Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted to do something, say, speak to someone, but then somehow convinced yourself you’d do it later when you got back in 5 minutes? Well, I have many times. And have you noticed that somehow, almost every time, that person isn’t where you left them after 5 minutes, or is gone or is talking with someone else and so you don’t go talk to them?
I get this often. I procrastinate on acting on an opportunity just to find out that later the opportunity has vanished. In fact, this happened to me so many times that I now pay real close attention to these kind of situation, to the thought patterns they elicit.
I’ve even experimented with recognising my thoughts in these situations and intentionally not doing anything and moving on, to see if when I came back I still had the opportunity to do what I had wanted to do moments ago.
For example I was once running on a Saturday morning and I saw this man on a hammock with a sleeping bag. It intrigued me and I wanted to ask the man what he was doing. I didn’t, but recognised that I was debating whether to do it or not. I kept on running. And lo and behold, minutes later when I passed by the same path, the man and his hammock was gone. My opportunity to ask him what he was doing disappeared.
Through enough of these observations, with consistent results, I’ve come to the conclusion that every opportunity I have is unique and that if I don’t take it while I can, I can be 100% sure that I will never again have the same opportunity. Realising this has been a source of much more effective action. I know this is common sense, but knowing something is not the same thing as feeling it and acting on it.
How many times have you said you’d do something later and never done it? How many times have you wanted to do something and rationalised your way out of doing it, only to find out you can’t even do it anymore?
If I want to do something that is dependant on external situations and I want to act, I tell myself that I have to do it now or not do it at all. Because the opportunity I have now is unique and I will never have the same exact conditions in my life. This may seem extreme but it is a fact that every situation is unique. Why would you waste your time, your most precious resource, procrastinating on something you can do now and not have to deal with later? I often tell myself that my future self will want to deal with it. But that is just me misleading myself. My future self will deal with it in the same way I deal with it now.
So when you want to do something and the opportunity to do it is here, do it now, act!
Opportunity doesn’t wait for you to be ready, it’s now of never, later is too late, she’ll be gone.
As I’m writing this I’m asking myself what I should write about. But there is no should. I can write about what I want.
Here is an interesting experience I have occasionally when driving. I got my licence at 18 and have driven around a fair amount. When driving alone, at some point I have this realisation and weird feeling: “I can kill myself just by turning the wheel.” Now to be clear I don’t want to kill myself, but when that kind of thought comes up in your mind, it’s weird.
You realise how fleeting everything is. How fragile it is. There is this morbid curiosity of what if? What if I tried? What if I turned the wheel to see what happens? All I have to do is drive into another car head on and the impact would surely kill me. But that would kill someone else. And what if you didn’t kill yourself?
But then … I don’t want to do it, because if I do it’ll probably be the last thing I ever do, and that isn’t something I want. You appreciate what you have more when you realise just how fast it can all go away.
It’s terrifying and deeply calming at the same time. You have this feeling of control but then you realise everyone else can have the same thoughts as you and you are grateful for what you have.
A phrase I often hear is: “If it were easy everybody would do it”. You have probably heard it and even said it, I know I did. I no longer say it. Here’s why.
I disagree and I believe it doesn’t serve us. Not everyone would do it if it were easy.
It is not because something is easy that everyone will do it. I first came across this idea when reading The Slight Edge, by Jeff Olson.
From what I understand this sentence is often used to imply it’s opposite, that is: “If it is hard not everybody will do it”. We say this to explain why so few people do the hard things. Many motivational speakers employ this phrase.
But we don’t say it directly. Rather we prefer to use it’s opposite, implying the direct version, without ever stopping to consider if what we are saying is even true.
If something is easy to do it is often also easy not to do, if not easier.
To be sure we’re on the same page, the definition for easy that I am using is that something is easy if it requireslittle effort to do.
If it is easy to clean your dish when you put it in the sink, it is also easy to leave that dish in the sink, go do something else and let the dishes accumulate.
Inaction is often easier than action. Even if that action is easy to perform. It is easy to eat an apple for a snack. But how many of us actually do it? Thus, saying that if it were easy everybody would do it, is totally false and underlines at worst a lack of thought as to what one says and a lack of understanding of human nature and at best a mere repetition of some phrase we heard somewhere without thinking about what it meant and decided to repeat it, further increasing the chance we’d hear it again.
So now, understanding the nuance, I feel an obligation to say what I mean. The power of words must not be underestimated. The ordering in a sentence, the syntax, is also important. We all know that “The dog bit Johnny” and “Johnny bit the dog” don’t mean the same thing, especially for Johnny, despite there being the same exact words in the two sentences.
Saying that if it were easy everyone would do it, though initially intended to show the recipient of this phrase that what is hard is not done by everyone and that it takes work to achieve what is hard, ends up misleading people.
If I start believing that everyone will do something if it is easy, then when I don’t do something that is considered easy or that I find easy I will feel bad. Or inadequate. I could beat myself up over the fact that I can’t do something easy.
All this of course is non-sense because the initial proposition that generated this is incorrect. We neglect to address the fact that easy things are also easy notto do. Meaning that many people will actually prefer not to do it because it is easier not to than to do it.
We could benefit from keeping this in mind more often. And recognising that there are no single big moment that lead to success, but only an accumulation of little disciplines and choices. Many of which are easy to do and easy not to do. The choices you make repeatedly over time are the ones that will determine your outcome. Being aware of this is a first step to getting where you want.
I have to make a commitment. I want to tell stories. I want to learn how to write. It’s gonna take time. I have to start. So I’m committing to 30 days of daily posts on this blog. I intend to do it for longer than 30 days but I need to start somewhere. So 30 days it is.
One post every day, first thing in the morning incorporated into my morning routine.
I think I have nothing to say, but the fact is I do. I can write about anything and everything. The only thing I need is to write. To get used to the deadline and be forced to create.
The format is daily blog posts. I have to find a way to produce. Whether it is good or not is irrelevant. What matters is that I do something instead of thinking about someday doing it. I am writing for myself and want to make stuff. I want things to be perfect from the start but they can’t. That’s not how things work. You make, you remake, modify, scrap the idea, start again, make, remake and iterate until you die. And along the way some ideas may stick and produce results while other may not. What matters isn’t the result it’s the process of getting there. My process is to create. So now it’s time to cut the bull shit and start making.
Here are the values I hold dear to my heart. If you wish to figure out your own values you can check out my post on How To Discover Your Values.
I have them written out in two different ways. The first illustrates the core value and all the sub-values I put in the same general category. Then I have my values detailed into actionable values; my way of making the values more meaningful.
Values
GROWTH: Continuous Learning, Curiosity, Understanding, Improvement, Personal Development
PROSPERITY: Wealth, Abundantly enjoying the rewards of life.
JUSTICE: Respect, Fairness, Equity, Integrity, Truth
Actionable Values
1. GROWTH: Stretch continuously. Learn with passionate curiosity. Constantly seek to become your better self. Assume humility and Ignorance when in doubt. Remember Ygritte’s words: “You know nothing Jon Snow.”
2. DISCIPLINE: Master Thyself, Know Thyself. T’is the only way to be free. Neglect neither body nor soul. Stay true to yourself.
3. LOVE: Give abundantly and without restraint. Love unconditionally and compassionately. Remain Playful Cheerful and have Fun. You will only pass this way once.
4. CONTRIBUTION: Act in the best interest of others. Give, Share, Help, create value. Be selfless.
5. TRANQUILITY: There are things you can control and there are things you cannot control. Learn to tell the two apart. Accept that which you cannot control; Act upon that which you can. Remember the effects of Time. Remember Death.
6. ADVENTURE: Seek new horizons. Discover, wonder and wander. Meander. Lose yourself. Get lost.
7. PROSPERITY: Abundantly enjoy the rewards of life.
8. JUSTICE: Treat all with Respect, Fairness, Equity and Justice.
Values are a great way of gaining much needed clarity in this information age. They can help you make better decisions by sifting through all the clutter and getting to what is important quickly. In this post I’ll be showing you how to determine which values are most important to you, how to prioritise them and how to make them actionable.
This is the way I discovered My Values. It’s a tested and proven method that’s been used again and again by people at different times. It is a process that if done thoughtfully can lead to many insights into what is truly important in your life. If understanding yourself is important to you, going through this exercise will be well worth the effort needed to do it.
What are your values?
The first step to determining which values are most important for you is to understand what values are. I see values as guidelines. They are principles you live by, standards to which you hold yourself accountable. They embody certain characteristics or feelings and your ideal self would have. They are a something you strive for. Benjamin Franklin had a list of 13 values he would strive to embody and he used them to correct course constantly. Your values are like a compass in that sense, they help you get to where you want to go.
Now that we understand what values are, let’s get into the nitty gritty of it all : Actually figuring out what your values are.
You’re going to need an overview of the major values that exist. You can use the Values List, I published last time. It isn’t exhaustive but it’s a fairly good place to start.
What you are going to do is to pick out the values that stick out the most to you. To do this you can take a sheet of paper and jot down the values that stick out, or simply copy/paste the whole list into a text file and sort through the values there. The ones where you think, “hey, that’s me”, or “this is really important to me”, are the ones you should mark. (Use color, bolding or anything else to fit your needs and preferences)
I prefer the copy/paste method as it allows for greater flexibility in moving the words around and grouping synonyms.
Once you’ve gone through the list you, should have noticed that many values are similar or fit into the same category. I’ll call these clusters of values. These clusters of similar values will help you later on when you get on to fleshing out your values.
Now do your best to get down to ten or twelve clusters of similar values. You can have more, if you want. Personally eight works well for me. Eliminate the least important ones, if you are having trouble deciding which ones to get rid of.
Once you have a general idea of the main groups, you want to find a value and make it the head of the group. That would be your core value.
Say I have a cluster of values I judge to be similar: Learning, Curiosity, Understanding, Growth, Improvement, Humility.
I find Growth summarises this cluster fairly well. Thus Growth would be the core value, of the cluster composed of Growth, Learning, Curiosity, Understanding, Improvement, Humility. A core value can be all by itself in a cluster.
Once all your core values are detailed you might have something like this:
Now that you have determined which values seem the most important to you, it’s time to prioritise them.
Prioritisation
Prioritisation can seem particularly difficult, even though it is quite straight forward. It’s all a matter of how you do it. Let me walk you through it.
Since you have about 10 values are going to compare them and see which ones are most important.
Say you have the following list:
Growth
Health
Love
Contribution
Tranquility
Prosperity
Discipline
Justice
Dependability
Adventure
Take the first item and the list and compare it to the others. For instance Growth might be more important than Health to you, so now you know that Growth > Health. Now you check Growth against Love. Which one is more important? Sometimes it might be tricky to determine which one is more important. In that case you have to ask questions. If you had to choose, which one would you pick? If you could only live with one which one would you discard? It might help to imagine an example to facilitate the decision. This is where the synonyms you wrote down before come in handy. Would you prefer always learning new things, improving and understanding, or would you rather have a life filled with love, compassion, intimacy? This is a personal choice. For the sake of the example let’s say Growth > Love. And, you also happen to think that Love > Health. So now you have by order of priority Growth > Love > Health. You go through this entire list this way, and before you know it you’re done. It’s pretty straight forward.
Once you’re done you should have a pretty accurate overview of what your core values are, by order of priority. Now it time to get a little more practical.
Making values actionable
Now there are a couple more steps you can take to make these values meaningful and practical.
By themselves this list you have made is quite nice to have, but frankly it’s only a list of words. It’s not very exciting, and you can’t do much with them. The values aren’t very actionable, they are simple nouns, they aren’t verbs. Things that you can act upon easily.
So lets verbify these nouns ! (yes, this isn’t an error auto-correct, verbify is now a new word)
It’s up to you to explain your value to yourself, and give yourself guidelines, things you can act upon. Define the value. What does it mean to you? What do these words represent? What can you do to embody them?
Here are some examples of my actionable values.
Growth: Stretch continuously. Learn with passionate curiosity. Assume humility and ignorance when in doubt. You know only that you know nothing. Remember Ygritte’s words: “You know nothing Jon Snow”.
Discipline: Master thyself, Know thyself. Be true to yourself. T’is the only way to be free.
Love: Give abundantly and without restraint. Love unconditionally and compassionately. Remain playful, cheerful and have fun. You’ve only got this life.
A word of warning, when I first tried this exercise I simply copied the values of the person I was learning this exercise from, as did not want to go through the mental work needed to come up with my own meanings and wording. That was frustrating and not very effective. I even felt it didn’t work very well. It wasn’t until I actually, honestly gave myself a shot at doing it that I felt a difference and a great satisfaction.
Constant Reminders
I believe it is very powerful to remind yourself frequently of what is important to you. So to do that I hung a sheet of paper on a wall at my desk and wrote my values on it. Now whatever I do I have them in the corner of my eye.
It also allow for fine tuning. As sometimes, especially at the beginning, I would find that the ordering wasn’t that precise and need to be changed.
Changing Values
Change is ever-present in our lives. We always evolve. We always change. You are not the same person you were 5 years ago, nor are you exactly the same as you were yesterday. As you change so will your values.
The advantage of seeing your values all the time allows you to feel when there is something that is bugging you. For instance, when I first set up my values, Contribution kept bugging me. It didn’t feel right the way I had prioritised it. I let it be for a couple days, and the feeling persisted, after two weeks, I sat down, thought about it and realised it was more important to me that I had thought at the time. I also felt that Health and Discipline could actually fit in the same general category. So I decided to just integrate Health into Discipline.
These are normal changes that will come. When you have a feeling that is bugging you, or something just doesn’t feel that right, investigate. You might find something interesting and add clarity to your values.
You may also decide to focus more on specific values or may even find that something that was important to you now may be totally unimportant to you in a few months or years.
After this long post, I want to thank you for hanging in there. I really recommend this exercise. The clarity and insights you gain on yourself and what is important to you is very valuable and will help you become your better self.
Simply copy or print the values and go through them, marking the ones that resonate with you, then order them by priority.
Pick out the ones that stand out to you the most. The ones where you think “Hey, that’s me”. You might find some of these values to be negatives, it doesn’t matter. What you want is to find your core values.
Keep in mind that this list is not exhaustive. If you come up with values that are important to you but absent from the list, by all means add it. You will find that some of these values are synonyms or fit into the same category. That will help you later on when defining your values clearly.
Values:
Abundance
Acceptance
Accessibility
Accomplishment
Accountability
Accuracy
Achievement
Acknowledgement
Activeness
Adaptability
Adoration
Adroitness
Advancement
Adventure
Affection
Affluence
Aggressiveness
Agility
Alertness
Altruism
Amazement
Ambition
Amusement
Anticipation
Appreciation
Approachability
Approval
Art
Articulacy
Artistry
Assertiveness
Assurance
Attentiveness
Attractiveness
Audacity
Availability
Awareness
Awe
Balance
Beauty
Being the best
Belonging
Benevolence
Bliss
Boldness
Bravery
Brilliance
Buoyancy
Calmness
Camaraderie
Candor
Capability
Care
Carefulness
Celebrity
Certainty
Challenge
Change
Charity
Charm
Chastity
Cheerfulness
Clarity
Cleanliness
Clear-mindedness
Cleverness
Closeness
Comfort
Commitment
Community
Compassion
Competence
Competition
Completion
Composure
Concentration
Confidence
Conformity
Congruency
Connection
Consciousness
Conservation
Consistency
Contentment
Continuity
Contribution
Control
Conviction
Conviviality
Coolness
Cooperation
Cordiality
Correctness
Country
Courage
Courtesy
Craftiness
Creativity
Credibility
Cunning
Curiosity
Daring
Decisiveness
Decorum
Deference
Delight
Dependability
Depth
Desire
Determination
Devotion
Devoutness
Dexterity
Dignity
Diligence
Direction
Directness
Discipline
Discovery
Discretion
Diversity
Dominance
Dreaming
Drive
Duty
Dynamism
Eagerness
Ease
Economy
Ecstasy
Education
Effectiveness
Efficiency
Elation
Elegance
Empathy
Encouragement
Endurance
Energy
Enjoyment
Entertainment
Enthusiasm
Environmentalism
Ethics
Euphoria
Excellence
Excitement
Exhilaration
Expectancy
Expediency
Experience
Expertise
Exploration
Expressiveness
Extravagance
Extroversion
Exuberance
Fairness
Faith
Fame
Family
Fascination
Fashion
Fearlessness
Ferocity
Fidelity
Fierceness
Financial independence
Firmness
Fitness
Flexibility
Flow
Fluency
Focus
Fortitude
Frankness
Freedom
Friendliness
Friendship
Frugality
Fun
Gallantry
Generosity
Gentility
Giving
Grace
Gratitude
Gregariousness
Growth
Guidance
Happiness
Harmony
Health
Heart
Helpfulness
Heroism
Holiness
Honesty
Honor
Hopefulness
Hospitality
Humility
Humor
Hygiene
Imagination
Impact
Impartiality
Independence
Individuality
Industry
Influence
Ingenuity
Inquisitiveness
Insightfulness
Inspiration
Integrity
Intellect
Intelligence
Intensity
Intimacy
Intrepidness
Introspection
Introversion
Intuition
Intuitiveness
Inventiveness
Investing
Involvement
Joy
Judiciousness
Justice
Keenness
Kindness
Knowledge
Leadership
Learning
Liberation
Liberty
Lightness
Liveliness
Logic
Longevity
Love
Loyalty
Majesty
Making a difference
Marriage
Mastery
Maturity
Meaning
Meekness
Mellowness
Meticulousness
Mindfulness
Modesty
Motivation
Mysteriousness
Nature
Neatness
Nerve
Noncomformity
Obedience
Open-mindedness
Openness
Optimism
Order
Organization
Originality
Outdoors
Outlandishness
Outrageousness
Partnership
Patience
Passion
Peace
Perceptiveness
Perfection
Perkiness
Perseverance
Persistence
Persuasiveness
Philanthropy
Piety
Playfulness
Pleasantness
Pleasure
Poise
Polish
Popularity
Potency
Power
Practicality
Pragmatism
Precision
Preparedness
Presence
Pride
Privacy
Proactivity
Professionalism
Prosperity
Prudence
Punctuality
Purity
Rationality
Realism
Reason
Reasonableness
Recognition
Recreation
Refinement
Reflection
Relaxation
Reliability
Relief
Religiousness
Reputation
Resilience
Resolution
Resolve
Resourcefulness
Respect
Responsibility
Rest
Restraint
Reverence
Richness
Rigor
Sacredness
Sacrifice
Sagacity
Saintliness
Sanguinity
Satisfaction
Science
Security
Self-control
Selflessness
Self-reliance
Self-respect
Sensitivity
Sensuality
Serenity
Service
Sexiness
Sexuality
Sharing
Shrewdness
Significance
Silence
Silliness
Simplicity
Sincerity
Skillfulness
Solidarity
Solitude
Sophistication
Soundness
Speed
Spirit
Spirituality
Spontaneity
Spunk
Stability
Status
Stealth
Stillness
Strength
Structure
Success
Support
Supremacy
Surprise
Sympathy
Synergy
Teaching
Teamwork
Temperance
Thankfulness
Thoroughness
Thoughtfulness
Thrift
Tidiness
Timeliness
Traditionalism
Tranquility
Transcendence
Trust
Trustworthiness
Truth
Understanding
Unflappability
Uniqueness
Unity
Usefulness
Utility
Valor
Variety
Victory
Vigor
Virtue
Vision
Vitality
Vivacity
Volunteering
Warmheartedness
Warmth
Watchfulness
Wealth
Willfulness
Willingness
Winning
Wisdom
Wittiness
Wonder
Worthiness
Youthfulness
Zeal
Be sure to read How To Discover Your Values, for a walkthrough of how to use this list to discover your own values.
Everything we do is a matter of perception. It all depends on how we see things, how we perceive them.
Is it good or bad? Big or small? Safe or dangerous? Comfortable or uncomfortable? This is all done through our senses of the real world around us — our perception.
I marvel at the fact that the thing that controls all this is a squishy organ, trapped in a box, blind and hidden from the world, relying on electrical signals from various sensors to tell it what reality is.
This squishy organ, forever in darkness, is our black box. Both in the sense that it is literally in darkness, and in the sense that it records everything you do (although we can’t access all it records). Our sense of reality comes only through our nervous system, from receptors that are constantly distorted, tricked and only give a representation of reality.
Our senses — what we see, hear, feel, smell, taste — literally give us our “sense” of reality.
This has lead us to say things like “There are as many realities are there are humans”. For everyone’s perceived reality is their reality, although they are just representations of reality.
What one calls blue may in fact be what another would perceive as orange. Yet we have learned to call blue, blue and orange, orange. Communication would otherwise be impossible.
There is one logical observation that follows. Our senses are not perfect. They can be deceived or be faulty. Take for instance this famous experiment. If you have 3 buckets of water. One with cold water, one with hot water, and one with an equal mix of both. If you put one hand in the cold water and the other in the hot water, for a couple seconds, and then, put both hand in the mixed water at the same time you will not feel the same temperature on each hand, although the water is the same temperature. You perceive a difference when there is none.
We have all experiences optical elusions. Have a look at the following image. Is the man looking at you or to the right?
Can we not trust our senses? Is there no way to see reality for what it really is?
How would you feel if you were trapped in a room and everything you were told about reality came from exterior sources. Right now your probably telling yourself you would feel bad or that you wouldn’t accept it. But if that were all you knew you would assume everything was true. That is exactly how we behave in regards to our senses. We assume they are telling the truth. But as we’ve seen, it can be a distorted truth, and have multiple facets.
We have an expression that illustrates how heavily we depend on our senses. You have probably also used it many times, as I know I certainly have: “I’ll believe it when I see it.” “I have to see it with my own eyes, to believe it.”
Yet magicians are known to exploit this to their advantage. Using misdirection. Making a big move to cover a small one. Telling you to look here, when the “magic” is happening there.
One must keep in mind that our senses are all we have to get a sense of reality. We must do with what we have. If you start cursing all you have, you don’t have much left.
Your senses are your only way of assessing the world. One must also keep in mind that what we perceive is not always how things are.
If someone speaks a little harshly to you, do not take it personally, it is much more likely that you don’t perceive everything that is going on. You don’t have the full picture. It is impossible to have the whole picture. It would be too much information for you to handle at once. This person may simply have had a bad experience just before speaking with you.
Everything is perception. No thing or action is inherently good or bad, we are the ones who decide and perceive it to be so. Death can be seen as a curse and something to be afraid of. Or, it can be seen as a natural step in the cycle of life. You can even look forward to death. It is only a matter of how you perceive a thing to be.
It has been wisely said that “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change”.
What has helped me best, is recognising that we aren’t perfect and that we are prone to making errors. If I feel bad about something or am angry, I gently remind myself that it’s all a matter of perspective. I am in no way perfect, and I do not mean to say I don’t get angry or ever feel bad. Rather thinking in this way has helped me take things a little less seriously and enjoy things more.
Understanding how we think is key to taking effective action. In this post I’ll cover how our self-centered attention limits our action and how to go about using this to our advantage.
Everyone at some point thinks they are unique and at the center of the world. This is understandable as all our life we life we’re at the center of our own world, in our body and our mind. We are not, though, at the center of the world. This is like thinking the world is at the center of the solar system. This is why we thought for hundreds of years that we lived in a geocentric system – centered around the Earth. Even after Galileo Galilei, assured us it must be a heliocentric system – centered around the sun. He was tried by the Inquisition for such a belief and accused of heresy. It took many more years for this to be accepted as fact.
We think everything revolves around us. The planets, the moon, the sun. But it simply isn’t true. It is not possible, as everyone is at the center of their own world, and, like us thinks in a similar fashion, that everything revolves around them. If everything revolves around everybody it revolves around nobody.
So, most people are self-absorbed and never even consider you. Most people never pay attention to what you do, most people never will. This is not to be a depressing thought, rather we can see it as a positive thought, helping us take action.
If you hold a coin palmed in you hand and go walk in a mall or among a crowd, you might experience the following thoughts. Since you feel the coin and know it is in your hand, you believe everyone must see the coin and everyone must be looking at you. To you it is self-evident. The coin is in your hand. You are hyperaware of it, and of yourself. Can’t these people see I have something in my hand? No they can’t they are self-absorbed or do not notice you.
You’re hyperawareness about yourself gives you the feeling that you are being watched by many people, when in fact, you are simply being watched by yourself more carefully.
Don’t flatter yourself by thinking everyone would take some of their precious attention and give it to you just like that.
You can do virtually anything and nobody will notice, at most only a few. Of these few they’ll think either that you’re a weird person, at worst they might even say something if so inclined, or they’ll shrug it off and go back to their own egotistical thoughts.
If you have long hair, and you trim and inch, how many people notice it? Not many? How surprising. But my partner didn’t even notice, my colleague at work whom I see every day didn’t even notice. What does it matter? Do you really need someone to brush your ego all the time? Be content with the fact that you notice the difference.
When I explain this to someone and advise them to do something they consider weird in public, they cringe, and act as if everyone were going to see. The truth is most people are too occupied by themselves, their problems, their thoughts, to notice or even care about you. This may seem a bit, crude and insulting, but it is true.
To feel the truth of these words, consider what you do when in public. What do you think about? Are you constantly noticing everybody around you, paying very special attention to their every words, gestures, clothes? Do you not tend to think of yourself?
Do not think you are the only person who does this. It is inherently human. Everyone does it. It also explains why we cherish the attention of others. We don’t get it very often so when we do we enjoy it and it makes us feel good about ourselves. If you want someone to feel special, all you have to do is often to give them some of your attention.
What use is this? How can this help me?
It can help you in the following ways. The next time you want to do something and your excuse is “Well, a lot of people are going to notice”, “I’m going to look funny”, “It’s embarrassing”, it means you are thinking too much of yourself, you think you are super important. Come back down to reality. You’re not. Whatever you might be told, you’re not that special, don’t flatter yourself. Stay humble and recognise this truth and you will be free of the judgement of others, realising it is often only your own judgement you hear. Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. This will help you take action. Go ahead and test this out for yourself as a fun little experiment. Do something different, something you deem bizarre and pay attention to the reactions you get around you. The results will be interesting.
Have you ever wondered how to effectively learn something? How to remember something effectively instead of forgetting it 3 days later?
Well in today’s post I’ll be going over a concept introduced by Edgar Dale in 1969 as the Cone of Experience. I’ll be referencing to it as the Cone of Learning, which is basically the same thing.
This Cone of Learning helps us understand how we learn and gives us hints as to how we should utilise this to our advantage. At the end of this post I give you steps you can take to immediately improve your retention and learning abilities. Before we get to that, let’s understand what the Cone of Learning is about.
The Cone Of Learning
After 2 weeks, the amount of information you remember – depending on the kind of stimuli you used to acquire it – is estimated as follows:
You remember 10 % of all you read. Be it news articles, books, notes, text books you spent hours reading and re-reading to prepare for a test. That isn’t much. That makes me reconsider reading stuff over and over as an effective learning method.
You remember 20 % of all you hear. Something you heard on the radio, an audiobook, music.
You remember 30 % of all you see. We are visual beings. We constantly use our visual input to assess our environment and thus we tend to remember it better. This could be a landscape you saw. A face. Observing someone doing something.
You remember 50% of all you hear and see. This ties into watching movies, watching someone demonstrating something, watching a presentation, going to a talk, or a seminar, or course.
You remember 70% of what you say. This involves speaking with friends, giving a talk or expressing yourself and explaining things to someone.
You remember 90% of what you do and say. This means doing the thing, simulating an experience in your mind, giving a presentation. This is why we say doing something is such an important part of any learning process. You are actively engaging all your senses when you do something yourself. You have to think about it. It is more demanding cognitively than reading or just listening to something. In the end it is much more rewarding, because you learn it better and remember it better.
The first four parts of the cone all represent passive learning. You are simply reading, hearing, seeing or combining these different inputs. The last two, however, a more effective because they involve active learning. You have to actually do something; you have to think.
This is why reading something over and over generally leads to poor results. Whereas preparing questions and answering them, or explaining a concept or method to somebody generally forces you to reformulate the knowledge and helps you adapt it to what you know. You integrate the knowledge better. This is key to concepts such as active recall and spaced repetition.
I would argue that the percentages given in this cone are actually overestimations. I think we remember less that 50% of visual and auditory input when they are mixed together. After 2 weeks for example, I don’t think I recall 50% of a movie I watched. Sure I could recall a general sense of the story and timeline, the main characters, but saying that I remember 50% of the script would be really impressive, and quite improbable. That said when I watch a movie I do not have the intent of memorising it and remembering it. I seek to appreciate it and immerse myself in the experience the director has created.
Even if the percentages are not correct the underlying message is the same – you learn better if you combine audition and sight. As a general rule, we can safely deduce that the more senses you actively engage the more memorable something will be.
Thus when we want to learn something the best thing we can do is to actively engage as many senses as possible and take action by doing the work. We learn best by doing. That is why apprenticeships were so popular and effective back when books, recordings, movies and the internet weren’t so popular.
Practical Application
So, how are you going to implement this idea to improve your retention and learning?
Take something you are learning right now, or want to learn.
How you are learning it? Are you using passive learning or active learning?
How can you make your learning process more active and engaging?
Could you explain it to a friend? Could you help a friend? Can you ask someone to ask you questions on the topic you are learning?
Come up with at least 3 ideas and start implementing the one you find the easiest to apply right now.
Have you ever been in a situation where you simply wanted to know something, out of curiosity. You have this question you want an answer to. You’ve prepared the question in your head for the last five minutes. All you have to do is ask your question. The teacher/friend/stranger is 10 feet away from you. Oh, but there are people around you. They might think your question is stupid. The teacher might think you question is stupid. You finally decide it’s not worth asking. And, you don’t ask. Then later you regret not having asked.
Today’s post is about overcoming this and simply asking you question. It’s about creating the mindset appropriate to asking questions and getting comfortable doing it.
Questions Aren’t Stupid
First of all, no question is stupid. Not a single one. It may be inappropriate or out of context, but no question is ever stupid. If you kill questions you kill curiosity.
The Spotlight Effect
OGM, if I ask a question everyone is going to be looking at me ! This is believing you’re always the center of attention, and that you’re every move is watched very carefully. This comes from you being constantly at the center of your own world. It is normal, but you have to recognise that nobody really cares about what you do.
Think about it: When you see other people around you do you watch them very carefully? Do you pay attention to everything they do? Of course you don’t. First of all, it’s not possible to pay attention to everybody. Second, you are often thinking more about yourself and don’t care whether John has a pink sweater, Julie is sleeping or Jessica isn’t paying attention. Everybody does this. If you want to test this and see for yourself, you can do something that is out of the ordinary for you. You will find that few people ever notice, let alone say anything about it.
You’re Not Alone
You’re not the only one who has questions. You asking questions implicitly gives permission to others to do the same. Be a leader, that means going first. It may be awkward, but you’ll be fine. Odds are, you’re not the only one to have the same question. In class, I occasionally get people who come up to me later and thank me for having asked my questions, because they themselves were wondering about the same thing but didn’t have the courage to ask.
The Worst They Can Say Is ‘No’
This is something I learned from my dad. When you want to ask for something, ask for it. The worst they can say is ‘No’. Don’t go over the hundred reasons why you don’t what to ask it? This is the thing I have found to be most practical, because it reduces the risk and puts things into perspective.
When I was little, if I saw a stranger playing with a ball, I would want to play with him. My little brother would want the same exact thing but the difference was that he would go ask if he could play, while I stay put going over reasons not to ask. Almost every time he would end up playing with someone else and I would end up watching because I was scared to go over and play. After, going through this many times and seeing what I was losing, I finally began to ask. It was terrifying but I actually got to play or try something new. Over time this got easy. Now I can go over and ask without, going over a thousand reasons not to act.
If someone is playing with a football and you want to play with them. Go ahead ask. Worst case scenario they will say no. If they say no, no problem just go on doing what you were doing, or ask someone else. However if you ask, it is likely they will say yes. Try it, have fun with it.
Always remember: If you do not ask the answer is always no. Only by asking can the answer be yes. So ask, and don’t apologise for asking. To put it another way if you don’t ask you you have a 0% chance of ‘yes’. If you ask, though, the chance of ‘yes’ increases exponentially.
I hope you got something out of this post. It’s easy to not do anything. If you want something you have to go get it, ask for it or take action. The next time you have a question, remember, the worst they can say is ‘No’.
This simple and effective technique for staying focused and being productive while staying refreshed has helped many people get things done, including me. I am going to break down the technique into it’s core components and help you understand how to apply it effectively.
While this method is not for everybody, I recommend reading on to see if its the right fit for you. Now before diving into what the technique is and how it works, here are the main benefits of this technique.
Benefits
It’s easy
It’s free
Increased productivity
Maximised effectiveness and efficiency during your work time
Increased self-discipline
Reward based system making work enjoyable
Adaptable to your needs
Sustainable over long periods of time
What you’ll need
A timer
You need a timer. That’s it. Use the one on your watch, the one in your kitchen or your computer (here’s a free timer you can use). I strongly advise against using your phone as a timer due to the distractions it can cause. It is better to use something that is meant only for the purpose of tracking time.
The Principle
Set timer for 25 min of work
Keep out distractions
Mark your session with an X on a sheet of paper upon completion
Take a 5 min break to refresh and recharge
Repeat the above instructions
After 4 iterations take a longer break 15 – 30 minutes
A pomodoro is an indivisible 25-minute work period. It’s named after the Italian word for tomato, because Francesco Cirillo used a kitchen timer in the shape of a tomato when he came up with this concept.
Basically, you work 25 min, have a 5 min break and at the end of 4 work sessions you get a 15 minute refreshing break.
Now that you have a feel for the idea lets get into some detail. We’ll go over the importance of planning your work, protecting it, focusing on it, and recording it. Then we’ll see some of the variations you can use.
Before beginning your session you must prepare your environment with proper planning.
Plan
So you want to work. Very good. What are you going to work on? How much time is it going to take? Prioritise your tasks. If you have a to-do list, determine the most important tasks and estimate the time it will take to accomplish them. You can only eat an elephant one bite at a time. The same applies to your tasks, you must take them one step at a time and break down difficult tasks into smaller more manageable ones. Once you have small mangeable tasks, you must estimate how much time it will take you to complete the individual tasks. If the task is over 4 pomodoros long, break it down into smaller parts. This will help increase your productivity because you get a real sense of time.
Once you have planned your work you must protect your work time.
Protect
During your pomodoro you must cut out all distractions, to create a favorable working environment. Turn off you phone or put it in silent mode and in a place where you can’t access it easily. If you’re working on your computer exit all distracting sites (Social media, instant messaging, email, your web browser if you aren’t using it) If you have a hard time keeping away from such sites there are many online ressources for that purpose.
If you have a distracting thought that comes up, write it down to get it out of your head. Then get back to what you were doing. Every time you have an impulse to procrastinate, make a note of it. As you do this you will find that the number of distractions that arise decrease. This is a very effective way of staying concentrated as writing your thoughts down allows you to forget these thoughts – instead of keeping them in your head and being constantly distracted – while being sure you can come back to them if need be once you are done with your work.
If you are in a work environnement with other people you will have to develop strategies to put off unimportant tasks and distractions. Keep in mind that a pomodoro is an indivisible amount of time. If you stop before the timer goes off, you don’t put an X on your tracking sheet. This can be frustrating because because you don’t validate your session and you loose your concentration. You will be interrupted, and occasionally you will have to deal with it right away. However you will find that interruptions are rarely urgent and important, and that you can very often deal with the interruption very effectively.
Ok now that you understand that you must proctect your pomodoro and have a couple ways of doing so, lets see how you go about implementing the principle.
Focus
During your work time you must focus on one task and one task only. This is very important point. The main idea behind the Pomodoro Technique is that you are maximizing your work time by being as effective as possible. So you concentrate on the one task you have given yourself and you do it. You continue until you either finish the task at hand or you hear the end of your session. If you complete your task. Move on to the next one you planned and don’t bother looking at the time that is left. Just keep working until the timer goes off.
DRRRIIIINNNNNGGGGGGG !
Times up! Stooooop! Put down your pen, book, notes, remove your hands from your keyboard, step away from the work. I repeat, step away from the work, yeah thats rights, gently, put your hand behind your head and move away calmly, if you touch the work you will be shot. No just kidding you won’t be shot. But you had better act as if you were. It is best if you actually get up and change your location, thus creating a clearer division between work and rest. This is key!
During your break you must absolutely stop working! This is very important. You do not finish that little thing that you just have to do. Yeah, but it only takes 1 minute. No ! You stop ! times up ! Nada ! I’ve been there. It’s not fun. But you have to stop. This is were this strengthens your self-discipline. Think about it, could you have been more effective on your pomodoro to complete that 1-minute task? On your next pomodoro keep that in mind and try to get as much done as possible in those 25 minutes. It’s now time for your reward: the 5 min break. Set the timer to 5 min and off you go! Oh and congratulate yourself because you just worked 25 minutes straight without interruption and if there were interruptions you dealt with them effectively.
You must do something for five minutes that has nothing at all to do with work. Personally I would solve my rubix’s cube a couple times, or watch a video on Youtube, or do a couple chores around my place. You would be surprised at the amount of stuff you can do in 5 min intervals. To watch a 30 min video it only takes you 4 pomodoro sessions to view during your pause. (5 + 5+ 5 +15 = 30)
You can actually get a lot done during those 5 min breaks. But it must not be work related and it’s better if it’s fun for you. What’s the point of a reward if you don’t like it. Have a snack. Exercise a little. Do something you enjoy.
Once the timer rings, it’s time to stop what your doing and start another pomodoro. You must be strict with your time. It forces you to grow and improve. To further improve it is important to record your progress.
Record
Keep track of how much work you do. Every time you complete a pomodoro, make note of it, mark a pomodoro with an X or a line or anything you want. Also I recommend putting the date so you can review your progress later and compare it with certain events. Here’s a list of what my pomodoro count looked like when I was studying for an exam.
Keeping a record also gives you a sense of accomplishment because you know exactly how much you worked. It helps with self-observations and future improvement.
You are better able to assess the amount of work you do and you can review what days are good ones and what days are bad. It helps you better assess the time it takes to complete specific tasks. It will help you plan your future pomodoro sessions.
For instance in the above photo the red lines separate the different weeks you can clearly see that the first days weren’t very productive but that as the days went by I was able to work more. You can also see the relative regularity of the number of pomodoros you can have in a day. Not every day will be the same. You can clearly see that around the 12th of the month I worked a lot less than the previous week.
Adapt freely
Keep in mind that this is simply a productivity method. It is flexible to your needs. Feel free to change and play with the different time intervals. After about 5 months of daily pomodoro sessions I began to feel I could concentrate easily for 25 minutes so I decided to move to 30-minute sessions then 50-minute sessions with 10-minute pauses. I found that best suited my need. Keep in mind that I only increased the amount after I was comfortable enough with 25 minutes of concentration. You can do 3 sessions instead of 4 before your big pause. This you can adapt according to your needs.
Also, in the above sections I was quite strict about stopping when the timer goes off. If you really want to do the thing that only takes one more minute to do you can. I know I certainly did occasionally. When you stop what you are doing and force yourself to stop it strengthens your discipline. Constant timing minimizes procrastination and keeps you accountable for your work. If your in the “flow” though, you can keep going. In that case it is quite possible that 25 minutes is too short for you and that a longer pomodoro is probably what you need. This method isn’t for everybody. You can try it out, it’s free and you already have everything you need to get started. If you don’t like it, thats fine, you can always go back to what you were doing before.
If you would like additional information on the technique you can visit the official site. You can get as much information as you want, but at the end of the day the only way you will truly know if it’s a good fit is when you try it and see for yourself.
Why are some starting? Why do others not follow through? What makes you take action? How can you get better results? I’m stuck in a rut, how do I get out?
What makes you take action? Certainty ! Certainty that you will get what you want. Where does that certainty come form? It comes from your past experience and your beliefs.
The cycle
This cycle I call the Action Loop. This is no new concept. I am simply readapting it and explaining it. This four step cycle allows you to understand how action is created, and how it affects the results you get. As with everything, lets begin at the beginning.
For you to take action you must first see some benefit to taking the action. What is it’s potential?
Potential
If you see no potential you’re not going to take action. If you see a delicious looking, saliva inducing meal, you see potential for tasting a very nice meal. It’s going to taste good, you tell yourself. When you see this kind of potential you take action. You eat that meal and savour it.
If on the contrary you see a piece of meat in a plate with flies all over it and white worms and eggs on it, you probably see very little potential for a savoury meal. You might rather see a potential for a disgusting meal full of squishy bugs and bad taste. Therefore that potential you perceive leads you to take action. The action you take is not eating it. You can say it’s inaction, because you aren’t eating it, but that in and of itself is an action.
Potential leads naturally to Action.
Action
What is action?
Action is the act of doing something.
Note that this does not discriminate between good or bad actions. In either case it remains an action. That is why inaction is an action. However when we refer to taking action usually we refer to taking the right action. The right action is the one that gives you the desired outcome and gets you closer to your goals.
This something that you do is going to have consequences. It’s the law of cause and effect. If I do something I am sure to have a result. It may not be the outcome I want but I will assuredly have a result.
Results
Whatever action you take you will have results based on that something you did. I think by now you understand Action and Results. This is something I think we all understand intuitively. Here’s an example for the sake of clarity. If you exercise (action) you will sweat, burn calories, make your muscles fatigue and over the long term grow (results). Exercise leads to physical fitness.
The results you get will influence the way you act in the future, the way you think and thus what you believe.
Belief
Your beliefs are the collections of thoughts that you have integrated and are part of you thinking habits. This constitutes your Belief System. This system uses many patterns of thought we have acquired over time. It also includes a bunch of Limiting Beliefs that limit your ability to take the right action in certain situations.
Very rarely do we question those beliefs. They are our defaults we use them automatically and systematically. Of those beliefs, many have been acquired in childhood experiences. Note when we are born we do not have any beliefs. We are a blank slate. As we grow up and learn to adapt to our environments we integrate new beliefs. Most young children believe there parents know everything, they are their all important reference point. This reference is very important to their development.
Our beliefs can be challenged – by circumstances or surrounding environments that may bring new perspectives or insights. When this occurs one of two things may happen. Either we change our belief by taking on a new one or adapting the one we already hold or we simply maintain our belief and reinforce it.
During adolescence, when you begin to seek independence and discover new things a common change is that teenagers begin to question authority and the beliefs that they were brought up with. This is natural and normal. It is how we grow. It hurts to have you’re beliefs challenged, especially if it’s one you have held for a big portion of your life. Admitting you could be wrong is tough. Imagining that you were wrong for a long time can be even tougher. This explains why some people don’t want to change their beliefs although they can see there is a problem. They simply ignore the problem. This can be very destructive.
Adapting your beliefs can be very rewarding though. It develops the individuals mind, and his ability to think for himself. You gain new perspective and insight and can adapt you current beliefs into more empowering ones.
Here is the complete cycle:
If you believe there is little potential, you will take little action, you will get little results and then you brain will tell you: See! I told you this was going to happen! And this in turn strengthens that belief that there is tiny potential, which will lead to tiny action, tiny results, and your brain telling you: See! I told you this was going to happen! once again strengthening that belief.
It’s a vicious cycle. It explains in part why the poor get poorer.
Hey ! Wait a second. We also say that the rich get richer. In fact, we do. The cycle is a vicious one but it can also be a virtuous one.
Vicious or Virtuous?
The cycle is both at the same time. Yet you can only be in one at a time. In fact this is so important that I’m going to restate that at the risk of sounding redundant. This cycle is both vicious and virtuous but you can only be in one at a time. Once you’re in the cycle it is self-sustaining. If you believe there is a lot of potential, you will take massive action and get massive results at which point your brain will say: See! I told you there was a lot of potential! Thus reinforcing your belief, that will lead you to take even more massive action, and on and on it goes.
The next logical question is how do you choose which cycle you are in?
Or are we doomed to stay in a cycle all our life? Certainly there must be a way to choose the cycle you want, for there are many stories of poor men getting rich and rich men getting poor. Although the latter is often less talked about.
It’s quite simple actually. Not to be confused with being easy. Although it can be easy depending on how you do it. You simply have to change or affect a part in the cycle.
So how do you get in the cycle and influence it?
Influencing the Cycle
You have four entry points into the cycle. You can either use Potential, Action, Result or Belief.
One thing to note is that all entries are not created equal.
Potential depends a lot on exterior factors and your Belief System, your view of the world. It depends on circumstances.
Results change if the action is changed. The definition of insanity is people doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Therefore we can’t affect the results without changing the action. An important thing here is that Results are what we perceive them to be.
Action depends a lot on the potential you see, which is in turn influenced by your beliefs.
What about Beliefs? Beliefs are influenced by results. But they are in our control. Beliefs are collections of thoughts and patterns you use habitually. See the above section on belief for further info.
Beliefs are the cornerstone to your actions that will give you the desired results. Thus you must nourish and be selective of the beliefs you hold. You must test them to see if they withhold to storms.
How do you change a belief? You change the results. As said previously results are what we perceive them to be. You’re mind has a very hard time distinguishing real events from events you vividly imagine in you head. To strengthen a belief you must feed it the right results. If you want to be successful you have to instil the belief that you are successful. That means you’re results must be successful. You must perceive them as successful. If something happens, view it as a success. Put a positive twist on it. If you fail, see it as an opportunity. Make a habit out of it. Develop rituals to feed the right results to your beliefs.
Just getting into the cycle is not enough to develop success through right actions. You have to strengthen the belief that drives the cycle. That means you have to go through the cycle enough times to strength your belief until it reaches a self-sustaining size. Self-conditioning and repetition are very powerful tools if you want to instil a new belief that you think might be helpful.
For some insight as to how the new is affecting your beliefs, check out my article on why I don’t watch the news.
You want to live a less stressed life? Have more time? and be happier? Read on to see how the news is affecting you.
An indian I met recently, lets call her Eva for sake of discretion, inspired me for this weeks post. She asked me her favorite question to ask people outside of India:
What comes to your mind when you think of india?
I answered dancing, you know, the kind you see in Bollywood.
She then asked me to continue and say what else came to mind.
I dropped all the stereotypes I could come up within a limited time.
After I couldn’t come up with anything new off the top of my head in a few seconds, Eva told me usual responses she got.
Indians don’t eat beef, India’s overpopulated, there are too many slums, they have poor living conditions, there are always massacres.
Basically, most of what the news outlets feed us and what you might learn in school.
Now for the interesting part. She then proceeded telling me what she never got as answers.
That India is one of the fastest growing emerging countries.
That India controls a huge part of the American economy since many companies are in India or work with Indian based services like decentralised virtual assistants.
That the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) managed to launch a rocket to Mars and back on the first attempt for a fraction of the cost it took NASA to try the same thing after many failed attempts.
After having had this conversation it reminded me why I don’t read or watch the new. This simple question she asked reveals a lot about stereotypes and shows that the media influence our perspectives and view of the world based on what it decides to feed you.
What the media is feeding you
We usually come up with the negatives far easier than the positives. That is a natural tendency in everyone. It’s how we survived for thousands of years. We want to avoid what is uncomfortable or painful so we pay attention to the negatives and stay clear of them.
The media industry knows this. And they use it abundantly. Fear sells. Scandals sell. Death and big accidents sell. That’s why they’re regularly on the front page of the news.
It you turn on the news on your TV or look at the front page of a newspaper you can be assured it will almost always be along the same line. Accidents, violence, terrorism, catastrophic events, death, political scandals, all this between the weather forecast and occasionally an interview where the interviewer tries to move on to the next subject quickly because time is money.
In fact, here is the screenshot of the top stories on three consecutive days. I went through and emphasised some key words. Have a look at them.
Now that you’ve read through those words, can you imagine what decades of exposure to this type of content, every single day will do to you?
How positive do you think your thoughts will be throughout the day when you wake up and the first thing you do is look at the news? When you see there’s been another shooting that there’s more death, more political assaults and debates and scandals?
How good are your stress levels going to be? How happy are you likely to feel?
Trust me, if you don’t know what you’re day will be like, I can tell you it’s not going to be very positive or encouraging. It’ll likely be very stressful and uncomfortable.
On the first page shown above, what I emphasised on the bottom right made me laugh. “Get your morning update with FIRST READ delivered to your inbox every weekday.”
Seriously ! do you think you want to have this kind of “update” to downgrade the quality of your day? How about that for downgrading the quality of your life?
That is some serious mental conditioning you’re being exposed to. How about conditioning yourself to some more positive thoughts. What if you chose not to be exposed to such thoughts. As it has been said many times and many different ways, our thoughts have a tremendous impact on us every day.
Put shortly the news is a constant feed of violence, plane crashes, terrorist attacks, gun shootings, trivial political scandals designed to grab your attention and shock you.
So Is the world this negative?
When all you see all the time is violence, earthquakes, scandals, celebrity lives, negative words… you end up thinking that is the way things are and that the world is mostly what is showed to you.
It simply isn’t.
There are many beautiful thing out there. Beautiful landscapes, people, places, experiences. How often do you see it in the news?
If you see plane crashes every month or two on the news you begin to think that planes are suddenly starting to fall out of the sky more and more often. Therefore making you fearful. But the fact is, there have always been plane crashes, and planes are virtually the safest transportation available as of today.
In the US alone in 2015 there were more than 30,000 fatal crashes on roadways due to motor vehicles. Thats over 80 deaths per day. You don’t hear about all those deaths in the news. They’re too many and they aren’t considered shocking enough. Occasionally you might see an accident on the news but only if it involves someone famous or is sufficiently dreadful.
Now I am probably making you feel uncomfortable. It’s okay. It’s a normal response.
Remember, the world has many beautiful things in it. It’s not because you are shown negative things that it’s the way things are. Now some of you are thinking you want to stop watching the news. Others are probably thinking it isn’t feasible.
Ok … but you can’t just cut off the news !
But if I don’t get the news, I’m going to be cut off from the world ! I’m going to be ignorant !
No you’re not. You won’t even notice a difference. Actually you will, you’re quality of life will be greatly improved.
If you’re sceptical, try going a week without the news and see how it goes. Are you more stupid? Has you’re life changed a lot? Are you unaware of the latest important news?
If there is something worth knowing about on the news, you’ll hear about it. People talk a lot. You’d be surprised all you can learn just by listening. Plus it becomes another subject for small talk. Just ask someone what’s new in the world.
Cultivate selective ignorance. Chose what you don’t need to know. Be honest. Do you really need to know what Leonardo DiCaprio is doing in his spare time? Or that there is still bad stuff in the world?
There are definitely things that are worth not knowing.
After a while being “off the hook” you realise that things are about the same as they were going before you stopped. Plus you have more time for other activities.
What now?
My challenge to you is to go a couple days without checking the news and see how it works out. If you don’t like it after a week or feel you absolutely need your news feed you can always go back to what you were doing before. Just try it out.
However, if you notice any change in you attitude or thoughts when you aren’t being exposed constantly to the news, or if you realise that the news wasn’t bringing you any real value, I’d suggest you quit.
Note that the longer you have been regularly exposed to the news the longer it takes to have more positive thoughts and feel better.
So go ahead, take on the challenge. Go a week without checking the news and see how it goes.
Well you probably think you can’t do plenty of things. Think about it for a moment.
What are the top three things that come to your mind? Take 30 seconds to write them down on some paper or simply think of them in your mind. It just takes 30 seconds. I can’t (fill in the blank)
Ok. So what are those things you can’t do?
Perhaps you can’t have the money you want. You can’t have that relationship you want. Or is it that you can’t have that great looking body you’ve always wanted? Perhaps you think you can come up with a list of a million things you can’t do.
Even if it’s none of the aforementioned, you’re wrong !
Why?
Well that’s an excellent question. Let me answer by asking you another question.
What do you not know how to do?
You don’t have to write it down this time. I bet you could think plenty of different things you don’t know how to do.
I don’t know how to pilot a plane. I don’t know how to cook fugu-fish. I don’t know how to speak Chinese, or even use twitter ! But hey, I’m not here to tell you what I don’t know how to do.
My point is, you might not be able to do it, but isn’t it possible that you can learn to do it?
The answer is absolutely YES! Everything can be learned. You can go take a course, buy a book, ask someone, or simply take the time to figure it out by trial and error.
You can’t know everything but you can do anything you set you mind to do!
You might say, Yeah, but now I’m 18, I can’t enlist in a class for little five-year-olds. Of course you can’t! That simply isn’t possible because you are no longer a five-year-old. Don’t try to fit something into a category, that by definition is exterior to the category you are trying to put it in. But what’s stopping you from enlisting in a class to learn what they teach in those five-year-old classes.
You can do anything ! The only thing stopping you at the moment is the fact that you don’t yet know how to do what you want to do. You need knowledge.
When you have acquired it, you can no longer say: I don’t know. You do, and therefore you can do what you want.
There is then nothing you can’t do.
Now if you want to do what you thought you couldn’t do you need to put in place the right stuff to make it work. You now have to actually do it. Take a simple action that gets you a step closer to what you want to accomplish.
Therefore, now, when asked what you can’t do, your answer must be: “nothing”. You are constantly evolving, moving, breathing. Even if you suppose you could do nothing, you would still be doing something, you would be doing nothing.
This is something that I have found to be very powerful. Just a simple change of language will forever change the way you see things and it will affect your limiting beliefs and the story you tell yourself
Don’t limit yourself unnecessarily, keep your doors open.
If you want to do something, you can do it. There is nothing you can’t do
You need to acquire basic knowledge. If you don’t know where to acquire the knowledge you want, do some research, ask around and you will find knowledge is always there for those who search for it.
The next critical step after having gathered the knowledge is, wait for it, this is really common knowledge, but it’s worth repeating, it is taking action. I know, quite obvious right. Yet most of us struggle with this basic idea everyone understands intuitively yet few people actually undertake. In future post I intend to dive deep into the science of how we take action.
All that is left is doing it. Finding the motivation and courage as well as strong reasons to do something will help you achieve what you first thought you couldn’t do.
If you liked this post, feel free to share it. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
You must be crazy ! Cold showers ! That’s impossible ! I can’t do that !
If that’s what’s you’re thinking, read on, let’s see what they can teach you by going through what I learned.
First, a little history. How did I come across cold showers? Via Joel Runyon’s great TedTalk. It got me thinking. What if I did this. Since I’m curious I had to find out for myself. So I did. I started the 30 day cold shower challenge, found it amazing and decided to integrated it into my morning routine and did it for 4 months straight every single day. Now almost every single shower I take is cold. It feel so much better. I still enjoy a warm shower once in awhile, but cold water is my default now.
Here’s what I learned, and what you will discover should you take on this challenge. And you definitely should take on this challenge.
Overcoming the uncomfortable
Becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable completely changes your approach to life. I now enjoy more being uncomfortable because I learned it was during moments of discomfort that you progress and grow the most. Don’t get me wrong, being uncomfortable is by definition uncomfortable, so I still feel the discomfort. However the approach I have when I apprehend this discomfort is what has changed. I accept it and embrace it more easily, whereas I used to constantly fear and avoid it. Now for instance, I actually enjoy taking cold showers. It isn’t a problem anymore. I’m grateful for it. This is what you get for being comfortable with the uncomfortable, you start enjoying it and having fun with it.
As Joel said:
“If you aren’t willing to be uncomfortable for five minutes, when you’re alone in the shower, and the only negative outcome is you feeling cold for five minutes, then how do you expect you will have the strength and courage to choose to be uncomfortable in a situation where outcomes are more important and the people affected far outnumber yourself?”
What excuses are and aren’t
Excuses are the things we tell ourselves to rationalise our fears and avoid discomfort. They can either convince you you are right – you will then take no action – or, you can decide they don’t matter and act despite their existence. Excuses aren’t barriers that stop you. They are simply thoughts. And as with all thoughts, they can be replaced. Excuses aren’t the things that stop you from acting. You are.
The insurmountable becomes trivial
Usually, I have found, we vastly overestimate the difficulty of a task before it’s completion. And then, once finished, we see how foolish we were at the beginning in overthinking and having so much apprehension over something that was so simple.
I once actually laughed at myself while taking a shower for thinking how easy it was now, when reflecting on how hard it had first seemed as an outsider looking in.
This is a wonderful way to admire the simplicity of things while recognizing how we humans tend to overcomplicate everything.
Taking action is the only solution
Despite all the excuses I could come up with or the thinking I did in my head. The only way to take the cold shower is to take the cold shower. As the quote goes:
“Do the thing and you shall have the power”, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing wakes you up quicker in the morning
This is, in my opinion, one of the best benefits I find to taking cold showers.
The burst of energy you get is incredible! Once you overcome the anxiety, pain, and coldness of it all, I’m telling you the state in which you find yourself after the shower I amazing! Your whole body goes on high alert. Your blood vessels constrict, your heart pumps the blood to your brain and muscles. You’re senses are more acute. You feel alive. You feel like you can do anything. It’s such an empowering state to be in.
I start of my days like this. Get up, exercise, cold shower. And just like that I’m up and ready to take on the rest of my day and be the best I can.
Conclusion
In short, cold showers are an excellent way to get comfortable with uncomfortable things, learning to break through excuses with action, admiring simplicity, and waking up in the morning.
To experience this, simply commit to get started tomorrow, you can even start today ! Go ahead, turn the water to cold, and see what happens. Just 5 minutes of discomfort for some real long-term benefits. I dare you to try.
Tell me about your experiences in the comments below.
