I never read any of his famous books.

Yet, as I listen to him on Masterclass talking about Voice and Tone, I realized that he’s not only a brilliant writer- he’s also a great communicator.

When I started to listen to his lessons, something else changed inside my head.

First, I finally internalized that my words can make a real impact on people. Even if it impacts just one or two human beings.

This writer really got me.

With his skinny body, his little round glasses, his little hair spiked to the sky, the writer’s voice and tone really hit…

Who didn’t hate their mothers when they forced you to read?

Reading forcibly is a traumatic experience for a child. At that time, I hated my mom. She was bullying me with these strange objects we call books.

If I had nine friends calling for me, I was needed to complete the 5x5 soccer game. Why should I be grounded at home, with a book in my hands and my mother right beside me?

It was probably one of the most challenging times of my life.

As you can imagine, now my life doesn’t have any meaning without books.

At…

When I was in my last university year, teachers brought all the students together in an amphitheater for a closing ceremony.

Teachers self-promote themselves with a great effort to show compassion for students. They empowered speeches so formal it seemed a ceremony to an audience of congressional deputies.

The last teacher suggested a brief exchange of ideas. So, students had the opportunity to criticize and suggest things to improve at school.

I was the last to speak and crushed the school’s curriculum structure. I explained how the degree theses were only to fulfill avoidable hours instead of researching practical issues…

The ritual and the nervousness are always both the same. I check every detail before I go early to bed the night before. I wake up at 4 AM and drive 3 hours to the tallest mountain in Portugal.

I always go alone, just me and the sound of absolute silence.

When you plan to run in the mountains, there is some mandatory material that you have to read for safety. The race is an enormous stage of 54 hard kilometers to overcome the challenging mountain — it’s too easy to lose yourself there. …

Laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.- John Cleese

People like Jerry Seinfeld or Trevor Noah are gods of the modern world. They personify humor in its best and pure way by ridiculing life itself whenever they can.

We live in a society that fetishizes laughter.

Yet, there are always two choices you have to face in life. Or you laugh, or you cry. Or you see humor on it. Or you see sadness.

For…

The key to good decision-making is not knowledge. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.- Malcolm Gladwell

This photo of a shiny, beautiful girl writing at sunset shows a peaceful and harmful panorama about a writer, doesn’t it?

What you don’t know is that the light is artificial. Usually, writers don’t work sitting on a couch. Few writers are beautiful models (sorry girls- I love you all). And fewer are with that relaxed smile from a tropical beach tourist.

Let me be straight with you. Writing is damn hard.

It will not happen as…

Writing about this kind of subject kills my heart.

Who doesn’t remember the first time we went to a movie theater?

I even remember the smell of the new chair’s leather from the local theater I went to for the first time.

The first movie I saw was 1982, E.T.- The Extra-terrestrial by Steven Spielberg. Does anybody know what I’m talking about?

Who didn’t cry when the lonely 10-year-old Elliott said goodbye to E.T.?

So, talking about cinema and theaters is talking about freedom, dreams, and hopes. It’s talking about Michael J. …

It started with a bit amount of money.

$27, to be exact. A loan of $27…for 42 people. That was what excited Mohamad Yunus to start a tiny project in Bangladesh a few decades ago.

Local banks didn’t lend the money because they were poor people. So, Yunus had to be the guarantor for financial transactions.

Luckily, it worked. Everybody said lending money to poor people would collapse very soon. But fortunately, it didn’t.

I read Mohamad Yunus’s biography accidentally, in a municipal library, when I was 23 years old. It radically changed my perspective on several issues:

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