TED Talks - آموزش زبان

🔴 4 ways the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we sleep The COVID pandemic has changed sleep in at least four different ways: quantity, quality, timing and dreaming. [Sleeping with Science] The first is sleep quantity. A study conducted across Europe, as well as the US and Asia, found that on average people were sleeping around 25 minutes more each night during the pandemic. Second, there has been a change in sleep quality. Now, sleep has of course been a real challenge for many of us during the pandemic. And indeed, in the US, almost 60 percent of people felt that the quality of their sleep had become worse during the pandemic. However, 40 percent of the people didn’t feel that their sleep was any worse, so there seems to be quite a difference in the response across individuals when it comes to sleep quality and the pandemic. The third change we’ve discovered concerns sleep timing. Since many people didn’t have to commute to work or get the kids to school in the morning, on average, people were going to bed later and waking up later during the pandemic. And I think this is a case of “Revenge of the Night Owls.” And I see it as one of the positive consequences that came out of the pandemic. The fourth change is that people reported dreaming more and also having COVID-related dreams. And this is likely due to the fact that people were sleeping later into the morning, which is the time when we get most of our dream sleep, and the fact that dreaming helps us deal with emotional trauma. However, there are many essential questions that still remain. One that I am particularly interested in answering is whether or not a lack of sleep before getting your COVID shot, or your COVID booster in the future, changes the effectiveness of that vaccination, just as we know it does with your annual flu shot. What we do know for certain though is this: your sleep health is intimately related to your immune health. Said simply: sleep is a life support system. #Health #Science #Sleep #Human_Body #Pandemic 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

🔴4 ways the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we sleep #Health #Science #Sleep #Human_Body #Pandemic 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

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But understanding this complex decentralized infrastructure is not a prerequisite to understand what NFTs unlock for the human experience. Once digital value and ownership are no longer the sole domain of a few corporations, radical new possibilities emerge. In other words, 30 years later, NFTs finally solved John Perry Barlow's riddle. And this isn't science fiction; the technology already works. NFTs are already being used by the next generation of internet pioneers. And in the coming decade, NFTs will reshape the internet as we know it, with property rights baked into its code. So what does the internet of the future look like with NFTs as its building blocks? An internet where economic control rests in the hands of creators, not platforms. An internet where our ideas and creativity can be directly supported. An internet where information can be free, but where we get paid for the work we do with our minds. Thank you. #Cryptocurrency #Blockchain #Art #Technology #Future 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

NFTs are a technological breakthrough. They offer us the opportunity to break away from that broken system. So you're asking yourself: What is an NFT? It's a certificate of ownership registered on the blockchain for everyone to see. It's not too dissimilar to the deed you get when you buy a house in the physical world. But instead of a house, an NFT denotes ownership of a file on the internet. And unlike copyright or watermarks, which are ancient technologies rooted in bygone eras, NFTs are internet native. They are born of the internet for the internet. And NFTs don't simply port our existing model of ownership from the physical world, they improve it. In the physical world, ownership actually fences people out. It precludes others from enjoying what you own. I wouldn't expect to feel welcome in your home uninvited. Digital space, however, is expansive. It's home to the infinite, the exponential, the instantaneous. NFTs offer a system of ownership that reflects this expansiveness. With NFTs, my owning something doesn't preclude others from enjoying it. In fact, it's the opposite. The more an NFT is seen, appreciated and understood, the more possibility it has to increase in value. Let's take an example: Nyan Cat, a wildly popular, instantly recognizable cat meme. Since it was uploaded to the internet a decade ago, it has accumulated hundreds of millions of views. And precisely because of that virality, when it was auctioned as an NFT, it sold for 300 ETH, or the equivalent of over 600,000 dollars. And the person who now owns this NFT, they're not preventing anyone from liking, resharing or remixing Nyan Cat -- Nyan Cat is free to travel the internet as it always has. What's different now is that, as Nyan Cat's popularity continues to grow, so can the value of the NFT. Because of NFTs, Chris Torres, Nyan Cat's creator, has received direct compensation for his creation. But what's more is he'll continue to receive compensation every single time the NFT is resold. This is because of the royalty system baked into the smart contracts that govern NFTs. NFTs are software; they can be programmed. And with something as complicated as royalties, which require enormous amounts of legal and manual labor to implement in our analog world, we can now express them in a few simple lines of code. This represents a breakthrough innovation for any industry predicated on royalty payments, such as publishing or music. And just as blogs and MP3s re-architected, these industries in decades past, NFTs will catalyze their next evolution. The internet dissolved our geographic boundaries. NFTs dissolve economic boundaries. Yatreda, an Ethiopian artist collective, created these beautiful portraits of heroes and heroines from Ethiopia's past. They sold them as NFTs, and in one weekend, they made 13 ETH, or the equivalent of over 40,000 dollars. And they were paid out instantly. No customs, no foreign exchange, no international wire transfers. An artist collective based out of Addis Ababa has the same economic tools at their disposal now as an artist in LA, New York or London. And while the NFTs for Nyan Cat and Yatreda were created and sold on the same platform, they're not confined there -- remember: information wants to be free. And unlike the current internet, where information is made available through proprietary apps and platforms, NFTs are portable. Instead of living on a company's private servers, They live on decentralized infrastructure that is peer to peer, open and transparent.

🔴How NFTs are building the internet of the future? NFTs are not a scam. NFTs are not a fad. In fact, NFTs are the building blocks of the internet of the future. But in order for us to see this future clearly, we first need to go back into the past. The year is 1992. The World Wide Web is only three years old. This is what it looks like. For the first time in human history, we share a global commons, where, irrespective of where we are in the physical world, we can convene and share information freely. Most people at that time couldn't see what it meant to be connected by a network of computers. In fact, many people thought the internet itself was a scam or a fad. But a few early internet pioneers saw the potential in this burgeoning technology. One of those early internet pioneers, John Perry Barlow, saw both the opportunities and pitfalls inherent in our new digital world. And, of early cyberspace, he posed a prescient riddle all the way back in 1992, that I'll paraphrase for you: "If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed across the planet without cost, how are we going to protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work?” A lot has changed on the internet since 1992. The internet itself is an alive and evolving technology. And as predicted by its earliest champions, the internet has increasingly become our default context. Today, one's job, wealth, relationships, sense of self, are all often more mediated through our digital contexts than our physical ones. Yet, Barlow's riddle has remained vexingly unsolved. Concepts like property and ownership -- ideas that have been with us for centuries in the physical world -- have evaded us in our digital spaces. We’ve tried to foist copyright, DMCA, DRM and watermarks onto the internet to protect our ideas and to restrain their distribution. None of these approaches have worked. Why? Because, as Stewart Brand, another early internet pioneer, famously coined: information wants to be free. It wants to travel effortlessly, without hindrance, without encumbrance. This is what allowed the internet to succeed in the first place. Since 1992, we've uploaded trillions of photos and videos and even cat memes to the internet for free. And what business model has allowed this information to be free? Advertising. Advertising is the internet's default business model, not because that's what we want, but because it's what pays the bills. Right now, the few large corporations that run the most effective ad networks control most of the value on today's internet, not the people creating its content. On today's internet, we don't get paid for the work we do with our minds. And what's more, the content we upload to these services is trapped there. These services not only make money from our content, they control it. Until NFTs.

🔴How NFTs are building the internet of the future? #Cryptocurrency #Blockchain #Art #Technology #Future 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

So tech players are working hard on this. In 2018, Google launched an investment program for start-ups that would work with their Google Home suites. And since then, they have invested in over 15 companies. Amazon has 10,000 employees working on Alexa voice technologies. So they will eventually crack the voice issues. The smart assistants will be able to understand what we say, the meaning of the words in their context. For example, if I’m using my smart assistant, and I’m listening to music, and then I say, "Change." VA: Hi, Karen. Do you want to change the temperature of the room? KLT: Well, clearly this is not working yet, but in the future, it will understand that I'm talking about changing the track, not changing the temperature of the room. It will also understand our long and complex requests. You know, when we start saying something and then we change our mind mid-sentence. But that doesn't stop here. With far-field speech recognition, you will be able to use it from a distance, from a room to another. Even with background noise like kids screaming or traffic. Tremendous progress has been made on this recently, largely due to Amazon's efforts on their Echo speaker technology. Not only that. It will be able to understand in which mood you’re in -- joy, sadness, annoyance -- and will be able to mimic these feelings too. And as natural language processing advances further -- so natural language processing is the technology behind this -- so as it advances further, the voice-enabled interactions will increasingly be refined. Now, the second challenge and the biggest, in my opinion, revolves around the breadth of recommendations provided. Will they be able to -- What will be their range of actions? Will they remain limited to very specific tasks, or will they be able to become a true companion across your day to which you can ask whatever you want, whatever you need? For example, taking notes in a meeting or reordering milk or even mental health coaching. Will they be able to provide you recommendations across product categories? Today, companies provide us recommendations within one specific category, for example, that can help us choose between two dresses, between two books. In the future, the smart assistants will actually be able to help us choose between buying a book or buying a dress. So to be able to deliver this integrated and large range of recommendations, tech teams behind smart assistants will need to design the right algorithms. And these algorithms will need to be powerful enough to process a myriad of data points. To identify patterns, to model courses of actions, and also to learn from end users' feedback. But, a world where smart assistants become unavoidable means new priorities for all companies, not only the smart assistant players. Every business in the future will need to accelerate drastically on data and algorithm, on voice-enabled interactions. And also, they will need to be entrusted by consumers to provide recommendations. This is what I like to summarize in three words, in the three imperatives that are data, tech and trust. So the moment the breadth challenge and the voice challenge get solved will be a tipping point in smart assistant usage and adoption by consumers. Today, can you live without your smartphone? I assume not, right? In a few years from now, your smart assistant will be a convenient, powerful, reliable helper essential in your day-to-day life. So you won't be able to live without it. And unlike your smartphones, it will be embedded in every device around you. Your smartphone itself, of course, but also your car, the mirrors, your fridge, your glasses and who knows what other device in the future. So are you ready for a smarter life? VA: Yes, Karen, I am. Thank you. #Future #Machine_Learning #Technology #Algorithm 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

🔴Siri, Alexa, Google ... what comes next It's Monday morning. You've just received a voice notification from your voice assistant. Voice assistant: Good morning. There's a new pair of pants on sale at your favorite store. Last week, while wearing your smart glasses, you were drawn to a similar pair on a colleague. Would you like to wear them to the party on Thursday? I suggest you skip the movies tomorrow night to afford them. Say "yes" to validate the purchase. Let me know if I should also find a gift for your host. I can make suggestions based on your budget and her public Instagram profile. Say "yes" to proceed. Karen Lellouche Tordjman: Yes. So, thrilling or scary? Because this is how our future could look very soon. As a working mom, I find it exciting. I would love to stop doing Google searches, wasting time doing Amazon scrolling, budget calculation or optimizing my calendar. What is thrilling is the prospect of having a companion that would cater specifically to my needs and requests. Just imagine, it could do things, like using my heart rate to tweak my Starbucks order to reduce caffeine. It could take into account my lunch and the number of steps I've walked to tailor a workout for me. It could even align with my friend's smart assistant to craft evening plans that would fit everyone's budget, calendars and locations. Obviously, this scenario could easily lean towards the scary. This is why there needs to be regulation in place. All users, all consumers, should always remain in full control of data they share and on which type of recommendations they agree to get or not to get. Now, recommendation engines powered by artificial intelligence are not new. Far from it. We actually use them multiple times a day already. On average, 70 percent of the time spent on YouTube is on videos recommended by their algorithm. And you may also own a wristband that you use to track your sleep or monitor your workout. And there's the first generation of voice-enabled virtual assistants. You know, like Google Home or Amazon Alexa that you can use to change the temperature of your room. Your car as well is probably equipped with the same things that can help you manage your music or give you directions, hands-free. But there is one thing that all these tools have in common. They leverage AI to help you in one specific area of your life. Your home, your car, your health. They stay in the lane. Now imagine a new generation of voice assistants that crosses all lanes, that synchronizes everything. So you may ask, why hasn't this happened already? Because there are two technological bricks that are critical to make this happen that are still missing. One is voice. These tools must be able to understand everything we say. And clearly, this is not the case today. For my kids, maybe yours as well, Siri is still an endless source of fun. They like asking very simple questions and still get very confused answers. Two, breadth. They must be able to provide a large range of recommendations to cover whatever we may need. So tech players are still working on cracking those two elements, voice and breadth. On voice, as I said, Alexa, Google Home, Siri and the likes, they don't understand us entirely and systematically for now. Actually, understanding human language is difficult. It's as much about the context as it is about the words themselves. And think about the accents or background noise. It's already very difficult for Americans to understand French people speaking English, so can you imagine how difficult it can be for a robot?

🔴Siri, Alexa, Google ... what comes next #Future #Machine_Learning #Technology #Algorithm 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

Disagreeable givers are the most undervalued people in our organizations, because they're the ones who give the critical feedback that no one wants to hear but everyone needs to hear. We need to do a much better job valuing these people as opposed to writing them off early, and saying, "Eh, kind of prickly, must be a selfish taker." The other combination we forget about is the deadly one -- the agreeable taker, also known as the faker. This is the person who's nice to your face, and then will stab you right in the back. And my favorite way to catch these people in the interview process is to ask the question, "Can you give me the names of four people whose careers you have fundamentally improved?" The takers will give you four names, and they will all be more influential than them, because takers are great at kissing up and then kicking down. Givers are more likely to name people who are below them in a hierarchy, who don't have as much power, who can do them no good. And let's face it, you all know you can learn a lot about character by watching how someone treats their restaurant server or their Uber driver. So if we do all this well, if we can weed takers out of organizations, if we can make it safe to ask for help, if we can protect givers from burnout and make it OK for them to be ambitious in pursuing their own goals as well as trying to help other people, we can actually change the way that people define success. Instead of saying it's all about winning a competition, people will realize success is really more about contribution. I believe that the most meaningful way to succeed is to help other people succeed. And if we can spread that belief, we can actually turn paranoia upside down. There's a name for that. It's called "pronoia." Pronoia is the delusional belief that other people are plotting your well-being. That they're going around behind your back and saying exceptionally glowing things about you. The great thing about a culture of givers is that's not a delusion -- it's reality. I want to live in a world where givers succeed, and I hope you will help me create that world. Thank you. #Anthropology #Behavioral_Economics #Business #Collaboration #Community 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

Help-seeking isn't important just for protecting the success and the well-being of givers. It's also critical to getting more people to act like givers, because the data say that somewhere between 75 and 90 percent of all giving in organizations starts with a request. But a lot of people don't ask. They don't want to look incompetent, they don't know where to turn, they don't want to burden others. Yet if nobody ever asks for help, you have a lot of frustrated givers in your organization who would love to step up and contribute, if they only knew who could benefit and how. But I think the most important thing, if you want to build a culture of successful givers, is to be thoughtful about who you let onto your team. I figured, you want a culture of productive generosity, you should hire a bunch of givers. But I was surprised to discover, actually, that that was not right -- that the negative impact of a taker on a culture is usually double to triple the positive impact of a giver. Think about it this way: one bad apple can spoil a barrel, but one good egg just does not make a dozen. I don't know what that means -- No -- let even one taker into a team, and you will see that the givers will stop helping. They'll say, "I'm surrounded by a bunch of snakes and sharks. Why should I contribute?" Whereas if you let one giver into a team, you don't get an explosion of generosity. More often, people are like, "Great! That person can do all our work." So, effective hiring and screening and team building is not about bringing in the givers; it's about weeding out the takers. If you can do that well, you'll be left with givers and matchers. The givers will be generous because they don't have to worry about the consequences. And the beauty of the matchers is that they follow the norm. So how do you catch a taker before it's too late? We're actually pretty bad at figuring out who's a taker, especially on first impressions. There's a personality trait that throws us off. It's called agreeableness, one the major dimensions of personality across cultures. Agreeable people are warm and friendly, they're nice, they're polite. You find a lot of them in Canada -- Where there was actually a national contest to come up with a new Canadian slogan and fill in the blank, "As Canadian as ..." I thought the winning entry was going to be, "As Canadian as maple syrup," or, "... ice hockey." But no, Canadians voted for their new national slogan to be -- I kid you not -- "As Canadian as possible under the circumstances." Now for those of you who are highly agreeable, or maybe slightly Canadian, you get this right away. How could I ever say I'm any one thing when I'm constantly adapting to try to please other people? Disagreeable people do less of it. They're more critical, skeptical, challenging, and far more likely than their peers to go to law school. That's not a joke, that's actually an empirical fact. So I always assumed that agreeable people were givers and disagreeable people were takers. But then I gathered the data, and I was stunned to find no correlation between those traits, because it turns out that agreeableness-disagreeableness is your outer veneer: How pleasant is it to interact with you? Whereas giving and taking are more of your inner motives: What are your values? What are your intentions toward others? If you really want to judge people accurately, you have to get to the moment every consultant in the room is waiting for, and draw a two-by-two. The agreeable givers are easy to spot: they say yes to everything. The disagreeable takers are also recognized quickly, although you might call them by a slightly different name. We forget about the other two combinations. There are disagreeable givers in our organizations. There are people who are gruff and tough on the surface but underneath have others' best interests at heart. Or as an engineer put it, "Oh, disagreeable givers -- like somebody with a bad user interface but a great operating system."

So I wondered, then, if givers are the worst performers, who are the best performers? Let me start with the good news: it's not the takers. Takers tend to rise quickly but also fall quickly in most jobs. And they fall at the hands of matchers. If you're a matcher, you believe in "An eye for an eye" -- a just world. And so when you meet a taker, you feel like it's your mission in life to just punish the hell out of that person. And that way justice gets served. Well, most people are matchers. And that means if you're a taker, it tends to catch up with you eventually; what goes around will come around. And so the logical conclusion is: it must be the matchers who are the best performers. But they're not. In every job, in every organization I've ever studied, the best results belong to the givers again. Take a look at some data I gathered from hundreds of salespeople, tracking their revenue. What you can see is that the givers go to both extremes. They make up the majority of people who bring in the lowest revenue, but also the highest revenue. The same patterns were true for engineers' productivity and medical students' grades. Givers are overrepresented at the bottom and at the top of every success metric that I can track. Which raises the question: How do we create a world where more of these givers get to excel? I want to talk about how to do that, not just in businesses, but also in nonprofits, schools -- even governments. Are you ready? I was going to do it anyway, but I appreciate the enthusiasm. The first thing that's really critical is to recognize that givers are your most valuable people, but if they're not careful, they burn out. So you have to protect the givers in your midst. And I learned a great lesson about this from Fortune's best networker. It's the guy, not the cat. His name is Adam Rifkin. He's a very successful serial entrepreneur who spends a huge amount of his time helping other people. And his secret weapon is the five-minute favor. Adam said, "You don't have to be Mother Teresa or Gandhi to be a giver. You just have to find small ways to add large value to other people's lives." That could be as simple as making an introduction between two people who could benefit from knowing each other. It could be sharing your knowledge or giving a little bit of feedback. Or It might be even something as basic as saying, "You know, I'm going to try and figure out if I can recognize somebody whose work has gone unnoticed." And those five-minute favors are really critical to helping givers set boundaries and protect themselves. The second thing that matters if you want to build a culture where givers succeed, is you actually need a culture where help-seeking is the norm; where people ask a lot. This may hit a little too close to home for some of you. [So in all your relationships, you always have to be the giver?] What you see with successful givers is they recognize that it's OK to be a receiver, too. If you run an organization, we can actually make this easier. We can make it easier for people to ask for help. A couple colleagues and I studied hospitals. We found that on certain floors, nurses did a lot of help-seeking, and on other floors, they did very little of it. The factor that stood out on the floors where help-seeking was common, where it was the norm, was there was just one nurse whose sole job it was to help other nurses on the unit. When that role was available, nurses said, "It's not embarrassing, it's not vulnerable to ask for help -- it's actually encouraged."

🔴Are you a giver or a taker? I want you to look around the room for a minute and try to find the most paranoid person here -- And then I want you to point at that person for me. But, as an organizational psychologist, I spend a lot of time in workplaces, and I find paranoia everywhere. Paranoia is caused by people that I call "takers." Takers are self-serving in their interactions. It's all about what can you do for me. The opposite is a giver. It's somebody who approaches most interactions by asking, "What can I do for you?" I wanted to give you a chance to think about your own style. We all have moments of giving and taking. Your style is how you treat most of the people most of the time, your default. I have a short test you can take to figure out if you're more of a giver or a taker, and you can take it right now. [Step 2: If you made it to Step 2, you are not a narcissist.] This is the only thing I will say today that has no data behind it, but I am convinced the longer it takes for you to laugh at this cartoon, the more worried we should be that you're a taker. Of course, not all takers are narcissists. Some are just givers who got burned one too many times. Then there's another kind of taker that we won't be addressing today, and that's called a psychopath. I was curious, though, about how common these extremes are, and so I surveyed over 30,000 people across industries around the world's cultures. And I found that most people are right in the middle between giving and taking. They choose this third style called "matching." If you're a matcher, you try to keep an even balance of give and take: quid pro quo -- I'll do something for you if you do something for me. And that seems like a safe way to live your life. But is it the most effective and productive way to live your life? The answer to that question is a very definitive ... maybe. I studied dozens of organizations, thousands of people. I had engineers measuring their productivity. I looked at medical students' grades -- even salespeople's revenue. And, unexpectedly, the worst performers in each of these jobs were the givers. The engineers who got the least work done were the ones who did more favors than they got back. They were so busy doing other people's jobs, they literally ran out of time and energy to get their own work completed. In medical school, the lowest grades belong to the students who agree most strongly with statements like, "I love helping others," which suggests the doctor you ought to trust is the one who came to med school with no desire to help anybody. And then in sales, too, the lowest revenue accrued in the most generous salespeople. I actually reached out to one of those salespeople who had a very high giver score. And I asked him, "Why do you suck at your job --" I didn't ask it that way, but -- "What's the cost of generosity in sales?" And he said, "Well, I just care so deeply about my customers that I would never sell them one of our crappy products." So just out of curiosity, how many of you self-identify more as givers than takers or matchers? Raise your hands. OK, it would have been more before we talked about these data. But actually, it turns out there's a twist here, because givers are often sacrificing themselves, but they make their organizations better. We have a huge body of evidence -- many, many studies looking at the frequency of giving behavior that exists in a team or an organization -- and the more often people are helping and sharing their knowledge and providing mentoring, the better organizations do on every metric we can measure: higher profits, customer satisfaction, employee retention -- even lower operating expenses. So givers spend a lot of time trying to help other people and improve the team, and then, unfortunately, they suffer along the way. I want to talk about what it takes to build cultures where givers actually get to succeed.

🔴Are you a giver or a taker? #Anthropology #Behavioral_Economics #Business #Collaboration #Community 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

Sometimes, though, charting expenses may not reveal something specific, as a chocolate addiction or shopping problem, but what it reveals can be just as valuable. A marketing strategist and upcoming musician needed help with her taxes. When I met with her, I immediately took note of the fear in her face as she looked through her records and expenses. I checked in with her and she expressed to me that some things in her life didn't quite seem to work out, including her relationships. She was afraid of facing how much money she was about to lose after taxes. As we continued talking about her finances, she started to notice a connection between her fear of losing money and her fear of losing relationships. She went on to tell me that she was afraid of committing to anyone because she didn't want to get hurt. She expressed that she had not been close to anyone in over seven years because she feared failure. And maybe she might have an avoidance strategy around both her money and her relationships. It's been six years since I first help her chart her finances, and she's still consistently keeping up with her spreadsheet. As she confronted her personal accounting and grew her savings in advance of each tax season, she developed less fear of loss and grew more open to relationships. She tells me that she even has the courage to walk away from a relationship when it's not serving her. She recently told me, "My spreadsheet is basically a story of my life's progression and I can see it through the numbers.” I believe we can all do this type of audit of our own financial behavior and that we can learn surprising things about ourselves through tracking and charting our expenses. Here's how. Number one, take a look at your bank statement for the last six months and categorize the expenses by type for a more holistic view. For example, your spending on shopping versus transport versus entertainment. Number two, when an expensive pattern emerges, see what that pattern says about yourself. Be curious and inquisitive. At first, it may not be that obvious, but asking yourself what led you to make that choice in a given moment can provide some clues. Do you buy pizza every Wednesday night because that's when you're too tired to cook after a stressful weekly meeting? Number three, observe if there are any line items that you are shocked by in terms of value or volume and see what patterns emerge. For example, did you buy that new smartphone just before a major function or event so that your friends would notice? Or do you tell yourself you only take taxis late at night, but then realize that you're taking way more taxes every month than you thought? Are you working late more than you thought? There's so much that we can learn about ourselves if we take the time to look. And sometimes our money knows us better than we know ourselves. Tracking our finances can reveal what we are in denial of, our hidden biases, our fears and what might be holding us back. Though it can be difficult and uncomfortable to take a good, hard look at our financial behavior, it can reveal some deep emotional truths. Some truths that can help us re-evaluate our careers, our relationships and our priorities. So give it a try. The payoff could be huge. Thank you. #Relationships #Money #Personal_Growth #Emotions #Finance 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

🔴The emotions behind your money habits I am an accountant with a numbers problem. I mean, I'm good with numbers and using them to report what's happening, but I'm also concerned with the full story behind those numbers, the part that gets lost in translation, the part that numbers can't quite tell, the story that goes deeper than mere strategies for saving and earning money. And without that story, I don't think I'm doing my job well. That's why I've dedicated my career to figuring out how my work as an accountant can tell stories about people, stories that will ultimately help them improve their lives. Let me explain. It all started when someone told me, "You're obsessed with chocolate." And I was like, "What? No, I'm not." But then I wondered, could I be in denial about my own obsession? Was I actually spending a lot of money on chocolate but blind to it? Well, here was a chance for me to test this theory. Using my accountant lens, off I went tracking my spending on chocolate -- and there it was, my love for chocolate. I was spending about 50 dollars a month on chocolate, especially in months when I was overstressed and months when I was overjoyed. Analyzing my expenses helped me to understand that I had an emotional pattern where when I'm struggling or celebrating, I binge on chocolate. I had struggled with my weight for a very long time and I was convinced that my diet was not the problem. I was convinced that it was my lack of effort in exercise, and certainly not chocolate. Tracking my spending on chocolate, though, helped me realize that I was afraid of facing myself in the mirror, literally and figuratively, and that I lack the courage to deal with the real problem, my diet. So I continued to exercise, but devoted less time to it and instead shifted my focus and energy towards developing a more healthful diet. That year I lost 50 pounds. Our relationship with money represents our relationship with life. The accounting of my own chocolate behavior told me the story of my own denial. I realized that perhaps I could also help my clients see what they were overlooking in their own lives and help them realize their own emotional patterns through their tracking and spending of their expenses. So I started to pay close attention to the story behind my clients' expenses that may be hidden to them. One of my clients, a critical care nurse, was convinced that her personal budget was reasonable and expenses justifiable. She had struggled to build up her savings and I noticed that she had minimal records of her expenses. I suggested to her that her lack of savings could be due to more than just a gap in her financial knowledge and offered to help identify the problem. I encouraged her to start tracking and charting her expenses. After a few months, her financial records revealed that most of her spending was on expensive clothing and shoes. As we sat together, she was genuinely surprised to see just how much of her budget was going towards fashion. She remarked, "Wow, these are impulsive purchases, aren't they? I guess I didn't realize that." She analyzed further and realized that she was buying clothes in an attempt to impress and appear successful to her friends. And also when her confidence was low, buying clothes temporarily boosted it. She told me that buying clothing was her attempt to find meaning in life and feel valued. She sighed, and she set a goal for herself and her finances. Six months later, she called me to tell me she had saved a bunch of money by reducing her spending on shopping and instead choosing to exercise when she felt the urge to shop. She's much happier around her friends. Three years later, home ownership is on the horizon.

🔴The emotions behind your money habits #Relationships #Money #Personal_Growth #Emotions #Finance 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

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