Exercises

Audio / Education / Exercises / Leadership

Listen to the results of my online leadership course: the full interview, part 4/9

[Another post superseded this one by posting the full interview and the highlights. I'll copy that post here: Over the past six months I created an online leadership course, The Fundamentals of Leadership. I interviewed a student who took it. Listen to the interview highlights and full course. If you want to learn to lead yourself or others better, or to improve your life, listen to the interview and see if it fits your interests. Click here for the interview highlights (about ten minutes) Click here for the full interview (about an hour) Here it is in nine 5—8-minute segments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9 About the course The Fundamentals of Leadership…

January 17, 2015

Audio / Education / Exercises / Leadership

Listen to the results of my online leadership course: the full interview, part 3/9

[Another post superseded this one by posting the full interview and the highlights. I'll copy that post here: Over the past six months I created an online leadership course, The Fundamentals of Leadership. I interviewed a student who took it. Listen to the interview highlights and full course. If you want to learn to lead yourself or others better, or to improve your life, listen to the interview and see if it fits your interests. Click here for the interview highlights (about ten minutes) Click here for the full interview (about an hour) Here it is in nine 5—8-minute segments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9 About the course The Fundamentals of Leadership…

January 16, 2015

Audio / Education / Exercises / Leadership

Listen to the results of my online leadership course: the full interview, part 2/9

[Another post superseded this one by posting the full interview and the highlights. I'll copy that post here: Over the past six months I created an online leadership course, The Fundamentals of Leadership. I interviewed a student who took it. Listen to the interview highlights and full course. If you want to learn to lead yourself or others better, or to improve your life, listen to the interview and see if it fits your interests. Click here for the interview highlights (about ten minutes) Click here for the full interview (about an hour) Here it is in nine 5—8-minute segments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9 About the course The Fundamentals of Leadership…

January 15, 2015

Audio / Education / Exercises / Leadership

Listen to the results of my online leadership course: the full interview, part 1/9

[Another post superseded this one by posting the full interview and the highlights. I'll copy that post here: Over the past six months I created an online leadership course, The Fundamentals of Leadership. I interviewed a student who took it. Listen to the interview highlights and full course. If you want to learn to lead yourself or others better, or to improve your life, listen to the interview and see if it fits your interests. Click here for the interview highlights (about ten minutes) Click here for the full interview (about an hour) Here it is in nine 5—8-minute segments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9 About the course The Fundamentals of Leadership…

January 14, 2015

Audio / Awareness / Education / Exercises / Leadership

Highlights from interviewing the first student of my new online leadership course

[Another post superseded this one by posting the full interview and the highlights. I'll copy that post here: Over the past six months I created an online leadership course, The Fundamentals of Leadership. I interviewed a student who took it. Listen to the interview highlights and full course. If you want to learn to lead yourself or others better, or to improve your life, listen to the interview and see if it fits your interests. Click here for the interview highlights (about ten minutes) Click here for the full interview (about an hour) Here it is in nine 5—8-minute segments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9 About the course The Fundamentals of Leadership…

January 13, 2015

Education / Entrepreneurship / Exercises

New to the public: My Sales course!

If you think of used car salespeople when you think sales, you're missing out on some of the most important skills and perspectives for life. Not just business, but any interactions with people. Sales also means proposing ideas, job interviews (selling your labor),Â hiring great people (selling your organization), fund-raising (selling equity), and more. Approaching sales from a leadership perspective teaches you to influence and persuade to create long-term, productive, mutually beneficial relationships. As with my leadership courses, I teach skills anyone can use and that will be valuable your whole career and applicable across your life, not just in business. I'm teaching the class at General Assembly. Register here. From the registration page: A strong sales team is essential to any sustainable organization. Sales…

January 12, 2015

A seminar attendee inspires me back with his TEDx talk

The holiday note I got from one of my seminar attendees, DougÂ McCullough, described his trips skiing, camping, kayaking, canoeing, driving his high-end convertible, and other outdoor activities. There was a picture of him swimming with dolphins. He also linked to a TEDx talk he gave, which reminded me about one of my major inspirations, Mark Zupan, star of the Oscar-nominated Murderball and author of the book Gimp, and whom I describe on some depth in my two-day seminar and on my Resources and Inspirations page. I try to inspire people in my seminars. Many tell me I do. I love when they inspire me back. http://youtu.be/1keCb7oEMBg I also mentioned Zupan in this post, "Handling life's biggest challenges," by another friend who inspired me, which also…

January 6, 2015

Some science on where fat goes when you lose it

Exercises / Fitness / Models / Nature

Some science on where fat goes when you lose it

I love learning about nature! I looked up about what happens to the mass you lose when you lose weight. A paper last month in the peer-reviewed BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal), "When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go?" confirmed what I had read casually: you exhale it, or rather you exhale 84% of it. The rest is water, which we excrete "in the urine, faeces, sweat, breath, tears, or other bodily fluids." The paper's lead author, a physicist, also wrote simplified versions of the chemical reactions. The paper is mostly readable to a lay person, such as me, and is short so I recommend reviewing it. It also begins with a graph showing that nearly no one the authors asked knew the…

January 3, 2015

The stages of developing empathy and compassion

You can learn to improve your empathy and compassion skills. You can do so deliberately by practicing exercises that work. If you're reading this, you know the value of empathy and compassion to yourself and people you interact with. I don't claim to be the best in the world but I do better now than before. I've also seen students and coaching clients do it. I found the pattern goes like this: First you try theÂ exercises and get to experience what knowing someone's passions gives you. For example, from another person's environment, beliefs, and behaviors---what you can see---you can figure out their emotions. You sense that you would feel the same ones in their situation. If you imagine their situation you can almost feel…

December 31, 2014

Art / Education / Exercises / Habits / Leadership

The value of technique in leadership

An actor told me about a time he forgot his line on Broadway in front of about a thousand people, some who paid hundreds of dollars for their seats. He was in his forties and had acted for decades. Still, sometimes you forget your lines. What do you do when a thousand people are watching you and you don't know what to say? Most of us have faced not knowing what to say or do, though usually only in front of one or two people, which is more than enough to paralyze us with anxiety. Actors know about a technique called the repetition exercise, a cornerstone of Meisner technique, named after Sanford Meisner, one of America's great acting teachers of the twentieth century. There's a…

December 30, 2014

Education / Entrepreneurship / Exercises / Leadership

My next seminar, January 12 at The Yard in NYC!

My next leadership seminar will be January 12 at The Yard, a premier office space and coworking community designed to support business growth whose environment promotes creativity, collaboration, and connections. Perfect for my seminar! If you've thought about attending one of my seminars, this will be a great chance in a beautiful space, conveniently located. Click here for testimonials. HOW TO LEAD PEOPLE ...so they want you to lead them again. ~ Leadership Workshop ~ Click here to register Why you should attend You've ascended to a position of leadership, but how can you ensure that the people you are in charge of will be responsive to your leadership style? In this class, you'll learn effective ways to motivate people in the context of…

December 29, 2014

Exercises / Fitness / Models / Nature

How you lose weight

Have you ever wondered about when you lose weight what happens to the mass you lose? I didn't think of it either. My first thought was that you excrete it. You lose some water and salt to sweating, but I figured that got replaced so didn't figure into long-term weight loss. I didn't wonder how the mass you lose would get to your kidneys or bowels. I read recently that it doesn't. I read that the mass you lose when you burn fat exists your body in your exhalation. I confess I haven't looked it up for a second opinion, but it made sense from a few perspectives. We replace some oxygen in the air with inhale with carbon dioxide in the air we exhale,…

December 27, 2014

Exercises / Fitness / Habits / SIDCHAs

Three years of burpees

Yesterday began my fourth year of burpees. I've written about them at length, so I'll keep it brief today. A few sets of burpees are good fitness exercise. A few years of burpees is a solid foundation for a healthy life. Here are the top things they create for me. Sticking with them for a long time without missing any creates discipline, which is a foundation I can build other habits and behaviors I want in my life. I meant to make only burpees my base exercise. While increasing from ten per day to two sets of twenty-six per day, I couldn't help but include inverted rows to work my back and sit-ups to work my abs. My one-minute workout has increased to maybe five…

December 22, 2014

Education / Exercises / Leadership

The Meaning of Leadership — the class

NYU posted my course next semester: "The Meaning of Leadership." I designed it to cover developing the fundamental skills of leadership as comprehensively as one semester allows. I expect many students to find it one of if not the best class they ever take. From the syllabus, the course description begins: The Meaning of Leadership will prepare you to practice effective leadership and teamwork in a variety of contexts—business, politics, community organizing, entrepreneurship, sports, teaching, sales, coaching, etc—without relying on authority, status, hierarchy, or other external conditions. You will learn to create more meaning, value, importance, and purpose in your teammates, work, and professional relationships. As a result, your teams will accomplish more with greater satisfaction. Your teammates will feel inspired and will want to…

December 18, 2014

Rappelling down a three-story wall!

Exercises / Fitness / Freedom

Rappelling down a three-story wall!

My friend Dave got tickets to a rappelling class over the weekend. It may not have much to do with what I normally write about, but I can't help sharing some pictures. Come to think of it, people do courses like these as part of leadership training. Taking that first step off the platform to where only a rope was holding you up, and that rope wasn't tied around you, it only loosely looped through a metal piece attached to your waist, was scary. I recommend the activity to anyone. It's easier than you expect and fun. I did it in Brooklyn with Hollywood Stunts. They were professional and fun, so I recommend them. Pictures The light was low so not many pictures came out.…

December 17, 2014

Education / Exercises / Leadership

You learn behavior through experience, not people telling you what to do

Increasingly my answers to questions about certain topics are not to give information but to tell a process by which the person can find out the answers for themselves. I read a lot of leadership, professional development, and personal development books. Almost all tell people principles instead of how to learn things themselves. Principles sound great, but people who know the principles didn't learn them from being told them, they learned them from doing them. In other fields people know to develop skills through practice---sports, art, dance, music, math, etc. I hope to see leadership change from thinking someone can just tell you intuition to people expect to learn it from experience. Actually, I hope to play a role in creating that change.

December 15, 2014

The Model: the series

Awareness / Education / Exercises / Leadership / Models / Nonjudgment / Perception

The Model: the series

[EDIT: I covered this series in more depth in Leadership Step by Step, so I recommend the book, but the core is here. I use The Model as a part of my life, basically daily.] Here is The Model---my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development---in series form. Click in the table of contents to the left for each page. I find this Model the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. Why? A model's value comes not from its accuracy but how well it serves its purpose, which improves from effective filtering of information. Street maps, for example, are more useful for driving for having less detail…

December 14, 2014

Exercises / Habits / SIDCHAs

One year of cold showers

I almost missed the anniversary of starting my thirty days of cold showers last December, followed by taking cold showers every fourth day since. That comes out to about 75 cold showers, the coldest reaching 39.9F, the first thirty being at least five minutes long. Most people, thinking about the physical discomfort of a cold shower, dismiss the activity as crazy. Some sincerely ask about it. A small number act on it. The two or three people I know who have acted on it also found the activity incredibly rewarding. I've written before about the differences between physical pleasure and emotional reward. In most cases I prefer the reward and will sacrifice pleasure to create more of it, which cold showers do. (Usually I like…

December 8, 2014

Exercises / Tips

You don’t need six months to prepare. You need an hour.

I've almost finished recording the audio for an online course in many of the exercises I've posted here. I expect many people will find doing it a life-changing experience (like they will with my next seminar, this Saturday in Soho). I had been planning to make the course for a long time, thinking of how to write the perfect text and organize it all. I wasn't creating anything. Then a friend said what I always knew, but forgot: "Josh, let's just record this." Also, NYU asked me to teach an in-person version of the course and needed a syllabus. Two deadlines and a partner started me working---writing text for meeting with someone to record and to distribute to NYU students so they could figure out…

November 29, 2014

Exercises / Nature / Tips

Exercise in minimizing

Since my posts, "The smallest effective difference" and "Minimum effective behavior," I've meant to write an exercise in using less. The day after Thanksgiving,when people tend to consume more than they want, seems timely. As usual, the point of an exercise is partly for the immediate outcome, but mainly to develop new skills. New skills change your behavior and beliefs in the long term. So while the exercise may seem minor, its long-term effects on how you behave and interact with your world can be much greater. If it seems minor, you might as well experiment with it anyway since what's the big deal? Actually, I'm moving in this direction with my coaching and teaching, and appreciating it when teachers and coaches do it with…

November 28, 2014

Awareness / Education / Exercises / Habits / Leadership

What happens when you develop empathy and compassion skills

Each exercise in my seminars teaches a fundamental, useful leadership skill. Collectively, when you practice them more than a few times, they teach empathy and compassion, two critically important skills if you want people to want you to lead them. With my one-on-one coaching clients I can see their empathy and compassion skills develop over weeks and months. I've noticed patterns. At first people feel odd asking about emotions and passions, especially at work. "Can I use the word passion?," they ask. "Is it appropriate at work? It will feel funny." They ask if using someone's emotions to motivate them is manipulation. They worry about using the other person. After doing the exercises once or twice, they realize how effectively motivating someone through emotions and…

November 24, 2014

Education / Exercises

Another successful testimonial

Another attendee from a recent seminar wrote about her experience. I hope it helps people get a feeling for what the seminars offer and how quickly you can use the material and get its benefits. I have also been practicing what we learned from Josh's workshop and I have to say I am already seeing a difference in my relationships at work. I was having a very difficult time expressing myself to my boss and the exercises have helped me understand her position and be more empathetic and in tune with what she is up against. The exercises have also been useful for me at networking events! I ended up meeting a really great contact just last week after chatting about his passion for Gaudi.…

November 21, 2014

Choosing/Decision-Making / Exercises

What are you doing that’s exciting?

A question today: What are you doing that's exciting? Or rewarding, satisfying, fulfilling, invigorating, or whatever you want out of life? Is your life purely reactive, in that you only have time and resources to do what other people tell you to do, to pay rent, etc? If so, maybe you have no choice. Or do you have time for other things? Do you watch TV, play games online, etc? If so, then you have time to do other things. Then you have a choice of what to do. Do you choose exciting things to do? Or rewarding? Or anything like that? Nobody can stop you. Except yourself, I guess. But you can't blame anyone else for you not choosing exciting, awesome, rewarding, satisfying, or…

November 20, 2014

Exercises / Fitness / Habits / SIDCHAs

100 burpees: 9 minutes 21 seconds

Over a drink the other night, a guy I met told me his record for 100 burpees was 7 minutes. He does cross-fit a couple times a week. I couldn't help trying this morning. I did them in 9:21. I wrote him: I couldn't help trying to see how fast I could do 100 burpees. Just did 100 in 9:21. Getting to 7 minutes seems hard, almost impossible, but now I want to keep trying. You were doing push-ups and jumps, right? Congratulations on your achievement and thank you for the motivation. (I secretly hope he wasn't doing push-ups during his to make 7 minutes more accessible. But I also secretly hope not, to help motivate me). I vaguely remembered trying to do 100 fast…

November 18, 2014

Choosing/Decision-Making / Exercises

When to choose not to connect with people

A reader wrote to ask about choosing not to meet or make connections with people. I thought others might find the answer useful. Hey Josh. I was just wondering. You seem to place a lot of value on having relationships with people. Are there times you don't want a relationship with someone? I suppose in negotiations it is in your own interest to have a good relationship for at least the duration of the negotiations. Are there times when you think, "I just don't like this guy, fuck him"? I think I remember you talking about people being worth your time or something like that. I might remember wrong. I guess it's a lot different in business, than in just normal life. What's your thoughts…

November 5, 2014

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