When you ask people what made them who they are today, invariably all of them answer a version of the same thing: The past.
How they express this varies: my parents, my schooling, what I have been doing, my genes, etc. etc. but all in all, they all mean the same: what makes me who I am today is the past.
If that were true, that would be bad news, really.
Imagine that it is true. Now see yourself trying to be successful online. Given your track record, and your genes, and your past behavior, how much chance do you have for success?
I’d love to say zero, but it would be unfair to many of you. So instead, I answer it in a way that applies to all of you:
The same as yesterday. Or a year ago…
Now, that is a total bummer, isn’t it?
And it is total hogwash. It is a lie. It is an illusion.
If that were true, no change would be possible. And people do change. Not many, not often, but they do.
We all have at least two distinct and recognizable selves that we switch back and forth between.
In this article we’ll look at intelligence, but we could also look at the character, the attitude, the moral fortitude of the selves… but because I look at the world through the frame of smart and stupid, and only secondarily through loyal/disloyal, I’ll write this article on the intelligence level of your two selves.
Now, let me start with a statement: there is nothing wrong with being stupid. As long as you know and embrace that you are stupid.
This is an article from The Atlantic… Hint: not by discussing IQ The I here is James Fallows… although I tend to agree with him. this is a companion article to my previous article on self-esteem…
If you just want to know what people who are actually smart think of themselves… talk about themselves, jump there…
by James Fallows Jan 6, 2018 Science
I’ve never met or interviewed Donald Trump, though like most of the world I feel amply exposed to his outlooks and styles of expression. So I can’t say whether, in person, he somehow conveys the edge, the sparkle, the ability to connect, the layers of meaning that we usually associate with both emotional and analytical intelligence.
But I have had the chance over the years to meet and interview a large sampling of people whom the world views the way Trump views himself. That is, according to this mornin
What is an adult, what is a child… and does your ego-state (Child, Parent, Adult) influence how much money you have, how much love you have, how healthy you are? ((One of the distinctions, fields: what field is this interaction which we learned about a year ago, is closely related to Transactional Analysis ego states… very educational…))
In the starting point measurements I measure (#19) To what degree you have access to your adult capacities. ((1. your vibration (1-1000):
2. your overall intelligence, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, body, relationship, etc.:
3. the number of spiritual capacities you hav
In this article I am going to examine what it is that separates from Producers from Hunters and gatherers
I had a conversation with my friend, Nancy F., yesterday. The topic of the conversation, after some wild twists and turns, settled on what is the secret of Jewish people’s success.
Nancy F. has always wanted what Jews had, without having to be a Jew… lol.
I don’t have a lot to say about that, even though I am reading a book about it. Why? Because being that way is like the air I breathe, invisible.
You know, like water for the fish is not there. Until the fish jumps out of the water, looks down, and gasps: Water! Then the fish splashes back into the water and water disappears for him.
In my weekly coaching call with my only business/marketing student last night, I went deep into the causes of why someone with a degree, why someone who is making a living, cannot move further up the life-satisfaction, life effectiveness scale.
I have found two blatant holes in him, that my guess is shared by all of you, or most of you.
1. a total blindness of what gives meaning and therefore the mood for life.
2. a total inability to see what is cause and what is effect.
So how do you fix that? You don’t.
When you find something that isn’t working or isn’t working as well as you’d like it to, your knee jerk reaction is to fix it. Or change it. Or stop doing it.
In life, you have as much room to be as your environment grants you.
Room as in elbow room…
The environment you are in, at home, at work, at the pub, at the club, in the community van…
My brother has a lot of room to be when he is with his friends. He is funny, he is smart, maybe even glib… that is the only place anywhere he has some room to be. Maybe he had room to be at work… he is retired now. Everywhere else he is under the “thumb” of someone… under the tyranny of someone. He should be different, do different… never OK, never enough, never the one… except maybe his grandkids? still adoring him… for how long?
I left Hungary to have more room to be someone more than who I felt the environment all
I am getting a lot of requests to teach people how to become people who live a life worth living, who excel in all four areas, all four pillars of the good life.
My answer is almost always: Sorry I can’t help you.
But why?
Today I got lucky and got my answer in a pristine form.
My University classmate, Panni called me. We talk once a month. She is, of course an architect: we were classmates in architecture school, a five year study.
How to Get Your Mind to Read ((article by Daniel T. Willingham (@DTWillingham) is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and the author, most recently, of “The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads.” Republished from the New York Times
Photo: Credit Lilli Carré))
Americans are not good readers. Many blame the ubiquity of digital media. We’re too busy on Snapchat to read, or perhaps internet skimming has made us incapable of reading serious prose. But Americans’ trouble with reading predates digital technologies. The problem is not bad reading habits engendered by smartphones, but bad education habits engendered by a misunderstanding of how the mind reads.
This week has been a success for Life, and a disaster financially. Everyone was spending their money on turkey, I guess.
So I am going to announce some sales for this coming week. I’ll make them good… so you’ll buy.
Now, about the successes that lead me to a huge insight.
All that people do is guided by memes, and they think they decided to do it. And you think they decided to do it from the goodness of their heart, from the badness of their heart, whatever seem to be the case. But in fact they never decided anything… It is the memes that are doing the deciding.
This is a totally different way to look at people, at life, and at what’s happening.
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