DLAZA

귀욤 뮈소의 여러 책을 읽었지만, 가장 재밌게 읽은 것은 종이 여자다.

다소 허무 맹랑한 얘기로 느껴질 수 있지만,,, 그런 거 좋아한다..

.

주인공에 너무 몰입해서 종이 여자를 흠모하는 자신을 발견할 수 있었다.

너무 애틋하고, 잡힐듯 잡히지 않는 사랑 이야기.

책 소 개

<그 후에>, <구해줘>, <당신 거기 있어줄래요?>, <사랑하기 때문에> 등 출간하는 소설마다 베스트셀러 1위를 기록하는 작가 기욤 뮈소의 

일곱 번째 소설. 복잡한 수식이나 특별한 수사법에 기대지 않고 본능적으로 서스펜스를 빚기도 하고, 

복잡다단한 이야기를 빠르고 경쾌한 흐름 속에서 일관되게 통합해내는 기욤 뮈소 매직이 이번 소설에서도 유감없이 발휘된다. 

한 베스트셀러 작가와 그의 소설 속에 나오는 여주인공이 펼치는 사랑 이야기를 다룬다. 

어린 시절 겪은 강렬하고 순탄치 않았던 경험을 살려 집필한 소설 <천사 3부작>으로 일약 베스트셀러 작가가 된 톰 보이드. 

톰은 프랑스 출신의 피아니스트와의 사랑이 실패로 돌아가면서 크게 절망한다. 원고를 단 한 줄도 써나갈 수 없을 만큼 심신이 피폐하고 무력해진다. 

친구들은 톰이 다시 원고를 쓸 수 있게 할 방법을 여러모로 모색하지만 결과가 신통치 않다. 

그러던 어느 날 톰의 집에 소설 속 인물을 자처하는 여인 '빌리'가 나타난다. 빌리는 과연 소설 속에서 나온 '종이 여자'일까? 

그녀는 인쇄소의 잘못으로 파본이 된 톰의 소설 속에서 나왔다고 말한다. 소설 속으로 다시 돌아가려면 톰이 소설을 쓰는 길밖에 없다. 

톰과 빌리 두 사람이 손 맞잡고 펼치는 사랑의 모험 속에서 현실과 허구가 한데 뒤섞이고 부딪치면서 매혹적이고도 치명적인 하모니를 만들어 낸다. 

생동감 넘치게 톡톡 튀는 이야기, 한 편의 로맨틱하고 판타스틱한 러브 어드벤처가 펼쳐지는 가운데 톰과 빌리, 

캐롤과 밀로의 사랑과 우정이 봇물처럼 터져 나오는데…

저자 소개

 헌법은 국가통치체제와 기본권 보장의 기초에 관한 근본법규다. 

모든 법규정들에 공동의 기초를 형성하고 방향을 제시하는 것은 법질서의 통일성 확보를 위해 필요한데, 

이러한 역할을 하는 국가법질서의 최고규범으로서 그 의미가 있다.

'-해야 한다'라는 당연한 가치와 의무가 (추상적으로나마) 헌법에서 명문화되어 있기 때문에 보장된다는 점이 새삼스레 새롭다.

보통 2장 기본권만을 읽고 가지만, 이 책을 통해 간결한 문체와 쉬운 우리말로 헌법을 통독할 수 있다.

헌법의 개별 조문들마다 그 뜻과 배경에 대한 해설을 하고 있을 뿐 아니라 현재 우리 사회의 논쟁 지점을 정확하게 짚어준다.

국가라는 공동체와, 인간의 가치에 대해 통찰력을 얻어갈 수 있는 좋은 기회였다.

대한민국 헌법
전문
제1장 총강
제2장 국민의 권리와 의무
제3장 국회
제4장 정부
제1절 대통령
제2절 행정부
제5장 법원
제6장 헌법재판소
제7장 선거관리
제8장 지방자치
제9장 경제
제10장 헌법개정
부칙

How to stay calm when you know you'll be stressed _ Daniel Levitin

두번째 테드다.

스트레스를 받을 때, 현명하게 대하는 법에 대한 연설이다.

신경과학자인 Daniel Levitin은 스트레스를 받았을 때, 현명한 대처를 하지 못했던 자신의 일화를 소개하며 

스트레스를 받을 때, 코티졸이라는 물질이 분비되어 논리적이고 합리적 사고를 방해한다고 했다.

따라서 우리는 사전 분석이 필요하고, 특정한 매커니즘이 필요하다고 역설했다.

full script

A few years ago, I broke into my own house. I had just driven home, it was around midnight in the dead of Montreal winter, I had been visiting my friend, Jeff, across town, and the thermometer on the front porch read minus 40 degrees -- and don't bother asking if that's Celsius or Fahrenheit, minus 40 is where the two scales meet -- it was very cold. And as I stood on the front porch fumbling in my pockets, I found I didn't have my keys. In fact, I could see them through the window, lying on the dining room table where I had left them. So I quickly ran around and tried all the other doors and windows, and they were locked tight. I thought about calling a locksmith -- at least I had my cellphone, but at midnight, it could take a while for a locksmith to show up, and it was cold. I couldn't go back to my friend Jeff's house for the night because I had an early flight to Europe the next morning, and I needed to get my passport and my suitcase.

So, desperate and freezing cold, I found a large rock and I broke through the basement window, cleared out the shards of glass, I crawled through, I found a piece of cardboard and taped it up over the opening, figuring that in the morning, on the way to the airport, I could call my contractor and ask him to fix it. This was going to be expensive, but probably no more expensive than a middle-of-the-night locksmith, so I figured, under the circumstances, I was coming out even.

Now, I'm a neuroscientist by training and I know a little bit about how the brain performs under stress. It releases cortisol that raises your heart rate, it modulates adrenaline levels and it clouds your thinking. So the next morning, when I woke up on too little sleep, worrying about the hole in the window, and a mental note that I had to call my contractor, and the freezing temperatures, and the meetings I had upcoming in Europe,and, you know, with all the cortisol in my brain, my thinking was cloudy, but I didn't know it was cloudy because my thinking was cloudy. And it wasn't until I got to the airport check-in counter, that I realized I didn't have my passport.

So I raced home in the snow and ice, 40 minutes, got my passport, raced back to the airport, I made it just in time, but they had given away my seat to someone else, so I got stuck in the back of the plane, next to the bathrooms, in a seat that wouldn't recline, on an eight-hour flight. Well, I had a lot of time to think during those eight hours and no sleep. And I started wondering, are there things that I can do, systems that I can put into place, that will prevent bad things from happening? Or at least if bad things happen, will minimize the likelihood of it being a total catastrophe. So I started thinking about that, but my thoughts didn't crystallize until about a month later. I was having dinner with my colleague, Danny Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winner, and I somewhat embarrassedly told him about having broken my window, and, you know, forgotten my passport, and Danny shared with me that he'd been practicing something called prospective hindsight.

It's something that he had gotten from the psychologist Gary Klein, who had written about it a few years before, also called the pre-mortem. Now, you all know what the postmortem is. Whenever there's a disaster, a team of experts come in and they try to figure out what went wrong, right? Well, in the pre-mortem, Danny explained, you look ahead and you try to figure out all the things that could go wrong, and then you try to figure out what you can do to prevent those things from happening, or to minimize the damage. So what I want to talk to you about today are some of the things we can do in the form of a pre-mortem. Some of them are obvious, some of them are not so obvious. I'll start with the obvious ones.

Around the home, designate a place for things that are easily lost. Now, this sounds like common sense, and it is, but there's a lot of science to back this up, based on the way our spatial memory works. There's a structure in the brain called the hippocampus, that evolved over tens of thousands of years, to keep track of the locations of important things -- where the well is, where fish can be found, that stand of fruit trees, where the friendly and enemy tribes live. The hippocampus is the part of the brain that in London taxicab drivers becomes enlarged. It's the part of the brain that allows squirrels to find their nuts. And if you're wondering, somebody actually did the experiment where they cut off the olfactory sense of the squirrels, and they could still find their nuts. They weren't using smell, they were using the hippocampus, this exquisitely evolved mechanism in the brain for finding things. But it's really good for things that don't move around much, not so good for things that move around. So this is why we lose car keys and reading glasses and passports. So in the home, designate a spot for your keys -- a hook by the door, maybe a decorative bowl. For your passport, a particular drawer. For your reading glasses, a particular table. If you designate a spot and you're scrupulous about it, your things will always be there when you look for them.

What about travel? Take a cell phone picture of your credit cards, your driver's license, your passport, mail it to yourself so it's in the cloud. If these things are lost or stolen, you can facilitate replacement. Now these are some rather obvious things. Remember, when you're under stress, the brain releases cortisol.Cortisol is toxic, and it causes cloudy thinking. So part of the practice of the pre-mortem is to recognize that under stress you're not going to be at your best, and you should put systems in place. And there's perhaps no more stressful a situation than when you're confronted with a medical decision to make. And at some point, all of us are going to be in that position, where we have to make a very important decision about the future of our medical care or that of a loved one, to help them with a decision.

And so I want to talk about that. And I'm going to talk about a very particular medical condition. But this stands as a proxy for all kinds of medical decision-making, and indeed for financial decision-making, and social decision-making -- any kind of decision you have to make that would benefit from a rational assessment of the facts. So suppose you go to your doctor and the doctor says, "I just got your lab work back, your cholesterol's a little high." Now, you all know that high cholesterol is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke. And so you're thinking having high cholesterol isn't the best thing, and so the doctor says, "You know, I'd like to give you a drug that will help you lower your cholesterol, a statin." And you've probably heard of statins, you know that they're among the most widely prescribed drugs in the world today, you probably even know people who take them. And so you're thinking, "Yeah! Give me the statin."

But there's a question you should ask at this point, a statistic you should ask for that most doctors don't like talking about, and pharmaceutical companies like talking about even less. It's for the number needed to treat. Now, what is this, the NNT? It's the number of people that need to take a drug or undergo a surgery or any medical procedure before one person is helped. And you're thinking, what kind of crazy statistic is that? The number should be one. My doctor wouldn't prescribe something to me if it's not going to help. But actually, medical practice doesn't work that way. And it's not the doctor's fault, if it's anybody's fault, it's the fault of scientists like me. We haven't figured out the underlying mechanisms well enough. But GlaxoSmithKline estimates that 90 percent of the drugs work in only 30 to 50 percent of the people. So the number needed to treat for the most widely prescribed statin, what do you suppose it is? How many people have to take it before one person is helped? 300. This is according to research by research practitioners Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband, independently confirmed by Bloomberg.com. I ran through the numbers myself. 300 people have to take the drug for a year before one heart attack, stroke or other adverse event is prevented.

Now you're probably thinking, "Well, OK, one in 300 chance of lowering my cholesterol. Why not, doc? Give me the prescription anyway." But you should ask at this point for another statistic, and that is, "Tell me about the side effects." Right? So for this particular drug, the side effects occur in five percent of the patients. And they include terrible things -- debilitating muscle and joint pain, gastrointestinal distress -- but now you're thinking, "Five percent, not very likely it's going to happen to me, I'll still take the drug." But wait a minute. Remember under stress you're not thinking clearly. So think about how you're going to work through this ahead of time, so you don't have to manufacture the chain of reasoning on the spot. 300 people take the drug, right? One person's helped, five percent of those 300 have side effects, that's 15 people. You're 15 times more likely to be harmed by the drug than you are to be helped by the drug.

Now, I'm not saying whether you should take the statin or not. I'm just saying you should have this conversation with your doctor. Medical ethics requires it, it's part of the principle of informed consent. You have the right to have access to this kind of information to begin the conversation about whether you want to take the risks or not. Now you might be thinking I've pulled this number out of the air for shock value, but in fact it's rather typical, this number needed to treat. For the most widely performed surgery on men over the age of 50, removal of the prostate for cancer, the number needed to treat is 49. That's right, 49 surgeries are done for every one person who's helped. And the side effects in that case occur in 50 percent of the patients. They include impotence, erectile dysfunction, urinary incontinence, rectal tearing, fecal incontinence. And if you're lucky, and you're one of the 50 percent who has these, they'll only last for a year or two.

So the idea of the pre-mortem is to think ahead of time to the questions that you might be able to ask that will push the conversation forward. You don't want to have to manufacture all of this on the spot. And you also want to think about things like quality of life. Because you have a choice oftentimes, do you I want a shorter life that's pain-free, or a longer life that might have a great deal of pain towards the end? These are things to talk about and think about now, with your family and your loved ones. You might change your mind in the heat of the moment, but at least you're practiced with this kind of thinking. Remember, our brain under stress releases cortisol, and one of the things that happens at that moment is a whole bunch on systems shut down. There's an evolutionary reason for this. Face-to-face with a predator, you don't need your digestive system, or your libido, or your immune system, because if you're body is expending metabolism on those things and you don't react quickly, you might become the lion's lunch, and then none of those things matter. Unfortunately, one of the things that goes out the window during those times of stress is rational, logical thinking, as Danny Kahneman and his colleagues have shown. So we need to train ourselves to think ahead to these kinds of situations.

I think the important point here is recognizing that all of us are flawed. We all are going to fail now and then. The idea is to think ahead to what those failures might be, to put systems in place that will help minimize the damage, or to prevent the bad things from happening in the first place. Getting back to that snowy night in Montreal, when I got back from my trip, I had my contractor install a combination lock next to the door, with a key to the front door in it, an easy to remember combination. And I have to admit, I still have piles of mail that haven't been sorted, and piles of emails that I haven't gone through. So I'm not completely organized, but I see organization as a gradual process, and I'm getting there. Thank you very much.

IFRS가 개정이 많이 됐다..

특히 수익 파트부터 다양한 부분의 근간이 바꼈다는 느낌이다.

개정한 부분을 공부하며 정리하고자 한다.

[개정1] 당기손익인식지정 금융부채의 자기신용위험으로 인한 평가손익

우선 당기손익-공정가치측정 금융부채는 공정가치 변동을 당기손익으로 후속측정하는 금융부채를 말한다.

 당기손익-공정가치측정 금융부채는 보유 목적에 따라 단기매매목적의 금융부채와 당기손익인식을 지정한 금융부채로 구분된다.

금융부채를 당기손익인식항목으로 지정하면, 관련된 공정가치변동손익은 자기신용위험(own credit risk)관련 여부에 따라

다음과 같이 인식한다.

1) 시장위험으로 인한 금융부채의 공정가치 변동 : 기준금리 등의 변동

 - 시장위험으로 인한 금융부채의 공정가치 변동은 당기손익으로 인식한다.

2) 자기신용위험으로 인한 금융부채의 공정가치 변동 : 신용가산금리의 변동 - 개정된 부분

자기신용위험으로 인한 금융부채의 공정가치 변동은 기타포괄 손익으로 인식한다.

기타포괄손익으로 인식한 금액은 후속적으로 당기손익으로 재분류하지 않는다.

우선 1)과 2)를 비교해보자면 CAPM 공식을 이용하면 이해하기 쉽다.

E(Ri) = Rf + [E(Rm) - Rf ]B 에서

무위험 이자율 부분이 1)이 말하는 시장위험(기준금리 등)이고 뒷부분 리스크 프리미엄 족이 2)가 말하는 자기신용위험 부분이다.

말 그대로, 회사가 안좋아서 신용이 변하면 대출이자율이 변하는 것과 같은 이치다.

개정된 내용을 직관적으로 이해하자면,

시장 위험이 변해서 공정가치가 변하는 것은 어쩔 수 없으니 당기 손익으로 인식하지만

개별 회사의 위험으로 부채의 공정가치가 변하는것은 손익을 이연시키는게 합리적이라는 것이다.

나 역시 개정된 부분이 더 합리적인 논리라고 생각한다.

상속체계에 대한 복잡한 글은 아니다.

최근 친구의 어머님께서 돌아가셨는데.. 장례 절차를 마치고 나에게 상속세 납부에 대한 질문을 했다

CPA이지만..... 세법 공부는 한지 오래돼서 다시 찾아봐야 했던....

전문가가 되기 위한 공부는 끝이 없다.

질문은

"아버지에게 상속액을 몰아주는게 적게 내는지, 상속 비율을 정해서 상속 받는게 적은 것인지?"

쉽게 말하자면 차이가 없다.

상속세는 피상속인에게 부과하는 과세 체계이다. 피상속인이 사망하신 분! (상속인과 헷갈린다면 피를 흘리며 돌아가신다고 외우라던 강사분이 떠오른다;;)

따라서 상속비율을 어떻게 하든지, 피상속인의 상속가액에 과세하기 때문에 달라지는 것은 없다.

공제 역시 피상속인의 관계 형성에 따라 부과한다.

이밖에 알아두면 좋을 기본적인 내용은 아래에 적어놓았다.

과세가액은 상속재산의 가액에서 공과금·장례비용·채무 등을 공제하고(동법 제14조) 상속개시일 전에 증여된 일정한 재산가액을 가산한 금액으로 하며(동법 제13조), 공익목적의 출연재산은 산입하지 않는다(동법 제16조, 동법 제17조). 과세표준은 과세가액에서 기초공제·배우자상속공제·기타 인적 공제·금융재산공제·재해손실공제 등(동법 제18조 내지 제24조)을 차감한 금액으로 하되, 과세표준이 50만원 미만인 때에는 상속세를 부과하지 않는다(동법 제25조). 세율은 5단계의 누진세율로 하며(동법 제26조), 세대를 건너 뛴 상속에 대하여는 할증세율로 한다(세대생략이전). 산출세액에서 증여세액공제, 외국납부세액공제, 단기재상속세액공제를 한다(동법 제28조 내지 동법 제30조).

납세의무자는 상속개시일부터 6개월 이내에 상속세를 자진 신고·납부하여야 한다(동법 제67조, 동법 제70조). 자진신고·납부의 경우에는 신고세액공제를 하며(동법 제69조), 제대로 이행하지 않을 경우에는 가산세를 부과한다(동법 제78조). 납세지 관할 세무서장은 연부연납(年賦年納)(동법 제71조)과 물납(동법 제73조)을 허가할 수 있다.

"Ideas worth spreading" 다양한 분야의 연사들의 스피치를 모아놓은 것이 TED다.

https://www.ted.com에서 무료로 볼 수 있으며, 국가별 자막이 모두 지원된다.

영어 공부를 위해 시작했는데, 좋은 아이디어까지 공유할 수 있어 일석이조다.

1. 10 ways to have a better conversation에서 와닿았던 부분을 정리한다.

1) listen

Stephen Covey said it very beautifully. 

He said, "Most of us don't listen with the intent to understand. We listen with the intent to reply."

굉장히 와닿았던 말이다. 우리는 진정 이해를 위해 듣는 것이 아니라 대답하기 위해 듣는 것일 수도 있다. 

나의 경우 경청을 위해 노력을 기울이지만, 머리 속에는 얼릉 답변하고 싶다는 마음이 들 때가 많다. 

2)  be brief

"A good conversation is like a miniskirt; short enough to retain interest, but long enough to cover the subject"

말을 간략하게 하는 것이 굉장히 중요하다. 전역하고 얼마 되지 않을 무렵, 나는 내가 느끼기에도 서론이 굉장히 긴 타입이었다.

지금도 말이 적은 편이 아니라서, 짧게 말하는 연습을 해야겠다..

말을 짧게하라는 메세지를 미니스커트에 빗대어 재치있게 표현했다!

3) Bill Nye: "Everyone you will ever meet knows something that you don't." 

    I put it this way: Everybody is an expert in something.

처음 대화하는 누구라도 무언가의 전문가일 것이라는 기대감에 대화를 이어나가는 것이 중요하다.

사실 배울점 없는 사람을 몇 번 만나보아 크게 공감할순 없었지만(슬프다..)

앞으로 만날 그 어느 누군가에게 기대를 걸어보고 실망하지 않기를! 그리고 나 역시 누군가에게 expert 이기를!

발음도 좋고 배울점이 많았던 연설이었다.

[ Full script ]

I want to see a show of hands, how many you have unfriendid someone on Facebook because they say oppensive something about politic, religion, childcare food, And how many of you know at least one person to avoid because you just don`t wanna talk to them. you know, it used to be that you know that polite conversation we just have followed advice of Henry Higgins in "My Fair Lady": strict to the weather and health. but these days with climate change and anti-vaccine those subjects are not safe either. so this world that we live in, the world which every conversation has potential to devolve into an argument. where politician can speak to one or another and where the even most trivial of issues have someone fighting both passionately for it and against. it`s not normal. few research did a study 10 thousands American adults, they found at this moment we`re more polarized and more devided then we have ever been in history. we`re less likely compromised which means we`re not listening to each other. And we make decisions about where to live who to marry and even who our friends are going to be based on what we already believe. again it means we`re not listening to each other. A conversation requires a balance between talking and listening and somewhere along the way we lost a balance.

Now, part of that is due to technology. The smartphone that you all either have in your hand or close enough that you could grab them really quickly. According to few research about third of an American teenagers send a more than hundreds texts a day. And many of them almost most of them a more likely text their friends than talk to them face to face. There`s great piece of the Atlantic. It was written by high school teacher named Paul Barnwell. And he gave its his kids communication project to wanted know how to speack a specific project without using note. And he said this " I can`t realize that conversational competence might be the single most overlooked skill we fail to teach. Kids spend hours each day engaging with ideas and each other through screens, but rarely do they have an opportunity to hone their interpersonal communications skills. It might sound like a funny question, but we have to ask ourselves. Is there any 21st-century skill more important than being able to sustain coherent confident conversation?" So I'd like to spend the next 10 minutes or so teaching you how to talk and how to listen.

Many of you have already heard a lot of advice on this, things like look the person in the eye, think of Interesting topics to discuss in advance, look, nod and smile to show that you're paying attention, repeat back what you just heard or summarize it. So I want you to forget all of that. It is crap. There is no reason to learn how to show you're paying attention if you are in fact paying attention.

Now, I actually use the exact same skills as a professional interviewer that I do in regular life. So, I'm going to teach you how to interview people, and that's actually going to help you learn how to be better conversationalists. Learn to have a conversation without wasting your time, without getting bored, and, please God, without offending anybody. We've all had really great conversations. We've had them before. We know what it's like. The kind of conversation where you walk away feeling engaged and inspired, or where you feel like you've made a real connection or you've been perfectly understood. There is no reason why most of your interactions can't be like that. So I have 10 basic rules. I'm going to walk you through all of them, but honestly, if you just choose one of them and master it, you'll already enjoy better conversations.

Number one Don't multitask. And I don't mean just set down your cell phone or your tablet or your car keys or whatever is in your hand. I mean, be present. Be in that moment. Don't think about your argument you had with your boss. Don't think about what you're going to have for dinner. If you want to get out of the conversation, get out of the conversation, but don't be half in it and half out of it.

Number two, Don't pontificate. If you want to state your opinion without any opportunity for response or argument or pushback or growth, write a blog. there's a really good reason why I don't allow pundits on my show: Because they're really boring. If they're conservative, they're going to hate Obama and food stamps and abortion. If they're liberal, they're going to hate big banks and oil corporations and Dick Cheney. Totally predictable. And you don't want to be like that. You need to enter every conversation assuming that you have something to learn. The famed therapist M. Scott Peck said that true listening requires a setting aside of oneself. And sometimes that means setting aside your personal opinion. He said that sensing this acceptance, the speaker will become less and less vulnerable and more and more likely to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. Again, assume that you have something to learn. Bill Nye: "Everyone you will ever meet knows something that you don't." I put it this way: Everybody is an expert in something.

Number three Use open-ended questions. In this case, take a cue from journalists. Start your questions with who, what, when, where, why or how. If you put in a complicated question, you're going to get a simple answer out. If I ask you, "Were you terrified?" you're going to respond to the most powerful word in that sentence, which is "terrified," and the answer is "Yes, I was" or "No, I wasn't." "Were you angry?" "Yes, I was very angry." Let them describe it. They're the ones that know. Try asking them things like, "What was that like?" "How did that feel?" Because then they might have to stop for a moment and think about it, and you're going to get a much more interesting response.

Number four: Go with the flow. That means thoughts will come into your mind and you need to let them go out of your mind. We've heard interviews often in which a guest is talking for several minutes and then the host comes back in and asks a question which seems like it comes out of nowhere, or it's already been answered. That means the host probably stopped listening two minutes ago because he thought of this really clever question, and he was just bound and determined to say that. And we do the exact same thing. We're sitting there having a conversation with someone, and then we remember that time that we met Hugh Jackman in a coffee shop. And we stop listening. Stories and ideas are going to come to you. You need to let them come and let them go.

Number five If you don't know, say that you don't know. Now, people on the radio, especially on NPR, are much more aware that they're going on the record, and so they're more careful about what they claim to be an expert in and what they claim to know for sure. Do that. Err on the side of caution. Talk should not be cheap.

Number six: Don't equate your experience with theirs. If they're talking about having lost a family member, don't start talking about the time you lost a family member. If they're talking about the trouble they're having at work, don't tell them about how much you hate your job. It's not the same. It is never the same. All experiences are individual. And, more importantly, it is not about you. You don't need to take that moment to prove how amazing you are or how much you've suffered. Somebody asked Stephen Hawking once what his IQ was, and he said, "I have no idea. People who brag about their IQs are losers." Conversations are not a promotional opportunity.

Number seven: Try not to repeat yourself. It's condescending, and it's really boring, and we tend to do it a lot. Especially in work conversations or in conversations with our kids, we have a point to make, so we just keep rephrasing it over and over. Don't do that.

Number eight Stay out of the weeds. Frankly, people don't care about the years, the names, the dates, all those details that you're struggling to come up with in your mind. They don't care. What they care about is you. They care about what you're like, what you have in common. So forget the details. Leave them out.

Number nine This is not the last one, but it is the most important one. Listen. I can not tell you how many really important people have said that listening is perhaps the most, the number one most important skill that you could develop. Buddha said, and I'm paraphrasing, "If your mouth is open, you're not learning." And Calvin Coolidge said, "No man ever listened his way out of a job." Why do we not listen to each other? Number one, we'd rather talk. When I'm talking, I'm in control. I don't have to hear anything I'm not interested in. I'm the center of attention. I can bolster my own identity. But there's another reason, We get distracted. The average person talks at about 225 word per minute, but we can listen at up to 500 words per minute. So our minds are filling in those other 275 words. And look, I know, it takes effort and energy to actually pay attention to someone, but if you can't do that, you're not in a conversation. You're just two people shouting out barely related sentences in the same place. You have to listen to one another. Stephen Covey said it very beautifully. He said, "Most of us don't listen with the intent to understand. We listen with the intent to reply."

One more rule, Be brief. number 10, and it's this one: Be brief. A good conversation is like a miniskirt short enough to retain interest, but long enough to cover the subject. All of this boils down to the same basic concept, and it is this one Be interested in other people. I kind of grew up assuming everyone has some hidden amazing thing about them. And honestly, I think it's what makes me a better host. I keep my mouth shut as often as I possibly can, I keep my mind open, and I'm always prepared to be amazed, and I'm never disappointed. You do the same thing. Go out, talk to people, listen to people, and, most importantly, be prepared to be amazed. Thanks.