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,[…] Keep reading →

With my ability to announce my posts blocked by the Chinese government, now’s my chance to indulge in a selfish post without destroying my modesty, since fewer people will find out about it. A few months ago I had the most amazing dream. It even impressed me. Somehow I dreamt about this: It’s called a continued fraction. I know I’d seen the fraction before. I don’t remember if anyone showed[…] Keep reading →

I had heard of the Great Wall of China. Now I’m behind it. They block Facebook, Youtube, plenty of Wikipedia pages (like pages on internet censorship in China), and links to software to get around the firewall. There seems to be a paid service to circumvent it. I can’t say I understand the strategy behind blocking these sites. It seems counterproductive to my concept of what government is for —[…] Keep reading →

Yesterday I wrote about an alternative model for solving problems to the prevalent model that you need to find and solve their root causes to be effective. The alternative — the burning building model to solving problems — says that if you can think of something that will improve the situation, acting on it will help. If you’ve used the dandelion model for a long time, you may believe it[…] Keep reading →

Many people have a counterproductive yet common model for solving their problems. If you use it, you’re holding yourself back from a better life. There’s an alternative, however, which I’ll write about below too. The Dandelion Model I call it the “dandelion model” because it’s based on the idea that to get rid of a dandelion, you have to get to its roots. If you don’t, it will grow back.[…] Keep reading →

Continuing the theme on flexibility in your beliefs giving you freedom, contributing to your intelligence, and attracting people, I’ll continue about ways to increase that flexibility. Yesterday covered using a prevalent ad campaign to help develop non-judgmental acceptance of other people’s beliefs and changing your own. By the way, by accepting other people’s beliefs, I don’t mean necessarily agreeing with them, just accepting that they have them and understanding them.[…] Keep reading →

I’ll build on yesterday’s post on changing your perspective to make it easier to change your perspective with a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while. Airports around the world are full of an ad campaign that provide another great exercise in enabling changing your perspective. Flexibility in changing your perspective is one of the most important tools in changing your world, creating freedom for yourself, and in[…] Keep reading →

Flexibility in changing your beliefs and perspectives is one of the more important skills in improving your life. It’s also a major component of intelligence, one psychologist told me. In my seminars and with clients, it’s one of the more challenging skills to develop, though easy with practice. Like most challenges, the way to master it is to start easy and build. Look for all the opportunities you can to[…] Keep reading →

Istanbul is amazing! People who know me know traveling isn’t my highest priority, but it can add so much to your life. American culture says so little about Turkey. I’ve been trying to think of mainstream cultural references to it but the main ones I could think of were the movies Midnight Express and Gallipoli. The former was one of the main reason I don’t like Oliver Stone and is[…] Keep reading →