more I thought about it and tried to limit what someone might be able to do, the more I realized that wasn’t true. Sure, if you are five feet five inches tall you probably won’t be able to play in the NBA, but that doesn’t mean you can’t become a great basketball player. So, here’s my recipe for success. It pretty much boils down to three easy steps.
Before I get to these steps, I wanted to let you know I’m going to put this in the context of a DUI lawyer. Why a DUI lawyer? Because that’s what I want to become great at. And examples always help.
1. See Yourself as Being Great
This is a critical step. You’ve got to have the confidence that you will reach your goal and become great. You’ve got to see yourself at the end of the journey and feel what that would feel like. When you start doing that you’ll see that things actually start falling into place almost serendipitously.
Taking my example, I always try to think of myself as a great Seattle DUI attorney. I imagine what it would be like to have all the knowledge necessary to be great, to be able to control a courtroom and shred a witness on cross. Imagining that makes me more comfortable every time I step into the courtroom.
2. Do the Work Necessary to be Great
Malcolm Gladwell has a book out called “Outliers.” In that book he studied why some people become great and some don’t. There was a common theme among all of the great people – they’d been working at their craft for at least 10,000 hours. And that is about how long it takes to learn and integrate everything about a subject. 10,000 hours is only about 1.1 years. But with the rest of life this breaks up into about 10 years.
3. Practice Practice Practice
All the studying in the world isn’t going to help you if you don’t put it into practice. Part of becoming great is failing and learning from those failures. As much time as you spend learning you should spend implementing those lessons.
Using my example, I am constantly reading and learning about DUI defense, trial techniques, and everything else I can get my hands on, but I’m also spending a lot of time in court implementing the lessons I’ve learned and using them to my clients advantage.
Whether you want to be the best Seattle DUI attorney out there or break 80 on the golf course, follow these three simple rules and you’ll be there in no time.
Guest Post by Fight Your Seattle DUI
The Confidence Plan: How to Build a Stronger You
Confidence is the internal trait that is key to most success in life. If you believe in yourself, you’ll be more likely to meet your goals in you career, relationships, hobbies, and other domains.
Think about the reasoning for this: if you believe, deep down, that you are great and worthy person, you won’t give up easily when the inevitable downswings and roadblocks appear.
If you are down on yourself, however, you will give up at the slightest sign of adversity, causing you to never maximize your potential.
If you are low in confidence, you need to improve this trait. Here are some brief ways to improve self esteem and confidence that may help:
1) Use positive affirmations and kill negativity.
Your unconscious mind takes what you feed it, so if you cram it with garbage, it will let that diffuse through your mind. Focus on the positive – you don’t want to become ignorant, so focus on ‘realistic optimism.’ In other words, be somewhat pessimistic short term, but optimistic in the long term. This is the best balance in your approach.
2) Fix your external appearance
Change anything that bothers you about yourself. Lose weight, work out, get better clothes, get a better haircut – do whatever you can to make you feel good on the outside and inside.
3) Gain some sort of skill.
Having the ability to do something very well can be your ‘magic bullet’ in the world. If you can sing, you’ll have something to fall back on when you’re down on yourself, for instance.
4) Find positive friends.
Don’t surround yourself with negativity in the external world, just as you want to purge it from your internal world.
5) Eat right and exercise.
A lot of depression can be rooted back to poor habits of taking care of yourself, so make sure you keep those positive chemicals flowing by taking care of your body and mind.
 Good Luck Charms by Rembrandt Charms
CLICK IMAGE FOR DETAILS Many people believe that thinking you are lucky actually makes you luckier. Although it may be that you just notice the better things which happen to you, why chance it?
Use all the good luck tokens you can specially if they are as beautiful as the silver charms here! Here is an article by a Guest Poster all about lucky charms.
It can be a real downer to think that you have bad luck. You might feel so down that you don’t even consider getting a good luck charm to change your fortunes.
I’m not going to tell you to go out and get a lucky charm that will turn your life around and make everything okay, but you should know that you can change your luck through special lucky objects. More importantly, you have to change your thinking to change your luck.
What kind of charm do you need to get some good luck coming your way? You may wish to get a Chinese good luck charm, as these are some of the most common and popular. No matter what kind of luck you need changing, be it financial, health, or love, there are Chinese good luck charms for it.
Of course, Chinese culture can be very obsessed with wealth, so you may try a charm featuring the Chinese character for wealth. Feel haunted by evil spirits? Light up a row of firecrackers to scare them away. Or, you could could go searching for an image of the Virgin Mary in a loaf of bread, which would be a miraculous and very great Italian good luck charm.
But the best strategy may be to find an object that is important to you and holds personal meaning.
Decide what area of life you want better luck in, and make that object your helper. If you believe it, it can be possible.
Fisherman have their own, secret charms to help bring in the fish. They might also wear a special article of clothing to imbue them with luck for a good catch. Obviously their lucky charms don’t catch the fish for them, there’s a lot of preparation that goes into being able to hook a fish, including equipment, knowledge, and experience. But the right preparation, plus the right lucky helper, can do wonders for getting the results you want.
 Sack Your Boss: How to Quit Your Job and Turn Your Passion into Profession So you hate your job and you’re confused and afraid of how to get out of it. You’re not alone. Realizing you’re stuck in a job that you detest and thinking you don’t have a way out can be very stressful. Not a single one of us wants to spend our life doing something that we don’t enjoy. If you know for sure that you’ve got to find a different job, the following tips can help you through this difficult situation.
*Decide what kind of work you would find more rewarding before you start looking. You don’t want to quit one job and replace it with something you dislike even more.
*Check the local employment adds on a daily basis. Take the time to look for something you’re interested in while you are still working at your current job. Do this each and every day. Sooner or later you’ll find something that interests you.
*Apply for jobs that you’re confident you would enjoy more than the job you’re at now. Be very vigilant about not falling back into the same type of job you are trying to leave. Research the company you are applying to, make sure they are someone you would be happy to work for. Do they have room for growth in the position you are applying for? The best jobs are the ones you will be challenged at and will provide you with the opportunity to advance based on how well you improve.
*When you find something you’re interested in, create a cover letter that knocks their socks off! Sell yourself well and let them know that you will be the asset to their company that they are looking for. Keep in mind, while writing your cover letter, that this employer is spending their precious time and resources trying to fill a position and they want someone that intends to stay long term and bring a quality of work ethic to their environment.
*Repeat this scenario until you find the job you are looking for. This process could take a while. Don’t get lazy and settle back into hating your current job and thinking you don’t have any other options. You DO have other options, but you’re going to have to put some effort into it if you want to make a change.
*If you’ve come to the conclusion that you will never be happy working for someone else and you want to be your own boss, start looking into the thousands of options available for this approach. You’ll need to take the time to research these opportunities and find what works best for you. Keep the job you have while you’re doing this.
Many products we buy especially those in the land of self improvement, business opportunity and weight loss are purchased because we hope to make our lives better.
Maybe this time the product will make all the difference – the clever ads or the blurb on the back of the book promise so much.
And not only will it change our lives, our shape or our business but it will do it all
“in 7 days”
“quickly”
“easily”
“with no effort”
 It's Right to Have Hope (Image by Robert Michie sxc.hu username robby_m) The thing is after the book is bought and the first chapter or two read, reality tends to hits us.
There is no magic formula after all. This solution takes work. Or needs luck. Or won’t do what we thought it could – and we set ourselves up for a huge disappointment.
We abandon the book, the course, the program.
And we lose hope until the next time a glowing ad comes along.
But the thing is, you are right to have hope.
None of these ads are offering anything that you can not achieve – a successful business, a slim figure, a better life.
They are all available to you – it’s the quickly, easily, in 7 days, with no effort that you have to forget.
Anything which is worth having takes action and it’s only action which separates the successful from the not so successful.
So instead of buying one product after another and hoping it has the magic answer for you, just take one of those products you bought in the past and actually do what it says ignoring the easy-peasy propaganda claims. The ads can’t possibly know what will work for you (just look at all those disclaimers if you doubt it!) But you’ll never know unless you take action to put the system in place and THEN evaluate whether it is working for you or not.
If it is – you succeeded, well done! Continue to look for ways to make things better and put them into action so you can evaluate what is working and what is not in the same way.
If it is not, choose another system or modify the one you have until it does.
Don’t give up on your dreams because a system (or even ten) does not seem to have the magic answer. Believe you can achieve what you want through exploring what works and what doesn’t.
There is no such thing as false hope until you give up trying.
 A thank you note is always appreciated The self improvement world has long waxed lyrical about the benefits of gratitude. Thinking about what is good about your life rather than dwelling on the negative has been assigned with all sorts of magical powers from attracting better things into your life to getting more done.
There’s probably some truth in that somewhere.
But why stop there?
Instead of just thinking about how grateful you are for the good things in your life why not let those who help make your life good know how much you appreciate them.
You don’t have to go over the top if that’s not your style but a little thank you here and there will not go amiss – and you’ll be surprised how much that makes a difference to those you are thanking.
Examples of what you could do…
- a handwritten note to thank a friend for lunch
- a small gift to thank someone for a referral
- letting an email contact know how much you appreciated them passing on a resource you needed
- giving your family a hug
- adding a comment to a blog or a forum for a post you’ve found useful
- thanking your partner for a good meal or for picking up the dry cleaning
- letting your kids know you’re pleased when they are helpful
- adding a little note when you pay your bills “Thank you for the electricity. Much appreciated” (Well, don’t you think that would make whoever deals with your account at the other end smile for a moment?)
Take a little time to think about who and what you are taking too much for granted and start weaving a bit more thanks and appreciation into your day.
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