Awareness

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. 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.] If I stress one thing about models and beliefs, I stress that they all have flaws. None are internally consistent. All contradict something in the world. To recognize that you can't prove most of the basic ideas you hold as truths can be mind blowing. I'm not trying…

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. 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 I'll review the main points arising from simply knowing about that we create models that mediate our interactions with our worlds -- what I call the passive view. Merely knowing about models passively, not what to do with them but just the following points, will help you…

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. 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.] Leadership depends on understanding that other people have different models. A leader who doesn't recognize people can have different models will create discord and confusion, as today's example will illustrate. I draw this example from my life. After business school a friend told me her consulting job was…

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. 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.] I tend to believe that everybody does their best according to their abilities and perception of their environment. Sure, I know counterexamples, but in general I believe that at every moment, everyone observes their surroundings and, based on their perception and abilities (more precisely, their beliefs about their…

[This post is part of a series on The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. 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.] For the next three or four posts, let's look at examples of how we use models in more depth. After each example I'll describe the lessons it teaches. We'll start with an example we're all familiar with: someone told you they'd call Monday. By Friday, no call. It's…