Awareness

Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

The Model: models in general

[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.] Before talking about the Model in particular, let's talk about models in general, a fundamental and incredibly useful concept in its own right. I've covered them before in this blog from several perspectives. Models are simplified representations of something for a purpose Models are simplified representations of something…

August 25, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

The Model

[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.] What goals do we have in life if not to understand what makes life good and how to make our own better? By good I mean by the values of the person living that life -- not by some abstract standard. I want to distinguish the following from…

August 24, 2011

Awareness / Blog

The Model — introducing my model for the human emotional system

[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 will be posting an extended series on the Model -- my model of the human emotional system, which is at the foundation of most of my posts here on self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and improving your life. It will cover the most useful and valuable ideas you will…

August 23, 2011

Awareness / Blog

More excitement than most people can handle

Speaking of mental chatter, most people get one of its properties backward. Doing nothing isn't boring; it's overwhelming. People think of doing nothing as boring, as in devoid of anything to think about or do. On the contrary, doing nothing generally overwhelms your awareness. Most people's minds give them more to think about than they can handle. You turn on the television or read a book when you have nothing to do to calm it or distract your mind. Otherwise most people can't handle their mental chatter. Like you can control your breathing when you consciously focus on it, you can consciously choose your thoughts if you focus on them. If you don't, your thoughts will flow one to the next to who knows where.…

August 22, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Tips

How to make people around you miserable

People sabotage their relationships and lives without realizing it. You might too. Today's post will tell you an effective way to make your relationships miserable and shallow, in contrast to yesterday's post on how to get others to improve your life. People do the opposite of that post's ideas and, lo and behold, achieve opposite results. They have apparently valid, but ultimately shortsighted and counterproductive, reasons for their behavior. Their reasons seem valid only when their awareness is low enough. Yesterday's point was that by sharing with people what you love, they'll know what you love and tend to share it with you; likewise that when you know what others love, you'll prefer to share those things with them. Everybody enjoys being on both sides…

August 20, 2011

The most effective self-awareness exercise I know

Awareness / Blog / Freedom / My Favorite Posts

The most effective self-awareness exercise I know

Know thyself. Every system of improving your life has some concept of increasing your self-awareness. But what is self-awareness? People with low self-awareness, who could benefit from it most, tend to understand it least. The self self-awareness is aware of refers to something different than, say, knowing you have ten fingers and breathe air. Experience increases self-awareness best. I wrote below the most effective exercise I know of to increase your self-awareness. I often assign this exercise to my clients, usually as the first. This exercise increases your awareness of how your mind works, in particular a part of it that influences your perception of your environment and how you react to it every moment of every day. Mental chatter (or self-talk, internal monologue, or…

August 18, 2011

Awareness / Nonjudgment

When to judge

After three posts on avoiding expressing judgment, I should clarify I don't suggest never expressing judgment. Here are a few cases where I express judgment. Judging myself: using my criteria to evaluate myself doesn't deprecate others' values, for example, writing "I should clarify" above. I do take care to notice my values change, particularly when evaluating myself in the past (see my series Goodbye guilt and blame for more on judging yourself). With clear criteria or goals: when everyone knows the criteria for evaluation, I find no problem in using them. For example, in "Judging people is a good way to antagonize them," the term good evaluates based on ability to antagonize. The criteria are clear. Someone may disagree on my evaluation, but won't take…

August 15, 2011

Awareness / Nonjudgment

More thoughts on being less judgmental

A reader wrote, in response to Friday's post "How to stop being so judgmental," Thanks Joshua for the insight on judgement. I have used less negative words and have already replaced them with a more positive intake on certain topics to avoid negativity. By doing so, I have noticed a more positive reaction from peers and friends, which leads to more productive outakes on actions in a general sense. Thanks! :) First, thank you for the rewarding feedback and you're welcome if I've helped you make your life more like you want it. I can think of little more rewarding than to contribute to someone improve their life. You touched on a fine point I hadn't clarified in the post. Frankly, I haven't completely clarified…

August 14, 2011

Awareness / Nonjudgment / Tips

Another way to avoid acting judgmentally

Another reason for yesterday's post on avoiding acting judgmentally came from a project some people told me about called E-prime. From Wikipedia E-Prime is a version of the English language that excludes all forms of the verb to be. Hence, E-Prime allows neither conjugations of to be (am, are, is, was, were, be, been, being), nor archaic forms (e.g. art, wast, wert), nor contractions ('s, 'm, 're). Some scholars advocate using E-Prime as a device to clarify thinking and strengthen writing. For example, the sentence "the movie was good" could translate into E-Prime as "I liked the movie" or as "the movie made me laugh". The E-Prime versions communicate the speaker's experience rather than judgment, making it harder for the writer or reader to confuse…

August 13, 2011

Awareness / Blog

Women are not “more emotional” than men

"Women are more emotional than men." "Men are more rational than women." I hear such statements all the time. I think they are nonsense that only reveal that the person saying them doesn't understand emotions. A reader emailed me about Tuesday's post that mild emotions are still emotions and requested I "continue the insightful thread on emotional-based behavior on the blog." I'm not sure if this post qualifies, but I meant to follow up on that post with this one. Since all emotions are still emotions then everyone not dead feels emotions their whole waking life. Someone's emotions may be more or less intense or immediate, but they still feel them, even if subtle or not pressing. Someone exercising logic or reason isn't being unemotional,…

August 11, 2011

Art / Awareness / Blog

Man Ray on values

Another quote from the Man Ray biography reminded me of a recent post of mine on values (exercise to the reader: which recent post?). Man Ray had a number of great quotes, especially on this page and this page, relevant to my focus on understanding values and meaning. As a surrealist and dadaist, movements whose "purpose was to ridicule what its participants considered to be the meaninglessness of the modern world," he questioned values and meaning, which can lead to a greater understanding of them. https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/manray_cadeau.mp4 In a last minute attempt to provide a dada gift for his friends, Man Ray assembled one of his most famous objects. I passed by a hardware shop and I saw a flatiron in the window. I said, "Now…

August 6, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Fitness / Nature

When 100% orange juice isn’t: Pepsi, Coke, and agribusiness turn fruit into chemical concoctions

Today is another pause in my series on exercises on communications skills, based on some posts I read on orange juice and how agribusiness processes it. Do you love orange juice? How could it not be just squeezed fruit juice? I love fresh squeezed juice. Fresh squeezed orange juice is one of my favorite things on earth. Growing up we got it from concentrate, I guess because we couldn't afford not-from-concentrate. Once on my own, I switched to not-from-concentrate. I never moved up to fresh squeezed for two reasons -- it was too expensive and it would go bad before I finished it. So I stuck with not-from-concentrate. But wait a minute. Why didn't the not-from-concentrate go bad? How did it differ from fresh squeezed?…

August 1, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Leadership

You don’t know your values until you test them, part II

Yesterday's post described how interacting with a former Austrian soldier, now friend's grandfather led me to examine my values. Such interactions lead you to expand your understanding of others and of humanity as well. Let's understand the situation. Comparing people to Nazis has become an internet joke (perhaps insightful) called Godwin's Law. This situation isn't that. This man was a Nazi foot soldier, proud of some aspects of it. I'm not comparing or judging, only using the real-life situation to examine values from a perspective beyond most people's every day experience. I posted this anecdote because it's been on my mind since posting this exercise in improving your empathy three weeks ago. That post got more response and feedback than most others. You can read…

July 26, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Leadership

You don’t know your values until you test them

You may think you know your values. Until you test them, you probably don't. Understanding their boundaries helps you understand them better. Testing them in controlled situations prepares you for surprises others aren't prepared for. Preparation like that makes for effective leadership of yourself and others. If you never plan to reach any boundaries, you may not expect to benefit from examining them. But then if you never examine them, you won't do well when you do things outside going to work, watching TV, and buying things in malls. I've thought about values -- my own and values in general -- a lot, I suspect more than average. I've come to many conclusions about them. The following anecdote presents a case whose meaning and applications…

July 25, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Fitness

Have you forgotten you’re alive?

Have you forgotten you're alive? Do you want to escape the world -- the heat of everyday life? New York City is supposed to hit 103 F (39 C) today. Yesterday was that hot. People say it's horrible. If you think the world is that horrible, go for a run in Central Park. You'll feel alive. the heat won't bother you so much afterward. You'll remember we were born to live in this world. We adapted to it. We have what it takes to survive and flourish in it. The sign said 97 when I started yesterday. It was less crowded than usual, but people were still there. I got passed by more other runners than usual. People have crazy ways to remind themselves they're…

July 23, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Tips

How to turn lemons into lemonade, part IV

Wrapping up this series on how to make your life successful using Johnny Depp's example... Anyone can call any part of their life bad and feel sorry for themselves. Depp could have and he almost certainly would not have achieved the success he did nor gotten to do what he loves every day. Anyone can call something positive. Personally I don't buy just calling something positive. I'm not a fan of the power of positive thinking, though I'd choose it over negative thinking if I had to pick one, but that's a false dichotomy. You don't have to pick one and I don't find them different. Calling something positive means something else is relatively negative. What I find most helpful is evaluating things based on…

July 20, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Tips

How to turn lemons into lemonade, part III

Here's a view I find helpful, relevant to how Johnny Depp made useful something others would lament. Whether Depp used it or not, I don't know. I don't view things in life -- jobs like telemarketing; tangible things like dogs, cats, and trees; intangible things like ideas; ... whatever -- as good, bad, positive, or negative. They just are what they are -- jobs, dogs, cats, etc. Any value they have comes from how they affect your life. If they don't affect your life at all, they have no value. If they change your life significantly, they have significant value. Even significance only determines the quantity of the value, not its quality. If something changes your life it changes your motivations -- meaning it affects…

July 19, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Tips

How to turn lemons into lemonade, part II

Following up yesterday's example of how one person created success out of what others might consider disaster or failure: Johnny Depp used telemarketing to transform a floundering music passion into one the top trajectories in acting today. To people in the rat race, who blindly accept other people's values for themselves, resorting to telemarketing would suck. They'd probably say their lives were disasters and be depressed. People who didn't blindly accept other people's values but still don't understand their own might view resorting to telemarketing as terrible but necessary. They wouldn't like it, but since they had to do it they wouldn't let it get them down too much. People well out of the grind, who think about their values and don't accept those of…

July 18, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Tips

How to turn lemons into lemonade, part I

Life has challenges. Successful people succeed anyway -- not because they have easier lives, but for knowing how to handle challenges. They know how to use unexpected or undesired situations to improve their lives. Successful people make their lives great. You can too. In particular, you can learn from their successes. An interview of Johnny Depp onÂ Inside the Actors Studio revealed some of how he succeeded. Depp is one of the great actors of his generation. As one measure of his success, his films have grossed $8 billion. How did he achieve so much success? Whereas some actors were born into Hollywood families or had other easy access, Depp was born in Kentucky with no such access. Here is the part of the interview on…

July 17, 2011

Awareness / Blog

Making childhood dreams happen

Everyone kid gets asked what they want to be when they grow up. Do you remember what you said? Did it happen? Somewhere in the mid-2000s, I remembered a vignette from my childhood for the first time in decades, which was someone asking that question of me and my response, which was to say I wanted to be an inventor. I didn't remember it in the meantime because of what the person said next. I don't remember who it was, but it was at my grandmother's house, so it was probably a great aunt, great uncle or someone from two generations back. The person replied with perhaps the most obvious question from the perspective of the person asking, but not from the child's perspective, which…

July 14, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Fitness

Culture shock

People misunderstand culture shock. They talk about it happening when they go to a new place, but that's not when you really get culture shock. When you go to a new place you expect things to be different so differences don't shock you that much. You get culture shock when you return after having been away and having adoped foreign standards without realizing it. Then what used to be normal seems unexpectedly strange and you are shocked. I'm just back from overseas and the same culture shock hit me as always does, no matter how many times it already has because it's such a huge effect: Americans are fat.

July 13, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Leadership / Tips

How to choose between nearly equal but incomparable options

Someone I'm coaching wrote the following: I will be graduating from college in May, and I am trying to decide which two cities I should move to after graduation. I've been wanting to move to NYC ever since I first visited in high school and been going there ever since. On the other hand, everyone that I know tells me that I should move to LA instead and think I would be better off there. I've only been to LA once when I was younger, (visited Manhattan Beach and Santa Monica) but I did have a great time there. I do enjoy both but for the moment I am feeling NYC. To name a few why I'm feeling NYC, (specifically Manhattan.) I love diversity of…

July 11, 2011

Statements about time are statements about priorities and values

My father once said to me (paraphrasing) When someone says they have time for something or not, they aren't talking about time, they're talking about priorities. Everyone has time for what they want to do. If they say they don't have time, it means something else is more important. That observation has been one of the most valuable lessons I learned from him. Since then whenever someone (including myself) has told me what time they had or didn't for something, I've always translated their statement into a statement about priorities. The revision has always clarified the meaning better. My reaction has always been more effective and understanding. Not that I've kept track rigorously, but I don't believe I found a counterexample where thinking in priorities…

July 9, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Nature

Travel and developing empathy

Yesterday's post on developing empathy started with me writing about traveling, which ended up being today's post. Nearly everyone tells me they love to travel. The top reason they give for it is to experience new people, places, and cultures. I get that appeal, but my goals are different. My main goal in life is to continue improving it. My travel goals are to contribute to that goal. Learning about differences doesn't serve that goal so well. My main goal in traveling is to see how similar people are despite their different environments, not to see how different they or their cultures are. I find that finding commonalities improves my life more. This goal comes from applying yesterday's exercise on people in new places. People…

July 4, 2011

Awareness / Blog / Nature / Tips

Exercise: how to improve your empathy

Here is a mental exercise I like and find effective in learning to empathize and understand people better. It costs nothing and requires no preparation, but it can be personally challenging, but it develops you as a person. The exercise is to see how diverse behavior in others you can explain without relying on saying someone else has different motivations than you do. The more you can explain their behavior, the more you have in common with them, the more you understand them, the more connected you will feel, and the better your life. It can be difficult at first when trying it on people who behave differently than you ever would have but gets easier with practice. Eventually you internalize the skills and instead…

July 3, 2011

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