|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0593084640
| 9780593084649
| 0593084640
| 4.17
| 26,129
| Mar 02, 2021
| Mar 02, 2021
|
really liked it
|
A book of useful points of view, conveyed in a professorial tone of voice brooking no dissent. Ignore Peterson's checkered recent struggle with addict
A book of useful points of view, conveyed in a professorial tone of voice brooking no dissent. Ignore Peterson's checkered recent struggle with addiction and read with an open mind, you might take away something. especially the bits on marriage as a commitment, not hiding things in the fog, the dangers of ideology, the dangers of excessive sentimentality, need for a proper knowledge of the nature of nature and the world. full clippings here. ____ people depend on constant communication with others to keep their minds organized We outsource the problem of sanity. People remain mentally healthy not merely because of the integrity of their own minds, but because they are constantly being reminded how to think, act, and speak by those around them All creatures of reasonable complexity and even a minimally social nature have their particular place, and know it. All social creatures also learn what is deemed valuable by other group members, and derive from that, as well as from the understanding of their own position, a sophisticated implicit and explicit understanding of value itself Play with others depends (as the great developmental psychologist Jean Piaget observed) upon the collective establishment of a shared goal with the child’s play partners Humility: It is better to presume ignorance and invite learning than to assume sufficient knowledge and risk the consequent blindness. No one unwilling to be a foolish beginner can learn. It is said, with much truth, that genuine communication can take place only between peers. This is because it is very difficult to move information up a hierarchy. Those well positioned (and this is a great danger of moving up) have used their current competence—their cherished opinions, their present knowledge, their current skills—to stake a moral claim to their status. In consequence, they have little motivation to admit to error, to learn or change—and plenty of reason not to. “Victory,” in one of its primary and most socially important aspects, is the overcoming of obstacles for the broader public good. the position of top dog, when occupied properly, has as one of its fundamental attractions the opportunity to identify deserving individuals at or near the beginning of their professional life, and provide them with the means of productive advancement Sanity is knowing the rules of the social game, internalizing them, and following them Highly social creatures such as we are must abide by the rules, to remain sane and minimize unnecessary uncertainty, suffering, and strife. However, we must also transform those rules carefully, as circumstances change around us. (and if you are a person with sufficient character to manage that distinction), then you have served the spirit, rather than the mere law, and that is an elevated moral act. But if you refuse to realize the importance of the rules you are violating and act out of self-centered convenience, then you are appropriately and inevitably damned Every society is already characterized by patterned behavior; otherwise it would be pure conflict and no “society” at all. But the mere fact that social order reigns to some degree does not mean that a given society has come to explicitly understand its own behavior, its own moral code. Each of us, when fortunate, is compelled forward by something that grips our attention—love of a person; a sport; a political, sociological, or economic problem, or a scientific question; a passion for art, literature, or drama—something that calls to us for reasons we can neither control nor understand You do not choose what interests you. It chooses you. It is a perilous journey, but it is also the adventure of our lives. Think of pursuing someone you love: catch them or not, you change in the process. Think, as well, of the traveling you have done, or of the work you have undertaken, whether for pleasure or necessity. In all these cases you experience what is new. Sometimes that is painful; sometimes it is better than anything else that has ever happened to you We understand reality, therefore, as if it is constructed of personalities. That is because so much of what we encounter in our hypersocial reality, our complex societies, is in fact personality—and gendered personality, at that, reflecting the billion years or so since the emergence of sexual reproduction (ample time for its existence to have profoundly structured our perceptions). We understand male, and abstract from that the masculine. We understand female, and abstract from that the feminine. Finally, we understand the child, and abstract from that, the son. peace is the establishment of a shared hierarchy of divinity, of value. Thus, an eternal question emerges whenever people of different backgrounds are required to deal with one another on a relatively permanent basis: What do all gods share that makes them gods? What is God, in essence? [Harry Potter in book 2] does this, significantly, through the sewer, acting out the ancient alchemical dictum, in sterquilinis invenitur: in filth it will be found. That which you most need to find will be found where you least wish to look. But another form, more abstract—more psychological, more spiritual—is human evil: the danger we pose to one another. At some point in our evolutionary and cultural history, we began to understand that human evil could rightly be considered the greatest of all snakes. So, the symbolic progression might be (1) snake as evil predator, then (2) external human enemy as snake/evil/predator, then (3) subjective, personal, or psychological darkness/vengefulness/deceit as snake/evil/predator. Each of these representations, which took untold centuries, perhaps millennia to conceptualize, constitute a tangible increase in the sophistication of the image of evil. Every story requires a starting place that is not good enough and an ending place that is better. Do not pretend you are happy with something if you are not, and if a reasonable solution might, in principle, be negotiated. Have the damn fight. Unpleasant as that might be in the moment, it is one less straw on the camel’s back. And that is particularly true for those daily events that everyone is prone to regard as trivial—even the plates on which you eat your lunch. Life is what repeats, and it is worth getting what repeats right. perhaps that was part of the problem: because she did not know what she liked (and was equally vague about her dislikes), she was not in the strongest position to put forward her own opinions. The former problem—willful blindness—occurs when you could come to know something but cease exploring so that you fail to discover something that might cause you substantial discomfort. there is certainly fear of falling down a hole of that size (again, particularly when much has remained unspoken) that motivates the proclivity to keep things to yourself when they would be better, but dangerously, said. Imagine that you are so afraid that you will not allow yourself even to know what you want. Knowing would simultaneously mean hoping, and your hopes have been dashed. You have your reasons for maintaining your ignorance. You are afraid, perhaps, that there is nothing worth wanting; you are afraid that if you specify what you want precisely you will simultaneously discover (and all too clearly) what constitutes failure; you are afraid that failure is the most likely outcome; and, finally, you are afraid that if you define failure and then fail, you will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was you that failed, and that it was your fault. The fog that hides is the refusal to notice—to attend to—emotions and motivational states as they arise, and the refusal to communicate them both to yourself and to the people who are close to you. Every ideal is a judge, after all: the judge who says, “You are not manifesting your true potential.” No ideals? No judge. But the price paid for that is purposelessness. This is a high price. also expected, when we are without purpose: chronic, overwhelming anxiety, as focused purpose constrains what is otherwise likely to be the intolerable chaos of unexploited possibility and too much choice. Experience with the possibility of betrayal opens the door to another kind of faith in humanity: one based on courage, rather than naivete. I will trust you—I will extend my hand to you—despite the risk of betrayal, because it is possible, through trust, to bring out the best in you, and perhaps in me there is no shortage of genuinely good people who are thrilled if they can give someone useful and trustworthy a hand up You must sacrifice something of your manifold potential in exchange for something real in life. Aim at something. Discipline yourself. Or suffer the consequence. And what is that consequence? All the suffering of life, with none of the meaning. Is there a better description of hell? That is the curse associated with the human discovery of the future and, with it, the necessity of work—because to work means to sacrifice the hypothetical delights of the present for the potential improvement of what lies ahead. There is in fact little difference between how you should treat yourself—once you realize that you are a community that extends across time—and how you should treat other people. no happiness in the absence of responsibility. No valuable and valued goal, no positive emotion No matter how much we wish to discount the future completely, it is part of the price we paid for being acutely self-conscious and able to conceptualize ourselves across the entire span of our lives. people are generally very loath to talk publicly—it is a common fear, often severe enough to interfere with career progression. If you are at work, and called upon to do what makes you contemptuous of yourself—weak and ashamed, likely to lash out at those you love, unwilling to perform productively, and sick of your life—it is possible that it is time to meditate, consider, strategize, and place yourself in a position where you are capable of saying no. (on changing jobs) One hundred and fifty applications, carefully chosen; three to five interviews thereby acquired. That could be a mission of a year or more. That is much less than a lifetime of misery and downward trajectory. But it is not nothing. I find it heart-wrenching to see how little encouragement and guidance so many people have received, and how much good can emerge when just a little more is provided. “I knew you could do it” is a good start, and goes a long way toward ameliorating some of the unnecessary pain in the world. Helping people bridge the gap between what they profoundly intuit but cannot articulate seems to be a reasonable and valuable function for a public intellectual. You might even consider the inculcation of responsibility the fundamental purpose of society. As the purpose of human life became uncertain outside the purposeful structure of monotheistic thought and the meaningful world it proposed, we would experience an existentially devastating rise in nihilism, Nietzsche believed. Alternatively, he suggested, people would turn to identification with rigid, totalitarian ideology: the substitute of human ideas for the transcendent Father of All Creation. The doubt that undermines and the certainty that crushes: Nietzsche’s prognostication for the two alternatives that would arise in the aftermath of the death of God. Individuals who take this [Ubermensch] route, this alternative to nihilism and totalitarianism, must therefore produce their own cosmology of values. However, the psychoanalysts Freud and Jung put paid to that notion, demonstrating that we are not sufficiently in possession of ourselves to create values by conscious choice. The first players of a given (intellectual) game of this sort are generally the brightest of the participants. They weave a story around their causal principle of choice, demonstrating how that hypothetically primary motivational force profoundly contributed to any given domain of human activity. Their followers, desperate to join a potentially masterable new dominance hierarchy (the old one being cluttered by its current occupants), become enamored of that story. While doing so, being less bright than those they follow, they subtly shift “contributed to” or “affected” to “caused.” The originator(s), gratified by the emergence of followers, start to shift their story in that direction as well. Or they object, but it does not matter. The cult has already begun. Consider the characters fabricated by second-rate crafters of fiction: they are simply divided into those who are good and those who are evil. By contrast, sophisticated writers put the divide inside the characters they create, so that each person becomes the locus of the eternal struggle between light and darkness. It is much more psychologically appropriate (and much less dangerous socially) to assume that you are the enemy. The single axioms of the ideologically possessed are gods, served blindly by their proselytizers. That which is valuable is pure, properly aligned, and glitters with light—and this is true for the person just as it is for the gem. Aim. Point. All this is part of maturation and discipline, and something to be properly valued. If you aim at nothing, you become plagued by everything. If you aim at nothing, you have nowhere to go, nothing to do, and nothing of high value in your life, as value requires the ranking of options and sacrifice of the lower to the higher. A case can be made for the arbitrary and even meaningless nature of any given commitment, given the plethora of alternatives, given the corruption of the systems demanding that commitment. But the same case cannot be made for the fact of commitment itself: Those who do not choose a direction are lost. This, it should be noted, is not repression. This point must be made clear, as people believe that the things discipline imposed by choice prevents us from doing will somehow be lost forever. It is this belief, in large part—often expressed with regard to creativity—that makes so many parents afraid of damaging their children by disciplining them. But proper discipline organizes rather than destroys. A child who has been disciplined properly, by contrast—by parents, other adults, and most significantly, by other children—does not battle with, defeat, and then permanently inhibit her aggression. Such a child does not even sublimate that aggression, or transform it into something different. Instead, she integrates it into her increasingly sophisticated game-playing ability, allowing it to feed her competitiveness and heighten her attention, and making it serve the higher purposes of her developing psyche. Doubt about which game is appropriate right now is not relativism. It is the intelligent consideration of context. To think that peace can exist without the overarching and voluntarily accepted game is to misunderstand the ever-present danger of the fragmented tribalism to which we can so easily and devastatingly regress. The master can allow himself his intuitions, as the knowledge obtained by the discipline he has acquired will enable him to criticize his own ideas and assess their true value. It is worthwhile thinking of these Commandments as a minimum set of rules for a stable society—an iterable social game. If you learn to make something in your life truly beautiful—even one thing—then you have established a relationship with beauty. From there you can begin to expand that relationship out into other elements of your life and the world. That is an invitation to the divine. you study art (and literature and the humanities), you do it so that you can familiarize yourself with the collected wisdom of our civilization. You need to establish a link with what is beyond you, like a man overboard in high seas requires a life preserver, and the invitation of beauty into your life is one means by which that may be accomplished. To share in the artist’s perception reunites us with the source of inspiration that can rekindle our delight in the world, even if the drudgery and repetition of daily life has reduced what we see to the narrowest and most pragmatic of visions. Art is exploration. Artists train people to see. a psychological truism: that anything sufficiently threatening or harmful once encountered can never be forgotten if it has never been understood. We literally make the world what it is, from the many things we perceive it could be. Doing so is perhaps the primary fact of our being, and perhaps of Being itself. We face a multitude of prospects—of manifold realities, each almost tangible—and by choosing one pathway rather than another, reduce that multitude to the singular actuality of reality. If we were the source of our own values and masters of our own houses, then we could act or fail to act as we choose and not suffer the pangs of regret, sorrow, and shame. There are many serious obstacles both to knowing what you need and want, and to discussing it. If you allow yourself to know what you want, then you will also know precisely when you are failing to get it. You will benefit, of course, because you will also know when you have succeeded. But you might also fail, and you could well be frightened enough by the possibility of not getting what you need (and want) that you keep your desires vague and unspecified. romance requires trust, and not blind faith but the mature trust of one wise enough to distrust but courageous enough to risk putting their trust in a partner. the vow that makes a marriage capable of preserving its romantic component is first and foremost the decision not to lie to your partner. A marriage is a vow, and there is a reason for it. You announce jointly, publicly: “I am not going to leave you, in sickness or health, in poverty or wealth—and you are not going to leave me.” It is actually a threat: “We are not getting rid of each other, no matter what.” In principle, there is no escape. If you have any sense (besides the optimism of new love) you also think, “Oh, God. That is a horrifying possibility.” Do you really want to keep asking yourself for the rest of your life—because you would always have the option to leave—if you made the right choice? In all likelihood, you did not. There are 7 billion people in the world. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jan 13, 2023
|
Feb 02, 2023
|
Jan 13, 2023
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0063050943
| 9780063050945
| 0063050943
| 4.09
| 2,583
| unknown
| May 10, 2022
|
really liked it
|
The author is a long-time blogger, so his book is written in the easy to read style, liberally peppered with references and quotes of all sorts. At on
The author is a long-time blogger, so his book is written in the easy to read style, liberally peppered with references and quotes of all sorts. At one point it felt a bit like reading an aggregator (here's what all the smart people who have spent their lives researching the current topic under discussion have to say), but I suppose it's borrowing the credibility of others (not I say is this prof say one). A good confirmation bias book validating my general life philosophy that life is ultimately about relationships (see the very first line of the quotes below). Examines the various relationship aphorisms (a friend in need is a friend in deed, no man is an island, love conquers all, judging a book by its cover) in much detail. Overall a good non-fic book to dive into, on a highly relatable topic (on relating hur) ___ The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships with other people - conclusion of the Grant study at Harvard Medical School (268 men over 80 years) The fundamental core of relationships is the stories our brains weave to create identity, agency and community - and how those stories not only bind us together but can tear us apart if we're not careful. Often our problems with others start with our inaccurate perception of them. (suspect/criminal) Profiling is basically unintentional cold reading. When dealing with strangers, you correctly detect their thoughts and feelings 20% of the time. With close friends you hit 30%, and married couples peak at 35%. Yet we all think we're awesome at reading others. Egocentric anchoring - we're too caught up in our own perspective - so we exaggerate the extent to which others think, believe and feel as we do. How readable people are ranges widely. Most of the reason we're able to read people isn't that we're skilled, is that they're expressive. Giving a crap makes our brains better at almost everything because our default is barely paying attention to anything. When we set a high bar for accountability, our opinions don't become inflexible until we've done a thorough review of the evidence. Empathic accuracy (aka mind-reading) is a positive if it doesn't uncover information threatening to the relationship, but if it does, it's a negative. People often want to learn how to improve the accuracy of their social judgments, but it is unclear if seeing social reality is a healthy goal. Strict reciprocity is a profound negative in friendship. Being in a hurry to repay a deby is often seen as an insult. With buddies we discount how much costs and benefits matter. 70% of marital satisfaction is due to the couple's friendship. Tom Rath says it is 5 times as critical to a good marriage as physical intimacy. The friendship bit With no formal rules, expectations are blurry. This renders friendships fragile. They wilt without care, but there are no rules for what is required, and negotiating specifics is uncomfortable. Without institutional obligations, the upkeep friendships require must be very deliberate. And in a busy world, that is beyond what most of us can handle. Often the 30s are the decade where friendships go to die. Around that time is when you gather all your friends for your wedding - and then promptly never see them again. Friendship is more real because either person can walk away at any time. Its fragility proves its purity. Touching base in some form every 2 weeks is a good target to shoot for. Display the costly signals of time and vulnerability to forge and maintain true friendships. Hug a friend today. We don't celebrate our friendships enough. To Aristotle - friends are disposed towards each as they are disposed to themselves - a friend is another self. A series of experiments demonstrates that the closer you are to a friend, the more the boundary between the two of you blurs. We actually confuse elements of who they are with who we are. When you're tight with a friend, your brain has to work harder to distinguish the two of you. Kids with Williams Syndrome (WS) are the only children ever found to show zero racial bias. Putting yourself in someone else's shoes makes you worse at relating to them (or trying to read their minds). Dale Carnegie's book is great at the early stages of relationships, and it is excellent for transactional relationships with business contacts. The next time you're with someone you care about, or someone you want to deepen your friendship with, follow THE SCARY RULE (TM), if it scares you, say it. You can discourage narcissists from questionable behaviour by asking them "what will people think?" they may not feel guilt, but they do feel shame, and narcissists are very concerned about appearances. Divorce is the #2 most stressful life event, behind death of a spouse. It also puts a permanent dent in your happiness. Marriage is no guarantee of health or happiness; it's more like gambling - big wins or big losses. In the Bella Coola society of the pacific northwest, competition for the right in-laws was sometimes so intense that people would get married to another family's dog. As Alexandre Dumas quipped - the bonds of wedlock are so heavy it takes two, sometimes three to carry them. Love marriages are a fairly new concept - in 1960s - a third of men and 3/4 of women didn't think love was essential before getting married. Romantic love not only overrides rationality but also signals the overriding of rationality. As Donald Yates said - people who are sensible about love are incapable of it. Robert Seidenberg: Love is a human religion in which another person is believed in. Relationship illusions predict greater satisfaction, love and trust, and less conflict and ambivalence in both dating and marital relationships. Emotionally discounting the negative - it's not a big deal. Flaws are 'charming'. This attitude helps grease the wheels of a relationship. We're just more accommodating when our lovestruck brains dial down our reactions to our loved one's flaws. Co-habiting before marriage may burn through the period of crazy love before settling down to get married. By the time they tie the knot, entropy has set in. Inequality in the world - 15% of the people are having 50% of the sex. The 1800s Romantic era was about the idea that feelings, inspiration and the unconscious were more important than rationality and rules (the age of Enlightenment). Poe's work was very appropriate for the sullen, attention-poor years of adolescence because morbid short stories. You scream because you care. Once Negative Sentiment Override (NSO) has set in, you stop caring. Fighting doesn't end marriages, avoiding conflict does. Doing things together that are stimulating and challenging stretches our self-concept wider and provides a buzz. The angle of attack is simple: never stop dating All couples argue about money. Why? Because money is all about values. It’s a quantification of what’s important to you UCSB professor Shelly Gable has found that how couples celebrate can actually be more important than how they fight In accepting them as they are, you can still focus on and encourage those aspects aligned with their ideal self, who they most want to be. The stories we have about our relationships are usually intuitive and unconscious. But they’re there. Some people have a “business” story where they’re all about making sure things in the relationship run smoothly. Others do have a “fairy tale” story of wanting to save or be saved. And there are those who have a “home” story where everything is centered on building a lovely environment. There are an infinite number of stories. Talk to your partner and find out their “ideal” and “actual” story. Instead of a new story of love through a new relationship, you can forge a new story with the same person An economics study titled “Putting a Price Tag on Friends, Relatives, and Neighbours” put the happiness value of a better social life at an additional $131,232 per year. Loneliness is a subjective feeling. It’s not necessarily about physical isolation. It’s hard to understate just how many profound ideas and cultural shifts—political, philosophical, religious, and economic—came about in the nineteenth century, moving the individual to the forefront and sticking community in the back seat. Secularism. Utilitarianism. Darwinism. Freudianism. Capitalism. And consumerism. The social contract gave way to autonomy, and we went from communal to competitive. what your brain hears is you are also now, fundamentally, alone. And that’s why you can be lonely in a crowd. We think a lot about the great things we gained from this story shift but have trouble pinning down what we lost. There’s just a vague feeling of unease and an ever-present hum of anxiety. It’s awesome to feel in control and free, not bound by social obligations, but your brain knows that also means others are also free and not obligated to look out for you. And millions of years of evolution taught our physiology that that means one thing. Help is not coming. You’re on your own. Celebrities have to put up walls to deal with the flood of attention. Other people always wanting something from you makes it difficult to trust anyone. Friends become envious. And so being loved by everyone often ends up producing what the authors call “emotional isolation Konrad Zuse, who is considered the father of the modern computer, said, “The danger that computers will become like humans is not as great as the danger that humans will become like computers when someone cares for us, the more attention they give us, the more competent they seem, the better tools they use, the more time they spend with us, the more our bodies notice. And then your body can tell you a new story: Someone is caring for us. I don’t need to shout at you with pain anymore. We’re safe now. And it turns the “NEEDS SERVICE” light off. placebos do have an active ingredient: human beings caring for one another. [Depression] wasn’t just a problem caused by the brain going wrong. It was caused by life going wrong (without anyone having your back) Sociologist Charles Fritz did a study in 1959 interviewing over nine thousand survivors of disaster, and he found that when modern society goes to hell, we return to our natural state of cooperation. During war, psychiatric admissions decline. This phenomenon has been documented time and time again. When Belfast experienced riots in the 1960s, depression plummeted in the districts with the most violence and went up where there was none. Lee Marvin once said, “Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.” You’re not the only character in the story. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jan 2023
|
Jan 16, 2023
|
Jan 13, 2023
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1501119923
| 9781501119927
| 1501119923
| 3.72
| 3,059
| Nov 13, 2018
| Nov 13, 2018
|
really liked it
|
A nice quick read on the author's quest to be a more thankful person, using his daily cup of coffee as a springboard. Branches into musings on the min
A nice quick read on the author's quest to be a more thankful person, using his daily cup of coffee as a springboard. Branches into musings on the mind-boggling nature of globalisation. A good reminder that we can always choose what to focus on. ___ The result of this negativity bias is that we are awash in modern-day anxiety. We often see our lives as problem after problem, crisis after crisis. Many of us live in what psychologists call the 'deficit' mindset, not the 'surplus' mindset. We spend far too much time fretting about what we're missing instead of focusing on what we have. "What's it like being a barista? It's not always easy, you're dealing with people in a very dangerous state : pre-caffeination." Grateful living is only possible when we realise that other people and agents do things for us that we cannot do for ourselves. Gratitude emerges from two stages of information processing - affirmation and recognition. We affirm the good and credit others with bringing it about. In gratitude, we recognise that the source of goodness is outside ourselves. If something is done well for us, the process behind it is largely invisible. Gratitude has a lot to do with holding on to the moment as strongly as possible - it is closely related to mindfulness and savouring. Coffee is an enormous economic engine for prosperity. It provides jobs for an estimated 125 million people worldwide. "A couple days ago, my ankle started aching and gave me a slight limp. I don't know what caused it. I'm getting to that age where my body parts will break down from what manufacturers call "general wear and tear'. I've also noticed that my body is louder than ever, with clicks and pops emanating from various joints. When I get up from a chair, my body sounds like it's speaking a dialect of !Kung." (can relate ;_;) Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly annoyed about something, e.g. the rattle of the air-con, I'll repeat a 3-word phrase : surgery without anesthesia. Pallets are so widespread that one estimate says they account for 46% of U.S. hardwood lumber production. How can I have loving-kindness and compassion for my enemies? I think you can have gratitude that someone helped you in a particular way, while simultaneously wishing for the reduction of suffering of that person. e.g. if the CEO of Exxon got some of his own insecurities and defenses under control, he'd be less motivated for greed and profit, and more motivated for growth and humanitarianism. Being prompted to recognise luck can encourage generosity. A recent (2018) article - yes, $3 for a cup of coffee seems felonious, but if everyone along the coffee supply chain was paid US minimum wage, coffee would cost about $25 a cup. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Nov 18, 2022
|
Nov 19, 2022
|
Nov 14, 2022
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0062429175
| 9780062429179
| B01GCCT3DE
| 3.56
| 1,699
| Apr 25, 2017
| Apr 25, 2017
|
really liked it
|
A fun read that was more than a little relatable, this book covers a wide aspect of what being awkward means and some suggested ways to make social si
A fun read that was more than a little relatable, this book covers a wide aspect of what being awkward means and some suggested ways to make social situations easier to navigate. ____ Awkward people see the world different from non-awkward people, using a narrow spotlight (fragmented viewpoint), rather than taking in the big social picture (tone in the room, level of formality etc). This spotlighted attention gravitates towards nonsocial areas that are systematic in nature, which is why they like the rules of math or logic of coding. "Awkward people often tell me : 'I wish that people would give me a chance because I think that they will like me'". The guiding question of social deliberations - how do you fit in without losing yourself? - manners and etiquette serve as the common ground, as baseline expectations. When individuals adhere to expectations, such as friendly greetings or turn taking, they are demonstrating in small ways that they want to be prosocial, that they are aligned to the broader goals of the group. The difference between social anxiety and awkwardness is anxiety is unreasonable fear about being inappropriate, while awkwardness refers to (concern over) one's actual ability to be appropriate. Awkward people sometimes have a heightened sense of fairness or compassion because they have been on the receiving end of unfair or unkind acts. Being socially skilled is like a language, that most people are fluent in. The three important cues that give awkward people trouble: non-verbal behaviours, facial expressions, and decoding language used during social conversations. There is often an agitated vibe that characterises your interactions with awkward people, giving the appearance that they are nervous, upset, or irritated. If you view the awkward people as someone experiencing the interaction as particularly intense, the unusual vibe starts to make more sense. As a coping mechanism, awkward people learn to temper this intensity by avoiding things that trigger strong emotions, like avoiding eye contact, sidestepping emotional conversations, or might even feel overwhelmed by praise from others. Awkward people's emotional lives could be potentially adaptive (think Kipling's "if you can keep your head when everyone else is losing theirs) being calm in stressful situations, or having obssessive attention to detail. Both popular and likeable people tend to be socially fluent, but people motivated by popularity use their mind-reading skills to boost their social status or protect their position, while likeable people use it for the greater good. *Likeable people are driven by 3 core values: be fair, be kind, and be loyal.* Bullies' moral reasoning capabilities are as sound as their peers, though they show significantly lower levels of compassion, and were more likely to rationalise their immoral behaviour by seeing their selfish gains as taking precedence over the emotional costs incurred by victims. Numerous intellectuals have pointed to an interesting shift in the expectations held by the modern family. The expectation used to be that parents simply provide a safe, supportive environment for their children, but that shifted to an expectations that parents intensely manage their children's progress towards discernable achievements in the classroom or playing field. Part of the job description of being a child is to do some things that are socially inappropriate or foolish, suffer the consequences, and then take responsibility for the correcting course. Awkward kids are slower to realise that factual comments can be hurtful or get other people in trouble; for them, it's just reporting the facts. Mentally preparing kids for social interactions is no different from helping kids with their math homework. There is a valuable opportunity to coaching them in concrete skills that can make a difference in their ability to smoothly navigate social situations and form meaningful ties. What awkward kids need from their families: clear expectations, a sound rationale for rules and routines, and fairness in enforcing these expectations. (systemic treatment) By heavily weighing fairness, kindness and loyalty, one buys leeway to bypass some of the minor social expectations. (working the halo effect). We end up being friends with people close by, who are similar to us, and reciprocate liking (are willing to tell us they like us). Core message of Alkon's book on manners - good manners are important because they are a mechanism for showing other people empathy and respect. Etiquette decreases the proportion of unpredictability in social situations (a playbook for common scenarios), allowing awkward people to focus on actually being in the moment. Gifted people tend to be stubborn, rebellious, and perfectionistic. They show an unusual drive to master their area of interest and they are constantly trying to push the status quo, which motivates them to pursue their interest with unusual intensity and persistence. Ellen Winner calls this the "rage to master". The beauty of our social relationships is not about social awkwardness or skill, but rather comes from our kind attention to thousands of social details. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Aug 25, 2020
|
Aug 27, 2020
|
Aug 25, 2020
|
Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||
| 0060753633
| 9780060753634
| 0060753633
| 4.18
| 42,681
| Sep 05, 2006
| Sep 05, 2006
|
really liked it
|
TL;DR : the couple's goal of merging is likely antithetical to sustaining attraction, as attraction requires distance. Then the majority of the book i
TL;DR : the couple's goal of merging is likely antithetical to sustaining attraction, as attraction requires distance. Then the majority of the book is expounding on these points with couples' anecdotes as demonstrative examples. Good chapter on not shutting out fantasies. ___ Eroticism requires separateness, it thrives in the space between self and the other. In order to commune with the one we love, we must be able to tolerate this void and its pall of uncertainties. In truth we never know our partner as well as we think we do. Even in the dullest marriages, predictability is a mirage. Our need for constancy limits how much we are willing to know the person who's next to us. The seeds of intimacy are time and repetition. We choose each other again and again, and so create a community of two. Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness. One does not exist without the other. When two people become fused, connection can no longer happen. This is the essential paradox of intimacy and sex. In the beginning you can focus on the connection because the psychological distance is already there; it's a part of the structure. Otherness is a fact. Eroticism is a movement toward the Other, this is its essential character. Yet in our efforts to establish intimacy we often seek to eliminate otherness, thereby precluding the space necessary for desire to flourish. A treatment that places a premium on performance and reliability often exacerbates the very problems it purports to solve. More often than not, the beauty and flow of a sexual encounter unfurl in a safe, noncompetitive and non-result-oriented atmosphere. Sensuality doesn't lend itself to the rigours of scorekeeping. Taboo-ridden sexuality and excess-driven sexuality converge in a troubling way. Both lead us to want to dissociate psychically from the physical act of sex. A society that sees sex as soiled does not make sex go away. Instead, this kind of anxious atmosphere breeds guilt and shame in its more extreme version, or a generalised discomfort in its more ubiquitous expression. We were taught to rely on ourselves, not to depend on others. It's an unromantic attitude. Gender equality is made manifest in all its irony: both men and women now have the right to be terrified of commitment. This entire culture is profoundly uncomfortable with vulnerability and dependency. Good intimate sex requires both. Beware the idea that pleasure must be earned in advance by the performance of duty. This system of fairness and merit, to neutralise selfishness is a huge turn-off. When eroticism shifts into the realm of duty, it becomes weighted down with pressure, guilt and worry - all proven anti-aphrodisiacs. Cultivating a sense of ruthlessness in our intimate relationships is an intriguing solution to the problems of desire. It may appear to be detached and uncaring, but is rooted in the love and security of our connection. It is a rare experience of trust to be able to let go completely without guilt or fretfulness, knowing that our relationship is vast enough to withstand the whole of us. Mothers can get tremendous sensual pleasure while caring for their children. The level of tactile and auditory stimulation could end up capturing erotic potency. This redirected eros is to the detriment of the husband. Today we no longer get work out of our children, we get meaning. One one hand, we vest our children with sentimental idealisation, and we have a culture of child rearing that demands considerable emotional and material resources. On the other hand our society notably lacks the public support necessary to complete this fundamental project. By censoring our sexuality, curbing our desires, or renouncing them altogether, we hand our inhibitions intact to the next generation. It is not children that extinguish the flame of desire, it is adults who fail to keep the spark alive. Our fantasies combine the uniqueness of our personal history with the broad sweep of the collective imagination. They provide a wellspring of information about individuals' internal life and the relational dynamics of the couple. They are an ingenious way our creative mind overcomes all sorts of conflicts around desire and intimacy. While the fantasy itself may not be an intimate scenario, its disclosure expresses and fosters deep love and trust. The female characters in porn neutralise male vulnerability because they are always fully responsive and fully satisfied. The man never suffers from inadequacy. Our cultural taboos about erotic fantasy are so strong that for many people the very idea of discussing it creates anxiety and shame. Yet fantasies are maps of our psychological and cultural preoccupations; exploring them can lead to greater self-awareness, an essential step in creating change. When we cordon off our erotic interiors, we are left with sex that is truncated, devoid of vibrancy, and not particularly intimate. Our love affair with monogamy arguably comes with some cost. American culture has great tolerance for divorce - where there is a total breakdown of the loyalty bond and painful effects for the whole family - but it is a culture with no tolerance for sexual infidelity. We would rather kill a relationship than question its structure. Historically, monogamy was an externally imposed system of control over women's reproduction (which child is mine? (lineage) who will inherit? (property)) All relationships lie in the shadow of the third, for it is the other that solders our dyad. Therapists regularly encourage their patients to examine their assumptions about what's normal, acceptable, and expected. Yet sexual boundaries are one of the few areas where therapists seem to mirror the dominant culture. Monogamy is the norm, and sexual fidelity is considered to be mature, committed and realistic. When we validate one another's freedom within the relationship, we're less inclined to search for it elsewhere. In this sense, inviting the third goes some way toward containing its volatility, not to mention its appeal. When we can tell the truth safely, we are less inclined to keep secrets. Recognising the third has a tendency to add spice, not least because it reminds us that we do not own our partners. Perhaps this is a way of looking at maturity: not as passionless love, but as love that knows of other passions not chosen. Marriage, we've been taught, is about commitment, security, comfort, and family. It's a serious business, a responsible and purposeful enterprise; it's all the things we need, and all the things we need to do. Play and its playmates (risk, seduction, naughtiness, transgression) are left to fend for themselves outside the solid architecture of our homes. But a dispassionate friendship is a problematic ecology for cultivating eroticism. Adam Phillips (Monogamy): If it is the forbidden that is exciting - if desire is fundamentally transgressive - then the monogamous are like the very rich. They have to fund their poverty. They have to starve themselves enough. The grand illusion of committed love is that we think that our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable. As soon as we can begin to acknowledge this, sustained desire becomes a real possibility. Play, by definition, is carefree and unself-conscious. The great theoretician of play, Johan Huizinga, maintained that a fundamental feature of play is that it serves no other purpose. The purposelessness of play is hard to reconcile with our culture of high efficiency and constant accountability. More and more, we measure play by its benefits. Yet if we're plagued by self-awareness, obsessed with outcomes, or fearful of judgment, our enjoyment is inevitably compromised. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jan 10, 2020
|
Feb 12, 2020
|
Oct 05, 2019
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 095642810X
| 9780956428103
| 095642810X
| 4.06
| 1,063
| Nov 25, 2009
| Nov 25, 2009
|
liked it
|
Difficult to parse due to little meaningful organisation. Contains thought-provoking content like suck it up and work on your weaknesses, and be kind
Difficult to parse due to little meaningful organisation. Contains thought-provoking content like suck it up and work on your weaknesses, and be kind to yourself. Climb smart, keep at it, short term pain for long-term gains. The rest is details. ___ It's crucial to think through how others see your climbing, and the effect of your expectations of yourself. Climbers often have unrealistic expectations of themselves, for example to be able to reproduce previous highpoints of performance after a layoff. The first step is to really honest with yourself about the true level of your climbing, and how restricted it is to certain strengths you have. Then understand how little your performance ultimately matters to others. See yourself as the underdog. Spending time working in the comfort of your strengths or relying on them borrows strength from your best assets of talents. But borrowing strength builds weakness. Technique training - replaying movements of recent climbs and analysing peculiarities and subtleties. Both actual climbing and reflection are important components of the learning process. Break habits of climbing passively without thinking too much. Strength is only useful when it can be applied fully. Momentum use gives your strength a huge amount of leverage. Look for the board/angle/move type you are weakest on, and spend two to three sessions on that per one session on in your comfort zone type of climbing. The nature of static contractions of the forearm muscle when we grip holds also limits aerobic metabolism by squeezing muscle blood vesel shut under pressure, interrupting the supply of oxygen. Complete exhaustion of muscle glycogen stores happens after many hours straight climbing, or too many consecutive days training for the body to recover from. This significantly extends recovery time. This feeling is one of rapid and complete loss of strength, where even massive holds are a struggle to hold on to. Fear of falling, if left unchecked, changes your movement technique in a subtle way, making it more inefficient and affecting you on every climb you try. Over control attempts, like overgripping and climbing statically, emerge. Age isn't a barrier to getting good at climbing. Usually the barriers are mental. A common error in choosing the climbs to do to get better at climbing is to climb only routes at your current level. This is not the way training works. Climbing above your level will cause falls, struggles and pain. And eventually you'll improve. The only inertia working in opposition to this desire for breakthrough is fear. Fear of loss, fear of effort and fear of failure. Getting past these isn't easy. The desire simply has to outweigh the short term pain. Know that pain wil be short term really helps. Once that happens, the real improvement can start. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jan 22, 2019
|
Jan 27, 2019
|
Dec 18, 2018
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 4.38
| 196,672
| Sep 28, 2017
| Oct 03, 2017
|
it was amazing
|
Berkeley shoutout! A very important book on the centrality sleep has to our lives. Read it, then go fix your sleep schedule/environment. ___ Vehicular ac Berkeley shoutout! A very important book on the centrality sleep has to our lives. Read it, then go fix your sleep schedule/environment. ___ Vehicular accidents caused by drowsy driving exceed those caused by alcohol and drugs combined. The variance in preferred sleep schedules can possibly be explained by a tribal group collectively having less hours where everyone was asleep, reducing periods of vulnerability. Caffeine has an average half life of 5-7 hours. That means it occupies your adenosine (sleep pressure signallers) receptors for a very long time. Caffeine messed with spider webs more than marijuana, LSD, and even speed. Sleep spindles (bursts of brain wave activity) occur during the deep and lighter stages of NREM sleep, and the more there are, the harder it is to awaken the sleeper. You can never sleep back that which you have previously lost. When in an unfamiliar the sleep environment, one side of the brain sleeps more lightly than the other. However REM sleep always involves both halves of the brain, no matter which species. Fasting triggers the body to sleep less, as it sees a need to forage longer for more calories. Autistic individuals show a 30-50% deficit in REM sleep they obtain, relative to children without autism. The direction of causality, if it isn't co-occurrence, is unknown. Deep sleep may be a driving force of brain maturation, not the other way around. Early-evening snoozing jettisons precious sleep pressure, leading to difficulty falling asleep at night. Muscles themselves have no memory, it's your brain remembering the routine. And sleep aids this remembering. Sleep for memory consolidation is an all-or-nothing affair. You cannot catch up with sleep and hope to remember. Our RAM clears fast. With chronic sleep restriction over months or years, an individual will acclimatise to their impaired performance, lower alertness, and reduced energy levels. The sub-optimal state becomes the new baseline. Sixty years of scientific research preclude the author from accepting anyone who says they can survive on 4-5 hours of sleep. The under-slept brain is more prone to mood swings in either direction. Both dementia and cancer are related to inadequate sleep. Without sufficient sleep, amyloid plagues build up in the brain, attacking and degrading the deep-sleep-generating regions of the brain. The loss of deep NREM sleep lessens the ability of the brain to remove amyloid, leading to a vicious cycle. Daylight savings time causes a plummet in heart attack rates when the clocks move back (longer sleep), and a spike when they move forward (less sleep). The same trend is seen in traffic accidents. Sleep is an intensely metabolically active state for brain and body alike. Emotions are a strong predictive daytime signal for dreams. A significant portion of emotional themes and concerns that participants were having while they were awake during the day powerfully and unambiguously resurfaced in the dreams they were having at night. To resolve our emotional past, we require REM sleep with dreaming about the emotional themes and sentiments of the waking trauma. This revisiting helped patients to find emotional closure. Lucid dreamers can control when and what they dream while they are dreaming (eye movements were used as signals to communicate while in REM sleep). iPad use at night suppresses melatonin levels even for a few nights after, like a digital hangover effect. Alcohol messes with REM sleep, due to its metabolic byproducts. Those who take sleeping pills are 3-5 times more likely to die, depending on usage levels. A possible cause is higher than usual rates of infection. REM sleep is what stands between rationality and insanity. REM sleep deprivation causes symptoms of clinical psychosis. After 22 hours without sleep, human performance is impaired to the same level as being legally drunk. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Dec 09, 2018
|
Dec 16, 2018
|
Dec 14, 2018
|
Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||||
| 0735214697
| 9780735214699
| 0735214697
| 3.85
| 210
| unknown
| Sep 12, 2017
|
it was amazing
|
I'm probably one of those who has not done a Tough Mudder, only Spartan (and Viper) Races, but identify more with the TM's 'all for one, one for all'
I'm probably one of those who has not done a Tough Mudder, only Spartan (and Viper) Races, but identify more with the TM's 'all for one, one for all' ethos. Especially interesting to hear how they redesigned obstacles like Everest to be only surmountable through teamwork (with the rounded top lip). The stories in between chapters are the true highlights though, from the state troopers running in memory of their fallen comrade, to the war veteran running the full course with only one arm and one leg, and many more inspiring stories that left me with that warm fuzzy feeling. Now I really want to do a TM. ___ There are certain people in life who make you want to be a better person. They hold themselves to such a standard that you want to raise your own standard just because you are around them. One of the questions we asked ourselves when we created TM was: "How do you create a culture and an authentic experience that will reliably deliver grit, a quality that people seem to crave but don't know how to find? This craving, this grit-shaped hole, feels like a recent phenomenon, perhaps a by-product of our fortune in living. Character in Oundle was about being prepared for any crisis and being at home in any social situation. Young men "who feel acceptable at a dance and invaluable in a shipwreck". Public speaking taught the author this lesson: He had done something truly petrifying to him, and come through. By doing genuinely challenging things one could change the way one thought of oneself and the perception of others. "Character building" is exactly what the phrase suggests: one formative brick of a challenging experience, however small, laid on top of another. At Harvard, the author discovered that there are few places on Earth that talk more engaging about the value of teamwork and show less interest in it in practice. The university selects the most competitive individuals from five continents and requires them to compete for two years. You can't control what people say about you or think about you, but you can control how you react - at which point being honest with your actions and motivations becomes the only thing that counts. "Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they're never weakness." -Brene Brown When you get negative publicity that you believe unfair, the day afterwards you feel: "Oh God what will everyone think of me?" Then you realise that the people who know you will think exactly the same of you as they did before. And the people who don't know you, you're not too concerned about anyway. Secrets of a 80-year-old kungfu master: 1. Sleep well. 2. Get together with your friends. 3. Laugh everyday. The Electroshock Therapy obstacle was certified "no more dangerous than a cow fence". Which is reassuring to the degree to which you are wary of cow fences. "I have been often struck by how people who have been high achievers academically have a disproportionate fear of failure and how this can make them overly inclined to fall back on tried and trusted procedures and products. A lot of these people rise to leadership positions by arguing against risk." If you're not making mistakes, there are only two possible outcomes, neither of which is good. The first possibility is that you are making mistakes and hiding them or are oblivious to them - and that's a big problem. The other possibility is that you are not pushing yourself to change and improve - which will quickly become a big problem down the line. Punishing honest mistakes kills creativity. People believe that in the recent past they have gone through a great deal of change, but when they look to the future they believe there will be a lot less. At whatever point we are in our lives we tend to regard the present as a watershed moment at which we have finally become the person we will always be. This is a fundamental mistake. We should never content ourselves with the familiar. If you are not growing, chances are you are dying. The crucial element of that self-selecting character that is often overlooked: Entrepreneurs find it almost impossible to do what they are told when the instruction seems arbitrary or perverse. A startup should not be a choice, but a psychological necessity. At the root of that psychology is a refusal to accept the status quo. Any entrepreneurial mission is nonnegotiable. The best test of any idea is the realisation that you will never be happy in your life until you have at least given it your best shot. Self-selection, not conversion. When you practice leadership, you learn that you can try to nurture a culture in which people feel they have a stake and which you hope they can thrive, but not everyone will seize that chance. The solution is not to modify the way you work so everyone feels at home, but to be consistent to the values that culture emphasises and try to communicate the reasons behind them. Values can't be tailored to fit everyone. What is lost in the online actions of slacktivism is the vulnerability and risk of putting ourselves out there. If there is no effort or cost in what we do, then there is also no reward when we succeed, and no lesson when we fail. It is often in those Ah, Fuck It moments, when we look outwards from the stresses of our lives, that new bonds and friendships are created and deepened, and tribes begin to form and creativity happens. If we look for every second to be purposeful and every hour to give us personal gains, we not only forget that the best of times usually happen unplanned, we stop being Givers, with all the benefits that flow from that. Control only gets you so far: sometimes we have to just close our eyes, jump into thin air, and trust that hands will be there to catch us. There is no finish line when creating a company. Any business must always think of itself as an unfinished business, and all proper work is work in progress. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jul 27, 2018
|
Aug 2018
|
Aug 03, 2018
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1760638269
| 9781760638269
| B074TWG8V7
| 3.98
| 88,431
| Dec 12, 2013
| Jan 04, 2018
|
it was amazing
|
Thought-provoking, like a dash of cold water to the face. Worth re-reading slowly to let the philosophical points percolate through the "self-acceptan
Thought-provoking, like a dash of cold water to the face. Worth re-reading slowly to let the philosophical points percolate through the "self-acceptance => confidence in others =>contribution to others => meaning and self-acceptance" framework set out in the last chapter. ___ The argument concerning traumas, that because something happened to you in the past the way you are is not your fault, is typical of aetiology (study of causation). However, to Adler, we are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining. We make of them whatever suits our purposes. Your life is something you choose yourself, and you are the one who decides how you live. The question isn't "what happened?" but "how was it resolved?" c.f. fuck your trauma It is okay for you to be you. I am not saying it's fine to be 'just as you are'. If you are unable to feel really happy, then it's clear that things aren't right just as they are. You've got to put one foot in front of the other, and not stop. "The important thing is not what one is born with, but what use one makes of that equipment." The Greek word for “good” (agathon) does not have a moral meaning. It just means “beneficial.” Conversely, the word for “evil” (kakon) means “not beneficial.” No one desires evil: something “not beneficial.” Being "the way I am", with all these shortcomings is, for you, a precious virtue, something that's to your benefit. It helps you realise your goal of not being hurt in your relationships with other people. All problems are interpersonal relationship problems. To get rid of your problems, all you can do is live in the universe all alone. But you can’t do that. Loneliness is having other people around you, and having a deep sense of being excluded from them. To feel lonely, we need other people. Internal worry does not exist. Whatever the worry that may arise, the shadows of other people are always present. Without people to compare yourself with, inferiority would not exist. But feelings of inferiority are always subjective interpretations. The good thing about subjectivity is that it allows you to make your own choice. The pursuit of superiority and the feeling of inferiority are stimulants to normal, healthy striving and growth. It is when they cease to stimulate action that they become complexes. One boasts because of a feeling of inferiority, a fear that without the boasting others would not accept one "as they are". Superiority and inferiority complexes border each other. The baby is the strongest person in our culture, the baby rules and cannot be dominated. The baby rules over adults with his weakness. When one is trying to be oneself, competition will inevitably get in the way. The terrifying thing about competition is that even if you're not a loser but a consistent winner, if you have placed yourself in competition you will never have a moment's peace. You don't want to be a loser. And you always have to keep on winning, you can't trust other people. The world becomes a perilous place overflowing with enemies. The moment you are convinced “I am right” in an interpersonal relationship, you have already stepped into a power struggle. If you think you are right, regardless of what other people’s opinions might be, the matter should be closed then and there. However, many people try to make others submit to them. Once one is released from the schema of competition, the need to triumph over someone disappears. One is also released from the fear that says, Maybe I will lose. One becomes able to celebrate other people's happiness with all one's heart. One may become able to contribute actively to other people's happiness. The person who always has the will to help another in times of need - that is someone who may properly be called your comrade. Admitting mistakes, conveying words of apology, and stepping down from power struggles - none of these things is defeat. The pursuit of superiority is not something that is carried out through competition with other people. When you're hung up on winning and losing you lose the ability to make the right choices. Adler does not accept restricting one's partner. Relationships in which people restrict each other eventually fall apart. When one can think, "Whenever I am with this person, I can behave very freely", one can really feel love. You must not run away. No matter how distressful the relationship, you must not avoid or put off dealing with it. Even if in the end you're going to cut it with scissors, first you have to face it. The worst thing you can do is to just stand still with the situation as it is. The simplest way to tell whose task it is: "who ultimately is going to receive the end result brought about by the choice that is made?" Whenever a parent tells a child they must study "for their own good", they are clearly doing so in order to fulfill their own goals (desire for control, to appear good in society, etc). In other words, for the parents' good, not the child's. And it is because the child senses this deception that they rebel. You believe in your partner, that is your task. But how that person acts with regard to your expectations and trust is other peoples' tasks. Intervening in other's tasks and taking on their tasks turns one's life into something heavy and full of hardship. All interpersonal relationship troubles are caused by intruding on other people’s tasks, or having your own tasks intruded upon. Intervening in other people’s tasks is essentially egocentric. How other people see you is their task. Because you have not performed the separation of tasks, you are worried about being judged by other people. A way of living in which one is constantly troubled by how one is seen by others is a self-centred lifestyle in which one's sole concern is with the "I". Forming good interpersonal relationships requires a certain degree of distance. Like you can't read a book if you push it up against your face, nor hold it too far away. There is no reason of any sort that you should not live your life as you please. To understand the community feeling that Adler speaks of, use "you and I" as the starting point. Make the switch from attachment to self (self-interest) to concern for others (social interest). In the act of praise, there is an aspect of it being "the passing of judgment by a person of ability on a person of no ability". This unconsciously creates a hierarchical relationship, putting the praiser beneath the praisee. One praises to manipulate. The feeling of inferiority arises within vertical relationships. If you can build horizontal relationships that are “equal but not the same” for all people, there will no longer be any room for inferiority complexes to emerge. A sense of belonging is something that one can attain only by making an active commitment to the community of one's accord, and not simply by being here. And it is when one is able to feel "I am beneficial to the community" that one can have a true sense of one's worth. The subjective feeling of contribution forms the basis of one feeling that they are of worth. Look at people on the level of being, not acts. Someone has to start. Other people might not be cooperative, but that is not connected to you. My advice is this: you should start. With no regard to whether others are cooperative or not. The basis of interpersonal relations is founded not on trust but on confidence. Confidence is doing without any set conditions whatsoever when believing in others - without concerning oneself with such things as security. There are people who will continue to have confidence in you no matter how they are treated. It is precisely because we lay a foundation of unconditional confidence that it is possible for us to build a deep relationship. Right now you are thinking "if I were to have confidence in someone unconditionally, I would just get taken advantage of." However you are not the one who decides whether or not to take advantage. That is the other person's task. All you need to do is think "What should I do?" If you are telling yourself, I'll give it to him if he isn't going to take advantage of me, it is just a relationship of trust that is based on security or conditions. If you are only concerned about the times you were taken advantage of, if you are afraid to have confidence in others, in the long run, you will not be able to build deep relationships with anyone. It is because one self accepts that one can have 'confidence in others' without the fear of being taken advantage of. And it is because one can place unconditional confidence in others, and feel that people are one's comrades, that one can engage in 'contribution to others'. Further it is because one contributes to others that one can have the deep awareness that "I am of use to someone", and accept oneself just as one is. A Jewish anecdote: "If there are ten people, one will be someone who criticises you no matter what you do. This person will come to dislike you, and you will not learn to like him either. Then, there will be two others who accept everything about you and whom you accept too, and you will become close friends with them. The remaining seven people will be neither of these types. Now who do you focus on? A person who is lacking in harmony of life will see only the one person he dislikes, and will make a judgement of the world from that. Happiness is the feeling of contribution. Contribution that is carried out who one is seeing other people as enemies may indeed lead to hypocrisy. But if other people are one's comrades that should never happen, regardless of the contributions one makes. If one really has a feeling of contribution, one will no longer have any need for recognition from others. Because one will already have the real awareness that "I am of use to someone" without needing to go out of one's way to be acknowledged by others. In other words, a person obsessed with the desire for recognition does not have any community feeling yet. The fact that you think you can see the past, or predict the future, is proof that rather than living earnestly in the here and now, you are living in a dim twilight. You are trying to give yourself a way out by focusing on the past and the future. What happened in the past has nothing whatsoever to do with your here and now, and what the future may hold is not a matter to think about here and now. To shine a spotlight on here and now is to go about doing what one can do now, earnestly and conscientiously. Why is it necessary to be special? Be normal. You do not need to flaunt your superiority. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jul 29, 2018
|
Aug 2018
|
Jul 27, 2018
|
Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||
| 0062372416
| 9780062372413
| 0062372416
| 3.75
| 874
| Feb 24, 2015
| Feb 24, 2015
|
liked it
|
Since this is a collection of blog posts the bite sized chapters are never more than 4-5 pages long. The points are illustrated through examples drawn
Since this is a collection of blog posts the bite sized chapters are never more than 4-5 pages long. The points are illustrated through examples drawn from Bregman's personal and professional experiences, and do serve to underscore the ideas expounded. Easy to read, easy to forget too. Urges hold useful information. If you're hungry, it may be a good indication you need to eat. But it also be an indication that you're bored or struggling with a difficult piece of work. Meditation gives you practice having power over your urges so you can make intentional choices about which to follow and which to let pass. SMART goals often lead to either cheating or myopia. Instead of identifying goals, consider identifying areas of focus. When you are stressed by unmet expectations, you can either try to change reality or your expectations. But you very rarely win fights with reality, and if you do they are often pyrrhic victories. If changing expectations is too hard, try getting some perspective instead (in the grand scheme of things how bad is this, really?) Motivation is in the mind, follow through is in the practice. The mind is essential to motivation (wanting to do something), but gets in the way of actually doing it. If you want to get something done, become a busy person. Don't empty your schedule, fill it. The busier you are, the less time you have to get in your own way. "When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable. If past experience or data suggests that multiple solutions are possible but none are reliably successful, nothing may be the best strategy. It's not a performance, it's an experience. Constantly complete the sentence: "This is what it feels like to..." #Arminvanbuuren Experiment with an open mind, try and fail, willingly accept any outcome. The best performers are lifelong learners, and the definition of a lifelong learner is someone who is constantly trying new things. Fight the urge to fill every empty moment in your day, especially if you need to be creative for a task. Best ideas often come to us when we are being unproductive. Seems contradictory to the one above about filling your calendar?? Arrogance is thinking you're better than everyone else, which is often a protective mechanism born from insecurity when you don't feel good about yourself. When you love yourself, you won't need to feel better than anyone else, you'll simply feel good about yourself. Time management isn't primarily about using minutes well, it's about using yourself well. And that means spending time in your sweet spot, the intersection of your strengths, weaknesses, differences, and passions. Have a plan for how to handle situations, a thought/decision making process, rather than a contingency for every possible permutation or development. Don't let how something was communicated (e.g. text) distract from the content of the message, and the subtext. What if we chose to not miss opportunities to be inspired by others, rather than fixate on ways people disappoint us? "[on a two-faced friend] I'm too tired to be angry every time someone does something I don't like. And I don't want to be alienated from everyone. I enjoy him for his other attributes. But I know what to expect from him." Blame is a bad idea because it prevents learning. If something isn't your fault, there's no reason for you to do anything differently. When someone defies your expectations, don't get mad. Just adjust your mental models to more accurately align with reality. When you find yourself frustrated with someone, ask yourself: "What can I do or say that will help them?" Start from where they are, not where you are. The learning from failure (and avoidance of future failures) only comes once they feel okay about themselves after failing. And that feeling comes from empathy. Not coaching or pep talking or blaming. Just being with the person in their difficult place. Always give appreciation with no demands. Or end up demotivating people. Saying thank you doesn't just acknowledge someone's effort, thoughtfulness, intent, or actions. It acknowledges the other person. Acknowledging other people is the critical skill of a good manager, or even a good person. People learn by taking risks, reaching outside their comfort zone, stepping into roles that are too big, making mistakes and correcting them. That means in the short term their performance will go down if they're learning. But rank people and you end up penalising them for taking more challenges. You're sending the message "If you want to get paid well, stop learning." Learning anything requires doing it wrong then adjusting. And if you mollycoddle someone from doing things wrongly at all, they can't learn. Timing the save is the sweet spot between micromanagement and neglect. Humility isn't just an attitude, it is a skill. The most effective people are highly confident (they know they add significant value) and manifestly humble (they recognise the immense value added by those around them). "I'm important. At least as important as everyone else. If you want to turn someone's negativity around, validate their feelings first. As long as what you say comes from your care and support for the other person - not your sympathy (which feels patronising) or your power (which feels humiliating) or your anger (which feels abusive) - choosing to offer a critical insight to another is a deeply considerate act. Following the no powerpoint rule for meetings has the greatest impact because it keeps the energy where it should be: solving problems together. Well run meetings are unpredictable, and that's ok. See every solution as temporary and every tool as potentially valuable and potentially fleeting. This makes it easier to commit to, easier to implement, and easier to let go when appropriate. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jul 25, 2018
|
Jul 27, 2018
|
Jul 27, 2018
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0062236709
| 9780062236708
| 0062236709
| 3.64
| 469
| Aug 11, 2015
| Jan 05, 2016
|
liked it
|
Generally agree with the message of the book, which is care for each other, and start with yourself. Form a community, question the status quo, build
Generally agree with the message of the book, which is care for each other, and start with yourself. Form a community, question the status quo, build your own life. My main beef with it is that it's very Ameri-centric. Still, a worthy goal to strive towards, especially personal community. ___ Shifting from self-help to each-other help gives you a deeper, wider and more satisfying idea of what success means. The time when "you have to grow up" is actually the time many of us stunt our own growth. Because we decide that we are too scared to go our own way. We force ourselves to forget that life is magical. We learn to override ourselves. It's okay to desire things for yourself if you point the energy of that desire in a direction that will help others. Use your karma to help the world. The surprising result of No Impact Man was learning that we don't have to deprive ourselves for the sake of the world. It is not about not wanting things, but simply learning to want the things that actually make us happy. Nurturing wisdom, not suppressing desire. Lifequesters are the people who have begun or are ready to begin the search for the kind of life choices that are both true to themselves and to the world. Ask yourself: "Is the world your stories are creating the one you actually want to live in?" Call out your limiting stories. Ask yourself what is stopping you from being more heroic, from changing your life in the way you want to, from making a difference. Often, we suffer not because of what is, but because of our stories about what is. Ask yourself then: "Who would I be, without that story?" To deny our individual agency is to refuse to be the hand of God or the universe or any other force for good. There is no movement towards utopia without our participation. Two components of a good life: Security and Meaning. Security is what you need to be alive, safe, healthy and comfortable. It comes from what you get from the world through your relationships. Meaning is the buzz you get from being alive, and includes self-expression, the ability to change things, adventure, and service, all of which come from what you give to the world through your relationships. When you find yourself alienated from society's stories and standard life approaches, you are not supposed to leave society, you are supposed to lead it. Whoever's fault it mostly is, yours is the only part we can actually change. Part of the essence of optimism is holding a vision of the world we want to live in. Give thanks for a wonderful world and help that wonderfulness spread to others. The key to economic prosperity is the organised creation of dissatisfaction. With money you can so easily buy isolation. Conversely, when you don't have money you start to be more aware of the interdependence of people. The research shows that people who grow up in insecure circumstances turn to materialistic goals. Research by Tim Kasser suggests that being in the presence of "a person who clearly likes you, tends to be very accepting and non-evaluative of you, and simply accepts you for who you are" causes a shift away from extrinsic values and towards intrinsic values. Americans eat 48 pints of ice cream per person per year, and 2/3s of Americans most frequently eat their ice cream in front of the TV or the couch. Food itself cannot give comfort. Comfort at a meal comes when someone you love sits and eats with you and talks to you and listens to you and cares for you. To train your self-reliance muscles do things that show you are capable of meeting your own challenges, like growing and choosing and cooking your own food, or walking/biking. Ownership is a good paradigm for things we use all the time and want no one else to use. The standard relationship with stuff - long-term ownership - makes the stuff less effective in bringing us happiness because of its storage and upkeep cost. Renting or borrowing can let you enjoy stuff without the downside of owning it. Never plan to shop with your friends as a social activity, you simply end up buying things you don't need when you just wanted to spend time with your friends. The quality of your commute can be as important to your overall life satisfaction as having a life partner or child. Solo drivers are the least happy of all commuters. A government or society acts a certain way only as long as the people who participate in it agree to follow the rules. Beginning or committing more fully to one's lifequest has a great fear. The fear that we will no longer be acceptable to those around us, that we won't be loved and liked, and that we won't be supportable. By stripping off our masks, we break our promises to our groups about who we will be. This is one reason why the heroic act of becoming your True Self is such an act of bravery. It is to venture into the unknown and the vulnerability of demonstrating parts of yourself that your groups have not agreed to accept. Social integration in a personal community and spending time with unconnected best friends or a partner can't replace each other. Interconnectedness makes us feel safer (by knowing you'll be taken care of), which in turn helps our bodies and brains function better (lower stress levels). When we are not with our group, loneliness predisposes our brains and bodies to believe that any stranger we encounter is a potential threat. This is how loneliness breeds loneliness. When setting up your personal community: the key word is to diversify. Don't have too many colleagues who might disappear if you changed job. Don't have only friends and family of your romantic partner, which stifles richness and is putting all your eggs in one basket. Don't be the only person of your type (e.g. gay, parent), you will spend forever explaining your needs. Don't have only one of each type of friend. Mix the network with people of different ages, employment situations. Don't let the community stagnate. There is a biological drive to nurture creatures weaker than ourselves. This nurturant bonding systems involving oxytocin and dopamine is part of why we love puppies and kittens and babies so much. Being a child's primary caregiver requires nonmentoring activities like doing their laundry and working to support them, unlike when you parent other peoples' kids. Douglas Steere - The question "who am I" inevitably leads to a deeper one, "whose am I?" because there is no identity outside of relationship. You can't be a person by yourself. Let yourself wander. Then build your corral where you find yourself staying. At all times a simple question rose in his mind: "Given my situation, how can I help?" If delusions are endless, why get upset about the fact that we are deluded? If I can avoid being inside fucked up - if I can accept the noise - then I won't have to put my energy into trying to change what can't be changed: being human. I will have freedom. Use whatever argument you are most passionate about. Because it may not be what they can hear best, but it is what you can say best. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jul 23, 2018
|
Aug 04, 2018
|
Jul 23, 2018
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0345816048
| 9780345816047
| B01FPGY5T0
| 3.92
| 235,135
| Jan 16, 2018
| Jan 23, 2018
|
really liked it
|
Packed with quotable quotes. However it is verbose and meandering, and is a book that ought to be savoured, not skimmed. And revisited occasionally. F
Packed with quotable quotes. However it is verbose and meandering, and is a book that ought to be savoured, not skimmed. And revisited occasionally. Full book notes on blog. ___ The story of the golden calf reminds us that without rules we quickly become slaves to our passions, and that there's nothing freeing about that. Unchaperoned and left to our own untutored judgment we are quick to aim low and worship qualities beneath us. Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues in power are always dangerous, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence. The study of virtue is not quite the same as the study of morals (right and wrong, good and evil). Aristotle's virtues simply are the ways of behaving most conducive to the happiness in life. Cultivating judgment about the difference between vice and virtue is the beginning of wisdom, something that can never be out of date. Telling people you're virtuous isn't virtue, it is self-promotion. Virtue signalling isn't virtue, it is quite possibly our commonest vice. The foremost rule is that you must take responsibility for your own life. Stretching yourself beyond the boundaries of your current self requires carefully choosing and then pursuing ideals: ideals that are up there, above you - and that you can't always be sure you'll reach. People who live by the same code are rendered mutually predictable to one another, acting in keeping with each other's expectations and desires. We experience much of our positive emotion in relation to goals. Dominance hierarchies have been an essentially permanent feature of the environment to which all complex life has adapted. A third of a billion years ago. Longer than trees have been around. The physical demands of emergency preparedness will wear you down in every way. Waking up at a consistent hour is a necessity. The systems that mediate negative emotion are tightly tied to the properly cyclical circadian rhythms. Many clients have reduced their anxiety to subclinical levels merely because they started to sleep on a predictable schedule and eat breakfast. Our anxiety systems are very practical, assuming anything you ran away from was dangerous. The proof, that you ran away. Anxiety induced retreat makes the self smaller and the ever-more-dangerous world bigger. People who refuse to muster self-protective territorial responses are laid open to exploitation as much as those who genuinely can’t stand up for their own rights. Standing up physically also implies and invokes and demands standing up metaphysically. Standing up means voluntarily accepting the burden of Being. People are better at filling in and properly administering prescription medicine to their pets than to themselves. Chaos is where we are when we don’t know where we are, and what we are doing when we don’t know what we are doing. It is all those things and situations we neither know nor understand. Order is the place where the behaviour of the world matches our expectations, when things turn out the way we want them to. But it is sometimes tyranny and stultification. We evolved over millenia within intensely social circumstances. This means that the most significant elements of our environment were personalities, not things, objects or situations. We eternally inhabit order, surrounded by chaos. We eternally occupy known territory, surrounded by the unknown. We experience meaningful engagement when we mediate appropriately between them. When life suddenly reveals itself as intense, gripping and meaningful; when time passes and you’re so engrossed in what you’re doing you don’t notice - it is there and then that you are located precisely on the border between order and chaos. Order is not enough. Therein lies stagnation. But chaos can be too much, one can't tolerate being swamped and overwhelmed beyond one's capacity to learn. The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. The worst of all possible snakes is psychological, spiritual, personal, internal. No wall, however tall, will keep that out. It is far better to render Beings within your care competent than to protect them. If not, another danger would emerge: that of permanent human infantilism and absolute uselessness. Do you want to make your children safe, or strong? Old stories contain nothing superfluous. Anything accidental - anything that does not serve the plot - has long been forgotten in the telling. We know exactly how and where we can be hurt, and why. That is as good a definition as any of self-consciousness. We are aware of our own defencelessness, finitude and mortality. Only man will inflict suffering for the sake of suffering. That is the best definition of evil I can formulate. Many people have the opposite problem: they shoulder intolerable burdens of self-disgust, self-contempt, shame and self-consciousness. These people often don’t really believe that they deserve the best care. Instead of narcissistically inflating their own importance, they don’t value themselves. It is not virtuous to be victimized by a bully, even if that bully is oneself. To stand up to the bully that is yourself is to embrace and love the sinner who is yourself, as much as forgiving and aiding someone else who is stumbling and imperfect. You are important to other people, as much as to yourself. You are therefore morally obliged to take care of yourself. If I am someone’s friend, family member, or lover, then I am morally obliged to bargain as hard on my own behalf as they are on theirs. If I fail to do so, I will end up a slave, and the other person a tyrant. Intelligence is in large part the ability to learn and transform. People create their worlds with the tools they have directly at hand. Faulty tools produce faulty results. Not everyone who is failing is a victim. Not everyone at the bottom wishes to rise. The person who tries and fails, and is forgiven, and then tries again and fails, and is forgiven, is also too often the person who wants everyone to believe in the authenticity of all that trying. A villain who despairs of his villany has not become a hero. A hero is something positive, not just the absence of evil. Place a delinquent teen among comparatively civilized peers. The delinquency spreads, not the stability. Down is a lot easier than up. Maybe you are saving someone because it's easier to look virtuous when standing alongside someone utterly irresponsible. Assume first you are doing the easiest thing, not the most difficult. Are you enabling a delusion? Is it possible that your contempt would be more helpful than your pity? If you buy the story that everything terrible just happened on its own, with no personal responsibility on the part of the victim, you deny that person all agency in the past (and, by implication, in the present and future, as well). In this manner, you strip him or her of all power. It is not the existence of vice, or indulgence in it, that requires explanation. Vice is easy. Peace is not. The desire to improve is the precondition for progress. Loyalty must be negotiated, fairly and honestly. Friendship is a reciprocal arrangement. When you dare aspire upward, you reveal the inadequacy of the present and the promise of the future. Then you disturb others, in the depths of their souls, where they understand that their cynicism and immobility are unjustifiable. Failure is the price we pay for standards and, because mediocrity has consequences both real and harsh, standards are necessary. If the cards are always stacked against you, perhaps the game you are playing is somehow rigged - perhaps by you. The idea of a value-free choice is a contradiction in terms. Value judgments are a precondition for action. Furthermore, every activity, once chosen, comes with its own internal standards of accomplishment. If something can be done at all, it can be done better or worse. Winning at everything might only mean that you’re not doing anything new or difficult. You might be winning but you’re not growing, and growing might be the most important form of winning. Dare to be truthful. Dare to articulate yourself, and express what would really justify your life. Consult your resentment. It’s a revelatory emotion, for all its pathology. Resentment always means one of two things. Either the resentful person is immature, in which case he or she should shut up, quit whining, and get on with it. Or is being taken advantage of (or allowing yourself to be taken advantage of). We live within a framework that defines the present as eternally lacking and the future as eternally better. If we did not see things this way, we would not act at all. The downside to all this foresight and creativity is chronic unease and discomfort. Much of happiness is hope, no matter how deep in the underworld this hope was conceived. You must be cautious, because making your life better means adopting a lot of responsibility, and that takes more effort and care than living stupidly in pain and remaining arrogant, deceitful and resentful. Obedience is not sufficient. But a person capable of obedience, of discipline, is at least a well-forged tool. Of course, there must be vision, beyond discipline and dogma. A tool still needs a purpose. It is that declaration of existential faith and keep hatred of Being at bay. Such faith is not at all the will to believe things that you know perfectly well to be false. It is instead the realisation that the tragic irrationalities of life must be counterbalanced by an equally irrational commitment to the essential goodness of Being. It is simultaneously the will to dare set your sights at the unachievable, and to sacrifice everything, including your life. “What is it that is bothering me?” “Is that something I could fix?” “Would I actually be willing to fix it?” If you find that the answer is “no,” to any or all of the questions, then look elsewhere. Aim lower. Search until you find something that bothers you, that you could fix, that you would fix, and then fix it. That might be enough for the day. The people from whom thanks you want might not be very proficient in offering it, to begin with, but that shouldn't stop you. People can learn, even if they are very unskilled at the beginning. There is evil to overcome, suffering to ameliorate, and yourself to better. I cite Wikipedia because it is collectively written and edited and therefore the perfect place to find accepted wisdom. The appearance of triviality is deceptive: it is the things that occur every single day that truly make up our lives, and time spent the same way over and over again adds up at an alarming rate. It’s not for the best that all human corruption is uncritically laid at society’s feet. That conclusion merely displaces the problem, back in time. It explains nothing, and solves no problems. If society is corrupt, but not the individuals within it, then where did the corruption originate? How is it propagated? It’s a one-sided, deeply ideological theory. Chimpanzees conduct inter-tribal warfare, with almost unimaginable brutality. Even dogs must be socialized if they are to become acceptable members of the pack - and children are much more complex than dogs. This means that they are much more likely to go complexly astray if they are not trained, disciplined and properly encouraged. Children can be damaged as much or more by a lack of incisive attention as they are by abuse. This is damage by omission rather than commission, but is no less severe and long-lasting. A child will have many friends, but only two parents. Friends have very limited authority to correct. Parents are the arbiters of society. They teach children how to behave so that other people will be able to interact meaningfully and productively with them. It is an act of responsibility to discipline a child. Violence is no mystery, it is the default. Peace is the mystery. Scared parents often think that a crying child is always sad or hurt. Not true. Anger is a common reasons for crying. Much more of our sanity than we commonly realize is a consequence of our fortunate immersion in a social community. Some children are agreeable. They deeply want to please, but pay for that with a tendency to be conflict-averse and dependent. Bad laws drive out respect for good laws. So, don’t encumber children with too many rules. The ethical equivalent of Occam's Razor. Parents should understand their own capacity to be harsh, vengeful, arrogant, resentful, angry and deceitful. Very few people set out, consciously, to do a terrible job as a parent, but bad parenting happens all the time. The primary duty of parents is to make their children socially desirable. That will provide the child with opportunity, self-regard, and security. It is possible to learn good by experiencing evil. Abuse disappears across generations. That's a testament to the genuine dominance of good over evil in the human heart. A hurricane is an act of God. But failure to prepare, when the necessity for preparation is well known - that’s sin. Stop saying those things that make you weak and ashamed. Say only those things that make you strong. Do only those things that you could speak of with honour. Life is short and you don't have time to figure out everything on your own. The wisdom of the past was hard-earned, and your dead ancestors may have something useful to tell you. The discovery of the causal relationship between our efforts today and the quality of tomorrow motivated the social contract. The act of making a ritual sacrifice to God was an early and sophisticated enactment of the idea of the usefulness of delay. The realisation that pleasure could be forestalled dawned on us with great difficulty. It runs absolutely contrary to ancient, fundamental animal instincts. To share does not mean to give away something you value, and get nothing back. That is only what every child who refuses to share fears it means. To share means, properly, to initiate the process of trade. Those who can't share can't have friends, because having friends is a form of trade. Christ's portrayal as the purveyor of endless sustenance says: live as the archetypal Saviour lives, and you and those around you will hunger no more. Problems that are solved disappear from view. The fact that automobiles pollute only becomes a problem of sufficient magnitude to attract public attention when the far worse problems that the internal combustion engine solves has vanished from view. People stricken with poverty don’t care about carbon dioxide. For Nietzsche and Dostoevsky alike, freedom - and even the ability to act - requires constraint. For this reason, they both realised the vital necessity of the dogma of the Church. Jung's great discovery - we cannot invent our own values, because we cannot merely impose what we believe on our souls. We must discover our unique nature, and contend with it, before making peace with ourselves. Expedience: That’s avoiding responsibility. It’s cowardly, and shallow, and wrong. There is no faith and no courage and no sacrifice in doing what is expedient. What can I not doubt? The reality of suffering. It brooks no arguments. Untruth, however well meant, can produce unintended consequences. Someone living a life-lie is attempting to manipulate reality with perception, thought and action, so that only some narrowly-defined outcome is allowed to exist. It is based on two premises, that current knowledge is sufficient to define what is good, far into the future. the second is that reality would be unbearable if left to its own devices. She's afraid of opening Pandora's box, where all the troubles of the world reside. But hope is in there, too. Someone hiding is someone not vital. Vitality requires original contribution. If you betray yourself, you weaken your character. If you have a weak character, then adversity will mow you down when it appears, as it will, inevitably. A vision of the future, the desirable future, is necessary. Such a vision links action taken now with important, long-term, foundational values. It lends actions in the present significance. Willful blindness is the refusal to know something that could be known. It avails itself of easy rationalisations. Error necessitates sacrifice to correct it, and serious error necessitates serious sacrifice. To accept the truth means to sacrifice, and if you've rejected the truth for a long time, that's a big debt you've built up. Lies warp the structure of Being. Rationality is subject to the single worst temptation - to raise what it knows now to the status of an absolute. That means denial of the necessity for courageous individual confrontation with Being. What is going to save you? The totalitarian says: "You must rely on faith in what you already know." But that is not what saves. What saves is the willingness to learn from what you don't know. That is faith in the possibility of human transformation. Milton believed that stubborn refusal to change in the face of error not only meant ejection from heaven, and subsequent degeneration into hell, but the rejection of redemption itself. Everyone needs a concrete, specific goal - an ambition, and a purpose. An aim provides a destination. An aim defines progress and makes such progress exciting. An aim reduces anxiety because if you have no aim everything can mean anything or nothing. We must be precise in our aim. Absent that, we drown in the complexity of the world. All people serve their ambition. In that matter, there are no atheists. There are only people who know, and don't know, what God they serve. The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability rather than status and power. Status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity. All such concrete goals can and should be subordinated to a meta-goal, which is a way of approaching and formulating goals themselves. The meta-goal could be "live in truth". In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. that is what makes it Paradise. Alcohol can cause ambiguity. That's partly why people drink. Alcohol temporarily lifts the terrible burden of self-consciousness from people. Drunk people know about the future, but they don't care about it. That's exciting. that's exhilarating. People are often willing to produce a lot of collateral damage if they can retain their theory. It is our responsibility to see what is before our eyes, courageously, and to learn from it, even if it seems horrible. The act of seeing is particularly important when it challenges what we know and rely on, upsetting and destabilising us. The Word that produces order from Chaos sacrifices everything ,even itself, to God. That single sentence, wise beyond comprehension, sums up Christianity. Every bit of learning is a little death. Every bit of new information challenges a previous conception, forcing it to dissolve into chaos before it can be reborn as something better. Advice is what you get when the person you’re talking with about something horrible and complicated wishes you would just shut up and go away. Advice is what you get when the person you are talking to wants to revel in the superiority of his or her own intelligence. Memory is the past’s guide to the future. If you remember that something bad happened, and you can figure out why, then you can try to avoid that bad thing happening again. That’s the purpose of memory. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jun 22, 2018
|
Jul 16, 2018
|
Jul 11, 2018
|
Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||
| 0060834064
| 9780060834067
| 0060834064
| 3.49
| 1,685
| Feb 01, 2005
| Apr 05, 2006
|
really liked it
|
Don Juan: "There are only four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what
Don Juan: "There are only four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same: only love." Scrolling down the reviews and I haven't found a single guy who read this. This book came to my attention after I read Kerner's other more well-known work (She Comes First) and thought it would be interesting to explore other perspectives. I was not disappointed. The story at the end from his wife was also an amusing read. The dream: "When it works, it's easy. He wants to see you. You want to see him. There are not doubts, excuses, maybes, or buts. You don't have to analyse the relationship. There are no games." ___ "Are you waiting for someone?" "Yeah I'm seeing this guy and he said he'd stop by, and I know I look like a real idiot, but I'm really into him." He shook his head and said: "But you're so beautiful, and you seem intelligent. Why would you do this to yourself? If you can't get his act together to come here then you're obviously way too good for him. Why are you wasting your time?" I nodded contemplatively and then did what all girls do when struck with an insight this intense and on-target: ordered another vodka tonic and went out onto the sidewalk to see if he was coming. The cure is simple, universally effective, and yet strangely elusive. It can be as hard to locate as the flu vaccine, but when you find it, your sense of well being sets in almost immediately. What is this magical antidote? Pride. The reason pride can be so elusive for women is because it often comes hand in hand with accepting that things weren't meant to be, and accepting this can be painful, depressing, and lonely. But the sadness fades. The recovery never takes nearly as long as the months of floundering in nonrelationships. What has struck me most over the past year or so is not the inability of women to read men's all-too-clear signs of relative disinterest but women's passive decisions to sleep with, date, and ultimately fall in love with men they never really liked in the first place. Women sleep with men for a variety of reasons that have little to do with their libido. If you're aware of this, great. Go for it. Just be prepared to deal with the consequences that may arise. But if you're looking to repair your self-esteem or exorcise the ghosts of boyfriends past through casual sex, you're probably setting yourself up for a disappointment. The point is this: You can treat sex lightly but it doesn't reciprocate. Sex matters. There are biological and evolutionary forces at work every time you have sex, so just be honest with yourself about why you're doing it in the first place. From a purely orgasmic point of view, women in relationships fare far better than single women. Unlike corporate executives and politicians, your orgasms never lie. They tell you the truth about a sexual encounter, whether you want to know it or not. If there's nothign to attach to, if there's no deeper emotional content or meaningfulness, orgasm becomes a reminder of the hollowness of the sex that preceded it (post-orgasm regret). This typically manifests itself as sadness or anger. Sex is powerful stuff and one of the downsides of having it casually is that it devalues a core component of the courtship process: what I tend to call the dance. Not to say you can't have casual sex, fall in love, and live happily ever after, but it's less likely, and certainly more of a challenge, when you consider how we're wired. The truth is that nature rigged our wiring long before contraception and the sexual revolution overhauled the system. Three types of erections: Psychogenic erection - produced by erotic stimuli (mainly audio and visual), the "brain erection". Reflect erection - produced by direct genital stimulation, the "body erection". Nocturnal erections - occur spontaneously during REM cycles. the "morning wood". Men are more able to compartmentalise love and sex, which allows them to have sex without emotion. But that does not mean they don't want the emotion. Men may be more easily aroused but that does not make them any less fundamentally interested in romantic or emotionally based love. Art is the lie that tells the truth - Picasso. Let the thing (in-the-meantime relationship) speak for you and eventually ir will speak for itself. The image will become the truth, leaving the motivation underlying it far behind and forgotten. Many of us have never spent any significant period of time alone. We go from our families to college to roommates and into relationships. We're become good at dealing with others but often at the expense of learning how to deal with ourselves. And in today's interconnected technology-driven landscape, we can easily avoid that sort of internal dialogue and introspection that forces self-reflection and -realisation. Magazines like Playboy are created for the male gaze, and magazines like Cosmo are created for women who view themselves through the male gaze. Women have internalised the male gaze, and it follows them everywhere. This leads many women to a crisis in confidence, whereby their value is based on the judgment of all men, echoed by the man they happen to be dating. If they are not dating anybody, the problem intensifies. The trade-off for trying to be so independent is that you've meanwhile missed your chance to find a man. The good ones were swept up by the more conservative girls, and now all you can do is lower your standards or stay single forever. But let me just say this to all of you loud and clear: Bullshit! According to Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, codirector of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers U, women who wait longer to marry are more mature, more financially secure, and have a better sense of who they could happily spend their lives with than those who marry early. I came to understand that commitment-phobes are not only unable to commit to "yes", they are also incapable of committing to the "no." They keep the door open, giving their partners false hope. The only thing worse than being single and miserable is being married and miserable. If you lower your standards now, you'll be paying for it in years to come. Michelle realises she should probably have stuck to her guns and declined the invitation. She realised that she and Cathy had nothing in common, and it's not worth putting yourself into situations where she has to feign interest or emotion. Trust yourself. Trust your instincts. Don't get wrapped up in finding or keeping a man, resorting to rules and tactics and playing the numbers game. Learn to stop succumbing to the pressure to achieve coupledom. That way, when the real thing comes along, you will be ready, willing, and able to jump in with both feet, not caught on some infernal treadmill where you wouldn't know the real thing if it slapped you in the fanny pack. Love at first sight is a false conceit; people confuse it for chemistry, which, while important, is just a fraction of what makes a relationship work. When it works, it's easy. He wants to see you. You want to see him. There are no doubts, excuses, maybes, or buts. You don't have to analyse the relationship. There are no games. I realised that love is sort of like that song (Sesame Street: "one of these things doesn't belong") - you need to know what belongs and what doesn't but you can only do that by really knowing yourself. All of my life I had settled for people who didn't belong. It took a while but I finally found the one who truly belongs. And if I can do it, so can you. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jun 14, 2018
|
Jun 18, 2018
|
Jun 18, 2018
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0399583602
| 9780399583605
| 0399583602
| 4.02
| 3,363
| Apr 01, 2017
| Apr 04, 2017
|
really liked it
|
Written in a casual, humourous style which makes for easy reading on a subject that can be technical, Winter breaks down what good sleep looks like (p
Written in a casual, humourous style which makes for easy reading on a subject that can be technical, Winter breaks down what good sleep looks like (phases, chemicals involved etc.) and lays out clear tips on how to restore equilibrium and a good night's rest. ___ Sleep is a neurological state, so when it comes to sleep, the brain is where it's at. Long-term poor sleep is like bad cosmetic surgery, risky, costly and not pretty. One behaviourial change you can implement right now that could reduce your risk of developing Alzheimer's disease is simply to sleep on your side. (glymphatic system works better at removing amyloid beta in that position, least for rodents) Going to bed early: beauty sleep. Staying up late: booty sleep. If you sleep well, feel well, and don't have symptoms of excessive sleepiness, whatever amount of sleep you are getting is probably okay. If you are not averaging enough sleep for your brain to function correctly during the day; like a drunk teenager, your brain essentially takes the car keys from your free will, and says, "you're pathetic. I'm driving now and you're no longer in control of when we sleep." With that, your brain starts acting like a real jerk, demanding sleep all the time. Now you're falling asleep in waiting rooms, while you're driving, during intercourse, and in all kinds of interesting situations. A nap in the afternoon is fine as long as it does not affect your ability to sleep at night. It can also be recommended when your nighttime sleep is efficient yet despite this you still feel sleepy. A nap is typically intended to complement or enhance an efficient night of sleep. *It is not meant to make up for lost sleep when the sleeper had the opportunity to sleep but did not.* Fatigue refers to a lack of energy, rather than a desire to sleep. You can be fatigued or sleepy or both. True sleepiness is caused by 1 of 3 things: medication, sleep deprivation, or sleep dysfunction. Light sleep is the transition phase between wakefulness and deep sleep (the most restorative sleep). Light sleep is also the gateway to dream sleep (REM sleep). During dreaming, your body completely suspends the fundamental and complicated function of temperature regulation. Deep sleep is restorative because it is the time of greatest growth hormone production. The ninety minute cycle lifehack is an average, different people can have different sleep cycle lengths. It qualifies as total horseshit. Just sleep whatever length is enough for you. The processes in our brain that control sleepiness are distinct from those that control wakefulness. Sleep is not just the absence of wakefulness (mainly histamine, also dopamine and orexin). There is also the presence of sleepiness (adenosine, melatonin). This is the reason anti-histamines induce drowsiness. Many people with insomnia sleep better in hotels or when visiting other people, as the anxiety inducing cues of their usual bedroom are not there. The cues create pressure to sleep, which creates vigilance and the inability to initiate sleep. Anxiety makes the world go round. I want my president to worry about things. I want my accountant to be an anxious guy. I don't want my surgeon to be a laid-back individual. I want her to be one tense bundle of nerves. Zeitgebers (time cues) help to set our internal clock everyday. The sun is the strongest, others include mealtimes, exercise, social interactions, temperature, and sleep. When these zeitgebers experience sudden change (e.g. jet lag or shift work), unplesantness results. You may have difficulty sleeping or feel sleepy, digestive issues, or impaired concentration. Every day your body can adjust one time zone. Shift workers, on average, lose 6 hours of sleep a week compared to non-shift workers. The bed is for two things, sleep and sex. By this rule, if your partner is preventing your sleep from happening in the bedroom (reading with a bright light, snoring, etc.) there's a problem. If your sleep isn't happening because your partner is trying to have sex with you, you might need to work on communicating more effectively. Sleeping separately (some or all of the time) could be a possible solution. It is not necessarily a sign of lack of love or commitment. Everyone has to right to sleep well and not be deprive of a good night's sleep. Nicotine and caffeine are stimulants, keeping you awake and worsening the quality of your sleep when you eventually do sleep. Try to not have caffeine (coffee, chocolate, tea) within six hours of going to bed. Alcohol worsens sleep quality, makes you wake up more at night, and may magically produce surprise bed partners in the morning. It produces sedation, not sleep. It also promotes amnesia, a common criterion for people jduging a good night of sleep. High GI foods produce sleepiness, if you're looking for a late night snack. The true definition of insomnia consists of two components: A person who is not sleeping when they want to sleep, and the person cares, usually a lot, about not sleeping, whether or not they want to admit it. Fear is a central component of insomnia. When you talk with good sleepers, they all have a "whatever, dude" mentality toward their sleep. Within them is an inner belief that they are basically going to be okay no matter what happens to them in bed. Remember, never try to sleep. Don't make sleep disturbances a defining characteristic of your life. Despite extreme levels of sleep deprivation and sleepiness, doctors on call functioned surprisingly well. To feel great, you don't have to sleep well. You just to believe you do! Unfortunately the converse is true as well. Simple sedating someone does not induce deep, restorative sleep. Sleeping pills are appropriate when they are used in a specific situation for a specific purpose. These include acutely stressful situations, jet lag, and shift work difficulties. They should be used for only a limited time. The single most important thing to achieving successful sleep is to have a consistent wake up time. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 28, 2018
|
Jun 2018
|
May 28, 2018
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 039956215X
| 9780399562150
| 039956215X
| 3.73
| 207
| Apr 25, 2017
| Apr 25, 2017
|
it was amazing
|
This book resonated with me, with its emphasis on values first, the section on good mentoring, and prioritising connection over competence. We are all
This book resonated with me, with its emphasis on values first, the section on good mentoring, and prioritising connection over competence. We are all human, no matter how dehumanising the modern workplace can be now, with most people "keeping things professional". ___ "Goodness" is far more than a person's competencies, goodness is about people's humanity, their values, the qualities inherent in their character, and other intangible traits. There is a need to distinguish goodness as competency from goodness as values. Classic Tsun-yan - thinking of each moment as a potential learning opportunity, implicitly making the point and recognising that we all could work with the people that we wish to, if only we put a little more of ourselves into those we really want to be part of our life story. One of Tsun-yan's evergreen themes for leadership: counselling others on leading and living with a sense of purpose towards wholeness. There is compelling scientific evidence that investing in relationships over things like money and fame is key to living a healthy, happy and successful life. If you focus on the right people with the right values, the rest resolves itself. Nothing even comes close to the importance of the people who surround us, so we should always prioritise clan and culture - over competency, company name, and cash. What I felt in the presence of good people was the result of someone helping me become a fuller version of myself. Good people purposely and proactively put people first, consistently and over the long haul. Good people grow by continually seeking to improve themselves; this means they not only pursue their own betterment, they also acknowledge a responsibility to help others feel and become the fullest possible versions of themselves. Good people put a premium on values. Good people are realists. They understand that goodness requires hard work and a constant balancing of aspirations and real life. Finally, good people see goodness as something that must be put to work whenever they are faced with the opportunity to do so. They step forward whenever they can, not just when they need to, goodness becomes habitual. A way to judge goodness: is someone a net energy giver or taker? Always go with the A team. Ideas and industries change far faster than people change. Good people who are As can adapt and evolve plans while motivating their teams to do the same. Furthermore they can do this while staying true to their core organisational values. Somewhere along the line, we accepted the idea that being human means being unprofessional. The most compassionate and human moments occur when people are willing to break from their characters to focus on commonalities rather than differences - when a person gives an unexpected hug or holds out a hand. Resumes and conventional job interviews don't tell us anything about the more nuanced and elusive traits of goodness. Are there ten people with whom I'd be willing to start up a relationship of goodness? To be a champion of their cause, an anchor in time of ened, a counselor or mentor in a time of dilemma, a cheerleader during times of success? General definition of "Good People": those committed to continuously cultivating the values that help them and others become the fullest possible versions of who they are. A definition is a high-level declarative statement of meaning, and a framework provides the structure to help us better understand that definition. A framework is a mental model that provides anchor points to contextualise our understanding. The Goodness Pyramid, from the bottom up - Truth: Honesty and congruence in your thoughts and actions. Compassion: Selflessness made possibly by understanding others' experiences. Wholeness: Fulfillment and gratitude for the people we have around us and for our situation in life. Truth: If we aren't true to ourselves and true to others, our foundation is hollow. Compassion: Openness is a mindset. It is about reducing bias and expanding our viewpoints. Generosity is compassion in action, and it denotes our willingness to act upon the empathy we feel. Wholeness: If compassion engenders caring, then wholeness allows us to feel satisfaction and gratitude for the people around us. Love, the mindset of wholeness, elevates the conditional care of compassion to the unconditional. It is about attaining the permanent mind-set that our own satisfaction and ultimate fulfillment results from supporting the fulfillment and success of others. Respect is not about obedience or submissiveness; it's about fulfilling our commitments and understanding our responsibilities and obligations to one another. Truth The final lesson of the failed IPO was most important: to maintain perspective and gain clarity on the people who really matter around you. Who is there for you when it counts, and who isn't? Missed financial transactions are one thing - a bruising of the ego and wallet - but it stings to discover that some of the loving, trusting relationships with people turned out to be merely transactional. In those moments, you learn a lot about yourself, and a lot about truth, friendship, goodness, and expectations. “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility is being superior to your former self.” - Ernest Hemingway Only by maintaining genuine humility can one foster a lifelong intellectual curiosity and the openness required for even greater possibility, creativity and humanity. Many mistranslate humanity as the belief that you think very little of yourself. Rather, humility is thinking somewhat less, rather than little, of yourself. A leader who has no doubts is a fanatic. A leader whose convictions are strong despite doubt is humble, willing to learn and listen, but with a strong bias for action. It is pride's negative side - envy, arrogance, or self-righteousness versus the more positive traits of pride, like self-respect or even patriotism - that is the true enemy of humility. Self-awareness has its own symbiotic, mutually reinforcing mechanism - when you are better able to judge, find, and associate with good people, they will help you reach a higher level of self-awareness. Being in the company of the right people who provide positive peer pressure is the best way to avoid falling into the trap of wearing a mask or playing an unnatural role. Processes, policies and norms can have the unintended consequence of encouraging mindless behaviour - the complete counterobjective to self-awareness. It is impossible to gain self-awareness if you're unable to define what success means. The ultimate test of self-awareness is understanding your own biases. Leaders must give permission to their teams to be more reflective, expressive, and human. Feedback is just a means of having an honest conversation with the aim of getting a better picture of an individual or the overall health of an organisation. Benjamin Franklin's own version of R&R - routine and reflection. Together, mindful reflection and the order and discipline of routine make for a lifelong learner, and, not unrelatedly, a lifelong leader. The best leaders in my experience are students first and teachers second. Compassion Competence without compassion leads to examples like the doctor who is more focused on the cancer than the person with the cancer. Paul Kalanithi - When Breath Becomes Air: Before operating on a patient's brain, I realised, I must first understand his mind: his identity, his values, what makes his life worth living, and what devastation makes it reasonable to make that life end. The cost of my dedication to succeed was high, and the ineluctable failures brought me nearly unbearable guilt. These burdens are what make medicine holy and wholly impossible: in taking up another's cross, one must sometimes get crushed by the weight. Dr Jack Erban - We all have a duty to serve and a duty to care, and this duty is both our gift and our privilege. Yale Professor Sherwin Nuland argued that the medical education system's preferential teaching of technique and protocol effectively rendered the emotional and psychological side of the patient equation an afterthought. Workplaces require some means of ensuring accountability, measuring productivity, and managing risk. But these policies are often carried out at the expense of compassion, so that the "what" of the business overwhelms the "how". There can be no empathy and optimism without openness. Openness removes prejudice and therefore allows goodness to shine through. The press is a good source of valuable feedback and public perception. The problem in business is that we are too often over-ruled and under-valued. We burden employees with rules and in the process undervalue and underestimate their desire and ability to do the right thing. Just because we have one bad person doesn't mean I should treat everyone in the organisation less well. Robert Greenleaf recommends that servant leaders should ask themselves these questions: "Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?" *In its purest form, empathy demands that we put aside our own vanity and biases in order to feel as others feel. Recognise effort and offer validation before voicing your own point of view or recommendation.* One way to become a better listener is to steer clear of phatic questions (words and phrases that we regularly use that have become procedural, aka the polite thing to say). All too often we say the right thing without the right mind-set, and so we hear without listening or understanding. Try "how are you, really?" rather than "how are you?" Vig Knudstorp, CEO of LEGO: Blame is not failure, it is for failing to help or ask for help. How we spend our money seems to be just as important as how much money we earn. Music is simply the vehicle Herbie uses to express his innate humanness and insatiable desire to become the best person he can possibly be. Wholeness Leadership, especially great leadership, is a lonely job. Proper leadership requires sacrifice so that others are shielded from this same loneliness and uncertainty. Leaders can remedy that by seeking wholeness. We feel whole when we are at peace with the realities of the roles we play. Have we reached a point in our work and life where our natural disposition is to root for others' happiness? Do we practice respect for ourselves and others? And have we accrued sufficient wisdom and experience to be able to distinguish between good and bad judgment, and to act appropriately? The best leaders recognise this truth - that we must be more than just numbers, that we must work toward the durability of something institutionally good in the character and culture of our organisations and the people we touch. To experience wholeness, one must allow oneself to both be loved and also to find more love in others. People who put themselves entirely in the service of others act out the highest form of love. Love is the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth. To love and be loved you must consciously wish and work for someone else's happiness. Love is something more strongly nurturing, widely practical, and deeply service oriented. Kevin Roberts, author of Lovemarks, had a philosophy that the best global brands built emotional authentic conversations with their customers. Wholeness and self-love are prequisites for sharing love with others. Whenever I evaluate businesses for investment, I always try to visit their workplace to see if I can literally "feel the love". Respect is a close cousin of compassion, but the practice of respect also demands that we defer to others, observe proper decorum, recognise our mistakes, and follow through on our commitments. It does not matter whether you are a CEO or a team captain, deference can only be won by earning the genuine admiration of another person, typically for either the consistency of your character or the calibre of your competence. Ultimately, genuine respect accrues to those who respect other people. Dr. Wayne Dyer: "When given a choice between being right and being kind, choose to be kind." We commend children if they learn from difficult moments rather than pointing fingers and avoiding blame. As adults, we would do well to remember this lesson. Brene Brown: "Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen." When considering to take on a new job, there are really only a handful of questions you need to ask yourself: Do you have affection for these people? Can you imagine yourself caring for them and them caring for you? Do you respect the boss's leadership style, and do you think she will respect you? And finally, would you be proud to talk with other people about your colleagues, your boss, and your workplace? We develop wisdom when we experience the world and learn good judgment alongside good people. Most people can deal with bad news or subpar outcomes if they set realistic expectations early and are given a chance to course correct. The author's two life goals: To become as wise as he can, as early as he can. The second is to remember to experience the happiness, awe, gratitude, and curiosity common among children. It's almost as if we understand everything during our first and final five years of life, and in between lie all of life's struggles. Concentrate on meaningful roles, experiences, learning and development. Read as many books as you can. Dog-ear pages and scribble in the margins. One especially easy exercise is to keep a log of themes and quotations that have inspired you. Maslow's self-actualisation has less to do with what we can do for ourselves, and more to do with what we can do for others. When we use politically correct business terms and euphemisms like "employee engagement", we dilute their essence. The same common needs and concepts exist in both business and personal contexts. Vulnerability: that everything worth doing carries a measure of risk. A decision making process: R.I.S.E. - recognising, internalising, sharing, and executing. When a stressful situation arises, especially one that seems to challenge your values of goodness, having a go-to method will help ease the emotional weight and give you an intial guide towards balance. The author met Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore REPRESENT) as an intern during the World Economic Forum in Davos, and noted he had balanced the tension between pragmatism and idealism. When we are idealistic, we live by our values, morals, and ideals even when they inconvenience us or cause us suffering. Pragmatism, on the other hand, looks for answers and prioritises action. They aren't combatants incapable of coexistence. Rather they are two halves of an exquisite tension that is a reality of business and even life. Seeking equilibrium and balance is very different from surrendering to compromise. While compromising and seeking balance may lead us to the same place eventually, compromise suggests a painful trade-off, while balance suggests the ability to reach a productive equilibrium. Three questions to identify your core, lifelong strengths, values and passions: -What did you especially love doing when you were a child, before the world told you what you should or shouldn't like or do? Describe a moment when you experienced this love and how it made you feel. -Tell us about two of your most challenging life experiences. How have they shaped you? -What do you enjoy doing in your life now that makes you feel the happiest? Jumpcut's (standout) core values: -Help people grow: Help others get a little better, every single day. -Sign your name on it: Your work should be like a work of art, so masterful that you would sign your name on it. What matters most in business and life are the deep values underpinning our dreams. The task of leadership is to dream big, but not so big that no one else can follow our dreams. Short-termism vs long-termism Failing fast allows us to creatively iterate towards new innovations, but the question remains, what is the cost of this mind-set? Do we avoid tackling complex problems that can't be solved in quick, iterative development cycles? Parenting is a long-haul game. So, too, is developing goodness and character. Is youth truly wasted on the young? Today, I've come to believe that impatience makes many young people miss important opportunities for growth towards goodness. The American question regularly posed to child development psychologist Jean Piaget - "Can parents do something to speed up the normal developmental process in children?" Good things take time to develop, and like a child's cognitive development, have to be allowed a natural and patient cadence in order to be realised. Vulnerability vs Conviction Nail care service is simultaneously the most-used and least-regulated beauty service in the world. Brene Brown: Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy - the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Vulnerability is defined in this context as a conscious choice, as amenability to novelty and experimentation that allows for the possibility of stumbling upon even bigger ideas. Think of it as risk taking. Business building and vulnerability are inextricably linked - if you don't allow yourself to have active vulnerability toward risk, there is little chance of reward or change. Active vulnerability is in essence proactive and informed risk taking. Passive vulnerability is reactive and submissive exposure. A difference between confidence and conviction - if you're confident, you can support a given decision. If you have conviction, you get that much closer to true accountability. Leaders and decision makers need to realise that they are accountable across all levels of their organisations. Gandhi - A "no" uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a "yes" merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble. Stubbornness is great when you're right, but hell when you're wrong. Leaders that faced vulnerability with courage gave themselves permission to be uncertain and were comfortable navigating their seas of ambiguity in the belief that any vulnerability that seeped in was the natural consequence of their search for a bigger purpose. Idiosyncrasy vs Connectedness Phatic communication refers to the act of relying on convenient, conventional, and not always meaningful words, phrases or even topics. Valuing dissent provides permission for our differences and idiosyncrasies to come out in an open and safe way. When interviewing candidates I like to ask whether the person is willing to confess one of their idiosyncrasies. We tend to remember the idiosyncrasies of good people or great leaders because their unusual behaviour, tics, or stories not only make them who they are, they also make them human. Idiosyncrasy should never be pushed to the point where it serves as an excuse for outcast behaviour that comes at the expense or even the offense of others. Leadership requires a rarer, less tangible capacity to maintain and construct human connectivity, which derives from revealing our vulnerabilities and idiosyncrasies. Good people and great leaders are superior communicators who can make the complex clear - they have internalised their ideas. They know who they are, why they do what they do, and where they're going. Rest of book notes available here. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
2
|
May 10, 2018
not set
|
May 15, 2018
not set
|
May 10, 2018
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| B001GS7AZI
| 3.88
| 406
| Oct 31, 2005
| unknown
|
really liked it
|
A suitably meta theorycrafting on how to gitgud. Probably will go over the head of non-gamers. Liberally borrows concepts from 孙子兵法 and applies them t
A suitably meta theorycrafting on how to gitgud. Probably will go over the head of non-gamers. Liberally borrows concepts from 孙子兵法 and applies them to games (poker,starcraft, street fighter, chess). Related reading: George Leonard's Mastery is a more generally applicable book on excellence. Line of most win: Building your life around any game is arguably a mistake, but I’ll pretend to ignore that point, as it sure helps when it comes to winning. ___ Games VS Life The age-old question of how much, if any of this, applies to real life. I start out by defining the big differences between real life and games: games are sharply defined by rules; life is not. Exploring extreme “corner cases” of a game is what high-level play is about. Exploring extreme situations in life can easily be socially unacceptable, morally wrong, and illegal. Competitive games require military virtues: immediacy, emergency tactics, and the end (winning) justifies the means (as long as it’s through moves the game defines as legal). Real life requires civic virtues like kindness, understanding, justice, and mercy. In pursing the path of winning, you are likely to learn that concentrating merely on beating the opponent is not enough. In the long run, you will have to improve yourself always, or you will be surpassed. The actual conflict appears to be between you and the opponents, but the best way to win is to bring to the table a mastery of playing to win and a mastery of the game at hand. These things are developed within you and are revealed to others only during conflict. No matter the game, you must create an environment in which you can improve. You must practice against a wide range of opponents. You must free your mind from self-imposed rules that prevent you from winning. You must develop “mental toughness” and the ability to read the minds of your opponents. You must interact with a community of other players. Another thing you will need is a lifestyle that will allow you to devote the time, money, and mental energy to playing your game. Since this is significant, you are well advised to play a game you find “fun” or at least to find “fun” in the competition or personal challenge of improving because building your life around a game that feels like “work” is a mistake. Building your life around any game is arguably a mistake, but I’ll pretend to ignore that point, as it sure helps when it comes to winning. (Playing with) Beginners VS Experts The idea is to use the beginners as a way to get an extraordinary amount of practice in the tactics that win the game in a short amount of time. The experts rarely allow such situations to arise, but when they do, you will need to capitalize on them professionally. When the opponent makes a fatal mistake, you need to be able to confidently take control of the game and win it. This act must be natural, something you’ve done a thousand times before. The experts keep you honest. They remind you, “That was not a safe move. You cannot trick me with that. That will not stop my advances.” The expert also teaches you how to win, but presents only very few opportunities to practice winning. The beginner, on the other hand, will let you practice winning until it’s second nature. At that time, you must return to the experts. The first step in becoming a top player is the realization that playing to win means doing whatever most increases your chances of winning. That is true by definition of playing to win. The game knows no rules of “honor” or of “cheapness.” The game only knows winning and losing.Innovation is merely one of many tools that may or may not help you reach victory. The goal is to play as excellently as possible. The goal is to win. On Losing Losing is part of the game. If you never lose, you are never truly tested, and never forced to grow. A loss is an opportunity to learn. But losing can be upsetting, and can cause emotions to take the place of logical thinking. Losing to 'noobs' doesn't validate your loss. It makes you a bigger noob, and deprives you of the chance to learn from your mistakes. Only the loser plays the part of the victim. The winner takes charge and actively seeks out improvement. Non-technical edges - the "fear aura" If your aim is to intimidate the opponent, then I am all for that. But there are polite, sportsman-like ways of doing this. The best way by far is to win tournaments. See what your next opponent thinks of you then. Just give him something as simple as a half-hearted glance and empty-sounding “good luck” before the match and he will probably fall over like a feather from your presence. When a player radiates a sense of total dominance at a game, I call this a “fear aura.” Once you develop your fear aura through excellent play and winning, you will laugh at the relatively ineffective notion of intimidating opponents with offensive verbal comments. Nearly winning vs nearly losing You must often employ different tactics when winning than when losing. When losing badly, you are often forced to choose only from high-risk options that have big enough payoffs to put you back into the game. When you are down several pieces in chess, you can no longer afford to grind the opponent down slowly, trading piece for piece. The further behind you are, the more imperative it becomes to find that bold combination that traps the enemy king directly. On the other hand, if you are winning by a huge amount in a fighting game, you would be wise to restrict yourself to unusually safe moves, giving the opponent no chance to come back. Critical Moments Critical moments are what you need to create and take advantage of when you’re losing. They are what you need to suppress and avoid when you are winning. The state has principles to live by and precedents to set, but war is fierce and urgent. If you wish to win in battle, you must do immediately whatever is practical and effective. Mental conditioning Discipline is more than just skill at execution. There is also mental discipline: the ability to stay focused and conserve your limited resources of concentration, tenacity, alertness, and physical strength. Physical discipline is a factor, as it can determine how much endurance or alertness you have to work with in the first place, but mental discipline is what lets you stretch your resources as far as possible. To conserve resources, develop a basic technique for winning. Against players who aren’t capable of overcoming your little algorithm, you can virtually play on autopilot. Attacking by Fire Sun Tzu spoke of using fire against the enemy, but he was driving at a fundamental tactic: attacking in parallel. One can set fire to an enemy building to drive him out into an ambush. One can set fire to one side of an enemy camp while taking up positions on the other side, again driving the enemy into an ambush. In all cases, the fire is basically used as an extra force of attackers. The fire cannot be reasoned with or bargained with or ignored. The fire has no mercy. While it serves the same function as a band of men would (to attack the enemy and drive him to action), the fire requires no manpower once it is started. It also finds its way inside a barracks without risking the lives of a squad. Because the fire acts independently, it allows a given group of men to apply more attacking force than would otherwise be possible. Gaming examples include projectile attacks in fighting games, or grenades in Counter Strike. Divide and Conquer Numerical weakness comes from having to prepare against possible attacks; numerical strength from compelling our adversary to make these preparations against us. Knowing the place and time of the coming battle, we may concentrate from the greatest distances in order to fight. In the context of Starcraft, minerals and gas are the two primary resources, but it is easy to overlook the third resource (not population) of concentration. Concentration is the time a player has to spend focusing on a task during a game. Fighting multiple fronts requires a good amount of concentration. Yomi In competitive games, there is little more valuable than knowing the mind of the opponent, which the Japanese call “yomi.” All the complicated decisions in game theory go away if you know exactly what the opponent will do next. When you are facing high level opponents who are more skilled at seeing the moments than anyone you have ever faced, it becomes that much more important to break out of the textbook mold and throw some figurative sand in their eyes. If you can blind them to the moments they would normally see, you then have access to the large repertoire of intermediate moves and tactics that you thought you couldn’t use on the experts. Preparation In college, I used to say that the more you prepare for a final exam, the worse you’ll do. The reason is that if the final exam is mere days away and you need to cram for it then your battle is already lost. Despite your best efforts, it will be hard to compete against students who have developed a natural understanding of the material and have been able to think about it and mentally manipulate it over the semester. Gaming is not so different. Things learned at the last minute just aren’t as effective as things you’ve fully integrated into your play over a long period of time. If something requires physical dexterity, you’re much better off if it becomes deeply engrained in your muscle memory. If it’s a tactic, you’re much better off practicing it over time against a variety of opponents in order to gain a full, first-hand understanding of it. Basically, if you stay on your path of continuous self-improvement then you are prepared for a tournament. Knowing your enemy is part of preparing for tournaments. Time and time again, I have seen new players who think they are very good claim that they would do well in tournaments, and they basically never do, at least not right away. Part of being good is being plugged into the tournament meta-game, and it’s extremely difficult, and in some games impossible, to simply develop skills in a vacuum then waltz in and win a tournament. R&D Playing to win and playing to learn are often at odds. If you play the game at hand to maximize your chances of winning, then you won’t take the unnecessary risks of trying out new tactics, counters, moves, patterns, or whatever. Playing it straight is the best way to win the game at hand, but at the cost of valuable information about the game that you may need later and valuable practice to expand your narrow repertoire of moves or tactics. playing to win involves exploring. It involves trying several different approaches in a game to see which you are best at, which other players are best at, and which you think will end up being the most effective in the end. The Karmic justice of it all is that love of the game really does count for something. Those who love the game play it to play it. They mess around. They pick strange characters, try strange tactics, face others who do the same, and they learn the secret knowledge. Those who play only to win can’t be bothered with any of that. Every minute they spend playing goes toward climbing their current peak, attaining their local maximum. Conversely, continuing to be the best at a game you no longer love, or never loved, is a difficult and hazardous thing to attempt. Those who love the game will find an easier time sticking to it, improving, and giving it their time and thoughts. Even if you can keep up with them, devoting such a large part of your life to something you don’t love is going to create its own problems that will no doubt eventually lead to your downfall. “Appraisal” or “Valuation” is the ability to judge the relative value of different pieces, moves, tactics, or strategies in a game. This might be the most important skill in competitive games. If Yomi is understanding the opponent, then Appraisal is understanding the game itself. adept at judging the relative value of moves in a particular game situation. Games require training, practice, and discipline. Having a love for what you’re doing really does help you. Games teach you to remain calm under the most dire of circumstances, and to never give up until your very last breath of life is spent. They teach you to learn from your mistakes, rather than shift the blame to others, because that is the only real way to improve. They teach that continuous self-improvement over time is the only way to survive. There are many forms of expression in the world, but one of the advantages of competitive games is that they force you to test your worldview against the worldviews of others. It’s easy to develop highly unpopular theories about life in general that you have no real way of testing, but competitive games force you to jump in, get dirty, and see how those ideas really stack up. If you are an unconventional genius, you will prove so beyond all doubt. If you are a confused quack, that too will be borne out, and you will have the opportunity to learn from others and change your ways. Competitive games teach you to focus on results. Slaughterer (don't give chance) vs teacher (give chance) Taking the Shadow’s approach (ruthlessness, playing at full skill level against all) will generally strengthen your own play skills, while taking the Vorlon’s approach (being nurturing to /going easy on new players) will generally weaken them. Teaching has its virtues, but it is often bad for the teacher. The Teacher has several forces working against him. First, all the time he spends on helping weaker players could be spent playing against stronger players. Next, he can develop bad habits by using techniques on weaker players that would never work on stronger players. And what’s worse, he will not have even a fraction of the practice that the Slaughterer will have when it comes to “pushing as hard as you can for as long as you can.” The Teacher will often need to push just enough to challenge the student, giving them chances to learn this or that concept. The virtues of the cold slaughterer: He’s the one pushing the envelope of play skills, which makes his contribution incredibly valuable, even if it is not often popular. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Apr 29, 2018
|
Apr 30, 2018
|
Apr 29, 2018
|
Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||||
| 1501129597
| 9781501129599
| 1501129597
| 4.30
| 4,583
| Jan 10, 2017
| Jan 10, 2017
|
really liked it
|
Reminiscent of Brene Brown, Lerner has written a guide for those figuring out how to move on after a relationship has been damaged (i.e. all of us). T
Reminiscent of Brene Brown, Lerner has written a guide for those figuring out how to move on after a relationship has been damaged (i.e. all of us). TL;DR: To heal, the hurt party needs to hear an unequivocal validation of the awfulness of the experience, and an affirmation that their feelings and perception make sense. Plus if you can never bring yourself to forgive someone, that's ok. ___ Questioning ourselves for being "oversensitive" is a common way that women, in particular, disqualify our legitimate anger and hurt. The fact that some of us feel more vulnerable than others in a particular context does not mean we are weak or lesser in any way. Conversely, the number one risk factor for being a non-apologiser is being born male. It is a profound challenge to sit on the hot seat and listen with an open heart to the hurt and anger of the wounded person who wants us to be sorry, especially when that person is accusing us (and not accurately, as we see it) of causing their pain. Both personal integrity and success in relationships depend on our ability to take responsibility for our part (and only our part) even when the other person is being a jerk. The need for apologies and repair is a singularly human one - both on the giving and receiving ends. We are hardwired to seek error and defensiveness, so the challenge of offering a heartfelt apology permeates almost every relationship. The apology is the chance you get to establish ground for future communication. This is an important and often overlooked distinction. "I'm sorry you feel that way" is a pseudo-apology because it paints the other person as the one overreacting to one's own "normal" behaviour. The higher the anxiety in any system, the more individuals are held responsible for other peoples' feelings and behaviour rather than their own. Offering an apology, followed too quickly by a request for forgiveness can short circuit the necessary emotional process of the hurt party. The purpose of an apology is to calm and soothe the hurt party, not to agitate or pursue her because you have the impulse to connect, explain yourself, lower your guilt quotient, or foster your recovery. Part of a true apology is staying deeply curious about the hurt person's experience rather than hijacking it with your own emotionality. What her daughter wanted was what we all want in our most important relationships. She wanted her mother to really get her experience and care about her feelings. Being a good listener also means that we can tell the other person when we can't listen - that we know when to say "not now" or "not in this way". When we tolerate rudeness in a relationship habitually we erode our own self-regard and diminish the other person by not reaching for their competence to do better. Listening is not a passive process. There is no greater challenge than listening without defensiveness. Perfectionism can make it difficult for any of us to offer a simple apology, because we are unlikely to be able to view our errors and limitations in a light and self-loving way. When we adopt an attitude of terminal seriousness about our mistakes, its more difficult to admit error and apologise for being wrong. Once we label and shame people we narrow the possibility of redemption and positive change. A heartfelt apology for serious wrongdoings can only be offered by those who can see their mistakes as part of being human, and who can hold on to a big picture of their multifaceted, ever-changing self. The most basic rule of good communication - criticise the behaviour, not the person. Observations suggest that the higher the word count on an emotionally loaded subject, the faster the other person shuts down. You can shame someone into saying sorry with a one-liner, because shame is that powerful. But shame will not inspire reflection, self-observation, and personal growth. We target female figures (mother ILs, daughter ILs) not only for their own difficult behaviours (for which they are accountable) but also for the passive or distant behaviour of husbands, fathers and sons. In this way we may avoid the challenge of holding the men in our lives responsible for having a voice, for managing their relationships with courage, clarity and conviction. Don't demand an apology. People do not respond well to being told how they should think, feel or behave - and that includes being told to apologise. Many of us dismiss apologies that the other person had gathered the courage to make for the reason that we want to end an uncomfortable moment as quickly as possible. If the person offered the apology, it bothered them enough for them to bring it up. If they pushed through their discomfort to apologise, we can push through our discomfort to say "thanks for the apology". Accepting an apology doesn't always mean reconciliation. We may never want to see the person who hurt us again. We can still accept the apology. But not everything we break can be fixed. When an apology sounds false or tries to reverse blame, it can take courage to call the person on it. As a general rule, consider keeping your default position as accepting the olive branch, which simply means that you agree to end a fight, lower the intensity, and open a space for moving forward with goodwill. Under stress people easily get polarised and divide into opposing camps. We get overfocused on what the other party is doing to us and not for us, and underfocused on our own creative options to move differently and deintensify the situation. We want change but don't want to change first - a great recipe for relationship failure. Relationships get into and out of trouble in predictable and patterned ways. Relationships operate in a circular, not linear fashion, the behaviour of each person provoking and reinforcing the behaviour of the other. The real question is not who started it, but what each person can do to change their steps in the dance. With the best of intentions we almost always leave it to the hurt party to reopen the conversation about a painful or traumatic past event. But it shouldn't just be the hurt party's job. It becomes their job because they are so often left with it. The conflating of letting go with forgiving confounds much of what's written about the necessity to forgive. The research might more accurately state that chronic, nonproductive anger and bitterness is bad for your health. Or that compassion and empathy, even for those who hurt us, are good things to cultivate. It's hard to argue with that. It's simply that none of these good things require forgiveness. What does the hurt party need to hear? People who appear to be holding on to anger or bitterness frequently did not experience a clear, direct, heartfelt validation soon after an earlier betrayal or act of neglect occurred. To heal, the hurt party needs to hear an unequivocal validation of the awfulness of the experience, and an affirmation that their feelings and perception make sense. You are not a less loving or whole person if there are certain things you do not forgive, and certain people you choose not to see. Most importantly, it is no one else's job to tell you to forgive - or not to. We may resist letting go of our anger because it keeps us connected to the very person who has hurt us. Anger is a form of intense (albeit negative) attachment just like love. Both anger and love keep us close to the other person, which is why so many couples are legally divorced, but not emotionally divorced. She also realised that at some level her husband could no be as happy as he appeared or even believed himself to be, because people who deceive and diminish others are not deeply happy and fully at peace with themselves. Letting go of anger and hate requires us to give up the hope for a different past, along with the hope of a fantasized future. What we gain is a life more in the present, where we are not mired in prolonged anger and resentment that doesn't serve us. Sometimes the only motive behind an apology is the wish to restore one's integrity, to heal the relationship with one's own self. A true apology does not ask the other person to do anything - not even to forgive. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Mar 26, 2018
|
Mar 28, 2018
|
Mar 26, 2018
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0061129739
| 9780061129735
| 0061129739
| 4.01
| 84,354
| 1956
| Nov 21, 2006
|
it was amazing
|
Despite being older than Singapore, this book is still as, if not more, relevant as ever in teaching us to focus on what matters. Only the male-centri
Despite being older than Singapore, this book is still as, if not more, relevant as ever in teaching us to focus on what matters. Only the male-centric language shows the aged provenance. Bonus section showing Fromm's background was illuminating as well. ___ Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one's capacity to love. Hence the problem is how to be lovable. The market mindset which characterises contemporary culture leads to the situation where two persons thus fall in love when they feel that they have found the best object available in the market, considering the limitations of their own exchange values. We are social creatures, made anxious by our separateness. The culture offers false and easy means for addressing our anxiety - through sameness. It invites us to consume the same goods, work at the same jobs, adopt the same goals- defining ourselves through conformity and insignificant nuances of difference. But if we lack the courage to be individuals, we will never achieve love, since "love is not taking, out of insecurity; it starts in giving - of joy, interest, understanding, humour, sadness, "of all expressions and manifestations of that which is alive" in us. Aside from learning the theory and practice, there is a third factor necessary to becoming a master in any art - the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern; there must be nothing else in the world more important than the art. This holds true for music, for medicine, for carpentry - and for love. And maybe, here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art, in spite of their obvious failures: in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power - almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving. The awareness of human separation, without reunion by love - is the source of shame (in the biblical Adam and Eve story). It is at the same time the source of guilt and anxiety. Mature love is union under the condition of preserving one's integrity, one's individuality. Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unites him with others; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity. In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two. Actions VS Passions: An activity that results from a passion is actually a "passivity", the person is driven, he is the sufferer, not the "actor". Love is an activity, not a passive effect; it is a "standing in", not a "falling for". Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that we love. Love and Labour are inseparable. To be responsible is to be ready to respond to needs expressed or unexpressed of another human being. In the love between adults this responsibility refers mainly to the psychic needs of the other person. The third component of love, respect, prevents responsibility from deteriorating into domination and possessiveness. Respect is not fear and awe, but the ability to see a person as they are, to be aware of their unique individuality. To respect a person is not possible without knowing them; care and responsibility are blind if not guided by knowledge; knowledge would be empty if not motivated by concern. There are many layers of knowledge, the knowledge which is an aspect of love is one which does not stay at the periphery, but penetrates to the core. It is possible only when I can transcend the concern for myself and see the other person on their own terms. The most widespread conception regarding giving assumes that giving entails "giving up" something, being deprived of, sacrificing. Yet giving is in actuality the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. In the commonly held view that love is the outcome of a spontaenous, emotional reaction, one neglects to see an important factor in erotic love, that of will. To love somebody is not just a strong feeling - it is a decision, a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and may go. How can I judge it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision? Self-love is not the same as selfishness, in so far as we are human beings, so if it is a virtue to love my neighbour as a human being, it is also a virtue to love myself. The kind of "division of labour", as William James calls it, by which one loves one's family but is without feeling for the "stranger," is a sign of basic inability to love. It is true that selfish people are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either. He seems to care too much for himself, but actually he only makes an unsuccessful attempt to cover up and compensate for his failure to care for his real self. It is easier to understand selfishness by comparing it with greedy concern for others. For example, the oversolicitous mother consciously believes that she is particularly fond of her child, but she actually has a deeply repressed hostility toward the object of her concern. She is overconcerned not because she loves the child too much, but because she has to compensate for her lack of capacity to love him at all. The neurotic unselfish persons pride themselves on "not wanting anything for themselves, living only for others". Yet such persons are paralysed in their capacity to love or enjoy anything; they are pervaded by hostility toward life and behind the facade of unselfishness a subtle but not less intense self-centredness is hidden. Mother's love is unconditional and based on equality, Father's love is conditional (just and strict), subject to living up to a set of standards. (The development of patriarchal society goes together with the development of private property). However since the wish for mother's love cannot be eradicated from the hearts of man, it is not surprising that the figure of the loving mother can never be fully driven out from the pantheon (the Church, the Virgin, the Grace of God). The teachers of paradoxical logic say that man can perceive reality only in contradictions, and can never perceive in thought the ultimate reality-unity, the One itself. Thus paradoxical logic leads to the conclusion that the love of God is neither the knowledge of God in thought, nor the thought of one's love of God, but the act of experiencing the oneness of God. This leads to the emphasis on the right way of living. All of life, every little and important action, is devoted to the knowledge of God, but a knowledge not in right thought, but in right action. Fear or hatred of the other sex are at the bottom of those difficulties (male impotence, female frigidity) which prevent a person from giving themselves completely, from acting spontaneously, from trusting the sexual partner in the immediacy and directness of physical closeness. If a sexually inhibited person can emerge from fear or hate, and hence become capable of loving, their sexual problems are solved. If not, no amount of knowledge about sexual techniques will help. When the question arises of dissolving an unhappy marriage, the stock argument of parents in such a situation is that they cannot separate in order to not deprive the children of the blessings of a unified home. Any detailed study would show, however, that the atmosphere of tension and unhappiness within the "unified family" is more harmful to the children than an open break would be - which teaches them at least that man is able to end an intolerable situation by a courageous decision. Another frequent error is the illusion that love means necessarily the absence of conflict. However what most people think of as "conflict" is actually disagreements on minor or superficial matters which by their very nature do not lend themselves to clarification or solution. Real conflicts between two people, those which do not serve to cover up or to project, but which are experienced on the deep level of inner reality to which they belong, are not destructive. They lead to clarification, they produce a catharsis from which both persons emerge with more knowledge and more strength. Love is only possible if two persons communicate with each other from the center of their existence, hence if each one of them experiences himself from the center of his existence. There is only one proof for the presence of love: the depth of the relationship, and the aliveness and strength in each person concerned; this is the fruit by which love is recognised. The economic structure of capitalism is reflected in a hierarchy of values. Capital commands labour; amassed things, which are dead, are of superior value to labour, to human powers, to that which is alive. As in so many other aspects, human values have become determined by economic values. What is good for machines must be good for man - so goes the logic. Modern man thinks he loses something - time - when he does not do things quickly; yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains - except kill it. The human problem of modern capitalism can be formulated in this way: Modern capitalism needs men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardised and can be easily influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority or principle or conscience - yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction; who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim - except the one to make good, to be on the move, to function, to go ahead. What is the outcome? Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions. Human relations are essentially those of alienated automatons, each basing his security on staying close to the herd, and not being different in thought, feeling, or action. While everyone tries to be as close as possible to the rest, everyone remains utterly alone, pervaded by the deep sense of insecurity, anxiety and guilt which always results when human separateness cannot be overcome. To overcome this civilisation offers the pallatives of bureaucratised, mechanical work, the routines of amusement, or buying ever new things, and soon exchanging them for others. To learn concentration requires avoiding, as far as possible, trivial conversation, that is, conversation that is not genuine. A conversation can deal with politics or religion and yet be trivial; this happens when two people talk in cliches, when their hearts are not in what they are saying. Just as it is important to avoid trivial conversation, so it is important to avoid bad company. Not just those who are toxic in disposition, but also zombies, people whose soul is dead, who assert cliches instead of thinking. However it is not always possible to avoid the company of such people, nor even necessary. If one does not react in the expected way of trivialities and cliches, but directly and humanely, one will often find that such people change their behaviour, often helped by the surprise effected by the shock of the unexpected. In each of these instances of being aware of one's emotional state, the important thing is to be aware of them, and not to rationalise them in the thousand and one ways in which this can be done, furthermore to be open to our own inner voice, which will tell us - often rather immediately - why we are anxious, depressed, irritated. The average person has a sensitivity towards his bodily processes; he notices changes relatively easily because most persons have an image of how it feels to be well. The same sensitivity towards one's mental processes is much more difficult, because many people have never known a person who functions optimally. In previous epochs of our own culture the man most highly valued was the person with outstanding spiritual qualities. Even the teacher was not only, or even primarily, a source of information, but his function was to convey certain human attitudes. In contemporary capitalistic society - the people suggested for admiration and emulation are everything but bearers of significant spiritual qualities. Those are essentially in the public eye who give the average man a sense of vicarious satisfaction. Love has no purpose, though many people might say: "Of course it does! It is love that enables us to satisfy our sexual needs, marry, have children, and live a normal, middle-class life. That is the purpose of love. And that is why love is so rare these days, love without goals, love in which the only thing of importance is the act of loving itself. In this kind of love it is being and not consuming that plays the key role. It is human self-expression, the full play of our human capacities. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Feb 19, 2018
|
Feb 27, 2018
|
Feb 26, 2018
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1462112285
| 9781462112289
| 1462112285
| 4.23
| 64
| Oct 08, 2013
| Oct 08, 2013
|
really liked it
|
Read the Four Agreements first to get the context of the book's short paragraphs. Good coffee table book/meditational.
Read the Four Agreements first to get the context of the book's short paragraphs. Good coffee table book/meditational.
...more
|
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Feb 2018
|
Feb 2018
|
Feb 03, 2018
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1582975213
| 9781582975214
| 1582975213
| 3.76
| 471
| 2004
| Jul 06, 2007
|
really liked it
|
Expressing yourself well in writing CAN actually be boiled down to a few principles, some of which I have recorded for reference below. The entire boo
Expressing yourself well in writing CAN actually be boiled down to a few principles, some of which I have recorded for reference below. The entire book itself is concise enough to serve as one such reference. ___ Strategically, the summary or conclusion should come at the start of the expository piece not at the end, so the reader is not left guessing at the writer's main idea. The reader is first told what the writing is about, before being given the supporting facts and details. Vague language weakens your writing because it forces the reader to guess at what you mean instead of allowing the reader to concentrate fully on your ideas and style. Choose specific, descriptive and words for more forceful writing. Don't just mention the "whats", mention the "so whats". Mentioning the examples, anecdotes and quotes provides support and indicates the reason why the writer is writing about something. The passive voice is appropriate when the performer of the action is unknown or unimportant. Favour verbs, not nouns. Semicolons are used instead of "but, yet, or, not, or for" to link two closely related sentences. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jan 03, 2018
|
Jan 21, 2018
|
Jan 03, 2018
|
Paperback
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| 4.17
|
really liked it
|
Feb 02, 2023
|
Jan 13, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.09
|
really liked it
|
Jan 16, 2023
|
Jan 13, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.72
|
really liked it
|
Nov 19, 2022
|
Nov 14, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.56
|
really liked it
|
Aug 27, 2020
|
Aug 25, 2020
|
|||||
|
| 4.18
|
really liked it
|
Feb 12, 2020
|
Oct 05, 2019
|
|||||
|
| 4.06
|
liked it
|
Jan 27, 2019
|
Dec 18, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 4.38
|
it was amazing
|
Dec 16, 2018
|
Dec 14, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 3.85
|
it was amazing
|
Aug 2018
|
Aug 03, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 3.98
|
it was amazing
|
Aug 2018
|
Jul 27, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 3.75
|
liked it
|
Jul 27, 2018
|
Jul 27, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 3.64
|
liked it
|
Aug 04, 2018
|
Jul 23, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 3.92
|
really liked it
|
Jul 16, 2018
|
Jul 11, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 3.49
|
really liked it
|
Jun 18, 2018
|
Jun 18, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 4.02
|
really liked it
|
Jun 2018
|
May 28, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 3.73
|
it was amazing
|
May 15, 2018
not set
|
May 10, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 3.88
|
really liked it
|
Apr 30, 2018
|
Apr 29, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 4.30
|
really liked it
|
Mar 28, 2018
|
Mar 26, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 4.01
|
it was amazing
|
Feb 27, 2018
|
Feb 26, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 4.23
|
really liked it
|
Feb 2018
|
Feb 03, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 3.76
|
really liked it
|
Jan 21, 2018
|
Jan 03, 2018
|
Loading...
