If you’ve just graduated college, you’ve probably begun hiding away all those books and papers. Finally: freedom!! It’s time to get really rich and make a name for yourself. Career. That’s the real world, right?

Wrong.

Graduation is no excuse to stop the learning process. Failure to study is folly! The new information your constantly process determines your edge in life. School learning is static and often decades out of date.

Here’s how to grow your IQ by 50%- after college.

1) Keep a book handy.

Thousands are released every year. Pick two close to your passions every month. Update yourself. Build your skillset to make yourself interesting and indispensable to to your associates.

2) Maintain a “To-Learn” List

Break out of your comfort zone! It’s fine to develop your core competencies, but too much of one thing makes you a dull boy. The most dynamic thinkers and leaders maintain a list of new challenges to tackle: like learning a new language, to scaling Mount Everest. Having new goals will revitalize you!

3) Expand Your Base of Intellectual Friends

Hanging out with dullards is contagious. Notice how being around folks who spout nonesense forces you to
lower yourself to their level? Upgrade your companions and their skills, ideas and passions trickle down to you. More than reading books, I achieved mastery of everything from dancing tango to deliverying firey speeches through my associations

4) Modeling The Greats

Got a project? There’s no point re-inventing the wheel. Learn how the masters did it and build upon their methods. You’ll quickly and readily discover how to get things done fast. Then you can move on to even bigger fish.

5) Practice practice practice

You’ll never learn how to shoot a gun by reading a book. Drop that book after you get the theory down pat. Walk to your shooting range and squeeze a few shots! That’s when textbook learning leads to magnificent mastery.

6) Mentor Your Colleagues

I’ve built my negotiation skillset by passing on tips to those who blunder like bulls at boardrooms. Know what? Each time I did so, I actually found myself weaving ever more enticing spiels that led to more satisfying win-win outcomes! Teach others and you grow. Empowerment is mutual!

Women will occasionally find themselves in heated arguments. Sometimes, people’s views and opinions will come in conflict and create drama. Every now and then these conversations can lead to more difficult situations. Knowing how to be assertive in a nice way can prevent an argument from blowing up and may even help one win an argument.

Learning how to be an assertive woman consists of two things: one is the tendency towards a positive attitude, and the other is audacity. Assertiveness means that you possess a kind of boldness; the boldness to let your views and opinions be heard.

At the root of audacity is the confidence that your views and opinions are true. Having confidence in your beliefs causes you to have the boldness to disclose or pass on to others what you have to say. And, conversely, you will have the courage to defend and stand up for your views against people who may disagree of feel differently than you do.

An assertive woman’s assertiveness is also joined by a positive outlook. She speaks with an attitude that is positive despite a subject that may be about things that are negative. The reason for this is because a person who has a negative attitude runs the risk of loosing his or her composure and possibly saying things that could either be regretted later, or not support the argument’s merits. Be sure to think carefully about the words you use and don’t just ramble on. More words is not a sign of assertiveness. It will not help you win the person you are speaking with and may be considered rude.

An assertive person is not one who tries to find the balance between passivity and aggressiveness; but is a different idea all together. It simply means that when you are in an argument, that you will not be bullied to compromise your beliefs or values. It means that you will stand your ground. It is conveying every thought and every word with grace and elegance in order to expose the truth that you hold. This means there is no need to belittle or insult, but, because you have the power of truth on your side, grace, elegance, and poise are yours to wield.

Be sure you have thought through your facts. Be able to back up the things you want to say. Know in advance, if possible, the counter arguments that might come and be prepared to answer them. Look at it is from the point of view of the other person. Step into their shoes and try to understand why they are taking the position that they are. This can allow you to see flaws in the other person’s argument, or, possibly, cause you to change your own opinion if that is what the truth dictates.

Learning how to be an assertive woman is the skill of learning to convey the truth. The truth brings with it confidence. Assertive confidence has nothing to do with changing the mind of your opponent, but has everything to do with ensuring that your opinions, beliefs, and feelings are heard. This is assertiveness.

Are you like many people who put off what you know you should do in your daily life? We all delay doing some chores, but if you are finding yourself with more and more undone projects, maybe you are a victim of “procrastination”. This gets to be a really demoralizing situation. If you accept the challenges that life provides, then you are more likely to live many years longer than those who spend their lives stressing about “getting things done” and never making the necessary moves to accomplish what needs doing.

If you are not being challenged in your daily life by your work or your living situation, then maybe it is just fear holding you back and you need to accomplish much more. Fear grips you so that you are not able to accomplish what you desire and so you put it off, making excuses not to accomplish the project. Eventually this can become a habit throughout all your facets of living.

Take these steps immediately:

1. Be organized – Start out small to accomplish the larger goal. Keep it simple one day at a time. Make a project chart for your larger jobs and put the smaller projects on your daily chart. Organize your day with a “TO DO LIST” and put the items down as rapidly as possible and do not worry about what order until the page is filled up. Then go back and rank what is most important . This way you can let the other items fall below what is most important and you can get to them later. What you do not get done one day can be added to the next day’s list. I know this can be a hard habit to get into, but once you do it for a week or two, you will find it will be hard to get to sleep without your list made for the next day.

2. Divide Major Projects – If a project seems overwhelming,divide your major project into little pieces. It is all a matter of doing little bits of associated action and keep moving to the final goal.

3. Just get started – When you find yourself making excuses and putting things off, then you know that you are letting yourself go down the road to being a prisoner of procrastination. Just do not let yourself provide excuses. Start with your easiest task and proceed from there. You will have a greater sense of accomplishment when you make small insteps to the greater project than if you do nothing at all.

4. Outside help – Enlist outside help if you find it necessary to finish a project. There is nothing wrong with having help, whether you have to hire outside help or whether you encourage your family members to help on some projects. The idea is to make a goal sheet and keep on the projects you know are needed around your place and pick a start date so everyone knows how to schedule their time to be involved.

5. Reward Yourself – Finally, reward yourself and your crew when you finish a project. Getting a job done has taken a lot of effort, and you need to be good to yourself for fighting the procrastination demon. There is a wonderful feeling which comes over us when we know we have done a good job and can see the fruits of our labor. That is how the world works. As it has been said, this is a kill and eat world. You have to know how to make yourself set goals, work through the human desire to put things off, and finally to feel the sense of accomplishment and reward with completion of a project.

Do not put off having the things you want in life because you procrastinate. Give yourself the satisfaction of accomplishing the things you need and doing them within your goal period.
Remember You are always walking some path, whether you like it or not.

It is now or never – Get up and JUST START! DO IT!