Train Your Brain: Memorizing the Highest Paid Celebrities of 2017

Memorizing the Highest Paid Celebrities of 2017

The list of the highest paid celebrities for 2017 has just been released and they certainly raked in a ton of  money!  A fun mental exercise to boost your brain power is to memorize the top 10 celebrities on the list in a way where you can recite them from top to bottom or bottom to top.

You can refer to the original article on this topic for a list of the top 10 Corporations.

The Top 10

As a reminder, here are the links to every number to which you will associate with the people on the list.

They are:

1. sun
2. shoe
3. tree
4. door
5. hive
6. sticks
7. heaven
8. gate
9. wine
10. pen


Now, we'll take a look at  the Top 10  Celebrities list (as of June 2017).

They are:

Now, let's link the celebrity with the memory aid for each number.

1. Sean 'Diddy' Combs/sun - Imagine Sean Combs enjoying the sun

2. Beyonce/shoe - Imagine Beyonce with a distinctive pair of shoes

3. J.K. Rowling/tree - Imagine J.K. Rowling in a treehouse

4. Drake/door - Imagine Drake and those flying-wing car doors

5. Cristiano Ronaldo/hive - Imagine Cristiano Ronaldo with a bee on his face (actually a moth from the Euro Cup Final but let's say a bee)

6. The Weeknd/stick - Imagine The Weekend using a chopSTICK

7. Howard Stern/heaven - Imagine Howard Stern entering HEAVEN

8. Coldplay/gate - Imagine Coldplay in front of the Golden GATE Bridge

9. James Patterson/wine - Imagine reading a James Patterson book with a glass of wine (hey there, George Clooney!)

10. Lebron James/pen - Imagine Lebron James using a PEN to sign one of many autographs

After you create these images, you'll find it very easy to recite the list from the top or bottom and to instantly recall any number. Quick, what's number 6?  Stick - The Weeknd

With the links, you can substitute other words for the numbers, such as one-gun or eight-gate but any word will do.  Have fun with the exercise and use it for any top 10 list that you can find useful!


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Words of Wisdom From Mark Twain

Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemens was an American author wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the latter often called "The Great American Novel.  He was also known for his many quotes on life which are still relevant today.  As he would say, life is an education so never stop learning as long as you have a breath in your body.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.

Worrying is like paying a debt you don't owe.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.

The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.

The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

We have all read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in high school but Mark Twain produced a wealth of literary work - fiction, non-fiction, essays and short stories.   They are worth exploring, especially his travel writing.  You can find out more at www.online-literature.com/twain.

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Lamborghini and Federal Express: Two Inspirational Start-up Stories

A previous article dealt with the stories of how some companies such as Pez and Gillette had their origins.  Here is the story of two more companies - Lamborghini, dealing with the world of exotic sports cars, and Federal Express, which pioneered overnight delivery.

Ferruccio Lamborghini had humble beginnings, being born to grape farmers in Italy in 1916.  It was his passion for mechanics as opposed to farming that led to his eventual wealth and fame.

 Lamborghini was more interested in machinery than grapes.  He studied mechanics at a technical institute and served as a mechanic for the Italian army in Rhodes during the Second World War.
After the war, he became quite wealthy as a manufacturer of tractors thanks to his background in farming and mechanics.

Had the story ended there, it would have been a nice tale about how a man born to farmers became successful and wealthy selling tractors.  However, only people who dealt with tractors would have known his name.

It so happened that Lamborghini had another passion.  As a young man, tractors were fine to get the farming jobs done but they obviously weren't very exciting.  He used his mechanical gifts to tinker with cars and turn them into roaring speedsters.  He started with small Fiats and then turned to Mercedes-Benzes, Jaguars and Maseratis.  It was much more fun to race speedsters than to drive a tractor across a field.

It was his Ferrari automobiles that sparked Lamborghini into starting up his own sports car brand.  He always had problems with the clutch on his Ferraris when driving fast and the repairs done by Ferrari technicians never worked.  He was so angry that he eventually complained to Enzo Ferrari himself, who retorted, 'Stick to your tractors and leave sports cars to the experts'.

The rest is history.  Lamborghini went by the principle that if you want to do something right, you should do it yourself.  He also knew that profits were much higher with exotic sports cars rather than tractors and the product was a lot more glamorous!

He combined his passion and his expertise to create the Lamborghini sports car and become a household name.  Had Enzo Ferrari been more polite, Ferruccio Lamborghini may have never built sports cars but it sometimes takes conflict to spark the passion that leads to new ventures.

Who would have thought that a tractor company would eventually produce a sports car that would be enjoyed by the likes of Floyd Mayweather, George Clooney, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West and Cristiano Ronaldo?  It shows that anything can happen when your dreams are unlimited and you put in the work to match those dreams.

Fred Smith used his passion for flying as a basis for a start-up that became Federal Express.  He attended Yale University in the early 1960's and wrote a paper for an economics class that touted the model of using specialized air transport to deliver packages.   This flew in the face of the current system at the time which used trucks, rail or passenger airplanes.  Fred Smith later said that his paper got a 'C' from the professor but he kept hold of the idea.

His goal was to start a company that used its own airplanes.  These planes could deliver goods much more quickly than relying on airlines which put their own passengers first and has their own schedule.  As the saying goes, "Time is money."  

Using Fred Smith's system, his company combined both air and ground transport under its own umbrella.   Packages and goods were picked up from the sender and transported to the recipient exclusively on Federal Express planes and vehicles .  This was much more efficient than sending packages to a regular airport and waiting for the first plane that had room to take on such items.  The old system meant that the courier had no control over the air transport.  The new system put this into the hands of the company and increased both efficiency and reliability.

This led to the famous slogan:

Fred Smith was such a believer in Federal Express in the early days that he went to Las Vegas when the company was down to its last $5,000 and gambled it all at the blackjack tables.  He won $27,000 and this kept the company afloat by paying its overdue fuel bill.  This method of raising funds is definitely not recommended but it did allow the company to become what it is today.

Ferruccio Lamborghini had humble origins but used his knowledge and passions to create one of the most famous sports car brands in the world.  Fred Smith used his passion and background in flying to start a company that revolutionized express delivery and became the largest such company in the world.  It is through such efforts that many of today's corporations had their start.  Make sure that you follow your passions and use your expertise since you never know where they can lead.

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Inspiring Quotes About Leadership

Leadership comes in many forms - from being President of the United States to being a parent of two children to being a manager at a company to coaching a sports team.

It also involves many facets such as inspiring others to achieve greater things or teaching people how to be just as passionate in achieving the goal.  Leadership takes knowledge, commitment, optimism and a willingness to compromise if needed.  The results of effective leadership are a gain for everyone involved.  It's something that we can all learn and apply in our lives, no matter how big or small the challenge.

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