Awareness / Exercises / Models / Tips

A model to help you stay calm and ward off anxiety

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Do you wish you were born in easier times, when life wasn't so competitive? When life was easier? The media always talks about today's razor-thin margins, terrorism, and so on. We have so many things to worry about today. Who can keep up with the pace of change? Who wouldn't feel anxious and wish for the good old days? Today's model undermines that disappointment in today, thinking the old days were less stressful. A model to help you stay calm and…

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May 8, 2013

Awareness / Exercises / Leadership / Models

What happens when you change beliefs

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] The movie Moneyball and the book it's based on illustrate how new beliefs take root and can challenge and crowd out your old beliefs. Today's post is long, but the movie very well illustrates some stages and the emotional challenge of adopting a new belief, facing and overcoming resistance, and how it can lead to effective leadership and creating community. I'll quote enough of it here if you haven't seen the movie, but it was nominated for seven Oscars and stars…

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May 6, 2013

Awareness / Exercises / Models / Tips

A model to remove limits from your life

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Do you want an okay life? Do you want limits on how much you can get out of life? Or do you prefer to have no limits on how much you can get out of life? Remember from two days ago that the value, meaning, importance, and purpose (MVIP) of a thing comes from the emotions it evokes. Remember from yesterday that you can create reward any time any place. It follows that you can create more reward all the time,…

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May 4, 2013

Awareness / Exercises / Models

A model of where value, meaning, importance, and purpose come from

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] You hear about values-based leadership, living based in their values, giving meaning to their teams, having meaning in their lives, having purpose in their endeavors. If I asked you your values, you could probably mention your family, projects, friends, making the world a better place, security, and a few things like that. If I asked what gave you meaning or purpose or what was important, you'd probably give a similar list. You might not list money or television, but many people…

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May 2, 2013

Awareness / Exercises / Models / Tips

A model to simplify

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Do you ever have more stuff than you need? Do you find yourself susceptible to people selling things that you later realize you don't need? When I realized how little stuff improved my life and how much it got in the way, I found myself wanting things. Today I offer a belief that helps me look at acquiring things skeptically. A model for simplifying life: We've found almost nothing in the past few thousand years to improve our quality of life.…

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April 26, 2013

Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making / Exercises / Models / Tips

A model to improve your environment

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] How would you like for everything in your life to look better and for everyone to treat you better? For everything in your life to improve? Today's belief is one of the most powerful you can have, as is the strategy it leads to. People also happen to oppose it the most. When I state it simply and abstractly, they agree with it. When I apply it to them, they push back against it. You will too. If I can take…

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April 21, 2013

Awareness / Exercises / Models / Tips

A belief to promote integrity and authenticity

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Do you rank integrity as one of your highest values? How much integrity do you have? Today's model hit me one day accidentally, but since it did, I've held it closely. One day after talking to someone I got into an elevator alone. As I did I noticed I slouched because no one was there. Rather I didn't do it for a reason, I just did, subconsciously thinking it didn't matter because no one could see. Then for some reason it…

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April 18, 2013

Exercises / Models / Tips

A model to prioritize things

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Do you have too much to do? Are you so busy you never seem to have time for the important things? Today's belief is quick to describe, but among the most important in this series. A model for prioritizing things: You have to say no to a lot of good things to have a great life This model explains itself. I confess I don't follow it as well as I'd like to, but at least I know it. It bears repeating:…

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April 14, 2013

Exercises / Fitness / Models / Tips

How to win an NBA championship if you’re a 66-year-old grandmother

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Today's post illustrates yesterday's model instead of introducing a new one. It's one of my favorite illustrations from my leadership seminar. It shows that with flexibility in your beliefs and understanding your emotions you can bring anything to your life that anyone else can bring to theirs. Winning an NBA championship Say you want to win an NBA championship. What exactly do you want? It's not possession of the trophy, which is just a physical object. It's not even necessarily to…

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April 12, 2013

Awareness / Exercises / Fitness / Models / Tips

A model to motivate physical and emotional fitness

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Your body is the physical manifestation of your thoughts and behavior. Two starting points for today's belief. First, how do you decide what diet, exercise, and beliefs are right for you? Some people are more muscular, some are thinner, some seem happier, others the opposite. Diet and exercise books flood the market. How do you make sense of it all? Second, before your next shower, stop for a moment, look at yourself in the mirror, and think about the person you…

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April 10, 2013

Awareness / Exercises / Models / Tips

My experience doing yesterday’s exercise and what it means to you

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Since my results surprised me, I bet your results will surprise you when you do yesterday's exercise to record your beliefs (aka mental models or just models). First, the quantity. I felt like I had five or ten main models that I used a lot. I had about sixty or seventy. So the mental world I live in, from my mind's eye, is more complex than I thought. Next, how new they are -- that is, most of them aren't more…

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March 31, 2013

Blog / Education / Fitness / Leadership

More on John Wooden

I found a couple more videos on John Wooden, whom I wrote about yesterday. First, some thoughts on him by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of the top players of all time. He is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, with 38,387 points. During his career with the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers from 1969 to 1989, Abdul-Jabbar won six NBA championships and a record six regular season MVP Awards. In college at UCLA, he played on three consecutive national championship teams, and his high school team won 71 consecutive games. At the time of his retirement, Abdul-Jabbar was the NBA’s all-time leader in points scored, games played, minutes played, field goals made, field goal attempts, blocked shots, defensive rebounds, and personal fouls. Look at the…

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March 23, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Tips

Paper shredders and making changing beliefs and values easier

People tell me it's hard to change beliefs and values. Some people think it's impossible. I agree if they believe it's hard, but you can and it gets easier with practice. Most people change their beliefs and values all the time without realizing it. One goal for this page is to help people learn to change their beliefs more easily so I try to give examples of how you already change beliefs and values without thinking about it. If you see you do in simple or little cases, you can expand what you already do to more complex or bigger cases. Next thing you know you'll change your life. People often restrict themselves by thinking of changing beliefs as thinking positively or thinking the opposite…

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March 15, 2013

Blog / Fitness

Redefining possibility again

Are you younger than 89? Can I ask you to think critically. Forget for a moment about logistics and if you have the time or interest to do it. Just ask yourself if you think it's possible. Do you think you could finish a marathon? Do you think it's possible? Many people I ask consider their finishing a marathon impossible. Not difficult but impossible. They explain why and their reasons never hold water for me, but they seem conclusive to them. Sometimes it's as simple as knee problems (note I asked about finishing a marathon, not running one, which would allow for using a wheelchair or crutches, both of which I've seen racers use. For that matter, seeing a blind runner in a marathon. Whatever…

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March 8, 2013

NorthKorea

Video: Interviewing Joseph of the American in North Korea blog

Today's video is of Joseph, who publishes the famous American in North Korea blog, which has some of the most amazing pictures and commentary of North Korea around. That blog makes him a celebrity among foreigners in North Korea because many times we crossed paths with other foreigners, someone from the group would come up and ask him "Are you the American in North Korea?" He was also one of the main organizers for our group and made connections with North Korean officials -- no easy feat. I had been intending to interview him for a while and took this occasion on a boat ride on the Taedong River. The interview went great, but the wind ruined the audio. You can still hear some of…

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March 6, 2013

Blog / Freedom

Personal development and achievement

What are your goals? People ask that a lot, especially in personal development. I'm going to point something out you might not realize. People usually talk about goals as external -- to get a promotion, to earn a certain amount of money, to marry a spouse with certain properties... stuff like that. People who take my seminar see what I put as the farthest stage I see myself reaching is freedom. I mention others may have other farthest stages, but whatever your farthest stage, I suspect freedom is somewhere up there. We like when others are free and unconstrained with us, so we know others like when we are free and unconstrained with them. When I say freedom, I don't mean being outside of jail…

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March 5, 2013

Nature / NorthKorea

Video: Surrounded by North Korean soldiers and flowers

Visiting a flower show in North Korea led to being in a building overflowing with North Korean soldiers (including, as a group of guys will notice, cute female ones), and flowers. They named some types after their leaders, so they have a lot of Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia, which they arrange into shapes of North Korea around small models of important places, like where Kim Il Sung was born and such. You can also hear the over-the-top North Korean music. Sometimes I held the camera low so as not to call attention. I hoped to catch some of the times the cute female soldiers looked at us and giggled, but they were more discrete than I was quick with my camera. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doWpYyVh4dQ

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March 5, 2013

Art / Creativity / NorthKorea

Video: North Korea’s incredibly talented and rehearsed children performers — and comparison with some Americans

Our guides took us to see the children's performance palace (I forget its official title), where they put on display groups of children whose performances were incredible. I wrote and posted images of them before. Who knows what training they've had or what motivates them to get to this level. I think the usual first guess of people who are critical of North Korea is that the government coerces them -- that if they don't perform well someone will harm their parents or something like that. Someone also told me that these children hold very high status, so maybe they have internal motivation. I'll never know if they are pushed, pulled, motivated on their own, something else, some combination, or what. All I can say…

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March 1, 2013

Awareness / Blog

Don’t be Walter: an example

Yesterday I wrote about the quintessential I'm-right-you're-wrong-and-I'm-going-to-convince-you-of-it-no-matter-what-it-takes situation with extreme escalation by Walter in the Big Lebowski. The last edit I made was to add the parenthetical comment in "What makes this clip so funny and brilliant (besides the movie's running jokes, like the Vietnam references) is...". I couldn't help but notice, if you don't look too carefully, that you could understand the Vietnam conflict from this perspective, with the United States political decision-makers as Walter. Read the archetype as I listed it yesterday with that conflict in mind. (Before you start to write to tell me how much I missed and how wrong I am, my point isn't to be right, just to give another perspective. See what you can learn from it.) You…

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March 1, 2013

Leadership / NorthKorea

Video: Mansudae Hill, location of 20-meter tall statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il

Here we are approaching Mansudae Hill, the location of 20-meter tall statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.  Love the men or hate them, they ruled the country for seventy years, so they're important for the people here. We see children leaving the giant statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. At the start I was holding the camera at my side to be more respectful but picked it up when I saw everyone else holding their cameras up. Toward the end I show the 20-meter tall statues and their grand surroundings. Kim Jong Il's statue was just unveiled by his father's. The last clip in the video shows North Korean people and families departing after paying respects to Kims' statues.…

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March 1, 2013

Freedom / Leadership / NorthKorea

Video: Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery on the hundredth anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth

A video of the Revolutionary Martyrs' Cemetery on the hundredth anniversary of Kim Il Sung's birth -- roughly like being at Arlington on July 4, 1976. There were many soldiers and foreign tourists, making for an odd mix. Normally the government prohibits tourists from taking pictures of the military, but perhaps for the special day, since they were there ceremonially, and since there were so many of them they let us take pictures and video of them. The cemetery also overlooks Pyongyang and the Mausoleum holding the bodies of Kim Il Sung and, presumably by this point, Kim Jong Il, though they hadn't yet reopened the mausoleum after Kim Jong Il's death by this point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voIgE4XraSs More footage of the cemetery More footage of the…

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February 27, 2013

Awareness / Blog

George Clooney on Living Well

Do you dream of a life on the red carpet, gracing black-tie events with your presence, choosing among the best projects, working with the top people in your field, with your name in lights? Sound unbeatable? Think again. At least if you're George Clooney. With all of that, he found simplicity from regular working men. He acted on it with something few of us could materially afford, but we can re-create anyway. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsgdaxo70Ck What are you striving for? What can you attain anyway?

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February 25, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Freedom

If you want to retire early, why? Is financial independence your goal or a means to an end?

Longtime readers might know I enjoy and recommend a blog on retirement and financial independence called Mr. Money Mustache. The author there wrote a post on people who evaluate him by their standards and claim he isn't really retired. He created a definition, quoted below, and said he was. As I said, I recommend his blog, but I think his choice of how to define "retirement" missed the point of what we want in life. Personally, I consider financial independence a means to an end, not an end itself. Its point is the emotional reward it creates. If you think financial independence is your goal, you'll miss you'll try to achieve something slightly different than what you want. You may rest when you only got…

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February 16, 2013

Blog / Fitness

Sports in the rain and values changing

The other day it rained and I skipped playing ultimate frisbee in Shanghai. It reminded me of playing in college and after. In the Northeast of the U.S., especially in late fall, leading to Regionals, it rained and snowed a lot. Weather didn't change that you simply went to practice. We practiced and played in snow, wind, rain, etc. I played disc the year I lived in Paris, taking a year off from school. We played on Sunday afternoons there. The fields, incidentally, were at a beautiful spot at the park in front of Les Invalides, pictured here: I remember one Sunday it rained like a monsoon. Huge droplets of rain, densely packed, falling straight down all day long. I showed up to the fields…

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January 29, 2013

Blog / Freedom

Martin Luther King, copyright, and the content of his children’s character

Last August, many reported on the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream speech. One of my favorite sites which concerns itself with copyright, started a conversation, "The copyright nightmare of 'I Have A Dream", on how the speech, which was broadcast in a way that would seemingly make it part of the public domain, ended up copyrighted. Please read that conversation for many views on how this case illustrates how copyright law has been distorted from its original intent to starve the public domain it was supposed to help fill. You'll see a couple points there on related issues, for example, how MLK's heirs are squabbling among themselves over the rights as well as charging others for using his words in…

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January 23, 2013