The words of Confucius speak of three ways of acquiring wisdom: reflection, imitation and personal experience. To gain wisdom, you need to study throughout your life, carefully analyze and consider your actions.

Throughout life's journey, everyone looks at themselves from the outside and there is always something to complain about. It doesn’t matter who has achieved what success in their life, you always want to change or improve something in yourself. And trying to make yourself better is a very worthy and necessary activity.

Some people believe that speed reading is an innate skill. But in reality this is not the case. People who are good at speed reading read a lot from childhood and developed some very useful reading habits that ordinary good people did not develop in themselves and for this reason simply do not have.

Life does not stand still. A person, one way or another, changes. He chooses to degrade himself, falling lower and lower on the social ladder, or to move on, becoming better, developing himself. A person cannot simply stand still and stop time. This is why self-improvement and personality development are very important.

What to read? Sometimes this question arises even for the most avid bookworm. Which book to choose, what exactly does your day-tired mind want? After all, there are so many good works: cheerful and funny, sad and instructive, fantastic and romantic. Our selection today is dedicated to wonderful books that will help you “pump up” yourself.

We only use 10% of our mind's capacity, but the brain is a muscle that needs to be constantly exercised. Here are some great tips for your brainbuilding!

In our fast-paced times, most people begin to understand that it is necessary to develop themselves. Life should be meaningful and rich, there should be dreams and goals in life that need to be achieved. In general, a set of qualities is required for a person to be considered a person.

Books are truly a storehouse of information for humans. One way or another, when reading a book, we take something that forever remains a part of our personality. But there are such books, after reading which you feel a push forward: you need to move further, higher! Today we have selected 5 books for our readers that will make you think about your life.

Fascinating and interesting books, unfortunately, do not come to our attention as often as we would like. But what could be better than a new story that will keep you coming back to it again and again? The bizarre interweaving of the plot holds the reader's attention, warming up interest more and more with each line, and the events that take place make you live another little life on the pages of the book. Today we will talk about a selection of truly fascinating books with which you will forget about time.

No matter how much they say that young people are not interested in books, every year more and more young people refute this absurd statement. As Voltaire said, a good book is a gift given by the Author to the human race. Today we will figure out which books published in the 21st century turned out to be the most read.

German courses via Skype: efficiency and convenience

Positive thinking helps you live easier and achieve success in any area of ​​life. All our actions are a consequence of our thoughts, and, of course, negative thinking slows down our development and does not allow us to change our lives for the better.

Most of us don’t even realize how important it is for our psyche, and therefore for our overall health, to live in harmony with ourselves. A constant feeling of dissatisfaction from one’s failures or bad actions, from disorganization and laziness, from isolation and uselessness to others, leads to an inadequate low of self-esteem.

Every day I continue my self-development and for this I need to look for a lot of new and interesting information that would not stop me for a second. I have already looked at a lot of sites about self-development, but only a few have received my attention. Of course, I have added them to my bookmarks and look at them constantly.

Since I also run it myself, I’m interested in how other sites present information on this topic. This helps me develop my resource, which I am sure will also enjoy some popularity. For you, I made a review of the most interesting sites about self-development, where you will find a lot of new things for yourself.

What should a website be like for personal development?

1. Personal example

In general, all sites can be divided into 3 types:

— portals/services;

— online magazines;

Services usually contain some kind of program that you can run to develop something.

Online magazines tend to have bare articles with a lot of water on them.

2. Diverse content

In addition to articles, a good website about self-development should also have books that you can. As well as a variety of action-inspiring videos.

3. Constant development of the site

Where would we be without this? If you see that there is more and more material and it is only becoming more interesting, then you need to immediately add it to your bookmarks.

Kluber – natural development club

Blog of Elizaveta Babanova - a system of spherical development.

Download my book that will help you achieve happiness, success and wealth

1 unique personality development system

3 Important Questions for Mindfulness

7 areas for creating a harmonious life

Secret bonus for readers

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Blog of psychologist Victoria Grizodub - instructions for effective exercises and techniques that help you find a state of internal balance and harmony.

MotivationLife is a magazine for self-development and personal growth.

VitaMarg is a website about a healthy lifestyle and spiritual development.

– Zoya and Olga’s blog about setting goals and achieving them.

– articles and experiments on personal development.

– resources for personal growth.

Life is Good is the first positive blog for smart people.

Selfdevelop is an online magazine about self-development.

– a blog about happiness and personal effectiveness.

World of success - articles about happiness and success.

Life hacker - “hacks” that will help you in life.

Self-development. Everyone understands this word differently. For some, this means learning a new profession and starting to earn a big salary. Someone will consider it self-development to read several books in one week. The third will be proud that he was able to reach a new level in a computer game and boast that he is engaged in his self-development.

BroDude has his own opinion on this matter, which is not surprising, since every day we engage in self-development, work on ourselves, improve ourselves and develop new personal qualities. The bottom line is that self-development is filling your consciousness with new knowledge and skills, and the prefix itself means that you achieve this yourself, without the help of experts. This, by the way, is much more productive, because you will have to delve into the essence and thereby receive more information. This is not for you to sit through a lecture playing on your phone. Self-development is impossible without your desire, which means it allows you to concentrate on gaining knowledge.

Where to start? Of course, with online courses to improve your skills. Fortunately there are a huge number of them now. We have selected a few, which we will now talk about.

1. Programming Basics

It’s easy to predict that programming is the future. It has already arrived. Nowadays it is impossible to imagine an advanced person without a smartphone or computer. Social networks, numerous useful services, even the coffee maker is programmed for the morning and will make a cup of coffee at exactly 7:00.

Even if you are a humanist and decide to quickly skip this point, then take your time. Of course, programming requires knowledge of mathematics and even physics. But now the way of writing programs that people used ten years ago no longer exists. Now there are a huge number of convenient tools that highlight, suggest, or even correct your inaccuracies in real time.

One of the most useful courses on this topic is from Geekbrains. This is exactly what you need at the initial stage of getting to know this profession. Even a beginner will be able to find a lot of interesting things for himself. If you doubt that you will succeed in the end, then don’t worry, everything is free. It would be more offensive not to try and regret it all your life.

The course lasts one and a half weeks and includes 3 lessons of 2 hours, each of which talks about the specifics of various nuances. After completing the courses, you will receive the coveted certificate with a seal. As a bonus, you will have access to all the videos of this course, and you will also write your first program, which you can brag about among your friends!

2. Marketing Basics

All the products that surround us will not sell and make a profit without a properly constructed marketing plan. You cannot create a new product without thinking through its promotion and advertising.
If you create a new type of chocolate that is of high quality and at the same time costs 10 times less, then you will not sell it if no one knows about it. Without proper advertising, you can burn out even with a brilliant idea. In the market, it is important to correctly present your product and that is why marketers are now worth their weight in gold. Good specialists are generally priceless.

It is safe to say that these courses will not be in vain for you, and you will not waste your time. Marketing is not all the knowledge you will receive if you want to develop yourself. There is programming, design, and project management.

By the way, when we went to the Netology website, we discovered a pleasant promotion. Its meaning is that when you complete one course, you will receive a second one as a gift. The promotion is valid until August 15. Really nice. If you don't like marketing, master design. This is the meaning of self-development - the constant search for new knowledge.

3. Basics of speed reading

The flow of information that now surrounds us is truly enormous. Often our brains can’t even cope with the mass of text that enters your brain throughout the day. If you count the time it takes just to read information, you will understand that it is spent on a huge scale. If we consider that time is the most valuable resource we have, then we need to take care of it with special care. This is why there are reading acceleration courses. They are aimed at a thematic study of information and highlighting the most important points, discarding the so-called “water”, which just takes up your precious time.

The average person reads at an average speed of 200-250 words per minute, while the brain is capable of processing about 500 words in the same period of time. As a result, we spend almost 2 times more time absorbing information than we could.

Courses to accelerate the perception of information have been very popular lately. One of these is Legentas. After completing it, you will be able to increase your reading speed by the same two times and work several times faster. More precisely, spend half as much time on perceiving information. What is this if not self-development?

The freed up time can easily be spent on improving more necessary skills. Think about how much you spend reading a regular article and divide that time by two. Now calculate how much time you can save during the day. You can spend it usefully and self-development will be much more productive.

4. English course in real life

Globalization is in full swing. One of the connecting components of this very process is the English language. It will allow you to get a higher-paying job, go on vacation to any European country and simply understand this world a little more than others.
There are a huge number of methods by which people learn English. Some claim that you only need desire, while others say that you need to go to an English-speaking country and live there for at least six months. We are sure that before rushing to extremes, you need to prepare yourself and acquire the basics. Without them, you won't be able to master a single task. First, you need to determine your level of language proficiency. For this, there are many tests that will determine your knowledge and give you a characteristic. Next, you need to decide on a study methodology. It would be right to try several at once - audiobooks may not suit you, but you will learn English easily by watching TV series with subtitles or in another interesting way. You have to start somewhere. There is no other way.

One of the most interesting courses is RealStudy. Here you can receive training at exactly the level that matches your knowledge. Simply put, if you are just starting to learn a language, then you will start from the very basics. If you have established that your level corresponds to a higher one, then you can start training immediately from the third or fourth level. Luckily there are six of them here.

There is nothing wrong with starting with the first one, only to realize that you have outgrown it and move on to the second one right away. This will not only help you repeat the knowledge you already have, but will also stroke your pride, which is directly related to the inspiration to conquer new knowledge. This course has many advantages - more than 230 video lessons, more than 300 dialogues for speaking practice and more than 1000 useful tasks.

5. TED

Nothing inspires self-development more than a clear example of a person who has achieved considerable heights in life. We look at successful people and try to come up with excuses for ourselves. We assure ourselves that they did not achieve their success on their own, they were helped, they were promoted. But you, without connections and funds, are not able to invent something or come up with a new product. This is all nonsense. Numerous life stories prove that more than half of successful and famous people achieved success by engaging in self-development. Indeed, when you listen to or watch the speeches of successful people, you want to believe that you are no worse, you just need to believe in yourself. It's inspiring, believe me.

If you speak at least the basics of English or have completed the course we offered above, then for inspiration you need to go to the world famous TED project. Here you can watch speeches by people who have something to tell. You can't copy any success story. You won't invent a new iPhone and you won't create a new TESLA. But this does not mean that you cannot be inspired by the stories of people who were able to achieve certain heights.
TED publishes interesting and instructive lectures almost every day.

Sometimes we spend our free time uselessly, chatting with friends on social networks or posting another photo on Instagram.

Instead, it brings to your attention a selection of sites that are extremely useful for self-development.

• Coursera is an educational platform that offers everyone online courses from leading universities and organizations in the world.
• The Universarium is a global project that provides the opportunity to receive quality education from the best Russian teachers and leading universities for millions of Russian citizens.
• Khan Academy - a free educational resource contains a collection of more than 4,200 free micro-lectures on all kinds of disciplines - from literature to cosmology.
• Udemy is a knowledge fair that currently has over 10 million registered students from all over the world. The program includes more than 40 thousand courses.
• UNIWEB is an online learning platform that, together with leading universities, develops online educational products with the aim of disseminating quality education in Russian.
• University Without Borders is a platform for the exchange of current academic knowledge for a Russian-speaking audience, regardless of place of residence, geography, place of work or study, as well as socio-economic status.
• HTML Academy - online courses whose goal is to turn anyone from a beginner into a web development professional.
• Lumosity is a site for developing mental abilities. It seems like nothing new, but Lumosity has its own peculiarity: the application selects an individual “training” program for each person. Don't waste your time on this exciting project!
• Eduson is an online training center for future businessmen from all over the world. The main methodology is various courses from leading professors and successful practitioners.
• Wikihow is the result of the combined efforts of thousands of people to create the most useful step-by-step guide in the world. Just like Wikipedia, WikiHow is part of the wiki community, and anyone can write or edit a page on the site.
• Internet school of the National Research University Higher School of Economics - courses in socio-economic subjects, mathematics, history, Russian and English.
• Lingualeo is a platform for interesting and effective learning of the English language, on which more than 12 million people are already registered.
• Duolingo is a free platform for language learning and crowdsourced translations. The service is designed so that as users progress through the lessons, they simultaneously help translate websites, articles and other documents.
• 4brain - free training on developing the skills of speed reading, mental arithmetic, creative thinking, public speaking, memory, etc.
• Psychology Today is an online magazine dedicated exclusively to the topic we all love: ourselves. The portal's topics cover all aspects of human behavior and mood: mental and emotional health, personal growth, relationships, sex, parenting and much more.
• Brainexer is a site with a large number of tests and exercises for mental arithmetic, memorization, attention and thinking. Tests are free and available without registration. Despite the fact that the resource is in English, there is a translation into Russian.
• Memrise is a unique online platform that uses the most advanced memory techniques to help users remember information faster and more efficiently than any other method.
• Vse10 is an online simulator that allows you to learn how to touch-type text on a keyboard using all 10 fingers for free. The site maintains your statistics, as well as the overall rating of user performance.
• Project Gutenberg is an electronic universal library of various works of world literature, which was founded in 1971.
• Yandex School - electronic lectures, the main goal of which is to train specialists - both for Yandex itself and for the IT industry as a whole.
• Curious - the site was created so that teachers, students and talented people around the world could share their knowledge and skills with everyone, and even with the opportunity to earn extra money.
• Sentences is a site that will help you learn and remember new English words in the context of sentences. A system that monitors language proficiency levels contributes to the high efficiency of learning materials.

It's never too late to educate yourself. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to return to university to do this - you just need curiosity and access to the Internet. For everyone who wants to learn something new, we decided to compile a list of the best sites for self-development.

Among the many resources, we gave preference to Russian-language sites with free materials that offer real knowledge (and not just diplomas and certificates).

So, the 12 best sites for self-development.


PostScience

For whom:for people who are ready to absorb complex knowledge

Format:popular science project, video courses

Language: Russian

“PostScience” talks about modern fundamental science, shifting the emphasis from applied areas, and highlights current theories, ideas, concepts in the natural, technical and humanitarian fields of knowledge.



Site image PostNauka

The project gives scientists opportunity talk about your research in the first person and show the results of many years of work. All PostScience speakers are experts in their scientific discipline.

The creators of the project clearly formulate the format of “PostScience” - a university lecture for not specialists, but people ready to absorb complex knowledge.

What to read/watch: At the end of July, NASA scientists discovered an exoplanet very similar to Earth. If you don’t know what an exoplanet is, watch the Exoplanets course or read about how “second Earths” are found.


Arzamas
For whom:for high school students, students and adults who knew but forgot
Format:"humanitarian series"
Language: Russian

The goal of the Arzamas project is to bring together outstanding Russian humanities scholars and create a “golden fund of domestic humanities about culture and man.”




Week of Myths at Arzamas
The creators of the project call their video courses “humanitarian series” - each lecture and each course is a separate, complex work - a series. The length of one lecture is about 15 minutes. Each course is supplemented with editorial materials (articles, interviews, columns, illustrations).

Things to do:

• Watch a humanitarian series about the history of dandyism, created almost in a lifestyle format.
• Try to understand Japan
• Play the game “How to change a light bulb in the toilet of a communal apartment”

• Difficulty: 2.1. The Japanese installed a seismic counterweight in the skyscraper
• Difficulty: 4.1. Astronomers saw the aurora outside the solar system for the first time
• Difficulty: 8.8. The lovely baryon has fallen apart!

• How much water does it take to extinguish the Sun?
• Why does time fly by so quickly for so many people?
• The movie "Batman v Superman" is coming out soon, why did they fight?
• Why do they sew patches on the elbows of jackets?
• When is it better to make important decisions - in the morning or in the evening?

• Find out how cryptocurrencies affect the economy?
• Start preparing for the Unified State Exam in mathematics in the fall
• Sign up for a video course on probability theory

TeachVideo
For whom: for computer users
Format: video courses
Language: Russian

TeachVideo is a service for educational videos on IT topics. The courses will be useful for both beginners and advanced users. TeachVideo is ideal for introducing a new program.

What to see:

• AutoCAD 2010 Basics
• Basics of Photoshop CS4

Elements
For whom: for all
Format: popular science project
Language: Russian




An entire section on the website is dedicated to CERN research

“Elements” is the simplest popular science resource in our selection; the outdated design and abandoned “Video Library” may scare off new users.

What to read: However, the site has a number of advantages. For example, the project aggregates all information related to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). One of the collections is devoted to inaccuracies in reports about the LHC in the media.

Another interesting section is “Children's Questions”, the answers to which will surprise even adults.

Coursera
For whom: for all
Format: video courses
Language:

A group of Stanford University professors launched an online platform for mass education that has become a benchmark. Today Coursera has more than a thousand courses and 14.3 million listeners.



Rock history course on Coursera

Most courses require knowledge of English; Russian subtitles are available only for some of them.

Most of the materials are freely available, but it is possible to take the course for a fee and receive a certificate of completion.

What to study right now:

• Courses in Russian
• Digital marketing
• Introduction to Physical Chemistry
• History of rock

• Principles of Macroeconomics
• Data Analysis and Statistical Inferences
• Introduction to Finance

Knowledge of English is desirable, but not required. Thousands of enthusiasts translate TED Talks into dozens of languages. Russian subtitles are available for almost all popular monologues.

What to see: