Awareness

Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Nature

I’ll get in trouble for this in two ways

I'll get in trouble for this post in two ways, but people who get it will appreciate it. The first is how I view death. I'm overwhelmingly swayed by this passage from the ancient book called the Zuangzi (spelled Chuang Tzu in the translation below) on the death of a loved one. Chuang Tzu's wife died. When Hui Tzu went to convey his condolences, he found Chuang Tzu sitting with his legs sprawled out, pounding on a pot and singing. "You lived with her, she brought up your children and grew old," said Hui Tzu. "It should be enough simply not to weep at her death. But pounding on a tub and singing - this is going too far, isn't it?" Chuang Tzu said, "Not…

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October 10, 2011
Non-Method methods
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Leadership

Non-Method methods

People improve their lives in many ways. To give context to the Method, in my next few posts I'll describe several common non-Method methods you're familiar with. Then I'll describe how the Method differs from them and why I believe it improves your life better and is more rewarding to do. So far I've only described the Method broadly: to choose the elements in your emotional cycles you can control voluntarily -- your environment, beliefs, and behavior -- together to bring about the emotions and emotional reward you want. There is much more to it and upcoming posts will describe it and how to implement it in detail, but this broad level is enough for the comparisons below. They will then clarify the Method when I…

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October 9, 2011
The Method: the foundation, part I
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Leadership

The Method: the foundation, part I

The Method is based on the Model. Keeping in mind that like any model, the Model simplifies what it represents for its purpose. The Model's purpose is to improve our lives by helping us understand our motivations, emotions, and emotional systems. As with any model, it can't be absolutely right or true. Neither can any alternative. I mention the above for context because the discussion on the Method will all adopt the perspective of the Model. Let's start our discussion on the Method with its foundations. Recall two points from our discussion on the Model. First, you can control some parts of your emotional system while others you can't. You can control you environment, beliefs, and behavior. You can't, except to a limited degree, control…

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October 8, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Leadership

From the Model to the Method

I've written about the Model, my foundation for understanding value, meaning, purpose, importance, etc in life, based on understanding yourself, particularly your motivations, emotions, and emotional system. I'll now start on the Method, which covers how to implement the Model. I developed the Model on my own, without intending to create something meaningful or helpful, though I think I ended up doing so. The Method, however, came from applying the Model in life. If you learned the Model and implemented it in your life, I expect you'd come up with the Method too or something similar. By reading my Method you can save time and resources by avoiding my mistakes. I can't think of anything more valuable in life than to replace more of your…

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October 7, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Leadership

The Model: summary

[I replaced this post with a series on The Model. Click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] For the past six weeks I've posted on the Model, my model for human motivations and emotions. The Model forms the foundation of what I consider the best way to view and live life. For those who have been reading along, I recognize it may have been a bit dry or academic. I expect later posts will make life and living the lifestyle you want seem easy and obvious, but require referring back to the Model, in which case this summary will simplify learning it. Today's post summarizes all those posts, which will probably end up a chapter in…

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October 6, 2011
My next two leadership seminars: October 23,30 and November 5,6 at the New School
Awareness / Blog / Education / Leadership

My next two leadership seminars: October 23,30 and November 5,6 at the New School

  LEADERSHIP THROUGH SELF-AWARENESS AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE In a two-day seminar, learn how to develop your personal leadership skills, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence by utilizing the latest advances in cognitive behavioral science, evolutionary psychology, and positive psychology. The course is open to all area business school students, alumni, and colleagues. In the past the seminars have sold out quickly, as such we are currently offering two courses.  Below you will find the dates of the courses and a link that you can follow to sign up. If you have any questions feel free to contact me. Schedule: (Note both sessions cover identical material) October session(consecutive Sundays): Day One: Sunday, October 23, 2011  noon—5pm Day Two: Sunday, October 30, 2011 noon—5pm November session(one weekend): Day One:…

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October 5, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Leadership

The Model: what is freedom?

[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.] Ask people -- yourself! -- what they value and freedom will rank near the top. What do they mean by freedom? I bet you don't know and that this post will show you can have more. The better you know what freedom means, the more you can bring…

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October 4, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Leadership / Tips

The Model: strategize, then enjoy

[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.] A quick followup to yesterday's post on first learning to manage your emotions, then enjoying the freedom mastery brings you. Here is some general advice for anything that requires planning. You probably already know it, but it bears repeating. First strategize, then act (and enjoy). In other words,…

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October 2, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Tips

The Model: bring about emotions you want and enjoy them, don’t dwell on them

[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.] Creating a lifestyle you want by bringing about the emotions you want is an art. I've written a lot about the craft -- the functional view of emotions, which is useful for bringing about emotions you want. Let's talk about the art today. The functional view may sound…

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October 1, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

The Model: “What is the meaning of life” is a needlessly and counterproductively complicated question

[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.] The past two day's posts on meaning and complexity in emotions helps us understand the age-old, often asked but never answered question, "What is the meaning of life?". More importantly, it helps us make sense of a question that doesn't make much sense. Unfortunately, the question's complexity makes…

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September 30, 2011
The Model: the source of all meaning, value, purpose, and importance
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

The Model: the source of all meaning, value, purpose, and importance

[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.] Most of our greatest life questions and quests involve meaning and values. What things are meaningful and why? What are our values? What is important and why? Looking up words like meaning, values, and importance in the dictionary or Wikipedia doesn't help. At least one dictionary online gave…

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September 29, 2011
The Model: a single cycle is simple. Many cycles get complex.
Three interacting thoughts
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

The Model: a single cycle is simple. Many cycles get complex.

[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.] Do you consider emotions complex and bewildering? I wouldn't surprise me if you did. Many people present them that way, what I call romanticizing them. Making them seem complex and bewildering sells movie tickets, magazines, and books, unfortunately at the cost of making people misunderstand themselves. I hope…

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September 28, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Tips

How to get past “I can’t get past it”

Some advice applies to everyone. I bet the following will help you or will remind you of something that helped you once. Even after you've heard it, reminders help, especially when stressed or frustrated. For example, a client wrote me about the exercises he's practicing. After describing his progress on the work, he described frustration in one area. I considered this frustration the main issue -- his motivation. Then when I'm thinking about trying again I think "What's the point. I won't get past the start anyway", and then I don't want to work on it anymore. It has happened to me 5 times this month already and I can't get past it. What do I do? When someone puts in the time, does the…

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September 27, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Fitness / Leadership

Should you get a coach?

If you're reading my blog you may be considering getting a coach, maybe even considering me. I've observed that the people who perform best at things tend to have coaches whereas the people who don't do so well remark that they don't need coaching or bristle at the prospect of getting help. Derek Jeter has multiple coaches. Forty percent of Fortune 500 CEOs have personal coaches. This week's New Yorker features a long article on coaching. While not scientific, it covers many of the important points one might want to consider on coaching, describes observing successful coaching describes the author's successful experience testing the waters being coached, and describes some research in the field. It doesn't say everyone should get a coach, but thoughtfully walks…

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September 27, 2011
Audio / Awareness / Blog / Tips

Audio interview: don’t just accept, celebrate!

You used to get frustrated by taxes, right? You probably don't like getting older. We all prefer accepting things we can't change to frustration, disappointment, etc. You've learned to improve your life through acceptance. Why stop there, implying the thing still bothers us? You can learn to celebrate anything you can accept, turning problems into sources of reward. On a related note, judging tends to repel others, just like people judging you, even favorably, probably bothers you. Who are they to judge, all high and mighty? This interview talks about accepting things without judgment, which improves your life and attracts people more than judgment does. It also points out how you can learn to celebrate aspects of anything you can accept. It notes that celebrating…

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September 26, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

The Model: what you can and can’t control

Of the five elements in the Model -- environment, beliefs, emotions, behavior, and reward -- you can voluntarily choose and act on your environment, belief, and behavior. Except to a limited degree, you can't voluntarily choose your emotions. They react to the other elements. Reward, being a special emotion, also reacts to the other elements. It may seem a cruel twist that the most important parts of the cycle are the parts we can't control. After all, the Declaration of Independence doesn't say "life, liberty and the pursuit of environment" or "... of perception" or "... of belief." It recognizes happiness -- your emotions -- as the highest value. From an evolutionary perspective, for your emotions to be involuntary makes sense. If you felt hungry,…

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September 25, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

The Model: how your emotional system chooses your emotions

[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.] Why do you feel the emotions you do? People who think their emotions are irrational and follow no pattern can't understand why they feel the emotions they do. Worse, they make themselves unable to manage their emotions. They become easy to manipulate. Perhaps they make good consumers for…

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September 24, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Leadership / Nature

The Model: more functional views of emotions

[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.] Our society cripples us by presenting too narrow a view of emotions. Today let's consider other views that let us be more free. Our culture romanticizes emotions for their feelings, characterizing them as irrational. That romanticization sells movie tickets and books, but complicates your ability to manage your…

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September 22, 2011
Earth from space, a pale blue dot
Awareness / Blog / Nature

Earth from space, a pale blue dot

If you read this blog for unique ideas from me, they don't come from nowhere. Their deepest foundation comes probably from the beauty I find in nature, a main reason I studied physics, which I consider the foundation of our understanding of nature. A science educator, James Drake, created this video -- a time-lapse of publicly available images -- a perspective of our world vastly different from our usual perspectives about our lives. I find it beautiful. You may want to click on the YouTube logo to watch it full-screen there. His blog has many images of Earth from space. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74mhQyuyELQ A small comment: I would title it "What does it look like to fly over Earth". I think the video shows what it looks…

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September 21, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Leadership / Nature

The Model: characteristics of emotions

[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.] Besides your emotional system's consistency and reliability, each emotion you feel has several characteristics relevant to its function. I have found four characteristics particularly relevant. Each emotion has characteristics of Pleasure, from pleasurable to painful Intensity, from intense to subtle Richness, from complex to simple Duration, of long…

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September 16, 2011
The Model: adding reward
Awareness / Evolutionary Psychology / Models / Nature / Visualization

The Model: adding reward

[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.] So far the Model comprises cycle of environment, perception (subject to belief), emotions, and behavior. Its last element represents how it regulates itself: reward. When this Model refers to reward, it means emotional reward, not something like financial reward, treats for dogs, or food pellets for lab animals.…

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August 30, 2011
The Model: adding belief and perception
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

The Model: adding belief and perception

[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.] Our Model so far comprised a cycle of your environment, emotions, and behavior. We're still building. We don't develop motivations based on our environments directly. The limitations of our senses mean we never know the full story of anything. The limitations of our memory and mental processing power…

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August 29, 2011
The Model: adding emotions
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

The Model: adding emotions

[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.] Yesterday began the Model with the foundation of understanding yourself as someone who exists in an environment and behaves within it. Unlike many simpler life forms, people don't merely react reflexively. I don't know how bugs and lizards live, but they don't seem to reflect much on their…

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August 28, 2011
The Model: environment and behavior
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

The Model: environment and behavior

[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 we'll see the first part of the Model. It comes from evolution in general and the burgeoning forefront scientific field of evolutionary psychology. Let's start with your behavior and environment. Like all life, you exist in an environment and you behave in certain ways within it. You…

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August 27, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

The Model: why

[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.] Why create a model? To know yourself better despite your complexity. Every system of self-improvement, at least that I know of, has some concept of increasing your self-awareness, your knowledge of yourself. "Know thyself." Modeling the part of you that creates value, importance, and meaning helps you understand…

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August 26, 2011

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