We can’t deactivate our biases, but we can counteract them with the right discipline.
1. You encounter a choice. But narrow framing makes you miss options. So Widen Your Options How can you expand your set of choices? We’ll study the habits of people who are expert at uncovering new options, including a college-selection adviser, some executives whose businesses survived (and even thrived) during global recessions, and a boutique firm that has named some of the world’s top brands, including BlackBerry and Pentium. 2. You analyze your options. But the confirmation bias leads you to gather self-serving info. So Reality-Test Your Assumptions. How can you get outside your head and collect information that you can trust? We’ll learn how to ask craftier questions, how to turn a contentious meeting into a productive one in 30 seconds, and what kind of expert advice should make you suspicious. 3. You make a choice. But short-term emotion will often tempt you to make the wrong one. So Attain Distance Before Deciding. How can you overcome short-term emotion and conflicted feelings to make the best choice? We’ll discover how to triumph over manipulative car salesmen, why losing $50 is more painful than gaining $50 is pleasurable, and what simple question often makes agonizing decisions perfectly easy. 4. Then you live with it. But you’ll often be overconfident about how the future will unfold. So Prepare to Be Wrong. How can we plan for an uncertain future so that we give our decisions the best chance to succeed? We’ll show you how one woman scored a raise by mentally simulating the negotiation in advance, how you can rein in your spouse’s crazy business idea, and why it can be smart to warn new employees about how lousy their jobs will be. Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath, Dan Heath The first step on your path of personal growth must be to recognize that your life as it stands right now isn’t how you want it to be. It’s perfectly okay to be in this position. It’s okay to want something and have no idea how to get it, but it’s not okay to lie to yourself and pretend everything is perfect when you know it isn’t. The closest you’ll get to perfection will be to enjoy the experience of lifelong growth, including all its temporary flaws.
It’s easy for me to say that you should face the truth about your life, but in practice this can be very difficult to do. It’s hard to admit that you’ve become dissatisfied with your relationship. It’s hard to accept that you made the wrong career choice. It’s hard to look at yourself in the mirror and realize that you don’t like the person you’ve become. But despite how difficult this is, it’s still necessary. You can’t get from point A to point B if you stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that you’re at point A. Denying A, fighting A, or otherwise resisting A only keeps you stuck at A. What do you perceive about your life that you’d like to change? Are there any addictions or destructive habits you’d like to break? Would you find more fulfillment in a new career? Would you rather be living somewhere else? Open your eyes. Look around you and notice what you like and dislike about your life. Don’t worry about setting specific goals just yet; just become aware of what you perceive and how you react to those perceptions Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.” William Blake
I’m often struck by the way people will toss off the advice to just be yourself without acknowledging that this is a slippery and complicated mission. It requires a vulnerability that our culture has trained us to avoid, so much so that we construct an entire ‘false self’ to protect our tender souls. In order to just be yourself, you have to crack apart that persona and expose the meat of who you are. You need the skills, and enough mastery of your craft, to project that truth of self in your work. When the gap between who you are and the projection of who you are (your ‘personal brand’) is as narrow as possible, you ring true. We call you authentic, and are that much more likely to engage with you or do business with you. That said, I spend a lot of time writing, which is a form of promotion. I do this not to advertise my books or web services, but because I want to help others, and writing is the best way I know how to do it en masse. So my writing is definitely promotion, but that’s a side effect, not a reason I do it. I don’t think I could write good sales copy to save my life. But, I do want to share what I know, and writing information- and opinion-type articles and books is the best way for me to accomplish that goal. Writing also allows me to explore my ideas in public. I don’t usually know if an idea is sound until I write about it. When I share it with someone else, they either agree or look at me sideways. If it’s the latter, I re-evaluate the idea, re-evaluate whether that person is my intended audience, and sometimes I just move on. Everything I Know by Paul Jarvis Listening to one of Michael Covel's podcasts the other day, I was fascinated to learn that Picasso had created between 50,000 and 100,000 pieces of art. That is a staggering number, but it shows clearly an example showing that the more time you spend at something, the better the odds of it being great.
Picasso did not create 100,000 great pieces of art, I have seen several that were not that great in my opinion, the pieces I saw were rough, mean spirited. We all know that some experiments that don't work, and so did Picasso, but he knew that the more times he created, the better the odds that he would create something interesting, and that because it was interesting, it might last. The man was a machine, and worked hard at his art constantly. It wasn't a job, it was his life. How does it apply to you? The more actions you do, the more times you create, that you get up and try, the better the odds of success and greatness. If you think one idea is all you need, you are wrong. You need hundreds of ideas, and then you try them out with small bets or experiments, and then push hard on the concepts that work. The real key is to have hundreds of ideas, and then actually execute part of it in a small way to see if it works. Over and over. An idea withoout an action is worth nothing. Picasso didn't know which pieces would be lasting pieces of art, he just knew what interested him, and he tried what he thought about, learned from those around him, and then pushed hard on those ideas that worked the best. D James Altucher's Daily Practice helps keep your life balanced when you need it to succeed11/29/2013
When I look back at these times now I realize there was a common thread.
EACH TIME THERE WERE FOUR THINGS, AND ONLY FOUR THINGS, THAT WERE ALWAYS IN PLACE IN ORDER FOR ME TO BOUNCE BACK. Now I try to incorporate these four things into a Daily Practice The key is: every day try to make some improvement in the following areas: PHYSICAL, EMOTIONAL, MENTAL, SPIRITUAL. PHYSICAL – being in shape. Doing some form of exercise. In 2003 I woke up at 5am every day and from 5-6am I played “Round the World” on a basketball court overlooking the Hudson River. Every day (except when it rained). Trains would pass and people at 5:30am would wave to me out the window. Now, I try to do yoga every day. But it’s hard. All you need to do, minimally, is exercise enough to break a sweat for 10 minutes. So about 20-30 minutes worth of exercise a day. This is not to get “ripped” or “shredded.” But just to be healthy. You can’t be happy if you aren’t healthy. Also, spending this time helps your mind better deal with it’s daily anxieties. If you can breathe easy when your body is in pain then it’s easier to breathe during difficult situations. Here are other things that are a part of this but a little bit harder: • Wake up by 4-5am every day. • Go to sleep by 8:30-9. (Good to sleep 8 hours a night!) • No eating after 5:30pm. Can’t be happy if indigested at night. But the most important side effect of being healthy is that sickness will not get in the way of your freedom. It won’t get in the way of mental vitality, emotional health, and ultimately spiritual health. And will allow you to enjoy high quality of life in your later years. So find even the 10 minute routine that resonates with you. Don’t depend on the late night infomercials with their false dreams and promises. The cemetery of dead exercise machines in basements is an enormous graveyard. EMOTIONAL – If someone is a drag on me, I cut them out. If someone lifts me up, I bring them closer. Nobody is sacred here. When the plane is going down, put the oxygen mask on your face first. Family, friends, people I love – I always try to be there for them and help. But I don’t get close to anyone bringing me down. This rule can’t be broken. Energy leaks out of you if someone is draining you. And I never owe anyone an explanation. Explaining is draining. MENTAL – Every day I write down ideas. I write down so many ideas that it hurts my head to come up with one more. Then I try to write down five more. The other day I tried to write 100 alternatives kids can do other than go to college. I wrote down eight, which I wrote about here. I couldn’t come up with anymore. Then the next day I came up with another 40. It definitely stretched my head. No ideas today? Memorize all the legal 2 letter words for Scrabble. Translate the Tao Te Ching into Spanish. Need ideas for lists of ideas? Come up with 30 separate chapters for an “autobiography.” Try to think of 10 businesses you can start from home (and be realistic how you can execute them)? Give me 10 ideas of directions this blog can go in. Think of 20 ways Obama can improve the country. List every productive thing you did yesterday (this improves memory also and gives you ideas for today). SPIRITUAL – I feel that most people don’t like the word “spiritual.” They think it means “god.” Or “religion.” But it doesn’t. I don’t know what it means actually. But I feel like I have a spiritual practice when I do one of the following:
The Results • Within about one month, I’d notice coincidences start to happen. I’d start to feel lucky. People would smile at me more. • Within three months the ideas would really start flowing, to the point where I felt overwhelming urges to execute the ideas. • Within six months, good ideas would start flowing, I’d begin executing them, and everyone around me would help me put everything together. WITHIN A YEAR MY LIFE WAS ALWAYS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. 100% I Was Blind But Now I See: Time to Be Happy by James Altucher This is a very basic deconstruction: instead of “programming,” we now have three subconcepts to work with: Input—information you use to execute a process. Process—a series of steps the program takes, given the input. Output—the end result of the program.
This breakdown is much more useful. “Writing a computer program” means defining what information you’re starting with, defining a series of steps that describes exactly what the computer will do with that input, and defining the output the computer will return when the program is finished running. Think of a flowchart, which appears to be a useful mental hook for how programs work. You start the process with certain inputs. Along the way, you take certain actions when specific conditions are true or false. The process ends when you reach the end of the flowchart, and you’re left with the output: the end result of the complete process the flowchart describes. Creating a computer program seems to be a different way of doing the same kind of thinking you do when you create a flowchart. You ask the same sorts of questions: What am I starting with? What happens at the beginning of the process? What happens after that? After that? When does the process end? What do I have when the process is done? That’s basic programming, really. Defining inputs. Setting variables. Creating processes that lead to the desired outputs. Thinking through those processes like a flowchart, adding conditionals and exceptions as necessary. If all goes well, you supply the inputs, run the program, and get the desired output. This is a massive oversimplification of a very complex activity, but it’s detailed enough to be useful for someone new to programming. By deconstructing programming in this way, it’s easier to know where to start. The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything . . . Fast! by Josh Kaufman A sizable number of students seems to feel that a person should be completely moral before beginning to meditate. It is an unworkable strategy. Morality requires a certain degree of mental control as a prerequisite. You can’t follow any set of moral precepts without at least a little self-control, and if your mind is perpetually spinning like a fruit cylinder in a slot machine, self-control is highly unlikely. So mental culture has to come first.
There are three integral factors in Buddhist meditation—morality, concentration, and wisdom. These three factors grow together as your practice deepens. Each one influences the other, so you cultivate the three of them at once, not separately. This level requires a bit of mind control. But if your thought pattern is chaotic, your behavior will be chaotic, too. Mental cultivation reduces mental chaos. Meditation teaches you how to disentangle yourself from the thought process. It is the mental art of stepping out of your own way, and that’s a pretty useful skill in everyday life. Meditation is certainly not an irrelevant practice strictly for ascetics and hermits. It is a practical skill that focuses on everyday events and has immediate applications in everybody’s life. Patience is the key. Patience. If you learn nothing else from meditation, you will learn patience. Patience is essential for any profound change. Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition by Bhante Gunaratana Everything that you have and everything that you lack stems directly from a belief of yours.11/16/2013
Everything that you have and everything that you lack stems directly from a belief of yours. Similarly, all of the experiences you've had and all of those experiences yet to be had are because of your beliefs. Beliefs are pervasive throughout all areas of our lives. They influence what we do and how we do it to an extraordinary degree. Your quality of life depends upon the quality of your beliefs; the more useful and empowering the beliefs you hold, the more success you will attract.
Ask yourself whether a particular belief serves you. If so, keep it. If the belief keeps you stuck in a station of your life that you've outgrown, get rid of it and replace it with a more empowering belief. Consistently remain aware of your beliefs about certain things in different contexts—for example, you can wear a rubber band around your wrist and snap it every time you catch yourself uttering something less than empowering. This will cause your mind to associate that belief with pain, and since the mind wants to avoid pain at all costs, eventually it will eliminate that belief. Make it a habit to eliminate the beliefs that you notice tend to be useless or that are holding you back. Make it a habit to believe even more strongly in the empowering ones. Unstoppable Confidence: How to Use the Power of NLP to Be More Dynamic and Successful by Kent Sayre The most successful people in all arenas of life are basically just sticking to the basics and doing the simple stuff over and over again until they get to where they want to go. It doesn't matter if you are studying to be a monk or a business mogul like Warren Buffet. The monk gets up every morning, does some work around the monastery and then gets on with his studies and meditation. Warren Buffet gets up every day, does whatever it is he has to do and then sits down and studies the market for up to 8 hours. There is no advanced formula to peace, success or happiness. They are all just the result of sticking to the same basics and becoming better and better through practice. The cool thing about sticking to the basics is that often times you will start seeing results very quickly and the results will keep improving the more you stick with it. Likewise, the solution to liberating yourself from the mind made prison is quite simple. Pick one or two concepts that you really like and start focusing on them in your everyday life.
The Mind-Made Prison: Radical Self Help and Personal Transformation by Mateo Tabatabai We are all artists. If you don't give yourself permission to share your gifts and talents with the world, you are never going to be truly fulfilled. You will always live with some sort of regret. It will be a waste of your potential if you don't share with other people your unique gifts to the world. Be a nurturer, an artist, a businessman, a wonderful friend, a great father, a fantastic lover, a spiritual teacher or an architect; it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you listen to what your gut is telling you and do what you are meant to do. Doing this will make sense on the very deepest level of your being because it is so much easier to be who you ARE and always have been, instead of trying to live up to a superficial picture you picked up along the way.
If you are not failing, it doesn't mean you are just THAT good, it simply means you have grown stagnant and you are not pushing yourself anymore. Never failing simply means you are playing it a little too safe. The Mind-Made Prison: Radical Self Help and Personal Transformation by Mateo Tabatabai |
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